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catbountry · 3 years

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Glancing over some of my older essays on politics, I’m kind of struck how, despite them not being written that long ago, I feel like I come across as a dumbass, or at least like somebody who thinks they’re much smarter than they actually are. And it’s weird, because most of my views are roughly the same; rather, it’s that I feel the way that they’re articulated comes across as too... I don’t know, smarmy? Smug, maybe? Lacking nuance. Blunt. Like I’m talking down to people. Obviously, this was never my intention, but it’s weird how something that was written while in my early 30′s somehow makes me wince a little... as I rapidly approach being smack-dab in the middle of my 30′s. God, I’ve been in my 30′s for almost 5 whole years now, fuck, where does the time go?

I think being able to come out of the other side of the Trump presidency in one piece has kind of helped add some much-needed perspective, at least for myself. I think the hypothesis that a lot of people who voted for Trump were desperate for some kind of change was proven correct when he failed to be re-elected due to his bungling of COVID, which, funnily (or not) enough, he almost could have looked like he was doing the right thing when he initially wanted to close the U.S. borders... except he’d been trying to restrict travel and close borders so often that of course nobody took such a suggestion seriously. And even if they had? Rich people still would have brought it over, because as we all know, rich people can just get away with all kinds of shit. Of course, once it actually hit, Trump really couldn’t handle the idea of looking weak at all, so instead, it was downplayed, joked about, not taken seriously, even though he’d been briefed that it was going to be really, really bad. And when he got it, and in private thought he was going to die? Well, once he beat it, of course he had to say it wasn’t so bad... even though it killed almost a thousand times more people than the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Most of them were seniors. I think that, as well as a general fatigue and disappointment over the lack of swamp-draining from those who weren’t fanatical devotees, probably sealed his fate. I admit, I wasn’t very sure Biden really had much of a chance for a long time... until COVID happened. But hey, at least we got our stimmy from Trump, right lads?

I’m still fully convinced that Trump never intended to win, and that his run was done purely for ego and financial gain, but his ability to effortlessly bait the media, as well as his unexpected exposing of the sham we all knew presidential elections to be, wound up rocketing him to success. Trump will no doubt go down as one of the most successful conmen in American history, one so slick he wound up conning his way all the way into the White House. The whole thing was like if The Producers was a presidential campaign, fascism included. Granted, I don’t think Trump was ever a true fascist; I think he wanted to be a dictator, but the actual job of being President was a drag. The cult of personality he accrued, however, was the biggest source of narcissistic supply that he’d ever experienced in his entire life. Hell, just being the literal President, the most important person in the entire fucking world, is a hell of a high that I don’t think he’ll ever really be able to reclaim. Trump’s going to be chasing that dragon for the rest of his life. Having “President” in front of your name is a lot nicer than actually, you know, having to be the President. I mean, look at how quickly Obama went gray. A lot of people are convinced Trump will run again in 2024, and I don’t doubt it, but unless something happens that completely throws us for a loop, I don’t see him being able to recreate the, er, “magic” of 2016. Everyone getting to see that, not only was his fanbase capable of having embarrassing public meltdowns just like the le epic triggered snowflake lib Hilary supporters, but that their meltdowns were even more embarrassing, and that they all looked like a bunch of fucking English soccer hooligans during the Capitol siege... well, I think that’s going to put off the swing voters, as well as the moderate Republicans.

Also, that Twitter knock-off founded by Trump’s aide, Gettr, being flooded by gay furries posting Sonic the Hedgehog foot porn? Feels like classic 4chan-style raiding. I approve. It almost feels like we’re healing, even if it’s just a little bit.

But what the fuck did we even learn from all this? What did I learn from this?

I don’t know. It feels like over the time I’ve been on Tumblr, what was once SJW became woke, and being woke has become very normal; so normal, in fact, that fucking massive corporations that use slave labor overseas will change their Twitter icons to rainbow every June because The Gays have become a safe, marketable demographic. On one hand, it’s nice to know that, at least in what I guess is considered the western world, LGBT people are more accepted now than they ever have been. On the other... god, it feels so cynical, doesn’t it? This is all very stream of consciousness, here. I don’t write very much on here since, surprise surprise, Tumblr’s been kind of dead since the porn ban. I still see people post, but it used to be that I couldn’t refresh my dash without seeing dozens of new posts. Now it feels like I refresh my dash and I’d be lucky to see a new post there an hour later. This is why I’m on Discord more. It feels like I have more productive conversations than I ever could on Tumblr or Twitter. Twitter is just... god. It’s like all the worst parts of Tumblr without the parts that made it fun aside from a few memes.

Sorry, I got off track there. The point I was going to make before is that, while I am still very firmly anti-censorship, I’ve managed to put myself in a position where it no longer feels like the stakes are so high. I can relax. I don’t have to feel like I’m on the defense the whole time as somebody grills me over some slip-up. I don’t use Twitter that much. When I do post something in response to somebody, I feel like I instantly regret it. I posted in response to some dumbass spreading a rumor that 4chan’s favorite Simpson’s meme about Sneed’s Feed and Seed is secretly ableist, and I got a response from some dude with an Umaru-chan avatar telling me how he’s proudly racist because he and his friends call each other slurs? Like bro, you’re posting cringe, you’re going to lose subscriber-

I don’t know what I’ve learned yet. Maybe that social media sucks and that chatrooms with friends are the superior way to communicate online. I tried out Telnet recently to go into some random IRC, that was neat. It just feels nice to not have to get into a fucking argument every fucking day over shit that doesn’t matter as much as people thinks it does, to not have to hear about every fucking time the President sneezes or farts. It’s not that there’s no longer anything to worry about; there is. I’d really like to see fellow lefties go after the handful of massive corporations that control the majority of the online experience, who censor not just all the racist white dude grifters in suits who all look suspiciously similar to one another, but us as well. I want to see us raise a bigger stink about the web being santized, sterlized, and gentrified to be friendlier to corporations who only want your precious data and eyeballs. Maybe without the constant distraction of Bad Orange Man, we could make that happen. Maybe.

Or maybe fucking Dream will breathe again and all the fucking children will piss their pants and clog up Twitter, fuck these kids, get off my internet, GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

#not fan fiction #political bullshit

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humansofhds · 4 years

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Amber Scorah, MTS ′22

“I no longer feel zealous for a religion, but rather for the beautiful treasure that this life is, and the incredible fact that any of us are here. I am just trying to use this life in the most meaningful way I can, not just to create meaning for myself, but also for others.”

Amber is a first-year master of theological studies candidate studying religion, ethics and politics.

Earliest memories

I remember fear mostly, because the Jehovah's Witnesses believe that the end of the world is coming any day and have been preaching this for over 100 years. Our children’s Bible story books had violent images of people being massacred by “God,” and I think it made me into a little bit of a dark child—a child that was thinking about things that other children probably weren't thinking about. Since I didn't celebrate birthdays, Christmas or do activities that my peers did, I felt this sense of being an outsider in the world. Therefore, I can’t extract my childhood memories without the religion looming large.

Beyond that, I have had such a weird history that I don't know which part of it to focus on. I'm Canadian originally, but a new American now. I was born as a third-generation Jehovah's Witness, and was a member of the religion all the way up until I became a missionary in China. When I was in Shanghai preaching, I ended up waking up to the fact that my religion wasn't everything that I had been taught it was. It came to a point that I no longer felt I could morally be a part of the Jehovah’s Witness organization, so I left my post, moved to New York City, a place I had only been once before, and started a whole new life from scratch. I now am an author and work in media activism.

Where have you been all your life?

Part of being raised a Jehovah's Witness is that you're told not to get a career. You're taught that if you have any talents or abilities, you shouldn't pursue them because all of your time should be used to preach and convert people. So, whenever my talents surfaced, or educational opportunities arose, I did not pursue them. By the time I left the religion, I was in my early 30s and didn't think I could do anything because I had only ever preached and worked part time. However, when I moved to New York, everyone that I would tell this story of my life to—the underground preaching, living in China, etc. —would say "This is crazy. You should write a book about this." Enough people said that to me that I thought, "Maybe I should just write down the story.”

I did end up writing the story and it got published, which was a shock to me. (See book publisher page here.) It was also terrifying, because it meant that I was coming out publicly as someone who did not believe in the Jehovah's Witnesses anymore and would be branded by my family and friends as an “apostate” and shunned.

But during the process of writing, something happened that I didn't realize would happen. I was able to revisit the past in a way that stitched it together and brought it into my present. Writing a memoir let me revisit in my memories—all these people that I missed and loved but would no longer talk to me. It helped me to make sense of it all and to just understand for myself: “What does it mean to lose everything and to start over?”

I have had to come to terms with my mortality because the Jehovah's Witnesses believe that once you survive this apocalypse, you will go on to live forever. After my departure, facing death was existentially difficult. Figuring out what I thought about God or the meaning of life was something I had to deal with. When every question you might ever have about life is answered in a specific belief system, and then you find out that the very foundation of that belief system is not true, then you have to figure out what the truth is.

I have also struggled with feeling behind in life. Everyone else my age had already gone to college, had a career, some of them were already having kids. And here I was, ejected into this world, where I didn't have a college degree, a career, friends or family. I was afraid that whenever I would go on a job interview, they would look at my resume and think; "What's wrong with you? Where have you been all your life?"

Unlearning, and re-learning religion

When I first left my religion, I hated religion and had no interest in it. I had a religion hangover because my religion was so all-encompassing and had overtaken my identity. But even though I felt repulsed by religion, I could never feel like an atheist.

As time goes by, those questions of meaning are still with me, just as they have always been, even as a child. I love this idea of approaching religion not as a religious person, but as a person seeking to understand what it is that makes us create religions, or to be part of religions, or what gives rise to all different kinds of religions. I am interested in answering those questions not through a holy book, but through eons of human experience and exploration. It was this quest that brought me to Divinity school.

Since classes started, my mind has been blown. It's really addictive, actually. Being here is like having a mirror that shows me what I’m interested in, and what I have to give the world. I am a little bit of an activist at heart and have a really strong sense of wanting to take action when I see a wrong that needs to be righted. I feel happy to no longer be an outsider, and to be able to find ways to do that.

Walking through unimaginable loss

In 2015 I had a baby boy. Karl died as an infant, on his first day in childcare. It was a horrific tragedy, and one which I believe firmly could have been prevented if America, like most developed countries in the world, had a national paid parental leave program. If I had not had to go back to work so early or be faced with losing my job and my health care, he probably would not have died. One in four women in America have to leave their babies at two weeks old. I was one of the lucky ones, in a way, because I had three months.

After Karl’s death, I became an activist for parental leave and joined forces with another mom who had lost her child in a similar way. I wrote an article that went viral in the New York Times and this campaign reached the 2016 Presidential election campaign and led to meetings with the Clinton campaign. Shortly after our campaign New York State passed a paid family leave bill.

I am also now a co-partner in a company that does media activism, where we bring untold stories of people who don't normally get heard from to the media. I used to check out and think that God would solve all problems, but I now realize that we all have a personal responsibility to do what we can to make things better.

On the horizon

I want to write a book about the struggle to find a sense of morality after leaving a religion that is so all-encompassing; Having had my morality dictated to me for so much of my life by religious leaders, I now find that I question everything that others take for granted. I am very curious about ethics and morals that aren’t grounded on religious beliefs.

Another thing I want to pursue, which I hope that my time at Harvard will help with, is more media activism. Going to Harvard connects you to a world where you can have a greater impact, since you will be broadening the subjects you are versed in and learning from other students who come from all different backgrounds.

While on my journey here, I carry with me my late Father, and the rest of my family members who are still Jehovah's Witnesses. I also think often about the many people I know who got out of religions like mine and those who committed suicide after they were shunned. I carry their stories here too, because not all of them get to go to Harvard. Now that I know we are mortal beings and this life appears to be all we get; I feel this zeal for living a rich life. A life that not only intellectually expands my world, but also gives me the tools that I can use to lift other people up. I no longer feel zealous for a religion, but rather for the beautiful treasure that this life is, and the incredible fact that any of us are here. I am just trying to use this life in the most meaningful way I can, not just to create meaning for myself, but also for others.

Interview by Suzannah Omonuk

#Harvard #harvard divinity school #memoir #book #Religion #media #publishing #advocacy #loss #large

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plsbyallmeans · 5 years

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Hillary Clinton on Her Surreal Life and New Hulu Doc: “I’m Not the President, and I Got More Votes! It’s So Crazy!”

The former candidate looks back and laughs. What else is she gonna do?

Hillary Clinton sat serenely before me, as if she didn’t have a care in the world. That was my first surprise as I was ushered into a room at a Pasadena hotel to talk to the former Secretary of State and the woman who won the popular vote in the 2016 election about Hulu’s four-part documentary series, Hillary (premieres March 6). Although she’s been accused of being plodding and dour, Clinton exuded buoyant warmth. And then there was her laugh. At first I was convinced that it was deployed for effect. (Politicians get media training; is laughter training a thing?) But gales of it tumbled out so regularly and recklessly that it seemed clear Clinton was just relaxed—maybe for the first time ever?

Sure, sometimes her laughter sounded rueful, but a lot of us feel rueful these days. And while she has stopped ascending the political ladder, Clinton’s name still sparks both adoration and loathing, as well as generalized post-traumatic stress. Some people wish she would withdraw into media exile rather than shadow the current election like the ghost of campaigns past. That gave some pause to Nanette Burstein, the documentary filmmaker behind The Kid Stays in the Picture and American Teen who took on this project in 2018. Burstein knew the Clinton defeat was still a raw wound for liberal America. But it was a cross she was willing to bear, given the complete editorial control and 35 hours of interviews with her subject she was granted, along with leeway to pose any questions she wanted.

I started to ask Clinton how it felt to participate in this legacy-defining project after so many years of having her life’s narrative framed by others, but the word “framed” triggered an explosive howl of laughter. “By all definitions of that word!” she said, eyes flashing, before collecting herself again.

“I decided to do it because I’m not running for anything and I think my life and my story has parallels with women’s lives and stories and what’s going on in politics,“ Clinton told me resolutely. (This was several weeks before the rumor circulated that Mike Bloomberg was considering asking Clinton to be his running mate.) “Thirty-five hours sitting in a chair answering questions is grueling but I felt like if I didn’t tell my side of the story, who would?” she added with a shrug. “At least there’ll be a baseline: Here’s what actually happened in my life. Here’s what I actually said about it.”

That led to some very uncomfortable conversations about the many scandals that engulfed the Clintons, including her husband’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. (“It was awful what I did,” Bill Clinton tells Burstein, barely able to look at the camera. “I feel terrible about the fact that Monica Lewinsky’s life was defined by it.”) “I had to ask the ex-president of the United States about the most personal thing in his life and why he would make such a decision,” Burstein recalled. “It was very intimidating! But it was about: How did this affect Hillary and her marriage and the repercussions of that, which followed her 20 years later, into this last election.”

The series flickers back and forth between Hillary Clinton’s youth and the present, weaving together a complicated and flattering (if not quite hagiographic) portrait of a woman who’s provoked admiration and abhorrence for much of her life. Sometimes she seems like a real-life Zelig, popping up near the center of American culture for the last half century. But Zelig was a bystander, whereas Hillary got right in the thick of the action, sometimes changing the course of events and others times being swept along by them.

Clinton came of age at the exact moment that the women’s liberation movement was rising, and her 1969 Wellesley commencement speech landed her a spot in Life magazine. As a young lawyer, she wrote briefs as part of the staff for Nixon’s impeachment hearings (decades later, in a savage irony, she saw the process from another angle when her own husband was impeached). After following Bill to Arkansas, she confronted good old boy sexism, encountering judges who thought women shouldn’t be lawyers and constituents who felt the first lady of Arkansas should take her husband’s name. When Bill cheated on her in the White House, some women were furious with Hillary for standing by him. Conversely, when Bill entrusted her with the daunting task of devising a universal health care plan 16 years before Obamacare, right-wing rage, and revulsion boiled over. Footage in the Hulu series features protesters brandishing posters with slogans like “Hillary makes me sick” and “Heil Hillary.” At a Kentucky rally, they even burned her in effigy.

“I was threatened when I went around the country talking about it,” Clinton told me of that heated Hillarycare moment, shuddering at the mention of the burning effigy. “The Secret Service made me wear a bulletproof coat at one event because they had taken guns and knives off of people trying to get into the outdoor event. I thought, Shit, I’m trying to get people health care! It’s not like I’m stealing your firstborn here! What is the matter with you?” she shrieked, howling with laughter. “It was so weird—like, what’s happening here? Were they paid? A lot of them were riled up by talk radio…. But yeah, I had a lot of very unusual experiences.”

In the Hulu series, former adviser Cheryl Mills recalls “Hillary hater sessions” during Clinton’s 2008 campaign for the Democratic nomination: Women complaining that the candidate was too power-hungry or that she’d been weak for staying with Bill. “It was like watching The Exorcist: The bile would just keep coming up,” Mills said. Clinton herself told me that before she ran for president, a psychological researcher warned her she’d have problems with white women “because they don’t want any conflict with their husbands, their fathers, their sons, their brothers, their boss. And white men are not going to vote for you—they didn’t vote for your husband, they didn’t vote for Obama, et cetera. So there was a lot of pressure on these women.”

Whatever your view of Clinton’s politics, Hillary reminds us that she was voted the most admired woman in America in the Gallup Poll for 16 years in a row. (Michelle Obama knocked her off the top slot.) Clinton fervently believes she had the white woman vote nailed down in 2016 “until Jim Comey dropped that letter on me,” she said. “I was going to win, I am absolutely convinced of that…. What happened is that white women left me, because their husbands or their bosses or whatever said, See? See? She is going to jail! It was a very effective assault on me.” The series points out that not only was Clinton’s career shaped by her own husband’s infidelity, but it was derailed once again by the sexual misbehavior of Anthony Weiner, husband of her top aide, Huma Abedin. The FBI probe into his sexting a teenage girl ultimately led to Comey’s announcement that they were reopening the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server. This reignited the frenzied right-wing smear campaign and, she believes, turned off enough vacillating voters to throw the election to Trump.

Burstein didn’t want to lean too heavily on the gender angle because there are elements at play in Clinton’s turbulent trajectory that “have nothing to do with that,” she said. “They have to do with politics. With her own personality. But there are also things that are very specific to being a female when you’re trying to do something no one else has done…. You really see that play out in her story over and over again.” The documentary shows how the battery of conflicting public expectations and right-wing vilification over several decades caused Clinton to build up defenses, which made her seem ever-more guarded and humorless. That armoring process started as early as law school, where she learned to put her head down and work hard “despite whatever obstacles were put up. And when you fast-forward into an age where everybody wants to see what your emotions are and how you respond and all that... It’s really a different environment in which we find ourselves now.”

Clinton first sat down with Burstein for interviews just a few days after the 2018 midterm results came through with their record number of women elected to Congress. The former first lady and Secretary of State regards the anger-fueled impetus that drove so many women to run for political office as the silver lining to her 2016 defeat. “She doesn’t feel that it’s a tragedy, so why should I depict it that way?” said Burstein. “She’s not bemoaning her existence every day. She’s like: Okay, what’s next?”

Sitting in front of me in a nubby tweed blazer, Clinton said she tries to be realistic about the progress women have made during her lifetime. “A lot of legal barriers have disappeared, and that’s a big step. So now we deal with all of these pent-up stereotypes and judgments about what women should and shouldn’t do or should and shouldn’t be. And we have all these forces—political and ideological and religious and financial—arrayed against further progress. And we have a president who is a willing tool. He doesn’t believe any of this stuff. He has absolutely no core beliefs whatsoever.”

Clinton won’t endorse anyone in the primary, she told me: “I just want whoever can beat him to get the nomination. Beat him in the Electoral College. That’s all I care about. I’m not going through this again!” she said, dissolving into laughter once more.

I asked Clinton if she ever thought about what she’d be doing in a parallel world where she hadn’t moved to Arkansas and married Bill. She evaded the question, telling me she moved there because she wanted to decide whether to marry and just fell in love with her life there. But then I mentioned to her William Gibson’s new novel, Agency, which takes place in a world where Hillary is president.

“Oh, I’d love to read it!” she gasped, asking for more details. In our own reality, “I’m not the president and I got more votes. It’s so crazy! So I’m interested in somebody writing something about a different ending.” She smiled and wailed, “I want to live in that world!”

(Link)

#Hillary Clinton #Eek so she's going to read the alternative universe Hillary Clinton and I am living for it

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saint-hildegard-of-bingen · 5 years

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If you love our country, please read this article, and continue to work to save our democracy. And stay hopeful!

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The despair felt by climate scientists and environmentalists watching helplessly as something precious and irreplaceable is destroyed is sometimes described as “climate grief.” Those who pay close attention to the ecological calamity that civilization is inflicting upon itself frequently describe feelings of rage, anxiety and bottomless loss, all of which are amplified by the right’s willful denial. The young activist Greta Thunberg, Time magazine’s 2019 Person of the Year, has described falling into a deep depressionafter grasping the ramifications of climate change and the utter refusal of people in power to rise to the occasion: “If burning fossil fuels was so bad that it threatened our very existence, how could we just continue like before?”

Lately, I think I’m experiencing democracy grief. For anyone who was, like me, born after the civil rights movement finally made democracy in America real, liberal democracy has always been part of the climate, as easy to take for granted as clean air or the changing of the seasons. When I contemplate the sort of illiberal oligarchy that would await my children should Donald Trump win another term, the scale of the loss feels so vast that I can barely process it.

After Trump’s election, a number of historians and political scientists rushed out with books explaining, as one title put it, “How Democracies Die.” In the years since, it’s breathtaking how much is dead already. Though the president will almost certainly be impeached for extorting Ukraine to aid his re-election, he is equally certain to be acquitted in the Senate, a tacit confirmation that he is, indeed, above the law. His attorney general is a shameless partisan enforcer. Professional civil servants are purged, replaced by apparatchiks. The courts are filling up with young, hard-right ideologues. One recently confirmed judge, 40-year-old Steven Menashi, has written approvingly of ethnonationalism.

In “How Democracies Die,” Professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt of Harvard describe how, in failing democracies, “the referees of the democratic game were brought over to the government’s side, providing the incumbent with both a shield against constitutional challenges and a powerful — and ‘legal’ — weapon with which to assault its opponents.” This is happening before our eyes.

The entire Trump presidency has been marked, for many of us who are part of the plurality that despises it, by anxiety and anger. But lately I’ve noticed, and not just in myself, a demoralizing degree of fear, even depression. You can see it online, in the self-protective cynicism of liberals announcing on Twitter that Trump is going to win re-election. In The Washington Post, Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush and a Never Trump conservative, described his spiritual struggle against feelings of political desperation: “Sustaining this type of distressed uncertainty for long periods, I can attest, is like putting arsenic in your saltshaker.”

I reached out to a number of therapists, who said they’re seeing this politically induced misery in their patients. Three years ago, said Karen Starr, a psychologist who practices in Manhattan and on Long Island, some of her patients were “in a state of alarm,” but that’s changed into “more of a chronic feeling that’s bordering on despair.” Among those most affected, she said, are the Holocaust survivors she sees. “It’s about this general feeling that the institutions that we rely on to protect us from a dangerous individual might fail,” she said.

Kimberly Grocher, a psychotherapist who works in both New York and South Florida, and whose clients are primarily women of color, told me that during her sessions, the political situation “is always in the room. It’s always in the room.” Trump, she said, has made bigotry more open and acceptable, something her patients feel in their daily lives. “When you’re dealing with people of color’s mental health, systemic racism is a big part of that,” she said.

In April 2017, I traveled to suburban Atlanta to cover the special election in the Sixth Congressional District. Meeting women there who had been shocked by Trump’s election into ceaseless political action made me optimistic for the first time that year. These women were ultimately the reason that the district, once represented by Newt Gingrich, is now represented by a Democrat, Lucy McBath. Recently, I got back in touch with a woman I’d met there, an army veteran and mother of three named Katie Landsman. She was in a dark place.

“It’s like watching someone you love die of a wasting disease,” she said, speaking of our country. “Each day, you still have that little hope no matter what happens, you’re always going to have that little hope that everything’s going to turn out O.K., but every day it seems like we get hit by something else.” Some mornings, she said, it’s hard to get out of bed. “It doesn’t feel like depression,” she said. “It really does feel more like grief.”

Obviously, this is hardly the first time that America has failed to live up to its ideals. But the ideals themselves used to be a nearly universal lodestar. The civil rights movement, and freedom movements that came after it, succeeded because the country could be shamed by the distance between its democratic promises and its reality. That is no longer true.

Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans are often incredulous seeing the party of Ronald Reagan allied with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, but the truth is, there’s no reason they should be in conflict. The enmity between America and Russia was ideological. First it was liberal democracy versus communism. Then it was liberal democracy versus authoritarian kleptocracy.

But Trump’s political movement is pro-authoritarian and pro-oligarch. It has no interest in preserving pluralism, free and fair elections or any version of the rule of law that applies to the powerful as well as the powerless. It’s contemptuous of the notion of America as a lofty idea rather than a blood-and-soil nation. Russia, which has long wanted to prove that liberal democracy is a hypocritical sham, is the natural friend of the Trumpist Republican Party, just as it’s an ally and benefactor of the far right Rassemblement National in France and the Lega Nord in Italy.

The nemeses of the Trumpist movement are liberals — in both the classical and American sense of the world — not America’s traditional geopolitical foes. This is something new in our lifetime. Despite right-wing persecution fantasies about Barack Obama, we’ve never before had a president who treats half the country like enemies, subjecting them to an unending barrage of dehumanization and hostile propaganda. Opponents in a liberal political system share at least some overlapping language. They have some shared values to orient debates. With those things gone, words lose their meaning and political exchange becomes impossible and irrelevant.

Thus we have a total breakdown in epistemological solidarity. In the impeachment committee hearings, Republicans insist with straight faces that Trump was deeply concerned about corruption in Ukraine. Republican senators like Ted Cruz of Texas, who is smart enough to know better, repeat Russian propaganda accusing Ukraine of interfering in the 2016 election. The Department of Justice’s inspector general’s report refutes years of Republican deep state conspiracy theories about an F.B.I. plot to subvert Trump’s campaign, and it makes no difference whatsoever to the promoters of those theories, who pronounce themselves totally vindicated.

To those who recognize the Trump administration’s official lies as such, the scale of dishonesty can be destabilizing. It’s a psychic tax on the population, who must parse an avalanche of untruths to understand current events. “What’s going on in the government is so extreme, that people who have no history of overwhelming psychological trauma still feel crazed by this,” said Stephanie Engel, a psychiatrist in Cambridge, Mass., who said Trump comes up “very frequently” in her sessions.

Like several therapists I spoke to, Engel said she’s had to rethink how she practices, because she has no clinical distance from the things that are terrifying her patients. “If we continue to present a facade — that we know how to manage this ourselves, and we’re not worried about our grandchildren, or we’re not worried about how we’re going to live our lives if he wins the next election — we’re not doing our patients a service,” she said.

This kind of political suffering is uncomfortable to write about, because liberal misery is the raison d’être of the MAGA movement. When Trumpists mock their enemies for being “triggered,” it’s just a quasi-adult version of the playground bully’s jeer: “What are you going to do, cry?” Anyone who has ever been bullied knows how important it is, at that moment, to choke back tears. In truth, there are few bigger snowflakes than the stars of MAGA world. The Trumpist pundit Dan Bongino is currently suing The Daily Beast for $15 million, saying it inflicted “emotional distress and trauma, insult, anguish,” for writing that NRATV, the National Rifle Association’s now defunct online media arm, had “dropped” him when the show he hosted ended. Still, a movement fueled by sadism will delight in admissions that it has caused pain.

But despair is worth discussing, because it’s something that organizers and Democratic candidates should be addressing head on. Left to fester, it can lead to apathy and withdrawal. Channeled properly, it can fuel an uprising. I was relieved to hear that despite her sometimes overwhelming sense of civic sadness, Landsman’s activism hasn’t let up. She’s been spending a bit less than 20 hours a week on political organizing, and expects to go back to 40 or more after the holidays. “The only other option is to quit and accept it, and I’m not ready to go there yet,” she said. Democracy grief isn’t like regular grief. Acceptance isn’t how you move on from it. Acceptance is itself a kind of death.

#rumors and misinformation #dump trump #keep america great

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twiddlebirdlet · 5 years

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https://www.wired.com/story/chris-evans-starting-point-politics/

Chris Evans Goes to Washington

The actor's new project, A Starting Point, aims to give all Americans the TL;DR on WTF is going on in politics. It's harder than punching Nazis on the big screen.

It’s a languid October afternoon in Los Angeles, sunny and clear.

Chris Evans, back home after a grueling production schedule, relaxes into his couch, feet propped up on the coffee table. Over the past year and a half, the actor has tried on one identity after another: the shaggy-haired Israeli spy, the clean-shaven playboy, and, in his Broadway debut, the Manhattan beat cop with a Burt Reynolds ’stache. Now, though, he just looks like Chris Evans—trim beard, monster biceps, angelic complexion. So it’s a surprise when he brings up the nightmares. “I sleep, like, an hour a night,” he says. “I’m in a panic.”

The panic began, as panics so often do these days, in Washington, DC. Early last February, Evans visited the capital to pitch lawmakers on a new civic engagement project. He arrived just hours before Donald Trump would deliver his second State of the Union address, in which he called on Congress to “bridge old divisions” and “reject the politics of revenge, resistance, and retribution.” (Earlier, at a private luncheon, Trump referred to Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s top Democrat, as a “nasty son of a bitch.”) Evans is no fan of the president, whom he has publicly called a “moron,” a “dunce,” and a “meatball.” But bridging divisions? Putting an end to the American body politic’s clammy night sweats? These were goals he could get behind.

Evans’ pitch went like this: He would build an online platform organized into tidy sections—immigration, health care, education, the economy—each with a series of questions of the kind most Americans can’t succinctly answer themselves. What, exactly, is a tariff? What’s the difference between Medicare and Medicaid? Evans would invite politicians to answer the questions in minute-long videos. He’d conduct the interviews himself, but always from behind the camera. The site would be a place to hear both sides of an issue, to get the TL;DR on WTF was happening in American politics. He called it A Starting Point—a name that sometimes rang with enthusiasm and sometimes sounded like an apology.

Evans doesn’t have much in the way of political capital, but he does have a reputation, perhaps unearned, for patriotism. Since 2011 he has appeared in no fewer than 10 Marvel movies as Captain America, the Nazi-slaying, homeland-defending superhero wrapped in bipartisan red, white, and blue. It’s hard to imagine a better time to cash in on the character’s symbolism. Partisan animosity is at an all-time high; a recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute and The Atlantic found that 35 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of Democrats would oppose their child marrying someone from the other party. (In 1960, only 4 percent of respondents felt this way.) At the same time, there’s a real crisis of faith in the country’s leaders. According to the Pew Research Center, 81 percent of Americans believe that members of Congress behave unethically at least some of the time. In Pew’s estimation, that makes them even less trusted than journalists and tech CEOs.

If Evans got it right, he believed, this wouldn’t be some small-fry website. He’d be helping “create informed, responsible, and empathetic citizens.” He would “reduce partisanship and promote respectful discourse.” At the very least, he would “get more people involved” in politics. And if the site stank like a rotten tomato? If Evans became a national laughingstock? Well, that’s where the nightmares began.

It took a special serum and a flash broil in a Vita-Ray chamber to transform Steve Rogers, a sickly kid from Brooklyn, into Captain America. For Chris Evans, savior of American democracy, the origin story is rather less Marvelous.

One day a few years ago, around the time he was filming Avengers: Infinity War, Evans was watching the news. The on-air discussion turned to an unfamiliar acronym—it might have been NAFTA, he says, but he thinks it was DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an Obama-era immigration policy that granted amnesty to people who had been brought into the United States illegally as children. The Trump administration had just announced plans to phase out DACA, leaving more than half a million young immigrants in the lurch. (The Supreme Court will likely rule this year on whether terminating the program was lawful.)

On the other side of the television, Evans squinted. Wait a minute, he thought. What did that acronym stand for again? And was it a good thing or a bad thing? “It was just something I didn’t understand,” he says.

Evans considers himself a politico. Now 38, he grew up in a civic-minded family, the kind that revels in shouting about the news over dinner. His uncle Michael Capuano served 10 terms in Congress as a Democrat from Massachusetts, beginning right around the time Evans graduated from high school and moved to New York to pursue acting. During the 2016 presidential election, Evans campaigned for Hillary Clinton. In 2017 he became an outspoken critic of Trump—even after he was advised to zip it, for risk of alienating moviegoers. Evans could be a truck driver, Capuano says, and he’d still be involved in politics.

But watching TV that day, Evans was totally lost. He Googled the acronym and tripped over all the warring headlines. Then he tried Wikipedia, but, well, the entry was thousands of words long. “It’s this never-ending thing, and you’re just like, who is going to read 12 pages on something?” Evans says. “I just wanted a basic understanding, a basic history, and a basic grasp on what the two parties think.” He decided to build the resource he wanted for himself.

Evans brought the idea to his close friend Mark Kassen, an actor and director he’d met working on the 2011 indie film Puncture. Kassen signed on and recruited a third partner, Joe Kiani, the founder and CEO of a medical technology company called Masimo. The three met for lobster rolls in Boston. What the country needed, they decided, was a kind of Schoolhouse Rock for adults—a simple, memorable way to learn the ins and outs of civic life. Evans suggested working with politicians directly. Kiani, who had made some friends on Capitol Hill over the years, thought they’d go for it. Each partner agreed to put up money to get the thing off the ground. (They wouldn’t say how much.) They spent some time Googling similar outlets and figuring out where they fit in, Kassen says.

They began by establishing a few rules. First, A Starting Point would give politicians free rein to answer questions as they pleased—no editing, no moderation, no interjections. Second, they would hire fact-checkers to make sure they weren’t promoting misinformation. Third, they would design a site that privileged diversity of opinion, where you could watch a dozen different people answering the same question in different ways. Here, though, imbibing the information would feel more like watching YouTube than skimming Wikipedia—more like entertainment than homework.

The trio mocked up a list of questions to bring to Capitol Hill, starting with the ones that most baffled them. (Is the electoral college still necessary?) They talked, admiringly, about the way presidential debate moderators manage to make their language sound neutral. (Should the questions refer to a “climate crisis” or a “climate situation,” “illegal immigrants” or “undocumented immigrants”?) Then Evans recorded a video on his couch in LA. “Hi, I’m Chris Evans,” he began. “If you’re watching this, I hope you’ll consider contributing to my new civics engagement project called A Starting Point.” He emailed the file to every senator and representative in Congress.

Only a few replied.

In hindsight, Evans realizes, the video “looked so cheap” and either got caught in spam filters or was consciously deleted by congressional staffers. “The majority of people, on both sides of the aisle, dismissed it,” Evans says. Many “thought it was a joke.” Yet there are few doors in American life that a square jaw can’t open, particularly when it belongs to a man with many millions of dollars and nearly as many swooning Twitter fans. Soon enough, a handful of politicians had agreed to meet with the group.

On the morning of his first visit to Capitol Hill, as he donned a slick gray windowpane suit and a black polka-dot tie and combed his perfect hair back from his perfect forehead, Evans felt a wave of doubt. “This isn’t my lane,” he recalls thinking as he walked through the maze of the Russell Senate Office Building. Here, people were making real change, affecting the lives of millions of Americans. “And shit,” Evans said to himself, “I didn’t even go to college.”

“This isn’t my lane,” Evans thought as he walked through the maze of the Russell Senate Office Building.

The trio’s first stop was the office of Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware. “Which one is the senator?” Evans asked.

Coons, having never watched any of the Avengers movies, didn’t know who Evans was, either. But in short order, he says, he was won over by the actor’s charm and “very slight but still noticeable” Boston accent. The thing that got Coons the most, though—the thing that would lead him to pass out pocket cards on the Senate floor to recruit others, especially Republicans, to take part in the project—was how refreshing it was to be asked simple questions: Why should we support the United Nations? Why does foreign aid matter? Coons saw real value in trying to explain these things, simply and plainly, to his constituents.

“Look, I’m not naive,” Coons says. He is the first to admit that one-minute videos won’t fix what’s wrong with American politics. “But it’s important for there to be attempts at civic education and outreach,” he adds. “And, you know, his fictional character fought for our nation in a time of great difficulty.”

Evans stiffens slightly when people mention Captain America. The superhero comparison is, admittedly, a little obvious. But again and again on Capitol Hill, the shtick proved useful: Sometimes it’s better to be Captain America than a Hollywood liberal elite who defends Roe v. Wade and wants to ban assault weapons. When Evans met Jim Risch, the Republican senator from Idaho joked about catching him up on NATO, “since he missed the 70 years after World War II.” When he met Representative Dan Crenshaw, a hard-line Texas Republican and former Navy SEAL who lost his right eye in Afghanistan, Crenshaw lifted up his eye patch to reveal a glass prosthetic painted to look like Captain America’s shield.

Eventually, Evans loosened up—at least he lost the tie. Since that first round of visits, he and Kassen have returned to Washington every six weeks or so, collecting more than 1,000 videos from more than 100 members of Congress, along with about half of the 2020 Democratic hopefuls. Evans has conducted every interview himself. Kassen, meanwhile, managed the acquisition of a video compression startup in Montreal. About a dozen of the company’s engineers are building a custom content management system for A Starting Point, which is slated to go live in February. They’re running bandwidth tests too—just in case, as Kassen worries, “everyone in Chris’ audience logs on that first day.”

“We have to do this now,” Evans says. “It’s out there. We have to finish this. Shit.”

Back in LA, Evans pulls up the site on his iPhone. He hesitates for a moment and covers the screen with his hand. It’s still a demo, he explains, in the same bashful tone he uses to tell me the guest bathroom is out of toilet paper.

On the homepage, there’s a clip of Evans explaining how to use the site and a carousel of “trending topics” (energy, charter schools, Hong Kong). You can enter your address to call up a list of your representatives and find their videos; you can also contact them directly through the site. The rest is organized by topic and question, with a matrix of one-minute videos for each—Democrats in the left-hand column, Republicans on the right.

Early on in the development of the site, Evans and Kassen fought over fact-checking. Kassen, arguing against, was concerned about the optics: Who were they to arbitrate truth? Evans insisted that A Starting Point would only seem objective if visitors knew the answers had been vetted somehow. Ultimately he prevailed, and they agreed to hire a third-party fact-checker. They have yet to put their thousand-plus videos through the wringer, so for now I’m seeing first drafts. If they’re found to contain falsehoods, Evans says, they won’t appear on the site at all.

Kassen showed me a sampling of some of this raw material. Under “What is DACA?” I found dozens of videos, offering dozens of different starting points.

One representative, a Republican whose district lies near the Mexican border, describes the program’s recipients as “1.2 million men and women who have only known the United States as their home.” They go to school, he explains; they serve in the military; they’ve all passed background checks.

Sometimes it’s better to be Captain America than a Hollywood liberal elite who defends Roe v. Wade and wants to ban assault weapons.

Another Republican representative says, “So, DACA is a result of a really bad immigration system … We’re seeing record numbers of families crossing the border because a kid equals a token for presence in the US. All right? We have all of these people come over, we can’t process them, they’re claiming asylum. I just heard from the secretary of Homeland Security this week, about nine in 10 don’t have valid claims of asylum. Meaning they’re not political—there’s no political persecution going on. OK?”

These two responses (from politicians on the same side of the aisle, no less) illustrate some of the quandaries that Evans, Kassen, and their fact-checkers are likely to encounter. The first representative, for instance, says there are 1.2 million DACA recipients, when in fact only 660,000 immigrants are currently enrolled in the program. The higher number is based on an estimate of those who could be eligible published by the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. The “nine in 10” statistic, meanwhile, is a loose interpretation of data from 2018, which shows that only about 16 percent of immigrants who filed a “credible fear” claim were granted asylum. But this does not mean, as the representative implies, that the other claims weren’t “valid”—merely that they weren’t successful. Nearly half of all asylum claims from this time were dismissed for undisclosed reasons. These are fairly hair-splitting examples, but even the basic, definitional questions are drenched in opinion. What is Citizens United? “Horrible decision,” says a Democratic senator in his video response.

Evans doesn’t want to spend time refereeing politicians. To him, A Starting Point should act more like a database than a platform—rhetoric that rhymes with that of Facebook and Twitter, which have mostly sidestepped responsibility for their content. He’s just hosting the videos, he says; it’s up to politicians to decide how they answer the questions. There’s no comment section and no algorithmically generated list of recommended videos. “You need to decide what you need to watch next,” Kassen says.

One of the assumptions underlying Evans’ project—and it’s a very big assumption—is that the force of his fame will be enough to attract people who otherwise would have zero interest in watching a carousel of videos from their elected officials. This, by all accounts, is most people: Only a third of Americans can name their representatives in Congress, and those who can aren’t binge-watching C-Span. “Celebrities bring an extraordinary ability to get attention,” says Lauren Wright, a political researcher at Princeton and author of Star Power: American Democracy in the Age of the Celebrity Candidate. But Evans, she says, is “not taking the route that a lot of celebrities have, which is: The solution to American politics is me.” It would be one thing if Evans were guiding you through the inner workings of Congress like a chiseled Virgil. But why would someone watch a senator dryly explain NAFTA when they could watch, say, a YouTube video of Chris Evans on Jimmy Kimmel?

Without its leading man in the frame, A Starting Point begins to look uncomfortably similar to the many other platforms that have sought to fight partisanship online. A site called AllSides labels news sources as left, center, or right and encourages readers to create a balanced media diet with a little from each. A browser plug-in called Read Across the Aisle (“A Fitbit for your filter bubble”) measures the amount of time you spend on left-leaning, right-leaning, or centrist websites. The Flip Side bills itself as a “one-stop shop for smart, concise summaries of political analysis from both conservative and liberal media.”

The underlying idea—that there would be a new birth of civic engagement if only we could wrest control of the information economy from the hands of self-serving ideologues and deliver the news to citizens unbiased and uncut—is an old one. In 1993, when the modern internet was just a gleam in Al Gore’s eye, Michael Crichton wrote in this magazine’s pages that he was sick and tired of the “polarized, junk-food journalism” propagated by traditional media outlets. (This was three years before Fox News and MSNBC came into being; he was talking about The New York Times.) What society needed, he argued, was something more like C-Span, something that encouraged people to draw their own conclusions.

But does any of it work? Not according to Wright. “We have many years of research on these questions, and the consensus among scholars is that the proliferation of media choices—including sites like Evans’—has not increased political knowledge or participation,” she says. “The problem isn’t the lack of information. It’s the lack of interest.” Jonathan Albright, director of the Digital Forensics Initiative at Columbia’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, agrees. “All of these fact-checking initiatives, all of this work that goes into trying to disambiguate issues or trying to reduce noise—people have no time,” he says. “Some people care about politics, but those are not the people you need to reach.”

Naturally, this sort of talk makes Evans a little nervous. But he takes refuge in what he sees as the core strengths of the concept. For one thing, he argues, snack-size videos are more accessible than text. Also, those other sites rely on a translator to interpret the issues, while A Starting Point goes straight to the source. It’s not for policy wonks. It’s for average Americans, centrists, extremists, swing voters—everyone!—who want to hear about policy straight from the horse’s mouth. (Never mind that most people hold horses in higher regard.)

Evans has all kinds of ideas for how to keep people coming back. He might add a section of the website where representatives can upload weekly videos for their constituents, or a place where policymakers from different parties can discuss bipartisan compromise. He talks about these ideas with an enthusiasm so pure and so believable that you almost forget he’s an actor. The whole point, he says, is giving Americans a cheap seat on the kinds of conversations that are happening on Capitol Hill. That’s a show that Evans is betting people actually want to see.

The worst thing that could happen isn’t that nobody watches the videos. That would suck, but Evans could deal with it. What gets him riled up most is thinking about what he might have failed to consider. What if the site ends up promoting some bizarre agenda that he never intended? What if people use the videos for some kind of twisted purpose? “One miscalculation,” he says, “and you may not get back on track.” (See: Facebook.)

Evans knows his idea to save democracy can come off a little Pollyannaish, and if it flops, it’ll be his reputation on the line. But he really, really believes in it. OK, so maybe it won’t save America, but it might piece together some of what’s been broken. A fresh start. A starting point.

“This does feel to me like everybody wins here. I don’t see how this becomes a problem,” he says, before a look of panic crosses his face, the anxiety setting in again.

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schraubd · 5 years

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What Went Wrong in 2016?

Right up until election day, most people thought Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 election. She didn't, and many people have many different theories about what went wrong. Which one you ascribe to probably does a fair bit of work in explaining who you back in 2020 and why. And the fact that we don't really know which answer is the right one, and feel an urge to cover all our bases "just to be sure", probably contributes to the Johnny Unbeatable problem -- the explanations aren't all mutually compatible, and so "learning their lessons" will pull us in contradictory directions. Theory #1: It was anti-Clinton mania: Claim: Hillary Clinton is uniquely reviled for idiosyncratic and effectively non-ideological reasons. Lesson: don't nominate Hillary Clinton. Simple. Theory #2: It was misogyny: It's not just Hillary Clinton. Any female candidate is going to whip up a toxic brew of wounded masculinity and machismo. People nervous about nominating another woman often believe this. Theory #3: Clinton was too elitist: Generally a favorite of not-Democrats, though endorsed by some "moderates" too. The idea here is that Hillary Clinton represents a far-left agenda and the Democrats need to return to the good old days when they were the party of ... Bill Clinton? JFK? FDR? Unclear. What is clear is that Democrats need to show more respect for rural heartland voters, respect people who oppose gay rights, respect people who want to deport immigrant children, and above all respect people who want to ban abortion. Oh, and under no circumstances should a Democrat call anyone "deplorable" -- except maybe Ilhan Omar. These folks believe Joe Biden would have won in a cakewalk Theory #4: Clinton was too centrist: Hillary Clinton didn't offer a true progressive alternative to conservatism, to capitalism, to corporatism, to technocracy, or to neoliberalism. Hence she didn't inspire voters thirsting for an alternative. Donald Trump at least purported to speak to voters who believed the system had failed him, and a Democrat who basically was seen as a "the status quo is okay" figure would not do well. A bold and uncompromising progressive vision that unabashedly targets the systemic forces immiserating us all, by contrast, can speak to the millions of Americans who feel dejected, disempowered, and ready for a change. Favored diagnosis of the "Bernie would have won!" crowd. Theory #5: Clinton abandoned the Midwest: "She didn't even visit Wisconsin!" The blue wall cracked, Democrats lost Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. So to win -- rebuild that blue wall, by nominating a candidate most likely to be extremely popular among rust belt swing voters in the Midwest. This could point you anywhere from Joe Biden to Tim Ryan to Amy Klobuchar to "recruit Sherrod Brown". Theory #6: Clinton didn't excite the base: Democrats took for granted the constituencies that are most responsible for powering them to victory and so left a ton of votes on the table. Rather than chase the elusive (and probably white) swing voter, the strategy here is to goose turnout among voters (especially women) of color. It's not the same as Theory #4 because -- despite what Jacobin Mag would have you believe -- it is not necessarily the case that people of color are inspired by fire-eating leftism of the Jacobin Mag bent. Often believed by those who think Democrats must nominate a woman and/or person of color; and often also paired with a belief that Democrats should abandon the rust belt and focus more on winning emergent sun belt swing states like Arizona, North Carolina, or (dare to dream) Georgia and Texas. Theory #7: PC backlash: The Democratic Party allowed themselves to be taken over by a radical identity politics fringe who alienated regular Americans with all this talk of "intersectionality" and "microaggressions" and "trigger warnings". Trump's victory was a result of a PC backlash prompted by White men who just was sick and tired of being called racist all the time, and lashed out by ... endorsing a really racist candidate. The interesting thing about this diagnosis is that its political description basically boils down to "White Americans are hella racist" while its political prescription is usually "don't ever say White Americans are racist." Facts sure care about those feelings. Theory #8: Voter suppression: Lower turnout among the base wasn't (just) because of less enthusiasm for Clinton. It was also a function of a sustained conservative campaign to obstruct poor and minority communities from voting. Proponents of this view aren't necessarily tied to a particular candidate as they are to urging Democrats to take voter access seriously as a top priority -- both in terms of legislating and in terms of activism. Unfortunately, the Senate won't pass any legislation, the courts are basically endorsers of the voter suppression project, and it's not like Republicans are going to be less invested in voter suppression the next time around, so this can rapidly turn fatalistic. Theory #9: Conspiracy theories: Russian interference, social media, fake news. Voters were buffeted by a frenzy of misleading or outright false information. Not only were some taken in by outlandish nonsense (QAnon, Pizzagate, Soros conspiracies), even those who weren't directly affected often suffered a general decline in trust for political institutions and the reliability of authority -- something that ended up redounding to Trump's benefit. And the Republicans exploited media timidity and its reflexive instinct to tell "both sides" to put naked falsehoods on par with actual truth. To a large extent, people in this camp think the media has to accept in a much more decisive manner its obligation call lies lies -- even if it makes "certain" elected officials mad. Theory #10: The Democratic Party is corrupt/incompetent/in disarray: Democrats don't really want to win, or they don't want to win if it means displeasing their true corporate masters. The party is beholden to an out-of-touch consultant class and big money donors locking them into unpopular positions that predictably lose elections. Only by seizing control of the party apparatus and smashing the old guard can Democrats actually run races that will actually inspire people. The more militant version of Theory #4. Theory #11: Nothing went wrong -- it was a fluke: During the entire 2016 cycle, the polls oscillated between a high of "Hillary Clinton landslide" and a low of "statistical dead heat". The argument here is that all that happened in 2016 is that election day happened to have the tremendous bad luck of occurring at one of the nadirs, leading to what was effectively a statistical dead heat and a coin-flip Donald Trump win. The lesson here is that there is n: o lesson: if you have a campaign strategy that gives you a win 75% of the time, that's a pretty good strategy even though (as Nate Silver reminds us) statistically you should lose a quarter of the time. All the efforts to "explain" the outcome basically a function of statistical illiteracy. To the extent Democrats should be on alert for anything, it's in letting the "we have to change something" impulse to tinker lead to making things worse. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2Fv6yC9

#Democrats #Election 2016 #Election 2020 #Hillary Clinton

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haughttopics · 5 years

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What's happening in the UK at the minute? I saw something on the news but I don't really understand?

oh dear anon, even people living here don’t fully know what’s really going on. but here’s the general gist of what’s happened recently:

boris johnson became prime minister when theresa may resigned. was he elected by the general public? absolutely not. he was picked by members of the conservative party in their own self interest, not in the interest of the nation and beyond. i’d like to point out that this is also how theresa may became prime minister in the first place in 2016.

just for some context as to who bo jo is, he’s a wildly racist and manipulative power hungry man who is personally endorsed by donald trump, and their similarities far extend their physical appearances.

yesterday, bo jo asked the queen for permission to suspend parliament (this is called proroguing) and she granted it. could the queen have said no? not without triggering a constitutional crisis. now this isn’t the first time such a thing has happened, in fact it’s very legal. but why is this causing such a public uproar? because of the looming brexit deadline on 31st october.

so why is the brexit deadline important here? well, during this whole shambles of a process our government has failed to create acceptable deals and terms with the european union of how we can continue trade and other things we rely on once we’re no longer a member. without any of these in place, we face the prospect of a no-deal brexit.

is no-deal brexit bad? in this scenario, changes would happen overnight and cause serious disruption to the british public, economy, welfare, and threaten the good friday agreement which keeps the peace between the republic of ireland and northern ireland (i can’t delve into this specifically because i don’t know enough information, but it’s important to know because this is a huge issue that needs to be addressed). there are obviously other fallouts from no-deal brexit but these are just some the major points.

bo jo is trying to threaten the eu with this prospect and is insistent that if the two sides can’t come to a mutual decision by the deadline then it’s happening, no further extension or anything. no-deal brexit is the worst possible scenario and a huge number of opposition mps and even tory mps are against this. as such, they have been trying to pass legislature to prevent this from happening.

with bo jo proroguing parliament, this gives very little time for anyone to create and pass legislature to protect the uk. so whilst it may be legal, it’s a very dirty move he’s done to undermine and prevent the democratic process, which ironically was one of the huge factors used by leave campaigners.

this is why the public are protesting and why the mps are angry, because we are supposed to be a democratic nation except this behaviour from an unelected prime minister is pushing into the boundaries of dictatorship.

that’s a lot of information, and there’s so much more i haven’t even touched on (honestly i don’t even know the full extent of every detail), but i think this image is a good summary of everything i’ve said and more:

#asks #anon #sorry i don't normally talk politics on this blog #this is the place i use as a break from it all #but i don't mind answering your question #hopefully that has helped clear up some confusion #but honestly the whole situation is one big clusterfuck and i don't think this could possibly end well for any of us

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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What Happens When Ordinary People End Up in Trump’s Tweets https://nyti.ms/32bCiou

🍁🏈🍂🍻🍁🏈🍂🍻🍁🏈🍂🍻🍁🏈

What Happens When Ordinary People End Up in Trump’s Tweets

By MATT FLEGENHEIMER | Published Nov. 2, 2019 | New York Times | Posted November 3, 2019 |

McCALLA, Ala. — The evening of April 29 passed like many others for Ben Rawls, a fire lieutenant in Tuscaloosa: settled in the rocking chair on his porch, amid empty beer cans and mosquito-fighting candles, tweeting to an audience of dozens until he got sleepy.

“Granted I am in Alabama,” Mr. Rawls, 45, wrote around 11 p.m., after a major firefighters’ union endorsed Joseph R. Biden Jr. for president, “but most of the firefighters I talk to are voting @realDonaldTrump.”

The morning of May 1, some 36 hours later, was less typical.

Mr. Rawls showered and took his daughters to school. He ignored his phone, until it yapped so insistently that he had to look. An ashbin of Twitter comments greeted him: Racist. Moron. “‘Toothless’ — that was a good one,” he recalled.

The most curious posts disputed Mr. Rawls’s very existence. Strangers accused him of being a bot. He replied to one with a video he recorded in his pickup. “Here I am,” he said to the camera. “No faking here.”

All told, it took about 12 hours for him to solve the mystery. Back in his rocking chair, he stared at a fellow Twitter user’s note of congratulations: Mr. Rawls had been retweeted by the president of the United States.

Along with the Republican allies, Fox News hosts and conspiracy-mongering trolls whose messages President Trump pinballs across the political arena, he has also elevated regular people whose words he finds pleasing. Perhaps no group understands the praise-seeking cyclone that is @realDonaldTrump better than these arbitrary few who have lived inside it, briefly and usually unwittingly.

Their brushes with cybercelebrity are a portal into the Twitter feedback loop powered and experienced by Mr. Trump — dark, caustic, skimpy on nuance — where the ripples of a single presidential tweet can be hard to fathom unless measured against the relative anonymity to which these users were accustomed. Mr. Rawls got 2,700 retweets and 14,000 “likes” with the boost from Mr. Trump. The reach of his tweets before and since, he estimated, was approximately zero.

For many of the retweeted, the temporary platform stands as a testament to a style of politics they have never seen before — one that has bonded the president to his followers, virtual or otherwise.

“No other president has ever done stuff like this,” said Curtis Vincent, a 35-year old in Bowling Green, Ky., who operates one of the more than 215 unverified accounts Mr. Trump has retweeted since taking office. “They’ve been on a higher pedestal.”

Mr. Rawls, Mr. Vincent and several others were retweeted by Mr. Trump on May 1 after responding to a post by a Fox News personality, Dan Bongino, about the fire union’s endorsing Mr. Biden.

Joining them in temporary Twitter fame was Joelle Palombo, 46, a Southern California resident with 11 followers, who had largely used her account to cheer on her daughter’s soccer team. But after Mr. Bongino tweeted that “NONE of the firemen” he knew were with Mr. Biden, she replied with a note of support for Mr. Trump from one “fire family” out West.

The flood of reactions so spooked Ms. Palombo that she enlisted her teenage son to help block anyone she saw in her feed. The purge took three days, she said, and included the president, who she did not realize had retweeted her until a reporter told her months later.

“I went and looked at his account, and I blocked him,” Ms. Palombo said of Mr. Trump. “That’s how scared I was. I’m just one tiny hair on a dog. Are you kidding me?”

Although her affection for the president persists, Ms. Palombo questions the value of his favored medium. “How many hours of the day do people put in to do this?” she said. “I don’t need to have a voice on this. I’ll vote.”

Others have found more purpose in the practice. Mr. Rawls described himself as a reluctant Trump voter in 2016. He preferred Ted Cruz during the Republican primary, and he winces at some of the president’s choices, including insulting John McCain well after the senator’s death.

But as the 2020 election approaches, Mr. Rawls suggests, the president’s Twitter output is a more effective galvanizer than even the slickest campaign ad. “The tweeting doesn’t bother me so much anymore,” he said. “I don’t really feel like I wasted a vote.”

And the validation of the president’s retweet has encouraged his own more quarrelsome instincts. “Before all this happened, I would type something out and say, ‘People will think I’m crazy,’” he recalled, citing prospective tweets that he scrapped.

Since May, these second thoughts have been rarer. He has called Anthony Scaramucci, the former White House communications director, a “bitter jerk.” He has shared a doctored video of Speaker Nancy Pelosi appearing to slur her words. He has weaponized a gif of Judge Judy (“Either you are playing dumb, or it’s not an act”) to mock Representative Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat promoting gun control.

“I’m a little bit less of a wallflower than I used to be,” Mr. Rawls said, crediting Mr. Trump’s retweet. “I guess you could say I was more emboldened.”

CATCHING HIS EYE

Capital letters help. Sentence structure can be disregarded. Mornings, East Coast time, are best.

Grabbing Mr. Trump’s attention on Twitter is more art than science — and, often, more fluke than art. But some who have been retweeted say there are certain flourishes that can improve the odds.

The surest path is echoing Mr. Trump’s voice. The user @fiiibuster, whose profile boasts that he has been retweeted twice by the president, has built a following of more than 38,000 accounts — and won the digital stamp of approval from a man with 66 million — through a steady offering of posts that resemble Mr. Trump’s own. Among the words in @fiiibuster’s retweeted messages: “security,” “prosperity,” “America first,” “Pathetic,” “bad reporter,” “shame!”

In other cases, Mr. Trump has gravitated toward those who share his taste in reading. A few weeks ago, he retweeted Cathy Buffaloe, 70, a retired librarian in Walton County, Ga., after she quoted a Wall Street Journal column criticizing Representative Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

When she told her husband what had happened, he asked if she had simply dreamed it. She took screenshots to show to friends and gained about 200 followers. “It isn’t often that ‘regular’ people have an opportunity to be heard concerning national issues,” Ms. Buffaloe said in an email.

J. T. Lewis, a 19-year-old Republican candidate for the Connecticut State Senate whose brother Jesse was killed in the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, was retweeted last year after writing a flattering message to Mr. Trump. When he traveled to Washington months later to meet with the president as part of a school safety event, Mr. Lewis brought a printout of the tweet.

“He smirked and signed it,” he said. “It’s in my room somewhere.”

Mr. Lewis said he hoped the president’s imprimatur would show that Mr. Trump was not in league with the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has spread bogus claims about the Sandy Hook shooting, including asserting that the victims’ families were actors and part of a plot to confiscate guns. (In 2015, Mr. Trump appeared on Mr. Jones’s “Infowars” program and praised him.)

But Mr. Lewis is skeptical that getting through to Mr. Trump owes to any elaborate strategy. “I don’t think things are planned out the way we think they are from the outside,” he said. “I think that was literally just: Guy in pajamas, ‘Oh, this is a nice tweet.’”

THE WRONG IVANKA

“The fingers aren’t as good as the brain,” the president once explained, discussing the typos he makes on Twitter.

And those fingers have at times conferred a spotlight on unsuspecting tweeters with low opinions of him.

In a tweet one night in January 2017, just before his inauguration, Mr. Trump shared a message calling his daughter Ivanka “a woman with real character and class” and tagging @ivanka.

That Twitter handle belongs to Ivanka Majic, 45, a technology researcher in Brighton, England, who shares a first name and little else with the president’s daughter. Ms. Majic woke up to media inquiries and a dilemma.

“There’s a decision to be made,” she said in an interview. “If you’re going to say something, what are you going to say?”

Ms. Majic recognized she would probably never be handed a megaphone like this again. “He was a bit unlucky, really, that it was my Twitter account,” she said.

She settled on this: “You’re a man with great responsibilities. May I suggest more care on Twitter and more time learning about #climatechange.”

Instantly, Ms. Majic became something of a local luminary as her progressive city strained to process Mr. Trump’s victory. Days later, at the London chapter of the global Women’s March, one attendee’s sign read, “@Ivanka, loving your work!”

In the years since, Ms. Majic has celebrated an annual “Trumpiversary” to mark the occasion. But one news clipping from the time still grates.

“There was one article that said, ‘Ivanka only has 2,700 followers,’” she remembered. “I was like, ‘That’s quite good for a normal person!’”

_______

Karen Yourish and Larry Buchanan contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research. Produced by Gray Beltran and Rumsey Taylor.

🍁🏈🍂🍻🍁🏈🍂🍻🍁🏈🍂🍻🍁🏈

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jasiper · 5 years

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hey i totally understand if you don’t want to answer this if you don’t want to cause it’s a politics question rather than pjo! but you’ve made a couple posts about the democratic candidates and was wondering if you had any preferences yet? like obviously we should all vote straight ticket in november, but who are you leaning towards in the primaries? i feel like a lot of them have a ‘gotcha!’ (part 1)

and actually aren’t as progressive as they say they are (i.e. k harris’s racism with her police work, biden actually being fairly conservative). like i said you don’t have to answer this info if you don’t want to, whether for your own privacy or to avoid maga anons, it’s okay if you don’t want to post it at all! i was just curious if you had any ideas on any specific candidates yet. thank you!!

hi anon, thanks for asking this! i’m pretty vocal on my political stance and i don’t mind sharing who i support or not! disclaimer: i support any of these candidates over trump, but naturally i do have opinions.

i’ve been a pretty big bernie supporter since 2015 (before i could even vote), and i still back him more than i do other candidates. he’s always been very consistent in his beliefs and i genuinely believe he has the best shot at beating trump (research and polls say again and again he’d win by the biggest margin). however, i think most americans aren’t ready to embrace free healthcare and free education, so while i do believe he can sweep much of the democratic vote, independents (who make or break swing states) typically won’t back someone as left as him, so while i absolutely adore bernie, i think it may be tricky when it comes down to independents. but overall, i agree with his platform; healthcare, education, shutting down the immigration detention camps along the border, keeping DACA (making the path to citizenship much easier in general), LGBTQ+ freedoms, reproductive freedom, etc.

during the midterms, i followed the texas senate race closely and i really liked beto o’rourke. he’s way more centrist than bernie and lots of his campaign money did come from the oil business, which i don’t support due to their detrimental environmental impacts, but i was so intrigued how a democratic nearly won a senate seat in texas. given that the 2016 election was handed to trump because of the independent vote, i can see beto as someone who can win over centrists, which is why i like him; i think he can flip some swing states. i’m still fascinated by the beto frenzy to this day (i have his sticker on my laptop, in fact), but his performance in the primary was... startingly underwhelming. i still support him and follow his campaign pretty closely and i hope he comes to my university before the california primary in march, but i definitely support him less than i did a few months back.

i like elizabeth warren a fair amount, which surprises me granted i didn’t know much about her except for trump’s constant bullying of her. if you guys don’t know, her platform is nearly identical to bernie’s and she’s outlined a plan to eliminate student debt, so i think she’s a contender.

two others i’m looking out for after the debate are cory booker and julián castro, both of which performed really well. they both had strong speaking points and as of now, i don’t have issues with them.

i feel like this hasn’t answered your question at all, but if you’re looking for a short answer, i’m still backing bernie 100%. so as of now, i’m voting for him in the primary and unless something drastic happens, i don’t foresee that changing. however, as i’ve reiterated several times, i’m voting straight ticket, even if it’s biden or harris or another candidate i don’t like because i’d rather endure them than another four years of trump.

#anonymous #sorry this is so long!!#i am a political science major i can't help rambling #but i hope this helps you out!#politics #megan's asked and answered

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canadianabroadvery · 6 years

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Alex Finley is the pen name of a former news reporter and former U.S. intelligence officer, writing occasional analyses of Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s efforts to skew the 2016 presidential election. This analysis was published in partnership with Vox.

INTRODUCTION A powerful man holds decades of compromising material on a businessman who has long considered running for president of the United States. He strikes a deal with the future politician, in which he will bottle up any negative information about him and, even better, circulate and amplify negative stories and conspiracy theories about the candidate’s political opponents.

To help foster the deal, the candidate’s lawyer sets up creative workarounds to hide payments related to that help. When asked about it, all sides deny any arrangement. All of this is done with the aim of influencing the U.S. presidential election.

That’s the exact situation we now know occurred during the 2016 election between President Donald Trump and the publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid magazine.

And we know all of this because Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer who acted as the go-between making the whole shady deal happen —admitted it in his recent plea agreement and because the publisher’s company filled in details in a public non-prosecution agreement. Cohen pleaded guilty to financial crimes, campaign finance violations, and lying to Congress, and on December 12 was sentenced to three years in prison.

The scheme was simple: American Media Inc. (AMI) — the parent company of the National Enquirer, headed by Trump’s longtime friend David Pecker — made hush payments to a woman who claimed she had had an affair with Trump, and tipped off Cohen that another woman was shopping a similar story.

Pecker’s intention was not to publish the information, but rather to keep it hidden from the American public, which was already seeing screamingly negative headlines in the Enquirer about Trump’s opponents—from Ted Cruz to Hillary Clinton.

Cohen, at the direction of Trump, made arrangements for AMI’s payment to the woman, former Playboy model Karen McDougal, to be reimbursed. When asked about the arrangement, time and again, Pecker, Cohen, and Trump all denied it. The statement of the participating parties nonetheless now make clear that the Trump campaign colluded with AMI to influence the election.

BUT HANG ON — HAVEN’T WE HEARD A SIMILAR STORY BEFORE? Russian President Vladimir Putin held compromising information on Trump — namely, that Trump and his advisers had routinely lied about their contacts and business dealings with Russia — throughout Trump’s campaign, the election, and after taking office.

Putin knew, for example, that Trump and his team had publicly denied having meetings with Russians, while in fact Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had met with a team of Russians — including a lawyer connected to Russia’s top government prosecutor — in Trump Tower in June of 2016.

Trump’s team also lied about the timeline involving discussions about Trump Tower Moscow (Cohen has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about this; that is, he lied to Congress, while Putin knew the truth).

And while we don’t know exactly what Trump did during his trip to Moscow in 2013, little that goes on there involving wealthy American businessmen would escape the Kremlin’s attention. So it’s safe to assume that Putin knew details of the trip. He also surely had details of Trump’s financial dealings with pro-Putin oligarchs.

Like Pecker, Putin has denied he has any compromising information about Trump. Also like Pecker, Putin helped direct the release of disinformation meant to promote Trump and hurt Clinton, according to a report by the Director of National Intelligence. We learned from two Senate reports this week that this effort utilized nearly every social media platform and reached more than 100 million potential voters.

In dealings with Putin, Cohen also played a fixer role, wheeling and dealing with the office of Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesperson, about a potential Trump Tower Moscow.

When asked later about any business arrangement, all parties denied it, then said it had been discussed but went nowhere and had ended before Trump was the Republican candidate, when in fact, discussions for the project carried on past the Republican primaries (even though the plans did not come to fruition).

It’s an interesting parallel, particularly given how the AMI story is now unraveling. Might the dynamics of the Trump-Pecker relationship provide insight into the perils of the continuing give and take between Trump and Putin?

COLLECTING DIRT AND GRANTING FAVORS According to the Associated Press, Pecker kept a safe full of negative stories on Trump. As multiple sources told the AP, “the safe was a great source of power for Pecker. … By keeping celebrities’ embarrassing secrets, the company was able to ingratiate itself with them and ask for favors in return.” A former National Enquirer reporter described the so-called “catch-and-kill” technique to the AP as: “‘I did this for you,’ now what can you do for me.” The Enquirer, he said “always got something in return.”

And Pecker did get something out of the relationship. In addition to flights on Trump’s private plane, Pecker got access to the gossip about the circles Trump inhabited. Trump is reported to have supplied Pecker with information the National Enquirer could turn into juicy stories. Pecker also received public praise from Trump that may have helped him professionally and financially.

Trump’s election also opened up new avenues for more gossip exchanges and more business opportunities for Pecker. Trump hosted a dinner for Pecker and a French businessman with ties to the Saudi royal family, for example, at a time when, according to The New York Times, Pecker was looking to expand AMI’s business with the Kingdom. Word of Pecker’s access to the White House opened doors in Saudi Arabia for him. And shortly before Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s tour of the United States last spring, AMI just so happened to publish a glossy magazine that appeared in supermarket checkout aisles that introduced the Crown Prince as “the most influential Arab leader, transforming the world at 32.”

The transactional nature of this relationship between Pecker and Trump tells us a lot about Trump’s approach to business: You do something for me, and I’ll do something for you.

This kind of give-and-take, however, can also leave people exposed. Trump and Cohen seemed to have realized this.

At one point during the campaign, they evidently began to fear Pecker had too much leverage and that they were too reliant on blessings from the tabloid, which has an average weekly circulation of around 265,000. So they decided to try to buy back the rights for the negative stories, according to reports by The New York Times and ABC News. (A lawyer for AMI denied the company would “seek to ‘extort’ the President of the United States,” according to a letter obtained by the AP.)

But in a way, that, too, is a normal state of affairs for Trump and his associates. Everyone in his circle seemed to have embarrassing information about others. Omarosa Manigault Newman underscored this point last summer when she — a favorite but losing Apprentice contestant who later won herself an office in the West Wing—revealed audio recordings she had made to make sure her reputation and position were safeguarded from backstabbing.

The Trump business ethos has long been: Do whatever is necessary to beat your competitors. So if Putin came offering a deal to help Trump win, who was Trump to say no?

FOLLOWING A SIMILAR COLLUSION MODEL Interestingly, the Steele Dossier — a series of raw intelligence reports compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele — outlines a deal between Trump and Putin that is very similar to what we now know existed between Trump and Pecker.

In a July 30, 2016, memo to the research firm employing him, Fusion GPS, Steele noted that the Kremlin had plenty of compromising material, or kompromat as it’s known in Russia, on Trump. Steele added that, according to his source for this information, “the Kremlin had given its word that [the compromising material] would not be deployed against the Republican presidential candidate given how helpful and cooperative his team had been over several years, and particularly of late.”

That same memo claimed that Trump was providing information to the Kremlin, mostly on Russian oligarchs and their families. Just as Trump was able to supply gossip to Pecker, Trump might have been able to provide interesting tidbits on Russian oligarchs outside of Russia, particularly given their affinity for investing in Trump properties. As Donald Trump Jr. himself has said, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.”

Some of Steele’s information has been borne out in court proceedings initiated by special prosecutor Robert Mueller. Steele’s claims that Trump or his team provided information to the Kremlin has not been proven, along with several additional claims in the dossier. But it would fit into Trump’s pattern of behavior, as evidenced by the arrangement Trump had with Pecker.

We know that Cohen played the fixer in Trump’s dealings with Pecker and that he played a similar role in Trump’s dealings with Putin. Cohen has already confirmed that he was a go-between in Trump’s efforts to secure a deal to build Trump Tower Moscow. Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, even lied on Cohen’s behalf, in order to back up Cohen’s story (until Cohen’s public confession).

We also know that Cohen worked with Pecker to cover up embarrassing information about Trump. Did he do the same thing in a collaboration or parallel effort with Putin, as Steele’s document suggests? “According to [a] Kremlin insider,” Steele wrote in a memo dated October 19, 2016, “Cohen now was heavily engaged in a cover up and damage limitation operation in the attempt to prevent the full details of Trump’s relationship with Russia being exposed.”

And if so, what favors might Trump have been willing to offer Putin in return for his help? Because like Pecker, you can be sure that Putin, too, keeps a favor bank, including a record of all loans and other disbursements.

What happens when he comes to collect?

#donald trump #Vladimir Putin #election interference

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southeastasianists · 6 years

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It’s a long drive to the city of Tanjung Balai in North Sumatra, Indonesia—almost five hours from the provincial capital of Medan, on winding roads past emerald green paddy fields and through palm oil and rubber plantations. The city is one of the main ports in North Sumatra, and connects both Malaysia and Singapore with Indonesia. Like many port cities, a large proportion of residents in Tanjung Balai make their living from the sea.

Meiliana, a Chinese-Indonesian and a Buddhist, was no exception. Having lived on Jalan Karya in Tanjung Balai for eight years, she owned a simple store selling salted fish with her husband, Atui. But in July 2016, Meiliana’s life was thrown into disarray, and in August 2018 she was sentenced to one and a half years in prison for blasphemy by the Medan District Court.

How it all began

It started out almost as a throwaway comment.

In July 2016, Meiliana walked across the road from her small house on the sleepy street of Jalan Karya to buy breakfast buns from Kasini, a 51-year-old Javanese Muslim who owns a small shop selling sundries. It was something she did almost every morning.

Kasini and Meiliana weren’t exactly friends, but they had a cordial relationship. At Eid-ul-Fitr, the end of the Muslim fasting month, Meiliana would bake cakes and take them to Kasini’s house.

On that fateful morning, as Meiliana paid for her buns, she had a request for Kasini. “Can you tell Wak [grandfather] to turn down the volume of the mosque speakers? It’s so loud it hurts my ears.”

Kasini’s father, 75-year-old Kasidik, has worked at the Al Ma’shum Mosque since 2007 as one of its caretakers. Five times a day, he walks the few feet to the mosque from the home he shares with Kasini and her children and puts a cassette in an old-fashioned tape player. The azan (prayer call) then rings out across Jalan Karya, reminding Muslims that it’s time to pray.

Karsini didn’t think much of Meiliana’s comment, other than wondering why, having lived just ten paces away from the mosque for the last eight years, she was suddenly bothered by the sound of the azan.

“I did think, why is she saying this to me?” she tells New Naratif. But the mood was calm, and Kasini passed the request on to her father. He, in turn, told another caretaker, who then told the imam (the spiritual leader of the mosque).

That comment, first made over a breakfast bun, then started to take on a life of its own.

Just a few days later, Kasini and Kasidik noticed that the street outside Meiliana’s home was suddenly clogged with cars and motorbikes. People started showing up at all times of the day and night, and they could hear shouting. At one point Kasini says she thought she heard Meiliana’s eldest son exclaim, “We’re all adults here! What’s wrong with you?”

Word of Meiliana’s comment about the mosque speakers had spread from a neighbour to her father, from a father to his co-workers, from the co-workers to more neighbours, and from the neighbours to social media. The message got distorted as it passed from one to another, and eventually people were saying that Meiliana had tried to stop the Islamic call to prayer and insulted Islam, violating Indonesia’s infamous blasphemy law (Pasal 156A KUHP), which carries a maximum five-year prison sentence.

A few days later, Meiliana’s husband Atui went to the mosque to publicly apologise for his wife’s comments. Meiliana was either too scared or too stubborn to go with him. In the end, it hardly mattered; her husband’s apology failed to insulate her against what happened next.

Prominent Islamic organisations, such as Front Umat Islam (FUI), successfully pressured the police to file an official report (link in Bahasa Indonesia). In 2017, the North Sumatra chapter of the Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI), one of the largest Muslim organisations in Indonesia, issued a fatwa (a non-legally binding but official pronouncement on Islamic law) against Meiliana. A mob proceeded to riot, pelting Meiliana’s home with rocks and bottles. They then set fire to Buddhist temples in Tanjung Balai.

Kasini claims that Meiliana was originally taken into custody for “her own protection”, as the authorities were worried she’d be lynched if she stayed at home. But instead of protecting her, they charged her with blasphemy.

According to one of Meiliana’s lawyers, Ranto Sibarani, the court proceedings were chequered at best.

The prosecutors presented the fatwa and a written statement from a witness at the riot outside Meiliana’s home as evidence. Sibarani claims it was mostly based on hearsay; no recordings of the original comment were provided. “They brought the mosque amplifiers as an item of evidence,” Sibarani tells New Naratif. “The officials welcomed the rioters with open arms. The case was heavily influenced by an intervention from the masses.”

A sense of disbelief over the legitimacy of Meiliana’s case continues to loom large. “She did not commit blasphemy. What she did was offer a neighbourly complaint, and that is not an insult to Islam,” Ismail Hasani, the research director at the rights advocacy group Setara Institute, told The Washington Post. “More generally, we believe that the blasphemy law itself does more than anything else to limit freedom of religion in Indonesia.”

Particular to Meiliana’s case, there’s also been a debate about the volume of the call to prayer, and whether a request to lower it qualifies as blasphemy. In 1978, Indonesia’s Religious Affairs Ministry released (link in Bahasa Indonesia) instructions on how to properly manage the volume made by a mosque amplifier, prioritising melody over loudness; Indonesia’s current vice president, Jusuf Kalla, has also advised mosques in Indonesia to be mindful of the volume of their speakers, and dispatched technicians to help fix faulty amplifiers.

Kasini says she feels “exhausted” by the case. She had to go to the police station countless times to give her testimony about Meiliana’s comment, and once attended court in Medan to give evidence. She says that when she made her statement to the judge, Meiliana was not there to hear the testimony against her, so the former neighbours didn’t have to face each other.

When asked if she believes Meiliana committed blasphemy, Kasini shrugs her shoulders and looks confused. “I don’t know anything about the blasphemy law, so I just leave it up to the judge. He must have known what he was doing,” is all she will say.

Kasini isn’t the only one who’s exhausted.

Meiliana’s story is one of fatigue for anyone who has tried to follow the trajectory of Indonesia’s nebulous and opaque blasphemy law, and the myriad cases that have unfolded over the years, always following a similar pattern.

Here, the cycle continues: frivolous litigation favouring the offended and mobilised mob; a president’s inability “to intervene in the legal process”; an outpouring of signatures in an online petition (link in Bahasa Indonesia); political convenience.

The blasphemy law in Indonesia is built upon all of these things—this is the story of how it’s wielded, how it unfolds, and how it (still) stands.

Indonesia’s problem with blasphemy

The blasphemy law has its roots in the administration of Indonesia’s first president, Sukarno. Signed into force by Sukarno in 1965, the law was originally meant (link in Bahasa Indonesia) to “accommodate requests from Islamic organisations who wanted to stem the recognition of indigenous beliefs.” It was later used as a way for President Suharto, the authoritarian second president of Indonesia, to prosecute anyone who dared to criticise his government.

Attempts to revoke the law have failed on more than one occasion. Indonesia’s fourth president, Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid—who wrote an article in 1982 for Tempo magazine entitled “Tuhan Tidak Perlu Dibela (God Does Not Need to be Defended)”—was once involved in an unsuccessful petition to revoke the blasphemy law. In July 2018, a petition launched by the Ahmadiyya Muslim community in Indonesia, who claimed that the law inhibits their religious freedom, was also rejected.

Anyone who stands accused of blasphemy in Indonesia also faces a tough legal battle with little chance of acquittal.

“Since 2004, there hasn’t been an appeal [in blasphemy cases] that has been granted by the court,” Andreas Harsono, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, tells New Naratif. “Out of 89 cases [in Indonesia’s sixth President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s administration], 125 [individuals] were convicted. And out of 20 cases, 22 [individuals] were convicted in President Joko Widodo’s current administration.”

One of the more recent blasphemy cases involved the erstwhile Jakarta governor, Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, who was sentenced to two years in prison under the blasphemy law. Accused of insulting Islam for having quoted the Quran while on the campaign trail during the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets, calling for Ahok to be imprisoned.

Although the scale of Ahok’s case was far greater, the patterns in Meiliana’s case mirrored his.

A continuing streak of religious intolerance

At the very heart of Meiliana’s case—and all of the other cases preceding it—is Indonesia’s continuing streak of religious intolerance.

Tanjung Balai is known for having a sizeable Chinese-Indonesian population; Chinese traders, arriving by sea, started to pour into the area in the 1800s. According to official records, the city has just over 185,000 residents, 157,000 of whom are Muslim and 11,000 of whom are Buddhist. At times in the city’s history, tensions between the different communities have flared.

In 2009, Tanjung Balai bore witness to the removal of a Mahayana Buddha statue. “The appearance of the Buddhist statue elicited a violent reaction from Islamic leaders. Wahhabi leaders under the United Islam Movement (GIB) organised rallies and protests in May and June last year, calling for the statue to be taken down. They argued that it tarnished the image of Tanjung Balai as a Muslim town,” wrote Human Rights Watch in a report.

Following Meiliana’s comments in 2016, a mob tore through the city and targeted several of its 16 Buddhist temples.

This outbreak of violence is now considered to be one of the worst examples of racially motivated mob “justice” that Indonesia has seen since 1998, when rioters attacked primarily Chinese-Indonesian communities in Medan, looting from shops and attacking local residents. The riots then swept across the country, leaving 1,000 people dead.

Atu is the 68-year-old caretaker of the Tiau Hau Biao Buddhist Temple, which sits on the estuary of the Asahan River in Tanjung Balai. The air is heavy with the scent of drying fish, and fishermen sit in front of the temple and cast their nets in the shadow of its crimson roof.

Atu has worked as a caretaker of the temple for 10 years, since it was first built, and works from 5am to 8pm, seven days a week. His main duties include sweeping the floors and replenishing the incense. Back in 2016, he was at home when the temple was attacked in the middle of the night. When he arrived in the early hours of the morning, the building was still aflame.

“I don’t know how much gasoline they brought with them, but they sure used up every single drop,” he tells New Naratif. Atu, and local residents who had come to help, set up a crude pump system to funnel water from the river to quench the flames.

It took over an hour to put the fire out.

Once the flames subsided, Atu saw that the roof of the temple has been destroyed. The statues had been burned. The floor tiles smashed.

The restoration of the temple to its former glory took several months. According to Atu, the money promised by the government to help pay for it never materialised. Instead the refurbishment was made possible by donations from the local community.

19 perpetrators were eventually caught. According to news reports, “Eight were charged with looting, nine with malicious destruction of property and two with inciting violence”. All were given sentences ranging from one to four months in jail. Despite having ransacked official houses of worship, none of the rioters were charged with blasphemy, because no one filed an official complaint against them—one of the stipulations for someone to be tried under the law.

Atu laughs dryly and shakes his head when asked about this. “Not fair, of course it’s not fair. They should have got longer sentences.”

He also says that the case appears to show a trend towards rising religious intolerance in Tanjung Balai. “We used to be more united, but now the different religious groups have started to split,” he explains. “For years I went to sea as a fisherman and left my family at home. I never worried about them.”

Now he can’t forget the sight of his beloved temple burning in the morning light.

The attacks on temples in Tanjung Balai certainly appear to show worrying echoes of the race riots that traumatised the Chinese-Indonesian community in 1998.

Sirojuddin Abbas, a researcher at Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting (SMRC), says that Meiliana’s case shows how the blasphemy law is being deployed to punish members from minority groups. “The target is always a member of the minority groups,” he says. “That still is the thing that has not healed from our majority groups: their distrust. In a pluralistic town, for example, even if there’s only a person who is not a Muslim, not having to hear excessive noise from a mosque speaker is still a human right.”

Atu dismisses the idea that the people who attacked the temple were hired thugs, brought in to stir up racial unrest. In 1998, it was thought that members of the Indonesian military deliberately did just that to spark widespread riots and deflect attention away from the failings of the government, which led to the fall of President Suharto after 32 years in power. But, despite the fact that these attacks in Tanjung Balai seem to have been less tightly organised and politically motivated, it doesn’t reassure Atu.

“I heard the rioters were mixed,” he says. “Some outsiders. But they must have had someone on the inside. Someone from Tanjung Balai.”

After news of the fire at the temple spread, Atu says local residents started visiting in droves to check out the damage. Buddhist festivals are held at the temple every January and October, and are popular events with the local community. Muslims also come to watch the colourful festivities.

Atu says he hopes for a bigger crowd than usual this coming October, due to the publicity that the blasphemy case has sparked, which has actually raised the temple’s profile. He feels that a large, mixed crowd of spectators will be a good thing, and that local Muslims getting a taste of Buddhist culture which will help bolster relations between the different communities once more.

“But this year, the police will be guarding us,” he adds.

The politics of blasphemy

Rising religious intolerance is one way of looking at Meiliana’s case. But there are other lenses through which to examine this issue. One of them has to do with the question of whether religious intolerance is a mere manifestation of political expediency.

In April 2019, Indonesian voters will go to the polls to elect a president. As both candidates, current President Joko Widodo and former Major General Prabowo Subianto, look to curry favour with Muslim voters in a country where 87% of the population is Muslim, changing the blasphemy law could be a risky move that could cause a backlash from more conservative sections of the Islamic community.

As Savic Ali, an activist with the Jaringan Gusdurian network of progressive Muslims, says, “I think [Prabowo and Jokowi] won’t make concessions with regards to the blasphemy law. Jokowi wants a safe position, as to not anger his Muslim voting base, and I think Prabowo does, too.”

And it goes beyond just individual voters.

Ali continues to say that two of Indonesia’s largest Muslim organisations, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah, won’t allow for the possibility of the blasphemy law being completely revoked anytime soon, as both believe it to be an important tenet of Islamic law. Fast forward to the presidential elections in 2019, and it’s likely that both Jokowi and Prabowo will be wary of alienating voters affiliated with either organisation—or indeed the organisations themselves, who hold significant political power in Indonesia.

Another warning sign that the blasphemy law is unlikely to be overturned or discarded anytime soon is the appointment Ma’ruf Amin as Jokowi’s running mate in the race for the presidency. Amin, who is the chairman of the MUI and known for his conservative views on Islamic law, initially said that he deplored the violent riots in Tanjung Balai following Meiliana’s comment. But, this did not stop the North Sumatra chapter of the organisation issuing a fatwa against her in early 2017.

Amin has also thrown his support behind other high-profile blasphemy cases in the past, and wields significant political and judicial influence. “He plays the most important role in sending people to jail, like Ahok,” says Harsono, in a reference to Amin’s statement against the former governor of Jakarta, widely thought to have been one of the driving forces behind his conviction.

Another example of the way politics and the blasphemy law are entwined is evident in Meiliana’s case when you consider the collateral damage: her family. Sibarani tells New Naratif that Meiliana’s son is still “afraid of the sight of a crowd” after the riots outside his home. Jokowi has said that he can’t intervene in legal cases or in Meiliana’s appeal, but there are those who think that he could show goodwill in other ways.

“He needs to say something about the need for Meiliana’s family to be, say, socially and psychologically rehabilitated,” says Abbas.

A few words from the president could perhaps go a long way in helping Meiliana’s four children to heal—still, he has remained silent, presumably so as not to offend any members of his conservative fanbase.

Yet again it seems, politics has turned the blasphemy law into a matter of convenience for those jostling for power. This refusal of politicians in Indonesia to engage in discussions about the blasphemy law has serious implications, and muddies the waters about its essential premise.

While outright revocation may not be on the cards, in its current form the law is porous and easily abused. Not everything can or should fall under the umbrella term “blasphemy”, and one of the main criticisms of the current version of the law is that it’s overly broad, encompassing a range of other issues like hate speech.

Ali says that, for serious situations that could be construed as blasphemous in nature, like urinating on a Bible, for example, there needs to be a revision to the law instead of an outright repeal. But for other cases, such as a complaint about the volume of a mosque speaker, the law needs to be clear about what the term “blasphemy” actually means. “Several points of the law need to be amended so that it can’t be a catch-all law,” he says.

As it currently stands, the only thing that’s clear is that the core meaning of “blasphemy”—and what it should encompass—is something that’s confused and confusing in Indonesia. And the lack of political will to even discuss potential changes to the law means that the absurdity of the very concept of blasphemy still remains in the shadows.

After all, were there people rightly convicted according to the blasphemy law in Indonesia?

For people like Harsono, this question goes right to the heart of the issue. “Of course there weren’t. How do you interview God?”, he says.

Hope for a change to the law?

Politicians might not want to rock the boat, but there might be a glimmer of hope on the horizon.

Since her sentencing, Meiliana has had some support from surprising allies.

As well as a Change.org petition with over 202,000 signatures, members of both Muhammadiyah and NU have criticised Meiliana’s sentencing—although not the blasphemy law itself, other than to say that it was incorrectly implemented in this case. Still, “both of these statements are unprecedented,” says Harsono. On Twitter, Indonesia’s religious affairs minister, Lukman Hakim Saifuddin, offered(link in Bahasa Indonesia) his services as Meiliana’s key witness if needed.

Though conceding that the situation is “bleak” and that electoral prospects are likely to get in the way of either presidential hopeful wanting to fully embrace reform, Abbas says that public support for Meiliana gives him cause for optimism.

Sibarani tells New Naratif that Meiliana’s counsel plan to file an appeal. This will add yet another chapter to her story, and could have repercussions across Indonesia if it’s successful. “If it goes through, we hope that it can be a legal breakthrough,” he says.

Until then, Meiliana’s former home remains shuttered.

A neighbour tells New Naratif that Meiliana’s husband was forced to move. Several members of the Chinese community from Jalan Karya asked him to relocate, as they were scared that they too would be the victims of reprisals and violence—tarred with the same brush of being “anti-Islam”. The neighbour also says that the couple had to give up their salted fish business on Jalan Asahan as they lost their permit to operate in the building as a result of the outcry surrounding the case. It’s unclear who gave the order for this to happen.

Atui has now moved to the city of Medan to be closer to Meiliana in prison, and is trying to build a new life.

When asked how she feels about this, Kasini looks pained. She wasn’t the one who made the original comment about the mosque speakers, but if she hadn’t passed on Meiliana’s request to her father, then perhaps none of this would ever have happened.

Does she think that Meiliana truly committed blasphemy and got the punishment she deserved?

Kasini looks lost for words. “Well… why did she buy a house so close to a mosque?” she says. “And why did she live here for eight years without any problems? Even if we had turned down the volume, she would still have heard the sound of the azan.”

Pressed again, and asked if this was fair and if she feels responsible for Meiliana’s fate, Kasini’s chin starts to tremble and her eyes fill with tears. She looks completely overwhelmed by the firestorm this case has caused—and which has consumed her life for over two years.

She insists she was just the messenger, when she passed on the words that ended with a woman in jail and a family torn apart.

Finally she looks up from the floor.

“If I’d known this was going to happen…” she says, her voice breaking, “then maybe I wouldn’t have said anything at all.”

#Southeast Asia #Indonesia #Religion #Islam #Blasphemy

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emblem-333 · 6 years

Text

In Retrospect, William Jennings Bryan and the Election of 1896

What we are currently seeing in the infancy of the 2020 Presidential Election is the focusing of the electorate on economics rather than foreign policy or a less pressing issue, like “honesty” and “integrity” which usually dominate campaigns. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are the favorites to win the nomination in a hotly contested Democratic primary that isn’t yet finished fielding potential candidates. But these two specifically have declared unapologetic warfare against Wall Street. They put in simple terms explaining why the middle class is in its dilapidated state is the aristocratic class hoards all the capital amassed by the proletariat. While centrist candidates Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand dance around whether they’ll dismantle the private insurance industry, Sanders is the only one decisively saying yes, he would go as far to implement his Medicare-For-All legislation.

There are many imitators, but only one O.G. What we’re seeing is the beginning stages of the fruits of the labor the Sanders 2016 campaign planted turning over the establishments apple cart and paving the way for likeminded, younger representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and IIhan Omar to carry on the mantle for his various causes like Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt did for William Jennings Bryan. Championing the cause for the downtrodden middle class and poor masses left behind by an oligarchic United States.

Before William Jennings Bryan the Democratic Party was made up of fiscal conservatives laissez-faire style of economics, strict adherent to the gold standard and primarily the party of big business. The Republicans of the late 19th century weren’t different in anyway besides treating black people objectively better than the Democrats. Though in this era Jim Crow laws ran rampant in the south and the GOP did little to resist the disengagement of blacks. Any progress accomplished by the Union winning the American Civil War, the subsequent Civil Rights Act of 1866 and 1875 and the concurrent Reconstruction Era in the South became undone completely in this time period of the 1890’s.

Just like their predecessors both parties kicked the can down the road when it came to the plight of blacks. As both parties stomaches fattened as a result of getting cozier with Wall Street, the railroad industry and the gold standard, the southern and midwestern farmer wasted away thanks to rampant inflation and bearing the brunt of the various panics and depressions in the 1870’s and 1890’s. Historians rather assume flatly Reconstruction ended because of the American people’s and the Republican Party losing collective interest in protecting blacks in the Deep South, when in actuality the Panic of 1873 cost the U.S serious capital and thus by 1877 federal troops were withdrawn from the Confederate states.

Debates ragged on whether the United State should do the unthinkable: become the first country to abandon the gold standard for a currency system favoring silver. The topic arose multiple times since the 1870s. You’d find silver leaning men in both the Republican and Democratic parties. Populist James B. Weaver won 8.5 percent of the popular vote campaigning on the free coinage of silver. But the movement truly came of age under the man William Jennings Bryan. The 36-year-old former Nebraskan representative commanded the Democratic Party and held a tight grip around its throat from 1896 up until his retirement in 1915. In those sixteen-years Bryan transformed the Democrats from a party of fiscal conservatism to pro-labor with more emphasis on aiding the yeomen farmer. While Bryan himself would never see the White House, his likeminded followers Woodrow Wilson and F.D.R carried the torch for him.

Playing the ultra-boring, but simultaneously fun “Campaign Trail” choose your own adventure game on AmericanHistoryusa.com I played as Bryan and in order to win I toned down the radical rhetoric somewhat. Instead of advocating on the unlimited free coinage of silver, I pivoted to a moderate stance of coinage at a 30-to-1 ratio to allow the treasury time to adjust to the effects of bimetallism and to avoid another run on the hoards of gold the U.S held. Taking home 248 electoral votes and 51.8 percent of the popular vote Bryan steals Illinois from the establishment candidate William McKinley to secure the presidency. The is the text the game reads upon victory.

Congratulations! You have won the 1896 election.

"The Great Commoner" will soon be President of the United States! Nobody with your political views has ever sniffed the Presidency, let alone won it, and with that in mind your supporters are rioting frenziedly in the streets. The sweetest speech of all will be your victory speech tomorrow in Lincoln, Nebraska. Prepare to enact your reform agenda and most importantly the free coinage of silver.”

Yup. I sure will. If only the game allowed you to be president after securing the Oval Office then I can try out this radical departure from the norm. But, alas, somethings are meant to be left to the imagination.

So, Jennings Bryan is President. Instantly the United States financial sectors panic and rally around opposition to halt Bryan’s measures. In the midterm election of 1898 the Democrats, fully taken over by Silverites, wrangler control of the House from the Republicans and a moderate, but nonetheless, radical change to our currency system is implemented. By 1899 the United States is off of the gold standard. Soon, Japan, Great Britain and France follows. Albeit reluctantly. This is how it happened in real life. Only the United States was the last to be brought to heel eventually in 1933 when Franklin Roosevelt did what Bryan dreamt of for so long.

Even in defeat Bryan’s hold on the party became so strong he purged the gold standard Democrats out of the party solidifying his silver coalition of politicians sympathetic towards the farmer and laborers. No reason to believe this doesn’t happen if Bryan is elected President. In fact, it probably happens sooner than it did in real-life.

Bryan was a staunch advocate of a federal income tax, which fully was realized in the certification of the sixteenth amendment in 1909 under William Howard Taft. Initially, Bryan opposed the creation of the Federal Reserve, which happened under Woodrow Wilson. Bryan worries the Fed it gave bankers too much control of the monetary system. The bill was promptly rewritten to suit Bryan’s needs and he voted for the creation of the Federal Reserve. I think this still happens in a timeline which Bryan is election and probably sooner. Swept into office amidst populistic fervor unseen since the days of Andrew Jackson Bryan, though a novice, most likely utilizes the bully pulpit and we see Henry Teller lead the charge on the Republican side and we are witnessed to the most eventful first term of a U.S President in the country’s history.

Bryan calls for the direct election of senators once in office, subtlety supports women’s suffrage and usually this is the part in alternate history articles where the radical, moralistic protagonists falls for his idealism. Except this is all happening during the Spanish-American War and Bryan could have been blind, deaf and dumb while serving in office and the U.S still decisively runs the imperials out of Cuba and the Philippians. Only Bryan had little interest in cultivating an American Empire. An anti-imperialist and pacifist, Bryan saw war as necessary but never actively sought a fight. He saw the United States as the moral arbiter in the Cubans fight for independence. If elected there is no subsequent Philippine-American War and no further bloodshed. The United States gains serious credit among future generations.

Hawaii is not annexed and probably never really is. For all the good I can say about Bryan he was an anti-imperialist, but since he and his party didn’t want to absolve any country not made up of predominantly Whites. Hawaii therefore becomes the smallest independent country on Earth... until a later administration absorbs it or some other imperialist country, like Russia, Japan or Great Britain does it. Most likely Japan. So Bryan inadvertently washes away U.S military involvement in World War Two.

The war carries Bryan to a second-term of the presidency... only to be cut short by a bullet months after his inauguration. His vice-President former Silver Republican Henry M. Teller succeeds him.

If the United States were to abandon the gold Standard, thirty-five-years prior to Japan were the first to do it, this helps the farmer and for a brief time the country recognizes Jefferson’s dream of a country built and supported off the backs of the Yeomen farmer. Again, for a brief time. The loss of their vigorous champion Bryan farmers cannot find a suitable replacement to rally around and this allows for the big business friendly, gold standard leaning Democrats to repopulate the party nominating New York judge Alton B. Parker. A moderate trust busting advocate for labor, Parker benefits from the meteoric rise of Theodore Roosevelt and swings into the presidency since both of the main parties are fractured in the aftermath of Bryan’s effects on the political scene.

No Roosevelt means no William Howard Taft. Meaning no splitting of the Republican Party in 1912. With neither close enough to sniff the presidency Wisconsin senator Robert La. Follette is nominated in 1912 and defeats Democratic Speaker of the House Champ Clark and becomes America’s first President to serve two consecutive terms since Ulysses S. Grant. Since Wisconsin is populated with German immigrants, La Follette interferes into World War One on the side of the Central Powers. Theodore Roosevelt is given the role of Secretary of State and the German Empire crushes the Allied Powers at the Marne near Paris with the help of the United States.

A victorious Germany means no rise of Adolph Hitler. No Third Reich. No Holocaust. Great Britain’s awesome power is greatly diminished, never to recover. The ninetieth century is the German century. As it originally was supposed to be.

Back to the gold versus silver debate. I am sorry.

Eventually the gold standard is readopted and the silver versus gold issue goes on until Richard Nixon flatly ditches gold in favor of neither metal backed currency. Still you see Bryan’s ideas infecting the parties for decades after his death.

Instead of Bryan’s ideas manifesting themselves in Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, they do so in Robert La Follette. The U.S becomes an economic power house rather a military one. Perhaps we’re all better off because of this.

#free coinage of silver #gold standard #william jennings bryan #theodore roosevelt #Willam McKinley #Spanish-American War #Robert La Follette #alternate universe #Alternate History #Economics #World War One #World War Two

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leupagus · 6 years

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Look, I don't know why you're so pathologically opposed to the idea that there's a fundamental issue with the democratic party and with Hilary Clinton. At a certain point you need to stop saying that all the reasons why she lost (which she did the popular vote argument is irrelevant) are completely external and start looking at what needs to be fixed. She was terrible, her policies were terrible, the Overton Window has lurched to the right, stop shrieking and fucking accept reality, jesus christ

Where to even start with this. First off, way to undermine your entire argument by pointing out the obvious, which is that Clinton won the most votes, by far (in fact she won more votes than any white man who’s ever run for President), and then saying it’s “irrelevant” because... I guess because it undermines your entire argument?

Second, “she was terrible, her policies were terrible”—you base this searingly insightful political analysis on what, exactly? As a senator she was well to the left of Biden, of Obama, and was in fact one of the most reliable left-leaning Democrats during her terms. Now you can point to her work as SoS and very rightly point out a lot of bad calls she made, but she was working as a cabinet member of the President, not a representative, and it wasn’t like she could just make up her own agenda. And as for policies, you clearly didn’t actually read any of her seventeen thousand white papers she created and issued during her campaign; you’re just relying on whatever Chapo or TYT spouted off in their podcasts. Everyone I know who took that isidewith.com test—granted, not a foolproof methodology!—who sided most with Sanders admitted that Clinton was only a few percentage points behind. So no, the policies weren’t “terrible;” you just couldn’t be bothered to learn them. You can complain about Democratic outreach, but again I’m going to have to just point and laugh. She went to states that no candidate has set foot in in years, she wanted to win Texas, she was reaching out as far as her arms could stretch.

As for the fundamental issue with the Democratic Party, no shit there are fundamental issues with the Democratic Party. The only difference in our viewpoints here is that you think it’s one thing (I neither know nor give a shit what you think it is), whereas I have paid attention for long enough to know that there are a myriad of issues the party leadership as well as the party base need to grapple with. Focusing too much on white male opinion is a big one, frankly; but there’s also the issue of systemic racism; misogyny; tepid-bordering-on-halfassed support for gay rights and trans rights; a tendency to handwring over the least amount of vitriol coming from any prominent Democrat magnified by about a thousand when that prominent Democrat is, say, a Black Congresswoman; over-reliance on big donors not just for money but for legitimacy resulting in people like Harvey Weinstein getting a seat at the table, however peripherally; a distrust of ideas that are not new but that have been struck down before and gotten Dems in trouble before such as Universal Healthcare, resulting in those who either weren’t alive or weren’t paying attention during the last fights trying to drag reticent veteran Dems toward a position that they’re gunshy about; an inability to look at Hillary Clinton through anything but a prism of personal prejudices, either for her or against her, because of her unique place in Democratic politics for 30 years; an insistence from the far left that those in the center or those who are older (as well as a tendency from same to conflate the two) should simply give way because of the correctness of the far left’s positions instead of through, y’know, democratic means; a baffling willingness amongst Democratic leadership to work with the GOP even now because they are not directly impacted by the decisions made; an indifference in the general voting electorate to local elections, to the actual consequences of both local and national elections, and a childish belief that voting should be something they are rewarded for instead of something that is their job. This is all literally just off the top of my head, they are all huge and complex and difficult issues that I struggle with every day, and not a damn fucking one of them can be solved by people like you who think lying about what happened in 2016 is some kind of own.

And if you want to make an argument that the country is further right now, boy do you need to do some fucking reading. Because here’s the thing, the country has always been leaning uncomfortably far right; you may have just noticed, hence your cute use of the Overton Window phrase, but none of what’s happening is necessarily new. Forty-six years ago I would’ve been jailed for getting an abortion; seventy-odd years ago people who didn’t look white were put in camps and separated from their families; fifteen years ago you could be jailed for being gay. This is not some leftist paradise that has suddenly been corrupted. It’s always been bad, and although it is worse right now, your notion that it’s somehow markedly worse just because this is the first time you looked up from jerking it to DSA posters is a really embarrassing revelation that you just weren’t listening to the thousands of people who have been telling you so for years.

So no, I will not stop shrieking, because I have accepted reality. I’ve accepted it for years, I accepted it yesterday, and if you think for one second that I will stop shrieking just because some anonymous asshole on tumblr who thinks that tweeting #abolishIce counts as activism thinks I should, then you can go fuck yourself. Accept that, dickhead.

#politics!#seriously yesterday was a big ol' vent but y'all just keep trying to lie your way out of reality #next someone's gonna tell me that the real problem is that we didn't pass UHC in 2009

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theliberaltony · 6 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): After a midterm election, it’s not unusual for a president to reassess strategy and approach and make appeals to the “middle” or to “reach across the aisle.” But we’re talking about President Trump, who currently doesn’t have a good track record of working with Democrats. So, what evidence do we have that he will try a different approach? And is trying a more bipartisan approach even a good idea?

geoffrey.skelley (Geoffrey Skelley, elections analyst): We’ve been waiting for the fabled “Trump pivot” for, what, two years now? I’m not counting on it happening next year.

sarahf: But his polling numbers aren’t good. It really seems as though he’s only popular in rural parts of the country.

What does that mean for 2020? Doesn’t he have to start to appeal to more groups than his base?

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): Well, the short answer is “yes”!

I’m not sure how Trump’s efforts to appeal to more groups will go. He told a group of reporters on Tuesday during a meeting with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer that he will shut down the government if he doesn’t get funding for his border wall. People don’t generally like it when the government shuts down.

sarahf: But on playing hardball on the border wall as a strategy — isn’t it to some extent more important that Trump deliver on that campaign promise to his supporters, regardless of the political fallout?

geoffrey.skelley: Problem is, the border wall idea is unpopular.

So this is a complete play to the base, which Trump arguably already has locked up. If he’s looking to improve his fortunes, pursuing a government shutdown for something that the majority of Americans oppose doesn’t seem wise.

clare.malone: Yeah … I mean not to sound like a joke here, but, man, they really should have taken infrastructure week seriously!

Imagine how popular a bill funding infrastructure projects would actually be. And I’m sure to appease Trump, you could have stuck in some border wall provisions.

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): I don’t think announcing you are excited about a government shutdown is smart.

sarahf: If Trump’s meeting with Schumer and Pelosi is any indication of what is in store, it seems like Trump won’t be trying a new strategy of appealing to the middle anytime soon.

So … to play devil’s advocate for a moment, is not appealing to a common ground a smart move? President Obama tried to compromise with Republicans, but, arguably, that didn’t work out too well for him and the Democratic Party.

clare.malone: I don’t really see the administration making real moves to open up other avenues of policy discussion. It just seems so hammered by other things — staffing issues and deflecting potential campaign finance law violations by the president.

perry: Obama had this vision for working with Republicans in 2011 (after the Democrats lost the House in 2010), and that fell apart. Trump seems to get the polarized nature of our politics better than most people. I think fighting with Pelosi and Schumer is not the worst idea. Just don’t force a government shutdown over the wall.

sarahf: So if Trump shouldn’t be fighting quite so aggressively for the wall, what would be a smarter move for him?

clare.malone: I’m not sure, Sarah, what the right issue for him is. The trade war stuff is fraught, obviously, and there are murmurs from the financial world about a possible financial crisis on the horizon.

perry: The Democrats are saying they want to investigate Trump aggressively. I think he can make that into a pretty compelling argument about Democrats trying to reverse the will of those who voted for him.

clare.malone: He doesn’t have a lot of places to go right now that aren’t divisive. And the White House doesn’t seem to have a lot of will right now to talk about these non-divisive issues.

geoffrey.skelley: Early on in Trump’s administration, Gallup found strong bipartisan support for proposals requiring companies to provide paid family leave for employees after the birth of a child and a plan to spend over $1 trillion on infrastructure. So perhaps those are places to start.

clare.malone: That’s two votes for infrastructure!

An Ivanka Trump resurgence with family leave??

geoffrey.skelley: Yes, that’s my thought too. You could have the first daughter out there pushing a new family leave proposal.

perry: I just don’t think either of those ideas will be accepted by Republicans in the Senate.

That’s part of Trump’s challenge: Any policy ideas he has must be adopted by the GOP-controlled Senate, too. So it’s not just him dealing and finding compromise with the Democrats.

He can’t really move to the left in any meaningful way.

clare.malone: Perry, why do you think infrastructure would be perceived as moving to the left?

perry: Any infrastructure bill that Pelosi would support would also include billions of federal dollars in spending that the House Freedom Caucus and many Senate Republicans won’t be interested in.

clare.malone: But what if you slipped in something for the border wall? Isn’t that a possible scenario?

I guess it’s also the old GOP priorities vs. the new Trump GOP priorities playing out vis-à-vis spending and financing a marquee campaign promise.

geoffrey.skelley: Having the Senate pass an infrastructure bill with money for a border wall would put pressure on Democrats in the House. Trump could then claim that House Democrats were holding up money that would rebuild the country — dare I say, “make America great again”?

But it is definitely tough to see conservative Republicans in the Senate going for it.

perry: I think Trump has two broad choices: On the one hand, he could tone down his rhetoric, hire a very experienced chief of staff, remove his son-in-law and daughter from top administration jobs, and try to become a less divisive figure. He could, say, model himself after Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who is very popular. On the other hand, he could amplify the country’s current political divisions and make the 2020 election a debate over which party is hated the most.

clare.malone: I feel like I know the answer to this …

sarahf: Same …

perry: I think the second path is easier for him and potentially a political winner.

geoffrey.skelley: Yeah …

clare.malone: So we’ve decided! Compromise is dead!

geoffrey.skelley: It’s the path that Trump is familiar with and therefore more comfortable with.

sarahf: OK, so does that mean any hopes for bipartisan legislation in this Congress are misplaced? I’m thinking of the criminal justice reform bill that a bipartisan group of senators has pushed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring up for a vote — an effort that the president has supported.

clare.malone: That bill has had some longer-term bipartisan support, so there’s still some hope, perhaps.

perry: I think small bills like that can pass, but that won’t define Trump and his presidency.

geoffrey.skelley: Yeah, it’s difficult to come off as bipartisan when, theoretically, you sign that into law and then the next minute you’re saying that you are proud to shut down the government.

sarahf: OK, I think it’s safe to say that we all think Trump’s strategy moving forward appears to be more of the same: Democrats are toxic to his agenda. But with special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, is that really the best strategy to deflect attention?

According to a recent poll, the share of Americans who approve of how Trump is handling the investigation has dropped. (Granted, Mueller’s numbers are down, too).

geoffrey.skelley: If the Mueller investigation really is an existential threat to the president, it makes sense that he would pursue a course to make it as partisan as possible. The House’s new Democratic majority could also help Trump — it gives him a partisan opponent to play off of, rather than just trying to undermine Mueller.

perry: Mueller’s numbers are not great in that poll. Trump has successfully poisoned that probe in the minds of Republicans. As a citizen, I think Trump’s attacks on the news media, law enforcement and other institutions are deeply problematic. But as a person who studies elections, I think attacking these institutions has been very smart politically. Barring Mueller finding some very clear evidence of, say, Trump encouraging the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, I don’t think Republican voters will take Mueller’s findings that seriously.

geoffrey.skelley: Of course, the scandal is not only affecting the president’s strategy, it’s also affecting his ability to hire staff, I’m sure. Want to be the president’s new chief of staff? Prepare to lawyer up.

sarahf: Right, and while appointing different chiefs of staff isn’t unusual (although Trump has moved at a faster pace than his predecessors), it does seem as if the coalition that Trump brought with him to the White House is now gone?

perry: To me, Trump’s biggest threat is not Mueller, but losing in 2020. To win re-election, he needs to get back some suburban voters or increase his margin even more among white people without college degrees — and that should be his sole focus moving forward.

It’s not clear how much Trump cares about policy or has specific goals for the next two years. I could imagine him picking an establishment Republican-type like Mitt Romney as chief of staff. If that person became a major force in the administration and Trump listened to him or her, that would help him win suburban voters.

But Trump could also go the more conservative route and pick Rep. Mark Meadows, one of the leaders of the House Freedom Caucus. It looks as if Meadows even wants the job. And then, of course, Trump could try to win every white voter without a college degree.

clare.malone: Or you could easily imagine him picking a non-entity as chief of staff, someone who bends to Trump’s whims.

perry: And that would be a mistake.

clare.malone: And not really do much to shore up white suburban voters.

perry: I also assume that is what he will do.

sarahf: At this point, doesn’t Trump’s path to electoral victory depend on winning at least some suburban voters?

geoffrey.skelley: Oh absolutely. Trump probably can’t win Michigan or Pennsylvania if he’s losing the suburbs as badly as Republicans did in the midterms, and that sort of performance could make a state like Arizona a battleground, too. Still, midterms are not good predictors of the next presidential election, so the 2018 results are far from determinative. But they are a warning.

perry: Unless he gets to, say, 85 percent with whites who don’t have degrees. (Trump won 64 percent of that group in 2016.) Then he’s OK.

I just think he should probably have a strategy of some kind. When you are considering Nick Ayers, Chris Christie or Mark Meadows to be your chief of staff, it suggests that you really have no strategy. Those people have little in common beyond being Republicans.

I also think he could go the full Stephen Miller route, and that might be a path to victory. Dial up the immigration policy even more and keep coming back to issues that divide people along racial and cultural lines, like the migrant caravan or kneeling by NFL players.

geoffrey.skelley: Demographics aren’t destiny. But if Republicans don’t recover a bit in the suburbs, Trump could have a tough time winning re-election. And I think that’s the danger of an all-in Stephen Miller strategy. It’s a question of diminishing returns — how much more of the non-college-educated white vote can Trump get?

perry: That’s what I don’t know. I’m not sure he hit his limit in 2016.

Maybe.

geoffrey.skelley: Me neither.

clare.malone: So to return to the original premise: What Trump should do, for starters, to increase his chances of winning in 2020 is to make more establishment GOP decisions when it comes to staffing and rhetoric.

But we also don’t think he’ll actually do either of those things.

sarahf: Yeah, I think this conversation has made me realize that looking at Trump’s approval rating isn’t perhaps as telling as we think.

We think it matters because unpopular presidents don’t necessarily get re-elected (see Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush). But maybe just ensuring your opponent is less popular than you is enough.

perry: That’s what I think.

In 2018, Democrats had 435 different candidates (a different candidate in every House race). In 2020, they have to run a single candidate. And my guess is that Trump will try to demonize that person (and maybe succeed).

geoffrey.skelley: Recall that both Trump and Hillary Clinton were very unpopular, and Trump still won. He will want to discredit his eventual Democratic opponent. And his approval rating may not need to be much above 45 percent to win a close, partisan race.

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