NYCweboy

Where to Begin...

There are so many things to write about, so much that's so awful (look, I'm an optimist, but even my sense of joy has been sorely tested), and I've avoided writing for so long (hey, I was just commiserating with the other writers on strike... heh heh), I hardly know where to begin.

So let's start here: Al Capone.

Of all the strange tangents Trump goes on at his, well, bizarre and frankly kinda tired, rallies, one of the weirdest moments is when compares his situation to that of Chicago's number one gangster. It's usually to suggest that, like Capone, Trump is being nailed on trivial charges, like tax evasion.Of course, what he also like to imply, in so many words, is that, like Capone, he too is a slightly outlaw badass who cannot be contained by the tired rules of conventional laws.

Which, if you think about it, is a kinda weird stance for a former President of the United States.

Seven years on, with an intervening stay in the White House and a violent riot to cap off his term, It's frequently suggested that as a nation, we have become inured to Trump's outrageousness, his breaking of norms, the lack of basic decency. Still, there are moments - "poisoning the blood of our nation", anyone? - where we can still get caught off guard by the breaking of a new norm, a bridge yet again not too far. I'd argue the casual tossed off lines about Capone are themselves a new, and striking low.

Donald Trump faces 91 felony counts in 4 separate indictments, 2 Federal, one each in New York, and in Georgia. That's on top of several civil suits crawling along, and random legal issues like being disqualified from ballots in Colorado and Maine over (apparently serious) suggestions that his running violates Section 3 of the 14th Amendment - the one where if you, like, participated on the wrong side in the Civil War, you can never hold public office again. The kind of thing we never thought we'd need after, you know, the Civil War. In pretty much every case, Trump has followed the time-honored (dishonored?)  legal strategy taught to him by Roy Cohn - challenge everything. Bury them in paper. Work the refs. Proclaim your innocence and claim unprecedented mistreatment.

Trump has filed motions to dismiss in all 4 cases - at this point, all are in some stage of stasis or collapse - and the striking thing about them is their sameness: "i didn't do it, if I did do it it wasn't a crime, and if it was a crime, I'm either allowed to do it, or immune from being prosecuted for it." Some have noted that the arguments he makes in one case often suggest problems with another (like claiming to be an "Officer of the United States" in Georgia, except that "Officer of the United States" is why the 14th Amendment would apply to him). The immunity claim is so over the top, it may set new precedent in the Supreme Court, where immunity was roundly tossed in US v Nixon. 

But to really contemplate the absurdity of Trump and his Capone via Cohn approach to law (with detours into Watergate era madness), let's just point to one of the cases - the one where Trump took some of the nation's most top secret documents, left them in boxes literally all over Mar A Lago, and refused to return them, to see how his arguments are really hopeless:

• "i didn't do it" - for months, Trump asserted to investigators, the National Archives, and eventually the press, that he had not taken any documents. he insisted he was being treated differently from other former Presidents (leading to the amazing discovery that yes, apparently people can accidentally walk off with secret documents from the White House more than you'd think). Eventually, in another unprecedented moment, the FBI raided Mar A Lago (aka a presidential residence), and discovered the boxes and boxes of documents and other detritus Trump had hoarded and hid. 
• "It's not a crime, or I'm allowed to do it" - Trump subsequently insisted that he had "every right" to take the documents under an apparently creative reading of the Presidential Records Act - a Nixon(!)-era law meant to make clear how records should be collected and filed by the Library of Congress. And by creative, I mean the well known "they're mine and you can't have them" doctrine. Amazingly that's not even the issue that may be resolved at trial - the simpler problem is that Trump had highly classified documents, violating the Espionage Act. And that crime, one that's charged out fairly routinely, doesn't require motive or misunderstanding. Just having the documents when and where you shouldn't have is enough.
• Immunity - Astonishingly, even in this, Trump continues to insist that the President is immune from the Espionage Act in some combination of "Executive Privilege" - which Trump aqpparently takes to mean "if I want it, it's my privilege to have it" - and Presidential declassification - a defined process Trump didn't follow, but Trump asserts (often hilariously) "it's declassified if I say so." Just to underline the absurdity of that argument, one of the holdups in the documents trial is that the documents involved are so highly classified, Trump's lawyers have had to scramble to set up a site in Florida secure and limited enough to view them to prepare for trial, so secret they may not be able to be introduced in open court.

And just to be clear... these are not the arguments or defenses of an innocent man. In the trial over falsification of business records that may close The Trump Organization in New York, Trump's lawyers literally maintain that years of fraudulent valuations of Trump properties used in tax and loan filings are a "common practice" in real estate... or in  other words, they have literally admitted to the fraud. Case after case, trial after trial... Trump makes guilty man arguments, brazenly waiting for someone to agree that it doesn't matter if he wantonly breaks laws.

And sure that's a lot like Capone... but should it be? Federal crimes are often the simplest of process crimes - like sending false information by mail, or filing a false tax return - for an obvious reason: it's the kind of housekeeping, minor detail that criminals don't think of while committing major crimes. In 2016, when Trump refused to show his tax returns claiming he was "under audit" it's becoming clearer he was half right - his tax returns build so thoroughly on one lie after another that untangling them will indeed take years. Illegality is so familiar to him, innocence passed him by a long, long time ago.

Where to begin... at the very least we should be able to concoct a standard for the Presidency that avoids the commission of massive fraud, theft of documents and fomenting insurrection. Start there. Start somewhere. Trump so thoroughly violates First Principles, it's amazing, seven years on, that we still have him here to kick around. Or yes, to kick us around. Set aside the collapse of the Republicans, the sycophants defending him, the opportunists tied to him... just for a moment. Start here. Donald Trump should not be President ever again, because we have standards. Principles. Something. That's a real fine place to start.

The Curious Case of George W Bush

Speaking of guys who offered up some eyebrow raising remarks on the twentieth anniversary of 9/11, we also have the bracing words of George W Bush:

"On America’s day of trial and grief, I saw millions of people instinctively grab for a neighbor’s hand and rally to the cause of one another. That is the America I know. At a time when religious bigotry might have flowed freely, I saw Americans reject prejudice and embrace people of Muslim faith. That is the nation I know," he said.

"At a time when nativism could have stirred hatred and violence against people perceived as outsiders, I saw Americans reaffirm their welcome of immigrants and refugees. That is the nation I know," he said. "At a time when some viewed the rising generation as individualistic and decadent, I saw young people embrace an ethic of service and rise to selfless action. That is the nation I know."

It was, yes, a lovely speech, and a graceful, not to mention, pointed, reference to the events of January sixth. Bush's remarks were welcomed as a strong corrective to the tendency among conservatives these days to try and whitewash 1/6 and continue to play Trump's apologists. Bush, for his part, was yet another Republican refusing to mention Trump by name when discussing the bad aspects... but his language was surprisingly direct.

All of that said... no one should let Bush get away with absolving himself of either his behavior after 9/11 or the way his actions and of the people around him also helped get us to exactly where we are now.

"At a time when religious bigotry might have flowed freely..." really? Do we really want to reexamine the arrests of random people with arabic names after 9/11? The rounding up of people? The immediate increase in threats to mosques in the days weeks and months after 9/11? The work of the Bush administration to insitute permission to torture suspected terrorists? How about the Iraqi prison where they were tortured? Or the Black sites? Or bloody Guantanamo Bay...WHICH IS STILL THERE???

How about Bush's cowboy mentality and his threats to hunt down and kill terrorists in caves? How about starting a war in Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11? How about starting a 20 year war in Afghanistan with no clear sense of the mission to be accomplished or plan to leave? How about "Mission Accomplished" and Bush landing on an aircraft carrier?

George W. Bush would like nothing better than for you to forget that 9/11 both happened on his watch and led to the kind of anti-Muslim paranoia on the right that Trump managed all too easily to exploit on his way to winning the White House. Bush would probably like, even more, to forget that he helped create a Republican Party aimed mainly at propping up his fragile ambitions, over anything resembling a coherent approach to governance of any kind... or that the hollowing out of the Republican Party (firmly accomplished by Karl Rove on the way to winning 2004) left a party scrambling to find its way and left open to the repeated work of opportunists and their personal interests.

As I said (rather presciently), in 2009:

By sheer force of emotion - not will - he remade the Republican Party in his image: anti-intellectual, inconsistent, too concerned about the image, and not enough about the details. He replaced conservative ideals with cant, and then doubled back and destroyed the cant by, as his family does, wavering in the face of failure.  He called himself a strong believer in free markets... and engineered the largest government takeover of the banking industry. He called himself a compassionate conservative... and then let the Gulf Coast drown.

And he lied. He lied about getting into war, then he lied about staying in the war, then he lied about getting out of it. He lied - and still lies - about 9/11 (Saddam Hussein... not involved). He lied when it would have been just as easy to tell the truth.

And really, I suspect... he lies to himself. It's easier that way.

I welcome anyone, including and especially the former President, who wants to call out the current conservative movement and insist that it has to be better and do better. I will not, however, stand idly by and let George W Bush recast himself as some kind hearted warrior for justice who had no hand in creating the Republican Party as we see it today. This is very much his fault. He was there, and he had a hand in making it what it became, and how it became the party of Donald Trump. 

Just because we were united in grief doesn't mean that we deserved a needless, preventable tragedy. Or so mcuh of what came as a result of it. And no one bears the responsibility for how we got here the way George W Bush does. Never forget that. And never let him get out from under it. 

Moon Unit

The most surprising Trump news from this weekend wasn't, surprisingly, his abject failure to show up to any of the solemn memorials (like every other living former President save the Carters), choosing instead to pay a Reality Celebrity appearance at the police and fire units near his apartment. Nor was it, drunken Rudy Giuliani's rabid ramblings at a memorial dinner that evening (though these were a sure sign of Rudy's falling into a sad Joe McCarthy-like final decline).

No, Trump managed to upstage himself by making a paid video appearance in promotional materials for the Unification Church of (the now deceased) Sun Myung Moon.

The Church - now led by Moon's wife and sons - has long been staunchly right wing in America. Among other things, they own The Washington Times. Still, Trump's taped remarks were, at the very least, disconcerting, and raised long simmering questions about the Church's malign influence.

Also, Donald Trump is a financially desperate hack who'd take money from anyone who will prop up his fragile ego and fan his delusions of self importance.

In my youth, the notion of "Moonies" - those who had surrendered their independence of thought and finance to the Unification Church - was part of a general concern about cults and the danger they posed. In the sixties, these concerns had started with the Helter Skelter killings of the "Manson kids", followers of Charles Manson. In the seventies, cut concerns took on added urgency partly because of the odd behaviors of Unification church members, Hare Krishnas, and ultimately, with the tragedy of Jim Jones and his followers in Guyana, after they'd fled the San Francisco Bay Area claiming persecution.

Like so many things that have become weirdly politicized, it's hard to know where cult acceptance bifurcated on party lines. Probably, one could point to David Koresh and conservatives trying to suggest "live and let live" libertarianism about a doomsday cult with odd notions about Christianity and some clear implications of underage sexual abuse of children. Whether it's of a piece with a blind spot about authoritarianism combined with "anything goes" notions of religious freedom (especially for anything nominally claiming to be Christian)... who can say. But the failure of conservatives to get tough and stay tough on religious cults does seemed to have moved form merely curious to oddly problematic.

Liberals, being the more comfortable home for religious skepticism, have a somewhat different problem: there's a decidedly passive, impotent approach to tackling cults once they are found out, also having to do with a confusion over choice versus coercion. Cults are marked by the work they do to brainwash adherents (well documented, clearly identifiable tactics like "love bombing", isolation, and deprivation), but often, cult involvement is treated as more of a personal weakness than a dangerous exploitation... until, well after the fact, the exploitation is all too clear. Most recently, that trajectory seems to explain how the NXIVM cult quietly destroyed many young women until its tactics were brought out into the open.

And what does this have to do with the Unification Church? Well, for one thing, like Scientology, the Moon family has worked hard to shroud the cult like aspects of the organization in order to put a more benign, quasi-religious face on its operations to avoid deep scrutiny. That includes using its Wash Times mouthpiece to whitewash potential allegations, courting conservative political cover, and most recently, going full MAGA to gain trust from Trump. Trump's paid appearance is, apparently, something of the culmination of those efforts.   

Trump's Moon Unit this weekend, might have played badly in conservative circles at one time; but at this point, the cult-like atmosphere of conservatism itself, never mind the more specific contours of MAGA support, probably slough this off as some liberal conspiracy to trash Trump by calling the speech benign, at best. Everyone else's views of Trump are so low at this point, one more round of him trolling for a check is hardly a blip.

Still, I wouldn't lose sight entirely of this momentary weirdness and the ways it could, and probably should, blow back on Trump and the right. Despite its own efforts to camouflage its cult aspects, conservatism generally likes to keep its Unification Church connections at arms length - plausibly deniable, while happily pocketing (some might say laundering) the Church's lavish cash. And while this moment, like so many isn't in itself enough to derail Trump's weak if noisy plotting for a political comeback... I wouldn't be too surprised if, should he really try to come back, that a lot of Moon-related questions suddenly appear. While Trump's sleazy business of talking to anyone with a dollar and a scheme worked once... this time, all those sleazy associations could be his, never mind the GOP generally, undoing.

 

Nothing Matters. What If It Did?

This isn't a post about statistics or polling or necessarily hard evidence. It's just a feeling. And Feelings, as they say, are not facts. But stay with me on this one. Just for a minute.

On January 6th we watched a wild insurrection unfold at the Capitol. Many of us had been watching both the Congressional exercise of certifying the election, possibly in tandem with the "rally" being held on the mall, near the White House. Eventually, the rally became a "march on the Capital, and then the Capital became a mob scene... but throughout, there was an air of unseriousness. Crazy outfits, flags, people who seemed unclear why they were there or what they were even doing. I'm not trying to suggest there wasn't sinister intent. Just that some of it was, well, ridiculous.

Later, of  course, as we saw pictures from inside, we saw more of this. The guy with the antler horns headdress. The guys with painted faces. The frat party antics, albeit, violent out of control party antics. Yelling incoherently. Some more intent on stealing a lectern than making a statement. Pissing on statues.  Or making statements like "Stop the Steal" with no real indication they knew how or who to stop.

We treat the Trumpist right as a serious threat, and obviously, some are. Some of them are, clearly, true
believers, engaged with a dangerous lie fed to them by a corrupt, lying criminal enterprise, led by a failed real estate magnate desperate for attention and fame.

But some of these Trumpist folks are the guy with the antlers. And we really should ask why we're taking that just as seriously.

Lurking within the hard right is a group of folks - mainly middle aged or younger white men, some women - who really don't take any of this seriously. Who are enjoying the performative street theater of Trump rallies and the politics of the last 4 years because they like the show. They like being able to act out. And - here's a deep secret - many of them don't care if there was a steal, or whether Trump is lying or not. They probably even get that he is. But the point is... they don't care. And they think it's ridiculous that you or I do.

Liz Cheney was ousted from House leadership for challenging the Big Lie. And clearly, some wanted her out for being disloyal, for challenging the Truth of Trump, as they see it. But as Madison Cawthorn said "Na na na na, nana nana, hey hey, goodbye Liz Cheney." There was plenty of unserious, I just don't like her feedback out there as well. Liz is about as serious, and as wonky, as right wing policy gets these days (which, yes, is its own example). And part of what the party and its base are rejecting, and still replacing, is the sense of taking anything about federal government seriously.

Cawthorn... Marjorie Taylor Greene. Lauren Boebert. Josh Hawley. Ted Cruz. On both side of the Capital, the Republicans have bomb throwers and outrage machines, offering nothing, literally nothing, of substance to policy discussions. Just bullies and drama queens and fame whores looking for their latest five minutes of glory in the national news feed. The right considers Joe Rogan, a modestly successful comedian turned podcast host, who famously reiterates on a regular basis that he has no idea what he's talking about, an essential conduit for reaching a significant part of the right's voting base. Why? Because like his listeners, Rogan doesn't really get why we should be taking any of this seriously.

Or take the Fox Friends who play the merry pied pipers to this nihilist line - the Tuckers and Gutfelds and Watterses who offer up sarcasm as if it's serious analysis then say "it's just a joke" when challenged. Just today, Tucker's role as source for much of the Trump world gossip floating around current news reports and upcoming books revealed, yet again, how Fox's top star believes, essentially, in nothing except his own self absorption. Yes, what Tucker is selling, crass as it is, represents significant danger. But even he, really, doesn't quite believe that the rubes are really falling for it. But if they are... well, it pays the bills.

On the left, we frequently fret about the shrinking minority of this Trumpist base, because we take them seriously, and as a serious threat, not just to the left, but to the fundamental order and underpinnings of our representative democracy. We worry about their fealty to populists and authoritarians, frauds and liars and cheats. But the bigger problem is that along with the true believers is this group of absurd nihilists who really don't believe in anything at all. Not particularly interested in ideas, or critical thinking, prone to fall for conspiracy logic and eager to be in on the joke... it's the nihilists that we really can never reach. We will never convince them, or win them over. At best, one day they will decide something else is cool, some other online gewgaw will distract their attention, maybe one day something will matter to them... but don't get your hopes up. Conservatives have signed on to this nihilism with gleeful abandon. Because nothing matters. Because they've largely just given up.

Since the election, a lot of the fun has fallen out of this faction. Partly, that too is on Trump, since he was never really in on the joke of it all - too sensitive and too afraid of ridicule, Trump really has no sense of humor. He's not joking, and never has been. There's really much less of the "can't they take a joke" excuse making the right used to offer up when challenged on their most outrageous, out there catcalls and threats. Things are ugly, and mean, and getting meaner and uglier by the day. And without a Trump that airs on TV and major social media every day, more than a little of the entertainment of these Roman Follies is gone too. So the question remains, how long will the nihilists stay with this party if it's no fun and less popular?

My guess is that they're already slacking off - Republican identification numbers are cratering, hundreds of rioters are facing serious criminal trials, Trump is sidelined... some people don't know when the party's over, but it's sure looking like last call on some of this. Then again, when you can gin up outages over Dr. Seuss and imminent calls for veganism, when Tucker and Gutfeld and Jessie Watters still rule the roost at Fox... heck even Rogan still has his primacy. The show will go on. The nihilist appeal is, after all, eternal. Nothing matters. Life is just one sick, absurd joke. If anything, perhaps, the real point is this: majority white culture was in some ways always bound to find its way to this dead end. Smoke if you got em. You never had it so good.     

Recounting, Every Single Minute

And while the pessimist in me agrees that there's a lot of bad outcomes possible... let's just take a minute and contemplate just how remarkably stupid and incoherent the Maricopa Recount actually is, and how bad it is actually going.

For months, Arizona Republicans insisted that there were so many errors and frauds in the counting of Maricopa County - which took longer than just about everyone to certify its votes, but where Joe Biden pulled ahead several days and thousands of votes sooner than expected - that there should be a recount. So Maricopa County recounted them... and got the same result. Then they audited the count... and got the same result.

Still unsatisfied, Arizona Republicans used a hugely doubtful approach of having the state Senate subpoena all of Maricopa County's ballots, records, and equipment to... well, it's still kind of unclear what all they think they're going to do, but a recount is definitely part of it.

Lots of people are making fun of the name of "Cyber Ninjas" the company hired to do the recount process; but I think the real joke is underappreciated: there's nothing to suggest that a small cybersecurity operation ever understood, had the expertise, or the organizational skill to pull off a recount of one of the five largest counties in the country. And so far, that's the joke that making this recount into a punchline.

First of all, let's be clear - one of the hardest things about the Arizona recount story is actually getting coherent journalism out of it. Reporters have been systematically blocked from much relevant fact gathering, and only the most enterprising have been able to tease out valuable insight. Such insight, as it is, has all pointed in one direction: this thing is a mess, verging on a disaster.

Second of all, the sheer size and scope of the task has been misunderstood or underestimated almost all along. There are 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County (62% of the state's population), and parts or all of 8 congressional districts. As I said, almost no county or election district elsewhere in the country has that volume of counting to accomplish. Almost any county of that size takes days, if not weeks, to fully report (New York City. Miami. Houston. Atlanta. Detroit. See a pattern?). Maricopa is, yes, the Parent County of Phoenix, so there's a city in there... but there's also the 13 smaller cities that have bloomed over the years around it. All of the Phoenix suburbs. The sprawl is absurd.

Of the 2.1 million ballots, officials overseeing the count say that 250,000 have been counted over 3 weeks. At that rate, according to the New York Times, it will take until August to complete the recount. The recount was scheduled to end this Friday. It's not at all clear Cyber Ninjas has enough staff - they have already asked for, and got, approval to add headcount to their counting staff... which is still a problem, since the Republicans, and the Ninjas, seem to be vetting potential counters for party affiliations (though apparently, not for things like, were you someone actually on the ballot, which caused them to fire a former legislator who was in the room for the first few days). 

Then there's cost. The Senate budgeted a laughable $150,000 towards the effort; the budget of the Maricopa County Election Board is in the millions. That's okay, though, no one believed you could bring in the count at that budget, and there are a number of wealthy donors throwing in money to complete it. But money and patience are not infinite. And at some point, soon, there will be growing pressure to ask just why costs keep spiraling and completion seems further and further away.

Of course, that's ignoring the absurd, crazy things the recount is supposed to assess: like are there ballots from Asia snuck into the count (hence the insane tales of searches for "bamboo" in the ballot paper), or did dead people vote (hint: if you voted, then died, you are not a dead person who voted... except you are).There were suggestions that staff would be calling or visiting voters at their homes (which, yes is a violation of voter intimidation laws... but again... what staff?). Because neither the Senate, nor the Ninjas, seem able to focus on specific examples of specific issues... every ballot is apparently being subjected to multiple inspections to check for every crazy accusation. Except no one is exactly sure if any of them are actually true.

More to the point... if there was any evidence of any truth to any potential accusation, we'd be hearing about it. The Cyber Ninjas specifically gave 24/7 video access to OANN, which has camera feeds monitoring every aspect of the recount (or so it is claimed). Even if OANN weren't primed to announce broadly and widely any discovery at a moment's notice (or conversely, if it's true OANN is broke, then maybe not), the right wing blogosphere and media are primed for proof Trump's crazy Big Lie fraud claims. They are desperate for anything that would bolster a joke argument the world refuses to take seriously. Yet, 3 weeks of work, 250,000 ballots examined... and nothing. Not a leak, not a suggestion of a counting anomaly. Nothing. No bamboo. No mysteriously dead voter. Nothing.

The only stories coming out of the recount are detail after detail describing just how half-assed, incompetent and potentially illegal the whole exercise is. Blue ink pens were handed out to counters... until someone pointed out it's illegal to use implements that could create new voter fraud. Observers were barred from the recount... until a judge had to step in and order permission for the media and outside observers. Boxes were mishandled and possibly double counted until errors were pointed out. The Justice Department says they're concerned about tampering. Maricopa County now says they're going to court to fight the Cyber Ninjas for the county's routers. And we have no idea what the Ninjas will or won't do to the servers that hold the electronic records of the original count.

As of May 14th, the whole recount has to be stopped because the Coliseum being used to hold it has another event coming in; it will be interesting to see just how every piece of the recount - never mind the pallets of those 2.1 million ballots, still in boxes - is stored and secured. But that's just details. What's truly insane, as of right now, is that this pointless, ridiculous exercise could be resumed, with no end in sight, for months.

And I'll just say it: for all the fears of some massively tampered, fictional account that Trump won with new numbers and trumped evidence of fraud... the real story here is likely to be one the right can neither spin nor talk their way out of: a badly inaccurate count that gives Biden more votes than the official count, no evidence of significant fraud (except, possibly, by the recount staff), and months of wasted time and costs that make further efforts in other cities and states prohibitively foolish. As crazy as it sounds, the best bet for many liberals is to let this farce play on and on until it plays itself into an embarrassing and very public truth: the whole recount fantasy is the biggest, and most wasteful piece yet of The Big Lie. And when they have to live that down, the right may very well have counted its way into the reckoning over the 2020 election that will truly wreck the whole show. And I am so totally here for it. Count on that.

Ban Me

The idea that it was a difficult or hard to predict decision to keep Donald Trump off Facebook is indicative of a problem that liberals (and everyone else, really) have when dealing with the lingering nonsense he provides: this isn't hard, we know we're right and let's just keep him away from having the chance to repeat the nightmare we lived from 2016 to 2020.

Who cares if Republicans are so internally broken as the last gasp of a political party that they can't extricate themselves from his malign influence? Who cares if "his base" must be catered to by fearful politicians bereft of ideas or independent thoughts? Why should we pay an attention to his ridiculous website, a desperate plea for relevance where he continues to blather away his incomprehensible mix of self aggrandizement, endless animus and fear of irrelevance? 

We owe him nothing.

Democrats, I swear, know this. on good days, we respond calmly and confidently to the remaining nonsense, clear in our understanding that we're right, he's wrong, and his sycophants are a minority voice that should be ignored (or in the case of his riotous mob, tried and imprisoned). We won the presidency, held a house majority and regained control of the Senate because his lies, malfeasance and corruption were simply unbearable. 

But still, like the post divorce remnants of a dysfunctional marriage, the bad man still has the power to undermine that confidence at the oddest moments. "What if he gets back on Facebook?" fretted media types. Kara Swisher - in what was surely the most embarrassing moment she's ever had and I've ever seen Maddow cater to - asserted, literally absent any relevant fact, that his return was all but a certainty (which she, quite soundly, had to retract the next morning). Even now, reporters bring up gloomy, doom filled predictions that all is lost in 2022 elections because a handful of democrats are considering running for different offices, and one woman (Cheri Bustos) has decided to retire (from, it should be noted, what is widely considered a safe seat). Because, of course... how can we possibly feel good, even for a moment, that the worst is over?

Look, I get it. Redistricting will be tough and nothing is certain. But still. Even the initial census results were hardly the bloodbath that had been foreordained, and indeed, the census, while troubled with pandemic issues, looks like a reasonably on track demographic assessment of the nation as a whole. Trump is spending time largely feeling sorry for himself, playing golf, puttering around his overpriced and ridiculous mansion cum private club, preparing to plop himself down into similarly cosseted digs in mid New Jersey, all the while whining about feeling hard done by. And sure, ambitious Republicans with no shame and less sense are catering to his whims and flying to his side to kiss the ring... but nothing, really nothing, suggests that this bowing and scraping is doing more than feeding Trump's foolish ego and putting the entire party on a crash course to oblivion.

Take Liz Cheney - or as Kevin McCarthy would add, "please." Cheney's principled and genuinely honorable insistence on speaking truth to foolishness may well kill her current chances at moving upward, but she has a point: perpetuating Trump's "Big Lie" about the election, trying to use falsehoods about made up frauds and ballot box stuffing will only damage the credibility of individuals and the group as a whole. Even now, Trump is braying from his little corner of the internet (anyone can make a website) his string of lies and misinformation of imaginary election issues. And trying to ignore the Trump in the room and run the usual ugly oppositional efforts to destroy Dem chances is unlikely to gather much traction either while Mr. Country Club can up-end the conversation with a few words. McConnell was, and remains, right in his end of term assessment: either Trump is removed from future influence, or Republicans have a problem. And he's their problem. Not ours.

I'm not saying that the Facebook - or the Oversight Board, if that's what you want, Mark - decision isn't news or a topic to discuss. It's more how we discuss it than the fact we discuss it at all. If we are done with Trump - and we are, not just "Lord knows we should be" - then let's be done. Let's be clear that he has no place in the national discourse. Let's remind ourselves, consistently and explicitly, that he continues to lie, misrepresent and insult everything that is worthy or worth holding onto in our serious discussions of national governance. Let us be clear what his sycophants, and parrots, and media enablers are, and how they should be treated - as the facilitators and enablers of damaging lies and destructive elements to our body politic. This isn't war, conservatives are not the enemy. But Donald Trump is a malignant, dangerous force against our democracy, and we calmly, and confidently, repudiate him, his followers, and all that he stands for.

This isn't hard. And we're not wrong. And there's no need for doubt or fear. We get this. Facebook gets this. Twitter gets this. Let's act like the fact that we get this means we know what we're doing. Because we do. And he is done.

Aftermath - The Hearings Begin

Untangling the events of January 6th isn't going to be simple. And it's clear that a) this is an emotional subject and b) anger about white supremacy groups is a potent, and difficult aspect of all of this.

Still, it will be important to separate out one problem from another. Failures to fully understand, or appreciate, or to prepare for the threat posed is one issue. The incitement created by Trump is another. But the failures of police and security efforts on January 6th is its own unique, additional problem. And trying to sort out that piece, as yesterdays hearing showed is both essential and complicated.

The Senate hearing with the former Sergeant at Arms of both the House and Senate as well as the head of DC's police force and the former head of Capitol Police was fascinating, revealing... and surprisingly (to me, anyway) full of details that suggested a wealth of systemic issues. If nothing else, the hearing underscored why 3 of the 4 men testifying were "Former" officials within days of the riot. Systemic failures in an organization you run that lead to disaster aren't generally events one just survives.

So what kinds of systemic issues showed up?

• Training - under questioning, Sund admitted that Capitol Police appeared woefully under trained for handling riots and mobs. While he indicated that there had been some "trial scenarios" - mostly conducted as part of events like Inauguration - other preparedness training had never been considered, never mind instituted. That failure stood in obvious contrast to DC Metro, which had all officers trained in riot emergency prep.
• Equipment - Never mind that the Capitol Police didn't have enough Tactical Units; it became clear under questioning that Sund had only recently started ordering the kind of protective equipment (such as riot protection helmets) needed in recent months (the first shipment showed up the day before the riots), delayed by the Pandemic. Further, an incredulous Senate made the point several times: no one ever cut the Capitol Police funding request, and they would have given him whatever he asked for. 
• Oversight - Sund made crystal clear that failures to call the National Guard and other resources were decisions that could not unilaterally be made by the Capitol Police, but had to go to his supervising committee, and the Sergeants both came off as decidedly weak on their defense that the reason the call went out late is because no one asked. Though conspiracists' will focus on the Army slow walking the Guard request, plenty of other, obvious bureaucratic hurdles were identifiable and preventable.
• Mission - Lurking between the lines of Sund's testimony was an obvious point: the building and personnel security functions of the Capitol Police don't square with a tactical force equipped to fight an insurrectionist mob. Are they Museum Guards? Or are they fast moving SWAT? This is not a small question, and much like the choices that led to merging Homeland Security (although as 1/6 demonstrates, not well) after 9/11, there's a question of why Federal security is a diffuse, and often unfocused effort.
• Intelligence - Whatever "you should have known" elements exist, the lack of good information was a clear issue that needs systemic solutions. Partly communication was clearly an issue (and a reminder that, for instance, the NYPD simply now operates its own unit because federal resources don't share, even with each other). But as well, the nature of our intelligence efforts - where enormous resources are (still) aimed internationally and outward while fewer resources work internally and domestically - is a problem. And it's not simple (what nation successfully spies on itself?), but the testimony definitely pointed to additional steps that must be taken.

Much of the focus on wild conspiracies may make for sexy reporting, but it would be a mistake to let the systemic issues get lost in a fog of "what about Ron Johnson" (and, just to make a point - the testimony Johnson read into the record was largely confirmation of the role of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, were anyone paying close attention to his words). Yes, there's a misinformation problem, and yes, there's a "co-conspirator" issue with some GOP Senators. But Josh Hawley continues to be a cartoon version of any kind of a threat, and Ted Cruz continues to be an expert at aiming his guns right at his feet. The real question is, does Congress have the will and the stamina to see these complex challenges to their own security through to successful resolution? I'm not sure the hearing confidently showed that. Not yet, anyway.

More pointedly, the hearing's disputes and multiple revelations underscored that Nancy Pelosi is right to want to stand up, and soon, an independent commission to take this in all the directions it needs to go. Piecemeal hearings and soundbite sum ups will not get at all the issues, all the complexities, and the serious work that needs to happen on multiple fronts. Bravo to Gary Peters reiterating, several times, that pressing the FBI on its White Supremacy investigation is ongoing and overdue. And kudos to Amy Klobuchar for calmly and effectively keeping her eye on Capitol Security. But this problem is enormous. What happened on January 6th isn't just a "can't happen again" - it's more than that. Fundamentals of our Republic type stuff. Yesterday was a start. The work remains. 

Everybody Runs... Don't They?

Watching Josh Hawley furiously backpedal is, yes, hilarious, especially given that "white power" salute that got snapped just shortly before the mob descended on the Capital. But really... what else can he do? "In for a penny, in for a pound" has rarely been so true even in someone so literal.

Hawley's been stunningly lackluster at least since he managed to steamroll his way into winning Missouri's Attorney General seat, where he proceeded, we now know, to largely outsource the running of his office so he could focus on his next Big Prize, ousting Claire McCaskill from the Senate seat she'd managed, better than most, to hold onto in squeakers, largely by being down to Earth and moderate. It's safe to say Hawley's not that, and it's a measure of McCaskill's class that up until January 6th, she never spoke a word against him in public. The more telling thing, of course, is she had no need to say anything at all. The contrast was obvious.

Hawley's surfed the waves of the Trump years as well as anyone, setting himself up as the New Guard of Trumpism, whatever that was supposed to mean... which, now if not sooner, clearly means next to nothing. Obsequious, fawning, and keen to parrot any Trump position, Hawley got his wish to be an essential member of the Trumpist GOP, a great reminder to be careful what you wish for.... and to be really specific with the genie when he shows up from the lamp. Also, just a reminder: Everything Trump touches, dies.

There are plenty of people enraged about Hawley, his actions, his behavior in the aftermath, his endlessly smarmy demeanor. I find myself more bemused than enraged - I think it's maybe a function of age, watching someone so young make such poor, obviously regrettable choices, oblivious to even the mildest exhortations of "no, stop, don't..."  Ted Cruz, for all his blunderbuss self aggrandizement, does appear capable of at least a small amount of shame. Hawley, it seems, never meant a mistake he couldn't compound.

Even that foolish fist up salute is so determinedly, self consciously silly; it's the fratboy version of finding a cause, that level of distinction between fighting for justice and fighting for your right to party that separates the serious from the poseur. It's Hawley's knitted brow and crinkled forehead (did no one let him in on the secret of Botox?) that elicit the giggles. He thinks... apparently, he thinks this is what "gravitas" looks like. And... Oh, dear. And deep behind those vacant, vacuous stares that his smile never reaches, it just seems clear he knows... this isn't really working.

'The Republican Caucus of the House has any number of these unserious types - Lauren Boebert, of course, has outdone herself as a shrill stalker of the spotlight, but from Kevin "you know we can see you" McCarthy to Jim "shirtsleeves suggest passionate intensity" Jordan to Louie Gohmert and on down the line... gerrymandering and a willingness to say anything makes for ludicrous times there. But Hawley has leapfrogged a number of Senators in his race to the bottom, or I suppose he thinks... top. It's hard, finding a space to the right of Mike Lee and Rand Paul... so I suppose, well, that's something, anyway.

Today, in addition to compounding his ongoing attempt to pretend He's Not In Hot Water, Hawley managed to make himself (along with Lee) one of only two Senators who didn't think rejecting a well liked African American four star General might look, well, tone deaf. Hawley will, surely, manage to cast himself as the only Republican rejecting all of Biden's appointments and, well... it's a plan I suppose. Still, it's wildly out of step with the moment, but as securing the Trump base goes...

I suspect, really, that Hawley's brilliant plan is positioning himself as Trump's potential 2024 VP pick. Perhaps someone should tell him that's not going to happen... but why ruin a good show? Hawley's near pathological fealty to the Crazy Town portion of the Trump Sycophancy is just astonishingly beyond what anyone else would even think of as worth doing. And sure, it's hard arguing Biden is an illegitimate president while arguing in the next breath that you were just raising "legitimate concerns" about election operations... but why let that stop you? When you've been coasting, primarily, on wholesome good looks and a willingness to say anything the hard right wants to hear, your problem isn't internal coherence. No, your problem is that the last bus left Crazy Town without you on it. If Hawley doesn't commit to making himself King of the place he got himself stuck, he really does have just about nowhere to go.

Hawley's delusions of turning his Mayor of Crazy Town shtick into a presidential run may yet come to pass; stranger, and worse candidates have had their moment. But it may be hard to get that on track with a Senate Ethics inquiry breathing down your neck, a post presidential impeachment that could implode your lodestar, and a set of political positions just slightly to the left of survivalists in the outskirts of Idaho. It's hard to tell, at the moment, whether Hawley is just running for his next dream job, running from his ultimate comeuppance, or just, you know, dancing as fast as he can, because the real terror in his eyes lies in not knowing what might happen when he stops. And yet... why... why do they always run?

Got Til It's Gone

A day later and it can seem light years away, but try and recall that until he ducked out early yesterday morning, we did indeed spend 4 years with Donald Trump in the White House. He may have ended much the way he began - in chaos, disarray, and like a thief trying to get away with something - but if there's one thing we came to learn under Trump, it was that what you see is what you will always get.

A day later, it's hard to ask just what we got, since we want to pretend, as we often do, that nothing at all matters before yesterday. By noontime, with the assembled guests in their usual spots (or something like it, under Covid) we once again paraded out an Inauguration, hit the reset button, and gratefully welcomed the return of normalcy. You know, where you can't leave your house, masks are required at the store, and vaccines are impossible to find. That's okay, stay home and watch another chorus of randos sing that song from Rent you didn't need for the umpteenth time. Liberalism means never having to apologize for the theater kids.

A day later and we have our sense of humor back, our divisions, our obstacles to progress as firmly in place as ever... and that's good, isn't it?  Isn't it swell, isn't it?  Well, it's heaven, nowadays (sorry, I was those theater kids, once)... but we may, by day three, already feel deeply disappointed watching Democrats in Disarray. Because why change anything, when all we wanted back was our same old, familiar narratives?

Familiarity breeds contempt as they say, and by the end, Trump was nothing if not familiar. Even on his way literally out the door, stopping to harangue the reporters, dutiful as ever, gathered at their rope line for one final word. And then, sharply dressed wife at his side, he toddled off (Melania swapped her severe black Chanel for a colorful caftan on her arrival in Palm Beach, and literally never looked back as she got in her car to head into private life). It's remarkable, really, that Trump seems to have exited the national stage in a way similar to other ex Presidents, could we be that lucky? I think not... but it's hard to tell what outlet he would have available to pop up on, even if he wanted.

It's hilarious, this game we're playing of treating Trump as He Who Shall Not Be Named, just one day after he leaves the presidency, whether because it serves Joe Biden's "let's move forward" storyline, or the Republicans' need to pretend they never heard of him, or our own sense that if we just don't talk about him it will be like this never happened. It's another piece of family dysfunction after all - not talking about the bad stuff. Pretending everything is fine. They paved Paradise, and put up a parking lot... but it's fine if we just agree it's nice to have the extra space to park.

The reality of course is that it's not that simple, or that easy, and pretending won't make this go away. Trump will linger in our culture, whether we determinedly try to exile him or not, whether he tries to force his way back onto the stage, or not. Trump may be relegated to the interior pages of scandal sheets and gossip rags, the story may move to lawsuits and investigations and financial failure... but he won't just be gone. Even today, Republicans are grappling with one last piece of political mischief, as they try to tamp down his "I could start my own political party" - an idea so half baked and deviously destructive, we can only hope he sees it through, Surely, it's the best next long con he could possibly have created, a grift that could make him millions long before anyone realized it was a complete sham.

Then, too, there's Impeachment, a trial to be held that apparently is the magic key to figuring out how the 50-50 Senate will finally set up shop and get down to business. Because no one is "concerned about ending the filibuster" - that won't happen and doesn't have the votes to pass, anyway. But the timing of a trial, the need for Republicans to get rid of Trump without angering the base... there's no real answer about when a trial could be helpful, or what verdict brings actual justice (at least, not for their side - we know he's guilty as sin). The struggle is real. The answers are elusive. And it's only one half of an entire branch of government that gets held up trying to figure a way out.

Good luck with that, I figure. Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got til it's gone? I don't mean Trump = we knew what we got, with him. No, what we haven't begun to face - in our perfect, don't talk about the dysfunction way - is all the other stuff we got. From literally getting sick to all that's been broken, to all the disarray in putting our government back together, all the aftermath we have yet to unpack... and on and on. We are remarkable, as Americans, at all the things we can refuse to face when we out our collective energy towards it. We put him on a plane, we sent him away... a big yellow taxi came and took away our old man. Can't we just enjoy the Tree Museum and that shiny new parking lot?

Math and Aftermath

"Off guard" is one of those odd phrases - unless one lives in some state of perpetual vigilance, we are, generally "off guard." And yet, how can one talk about those moments and world changing events that suddenly up end our day, our week, our lives with a sudden, crystal breaking clarity? Who knew that could happen? Why weren't we "on guard?" How did we miss that?

Already, people talk about January sixth as if what happened should have been obvious - how could you not know that thousands of hyped up, angry protestors would turn into a riotous mob, storm the Capitol, nearly do bodily harm to our Congress, take hours to stop? In the modern phrasing... "that's just math." And yet, the events of the day came at us, really, out of the blue. If anything, the days since have been coming out of shock - shock that it happened, shock that it could happen, shock that what did happen was so bad, and could have been much worse. We are, as Americans, prisoners of our cheerful societal naïveté - we may seem like the girl who knows too much and Already Did It, but often we're just the rich kids in clothes that are too mature for us, pretending to a maturity we don't really have, never entirely earned. January 6th will haunt us because, really, We Should Have Known. We're shocked that we didn't.

Personally, I have had a plan to restart blogging in earnest that got, well, a little waylaid by Christmas and the holidays... but last week was my week to settle down and back into it. And I thought I'd start with some posts about Trump in his waning days... what's it all about, what a strange time... yada yada. And then, on that Wednesday, things just blew up. I had decided to catch some of the "Arizona debate" on the Electoral College count, flipping between House and Senate C-Span channels. Things had been slow, so I'd also flipped to coverage of the "Rally" the Trumpist folks were holding, waiting for Trump when it was apparent he would speak to them live, not really paying attention to his remarks. But then the debates started in earnest, and I was flipping between Paul Gosar and Mitch McConnell when suddenly... bedlam.

I've done the "where were you" discussions of 9/11 and other historic days, but January 6th will be, I think, kind of a Next Level on that: it's not just where we were (home, mostly), but how painful, and slow, and terrifying it was to watch. Trying to figure out what we couldn't see. Realizing that our very democracy could be in peril, not really having a "Plan B" on our whole System of Government... these are not everyday discussions. Not here. Not by us. People wanted to have whole debates about What It All Meant all afternoon... but what was immediately apparent is we couldn't even have that discussion until we did something more like basic... like stop this, and get it under control.

So... it's under control. Now what?

There are a number of ways to break down and pick apart the events of the sixth; and the point, I think, is that What Happened is not one discussion. It's several discussions, all important, all with a bearing on our future, as a nation, as a people, as a Republic. That, too, is just math. No one discussion can cover all of what this is, what it means, what it will mean. Over the next week or two, I'm hoping to break down and break out some of the themes that I think will be meaningful as we move forward. It's not the blogging I intended... but Aftermath is a funny place. One I never expected to see. So here, roughly, are four areas that I think will matter as we look back on January sixth and move forward from it:

• The Mob - Trump Supporters, "the Insurrectionists," "The MAGA Crowd"... whatever we call them, whatever we thought of them before... this event changes that completely. Understanding what drove this, who drove this, their goals and beliefs, will all be hugely important, of course. Knowing their names, seeing, as we already are, the famous and the unknowns in that crowd, is a big story. I'm not sure it's entirely sunk in that we want to do this in order to isolate them and expunge them. But I think they will begin to realize that's what's happening, soon enough.
• Republicans and The Conservative Movement - The events of January 6th have enormous implications for the Right, as any have already started to note. But I think the early process we are seeing, the Anger, the Bargaining... signal that, in fact, something has died. I don't think anyone knows exactly what that means or just how it will play out... not yet, anyway. But a Republican Party that had to unwind the Trump Years anyway now has a much bigger soul to search - the Law and Order Party that enabled the Lawless in their midst, the Standard Bearers without standards... this is not a small earthquake. And it will not be neatly resolved and put away in short order.
• Security, Safety and the role of Law Enforcement - another obvious element of "how did this happen," we are bound to see months of Commissions, panels, in depth reviews and more trying to unwind the failures of the day. And this could be a healthy conversation about improving our sense of safety and yet another step towards engaging a broader conversation on Policing, generally. But... a whole lot of this could go very, very wrong. And that's not reassuring.
• Donald Trump, his family, and all the hangers-on. Impeached while Pence dithered on the 25th Amendment, events have moved quickly to sideline Trump if not remove him completely for his role in this mess... but we're nowhere near a full assessment of what 4 years have wrought, the aftermath of his lies, bullying and chaos-stirring. Nor have we unpacked the roles his family have played, or the (literal) Rogues Gallery of Accomplices, Apologists and Sycophants who also have earned their moments of deep scrutiny. "Justice" is no longer the only issue. As a nation, reclaiming our decency means looking hard at The Indecency among us. A good, hard look.

Two things that I don't think are major parts of this story of The Aftermath? "The Media" - who do need to show that they can take up these multiple threads, organize them, and look at them seriously, and who, yes, may well fall short. But trying to pin the events of January 6th on "culpable" or "complacent" media, I think, is to lose focus on the actual people in the actual mob that perpetrated the actual riot. Similarly, none of this is, or should be, about liberals, The Left, or the incoming Biden Administration. We have our own issues, our own story, our own role to play. And there's plenty of time to look at all of that. But this, this moment of real threat to Our Democracy, and to Our Way of Life is on their side, it's their problem, and they need to do the work. We cannot do it for them. But we can move to hold them accountable to do that very work.

One more thing: Be Unafraid. Yes, these are difficult, uncertain times. We have many problems. Bad things, very bad things, may yet happen. But if the January 6th Insurrection showed us anything, it showed us most how pathetic this whole exercise was. How sad and small, how incapable, how unserious. These bullies and miscreants are not something to fear; they are people to be pitied, marginalized, and brought to justice. They do not deserve to be given the power to scare us, to haunt us, to drive us into responding to fear rather than rising to our sense of Justice, Decency and doing right. They tried to break something at the very heart of who we are as Americans, it's true. But they only win if we act broken. We are not broken. We are many. And we are strong. And that... well, that's just math. Not Aftermath.