Day 563

Day 563 Sunday August 5, 2018 1,015 Days to Go

We were playing catch up on some of the shows we like to watch. Man oh man, a week in this environment is like a month or a year any other time. Trump throws out so much crap in a week that you forget the awful things he did and said the week before. Some people try to act like this is normal, but it’s not. Some folks are exhausted, I am told, don’t be. This is the time for vigilance and activism.

Last week was what? What was going on?
Helsinki has happened the week before, and Trump was dealing with the fallout. He looked weak in Helsinki, and he was.
I watched Bill Maher’s show from that week. Wow, how much you forget. He had on Malcolm Nance, who bills himself as a terrorism expert (he was a linguist in the intelligence community and was not then nor is he now held in high regard by those folks – just a word of caution.) As far as rigging an election, in this country it would be pretty easy to hack the voting machines, as has been demonstrated by various hacking conventions having contests to do it. (45 to 90 minutes is the usual time. Ninety minutes is required if you want the voting machine to play a song.) However, Nance said the easier place to do it would be at the district level where someone has a laptop and is tabulating the votes. Get into their machine and change the vote totals.
Then Bill had his panel, one member of which was Steve Schmidt, the former Republican and GOP strategist. He said there are five points to consider when looking at what is going on:
1. – Mass rallies to incite fervor, and where the people are lied to.
2. – Make victimization honorable. The people are told they are victims. They are all victims.
(Chris Rock and David Chappelle have had a field day with this one.)
3. – Allegations of Conspiracy. The Deep State. The hidden nefarious movements that only the leader can see.
Meanwhile, there are real nefarious organizations such as the Klan, the American Nazies, etc.
At Trump rallies there are now people wearing Q tee shirts and displaying Q signs.
Apparently, the far right is pushing an idea that the world is being run by a ring of child molesters and they are referred to as Q.
4 – The scapegoating of minority populations and of the most vulnerable among us.
5 – The need for the president to exercise extraordinary powers. Powers no other president has ever had.
(If this isn’t right out of Hitler’s playbook, I don’t know what is.)

Steve went on to say that this assault on truth, on objective reality, if and when people surrender their sovereignty (as over 30% of our population has done) then whatever the leader says is true, they believe to be true. Even then the truth is staring them in the face. When this happens we no longer have a democratic society.

The other guests on the panel pointed out several other things:
– Remember Sarah Palin complaining about “The Lame Street Media”?
– or Newt Gingrich bitching about the media in the South Carolina primary where he did very well by attacking the news organizations?
– Charles Blow, a NYT journalist, pointed out that this is who and what the Republican Party is and always has been. They, the Republican Party, had thought they could control this monster. That they could keep it in the attic and only have it come out on election day. To feed it scraps, and everything would be okay. Trump has let the monster out of the closet and it has devoured the party.

Bill played a clip of a Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts who, after Helsinki, said he was embarrassed. He said, “Do you stand for democracy or do you stand with that ganster in Moscow?”

There’s the question.

But it didn’t end there. Nancy MacLean was the final guest. I’ve written about her and her book “Democracy in Chains.” She pointed out that you have to look at the long game the Koch brothers are playing. Why she asked are the Kochs saying they’ll back other candidates? Why are they being docile? Because they are close to getting their hand picked nominee on the Supreme Court.
They are angling for a constitutional convention where they want to radically change our constitution. How close are they? They’ve got 30 states locked up. Bill pointed out that by 2040 eight states will have 50% of the population and 16 states will have 70%. That will mean 30% of the population will control 68 senators. The Kochs are headquartered in Kansas. There’s a reason for that. They can control the state, a very weird state.
MacLean went on to explain the radical agenda of the Kochs. They want to change our constitution. They have ten “Liberty Amendments” queued up. These amendments would transform our country from a democracy to an authoritarian regime that the legislators would not be able to change. Don’t believe me? Look at Chile, the folks the Kochs like, the ones that gave them these ideas, and the Kochs weaponized went down to Chile when Pinochet was in power and helped him push through a radical constitution. When a new leader came to power, she promised sweeping changes, only to learn once in power that most of the changes couldn’t happen until they could change their constitution.
What are some of these amendments the Kochs like?
– A balanced budget. Lots of folks think this is a good idea. It’s not. Why? In the study of economics you learn that an economy goes through cycles of boom and bust unless it is controlled. How do you control it? The government pumps money into the economy or takes money out of the economy. They do this by varying the interest rate on treasury notes. They also can spend money. Franklin Roosevelt spent a lot of money to help our country pull out of the Great Depression. He also spent more money to fight WWII. If there was a balanced budget amendment the government would not be able to do those things. Not only that but things like Medicare and Social Security as we know it would end. Why? The Republicans, starting with Reagan have been raiding the Social Security Fund (and the Highway Fund) so that the money in there are now replaced with treasury notes. That would not be allowed to continue and hence those programs would cease to exist as we know them.
– They want a voter ID amendment. This allows them to control who gets to vote. It’s a form of voter suppression.
– They want to revoke the 17th amendment. That is the amendment that says that Senators are elected by the people, not appointed by the state legislatures.
They want to return to Senators being appointed by state legislatures. They know state legislatures are the easiest to control. With a strong state legislature you can influence the Federal government and you can subdue local governments. Don’t believe me? Remember Michigan? Remember how they took over Flint and ruined the drinking water there? How about Detroit? Remember how that city almost sold off its art collection?

Don’t be complacent.

Then I watched John Oliver’s latest show. His main theme was on sexual harassment in the workplace. He showed an educational film that dealt with the topic. It was from the 1980s. Then he showed stuff from the 1990s. All promised the same stuff, yet here we are still in the same place.
He showed the Clarence Thomas hearing where Anita Hill was interviewed for eight and a half hours by the Senators about Clarence Thomas’ sexual harassment of her. The Senators, the Republican senators, didn’t believe her. They attacked her character, her reputation, her testimony. Anyone who doesn’t know that Orin Hatch is an asshole only need listen to his comments about Anita Hill.

Will things change? You bet they will. They will change for the worse. Our only chance is to get everyone out to vote. We have to get rid of this swine. (Swine plural, not singular, just to be clear.)

1,015 Days to Go

PS Unintended Consequence – A photo from the book “Blue Highways” by William Least Heat-Moon. Notice the political poster behind the folks.