breaking democracy

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27

I’m not an alarmist by nature. I’m not one of those people who worry a lot. I’ve never spent much time fretting about things over which I have little or no control. I can’t recall ever waking up because I was worried about something.

Until this morning. I woke up a little after 0500 this morning, worried. Why? Because Donald Trump is trying to break democracy — and I genuinely don’t know how alarmed we should be about it.

The more rational part of my brain is saying, “Dude, chill the fuck out. This is Donald Trump we’re talking about. Ain’t no way this guy could pull that off. He’s too stupid and too lazy to break democracy.” And I believe that to be true. If it was just Trump, I wouldn’t be worrying. But Trump has surrounded himself with venal, amoral, self-serving, dishonest, corrupt assholes. In other words, he’s surrounded himself with people just like himself, but smarter, more competent, and more energetic.

Even with that information, I wasn’t really worried. And then a friend — Sue Wilkinson, living in what I like to think is a small idyllic village in England — alerted me to this:

It’s a long video — sixteen minutes. If you skipped right over it and kept reading, I understand. But I’d encourage you to make the time to watch the whole thing at some point. It will scare the holy shit right out of you, but watch it anyway.

Because this is a thing we actually NEED to think about. Trump is actually PULLING THIS SHIT RIGHT NOW. He’s refusing to concede the election. He’s encouraging his followers to disrupt the election process and reject the results. Even though he has no evidence of fraud, he’s suing various states to overturn their election results. He’s actually accusing state governments — some of which are governed by his own political party — of committing crimes. He’s trying to stop the states he lost from certifying their results. And he’s got his pet Attorney General, Bill Barr, to ignore the Justice Department’s longstanding tradition of staying out of election investigations until after the results are in and certified.

But there’s more. Trump’s head of the General Services Administration has refused to sign the paperwork releasing the money and resources for Uncle Joe Biden’s transition team. In fact, throughout the federal government, Trump’s political appointees have ordered their staffs NOT to work with the Biden transition team. It’s like every Trump appointee in the entire government has their fingers stuck in their ears so they won’t have to hear that they’re out of a job. They are deliberately dodging their responsibilities to the America people.

And there’s still more. While he’s pulling all that other selfish undemocratic shit, Trump is also actively dismantling the US national security system. Yesterday Trump fired his third Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper (who replaced Trump’s second SecDef, Patrick Shanahan, who replaced Trump’s first SecDef, James Mattis). When asked about the possibility of being fired, Esper said this:

“I could have a fight over anything, and I could make it a big fight, and I could live with that. Why? Who’s going to come in behind me? It’s going to be a real ‘yes man.’ And then God help us.”

To be clear, Esper was about 75% a ‘yes man’. Still got his ass fired. Lots of people expect Trump to also fire Christopher Wray, his third FBI Director (after Andrew McCabe, who replaced James Comey — and it’s worth remember that the FBI Director is appointed for a ten year term in order to keep the director separate from politics). Trump is also said to be considering firing CIA Director Gina Haspel (who is, that’s right, his third CIA Director).

None of this is a surprise. A lot of us thought this was a possibility. Even a probability. But even knowing that Trump was likely to pull this shit, I still wasn’t really worried. Until that video taught me something I didn’t know. I knew that if the election mess ended up in the House of Representatives, they could hold a contingency election. They could ignore everything that happened before — the popular vote, the electoral vote — and elect a new president all on their own. But I DID NOT KNOW how a contingency election worked.

It works like this: there are 50 states with 435 voting members — 232 Democrats, 197 Republicans, and a single Libertarian (5 seats are vacant). Each state gets a single vote. The individual members of the House vote to determine how their state will vote. For example, the 53 members of California’s delegation would vote to determine how California’s single vote will be cast. Montana’s three members of Congress decide how Montana’s single vote will be cast. Nebraska’s three members of Congress decide how Nebraska would vote. It doesn’t matter that California has eight times as many representatives as Montana and Nebraska combined, and represents nearly 40 million US citizens, whereas Nebraska and Montana represents a total of about three million. What counts is that Montana and Nebraska would get two Republican votes and California would get one Democratic vote. Democrats may have more members of Congress and represent more citizens, but Republicans control more individual states.

So IF Trump and his people fuck up the post-election process to the point where the decision has to be made by the House of Representatives, a minority of Republicans in the House could literally override the electoral college vote and the popular vote and install Donald Trump as POTUS. That’s fucked up, right there.

That could actually happen. I’ve no idea how likely or unlikely it is. I’d like to believe it’s highly improbable. But I believed Trump’s election in the first place was highly improbable. The thing is, it COULD happen. I’ve no doubt at all that Trump wouldn’t hesitate to break democracy if he thought it would help him. And IF it happens — IF Trump somehow retains the presidency — it would shatter the notion of representative democracy into thousands of tiny misshapen pieces. It would probably be impossible to put them back together again.

That’s why I was awake at five o’clock in the morning.

donny and the joyful finger

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11

I wish I knew who took this photograph. I saw it this morning and I had an immediate emotional response to it. It’s a powerful photo. It’s not art, but it documents something critically important about yesterday’s announcement that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had won the 2020 election.

The finger is a gesture that’s been around since the Greeks and Romans. It’s a universal gesture of contempt, of anger, of disrespect, of defiance. It means Fuck you, it means Go fuck yourself, it means Shove this up your ass. It’s NOT a polite gesture.

We’ve seen this gesture a lot during the Trump administration. We’ve often seen it at Trump rallies, when Comrade Trump would point out the ‘fake news’ journalists. For these Trump supporters, the finger is an expression of rage and resentment and hatred. It’s Fuck you for who you are and for not supporting Trump.

We’ve also seen it used by folks opposed to Trump. Because Trump rarely appears in front of people who don’t support him, the finger has most often been displayed metonymically (yes, that’s a real word). People give the finger to some thing or object that represents Trump (like one of his properties). In this sense, it’s usually an expression of defiance as well as anger. It’s case of Fuck you and what you stand for.

There was, of course, the case of Juli Briskman, who was famously photographed in 2017 giving the finger to Trump in his motorcade as they passed her on her bike. She said,

“It was just sort of like, here I am on my bike. I’ve got nothing, right? This is pretty much the only thing I had to express my opinion. He wasn’t going to hear me through bullet-proof glass… So that was pretty much how I could say what I wanted to say, right?”

Ms. Briskman was subsequently fired from her job as a government contractor for taking advantage of the opportunity to say what she wanted to say. Her finger was an expression of Fuck you, you don’t represent me or my values. Happily, she was later elected to the Loudon County Board of Supervisors. There’s a bit of poetic justice for you.

The finger in all its manifestations has been a constant during the Trump years. But take another look at that first photograph. Look at the faces of the people. Notice the absence of anger. That’s what makes this photo important, I think. This finger isn’t an expression of “Fuck you, I HATE you, get out!” This is a joyful Fuck you, Donny. This is an expression of “I’m SO happy you’re leaving, now you can just fuck right off.”

To me, the the spontaneous celebrations were the most amazing and delicious aspects of yesterday. The unplanned, impromptu eruptions of joy and happiness and relief. It was an organic response to the release of four years of tension. It was the dancing and the laughing and the shared sense that years of darkness and horror and sickness and death and despair were giving way to a brighter future. Yesterday we weren’t just saying Fuck you Donald Trump, we were also saying Fuck you to ugliness and racism and hate and Covid and the constant weight of the gloom of Trump.

Yes, there’s a shit-ton of work to do. Yes, there are going to be ugly times ahead. But man, let’s not forget how we felt yesterday and how many of us still feel this morning. Let’s hang on to that joy. Joy is nourishment and it will sustain us through the coming months and years.

EDITORIAL NOTE: The photograph was taken by AP photographer Evan Vucci. Thanks to Patrick Power for alerting me to this.

poseidon america

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5

Back in 1972…no, wait. Earlier. 1969, a sportswriter-turned-novelist named Paul Gallico published a story about an aging ocean liner on its final voyage before being turned into scrap. Three years later, it’s turned into a movie. The Poseidon Adventure.

The SS Poseidon, traveling from New York City to Athens over the New Year holiday. The greed-head corporate owners, to save money on fuel, send the ship off with minimal ballast. Right there, you know everything, somehow, is going to go Oh Shit. And it does, right on schedule, New Year’s Eve, as the passengers are celebrating. An undersea earthquake creates a massive tsunami. Seriously massive. It hits the ship and, because of the lack of ballast, the ship is completely capsized. It literally turns upside down.

Hell, upside down. Who will survive? You guys, that was the 2016 election. We are the unlucky semi-innocent passengers on the ship when it’s hit by the calamitous, unpredictable wave. The people who should have been in charge are gone, replaced by inexperienced amateurs who tell us to keep calm and do what they say. If we obey and don’t ask a lot of pesky questions, they assure us that pretty soon the world will be all bluebirds and peach pie. A LOT of the passengers believe them.

The rest of us have spent the last 46 months trying to find some way to clamber up from the promenade deck, which is suddenly at the bottom, to the hull, now at the top, in the hope that we can manage to find a way out of the shambles. Sure, we’re being led by an annoying somewhat out of touch preacher, a semi-corrupt cop, and some smart-ass know-it-all kid, but at least they know which way is up.

They’ve managed to get us through the upside down kitchen, up an inverted ventilator shaft, along the flooded passageway to the engine room, all the way to the propeller shaft tunnel. Now we’re just banging a pipe against the hull, waiting for somebody to use a torch to cut a hole so Nevada can win the election for Uncle Joe Biden.

It looks like we’re going to survive. Yeah, we’ll have to listen to somebody sing a cloying version of There’s got to be a morning after, but that’s a small price to pay.

It’s been an ugly trip. We’ve lost a LOT of people, most of whom died unnecessarily. We’ve witnessed a shameful amount of selfishness and arrogance and corrupt double-dealing along the way. But we’ve also seen some courage, some self-sacrifice, and a willingness to help others.

That’s the good news. Here’s the bad news.

The ship is still upside down. And on fire. And full of dead people. There’s a HELL of a lot of work to be done. We’ve got good people willing to do that work. But remember those greed-head corporate owners who sent the ship off without ballast? Those evil fuckers still own the shipping company.

long day

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12

I’ll have to set an alarm tomorrow morning. It’s been a long, long times since I’ve set an alarm in the morning. Probably for 0500 hours, so I can wake up, check the perimeter with the cat, make coffee, get dressed, prepare food for the day, cosset the cat some, and get to the Lutheran church that’s my assigned polling station by 0600.

I’ll be there all day, setting up the polling station, checking in voters, registering new voters, handing out ballots. All day, until the polls close at 2100. Then maybe another hour breaking down the polling station.

I volunteered to be an election worker this year because of the pandemic. A lot of the usual election workers — mostly elderly women — opted not to work the polls out of a reasonable concern of contracting Covid-19. I live in Iowa, a state with a Republican governor who has faithfully followed the Trump path of Covid-denial. She has refused to issue a statewide mask mandate, she has insisted schools reopen in person, she has been inconsistent in her approach to closing/opening small businesses, and she has been accused of misusing US$21 million of federal pandemic relief funding to buy executive branch software. Despite the fact that Iowa has frequently ranked in the top ten states with the highest Covid positive testing rates (today the positivity rate is 13.4%), the governor has said, “We have to learn to live with it [Covid-19] and we have to do it in a safe and responsible manner.”

That casually negligent approach is reflected in the way we’ll handle the election. The state will provide election workers with masks, hand sanitizer, and alcohol wipes. Maybe gloves, maybe face shields. We’ll be given tape to make social distance markers for voters. That’s it for Covid precautions. There’ll be no plexiglass screens between election workers and voters. Voters will NOT be required to wear masks.

Happily, we’ve seen a LOT of early voting, which may alleviate the number of in-person voters tomorrow. Many (maybe most) early voters will have been Democrats; Trump has stressed that he wants his supporters to vote on Election Day. Those Republican voters will likely be the ones without masks.

The polls open at 0700 and remain open until 2100. Fourteen hours. Sixteen hours, including set-up and break-down. In a closed environment (probably with an old ventilation system). Face to face with strangers. Without a mask mandate.

Some election workers will almost certainly contract Covid-19.

I don’t expect any other trouble tomorrow. Although Iowa is a toss-up state, with an almost equal number of Biden and Trump supporters, we’re not likely to see the sort of aggressive voter intimidation and suppression tactics taking place in some states. We have our share of gun nuts, rabid right-wing conservatives, and wanna-be ‘freedom fighters’ but so far they haven’t been showing up at polling places armed with semi-automatic rifles.

That said, it’s a shameful comment on the current state of the nation that an election worker is grateful that armed self-appointed political gangs probably won’t be intruding on the electoral process. Four years ago, the very idea that something like that might happen was almost unimaginable; now we’re grateful that it’s not happening at our particular polling site.

After the election, I’ll be isolating myself for at least ten days. Today I’ll be going geocaching with my brother. Today I’ll be spending as much time outside as the weather will allow. Today I’ll have fun and not give much thought to the election. Because tomorrow will be a long day.

Tomorrow is going to be a long day. I’m not looking forward to it. I’d much prefer to be home, spending time with people I care about and a narcissistic cat. It’ll be a long day, but giving up sixteen hours is really a rather small contribution to the democratic process. A long day is a very, very small sacrifice. It’ll be a long day, but I think it’ll be worthwhile.

Tomorrow is going to be a long day for everybody, and we know more long days will follow it. It’s to be hoped there will be only another 70 or so long days until Comrade Trump is out of office. Otherwise, I despair for the future of the United States.

trump and getting to heaven

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I hear this a lot. I mean, really a lot. “I really don’t understand this thing Christians have for Donald Trump. How can they support this guy? It doesn’t make sense.”

The thing is, it sorta kinda does make sense. At least it makes a sort of sense for a couple of different kinds of Christians. The thing is, when most of us think of Christians we think of folks who are trying to live by the principles laid down by Jesus. You know, love one another, judge not, forgive others who have wronged you, the truth shall set you free, the meek shall inherit, all that. Those Christians would have a really hard time supporting a sociopathic serial liar like Donald Trump.

But there are a lot of other sorts of Christians who have different priorities, and those priorities make it possible — even necessary — for them to support a guy like Trump. For example, abortion absolutists. If the main (or only) issue you’re concerned about is overturning Roe v. Wade, then Comrade Trump is your guy. He’s said many times he’ll only nominate appellate court judges who are opposed to Roe, so there’s that.

Worst petting zoo ever.

Personally, I don’t think Donald Trump cares about abortion one way or another. I’d be willing to bet my paycheck (if I had a paycheck) that he’s coughed up some coin to put an end to more than a few unwelcome pregnancies. But if ending abortion gets him applause and support (and money), then he’ll be willing to say he’s against abortion. It’s not religious or philosophical for him; it’s transactional. Still, these Christians will pray for him.

There’s another reason some Christians support Trump. They believe the End Times are just around the corner and it’s time to start making plans for The Rapture. Just a week ago, Pat Robertson, the televangelist, revealed to his audience that god told him “Donald Trump will be reelected…and his reelection will bring about start of the End Times.” These Christians see that as good news. They believe a whole bunch of stuff has to happen before Jesus returns and kicks Evil to the curb. First up, dead true believers will be resurrected, then the living true believers and the resurrected dead will rise up bodily to the clouds to meet god and Jesus. While all this cloud-based business is happening, everything on Earth is going Oh Shit. We’re talking war and calamities and all manner of horrible stuff. Then after a period of time, everybody who was raptured away will get to return to Earth like Jesus’ sidekicks and destroy Evil. I may have gotten some that wrong, and the chronology might be a tad off. But there are a LOT of different interpretations about what’s supposed to happen…but my point, if you can call it that, is that IF you believe somebody like Trump is necessary in order to get to that returning-with-Jesus-to-kick-Evil’s-ass moment, then you’d be all ‘Yay, Trump!’

Farmers and shepherds getting raptured away, and sinners getting stuck with the resulting mess.

So there you go. That’s why some Christians continue to support Comrade Trump. They’re either all about the fetus or they’re working on an appointment with Jesus in the clouds. Or else they’re just racist, women-hating assholes who call themselves Christians.

The thing is, these Christians may not give a rat’s ass about you or your values or your beliefs, but they vote. And they’ll vote for Trump. So unless you want to see forced pregnancies and/or everything on Earth going Oh Shit while some Christians have tea with Jesus in the clouds, you need to vote too.

DISCLAIMER: I’m not a Christian, though I was raised as a sort of half-assed Southern Baptist with a little Lutheran side-eye. Just so you know.

70+ days of shit to clean up

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15

Let’s be wildly optimistic for a bit. Let’s assume Comrade Trump is soundly defeated in five days. Let’s also assume he calmly accepts the results of the election (hey, I did say ‘wildly optimistic’). That still gives him 70-plus days to fuck up the United States. It’s a lot easier to assume he’ll do some revenge-fucking than to assume he’ll quietly accept defeat. He will leave a LOT of shit for other folks to clean up.

I’m just guessing here, of course, but I suspect one of the things he’ll do is ruthlessly enforce the executive order he signed last week. This was a singularly nasty bit of work designed to make it easier for a president to fire career civil servants. To Trump, career federal employees are part of some faceless Deep State whose purpose, he believes, is to interfere with whatever he wants to do. In fact, that Deep State are the two million men and women who work in federal government turning presidential wants and wishes into formal policies that conform to the law, then implementing those policies. For example, when Trump says or tweets he wants to cancel the order for a new Air Force One (which he did), the Deep State career civil servants immediately begin the complex process of canceling an Air Force procurement order. Because that IS a complex process and can’t be done overnight, Trump complains the Deep State is thwarting him. Never mind that Trump changed his mind about canceling the order, he just hates being thwarted.

“You get fired, and you get fired, and you too, everybody gets fired.”

So I suspect there’s a good chance Trump will do some vengeance-thwarting on those thwarters. There’s a good chance he’ll fire more than a bunch of anonymous career professionals; he’ll very likely fire the heads of agencies he feels weren’t sufficiently loyal. FBI Director Christopher Wray, for example. And CIA head, Gina Aspel. Anthony Fauci will be toast. Probably a few more.

There will likely be a massive destruction of official records in the 72 days between the election and the inauguration of President Biden. Yeah, that’s illegal, but Trump and his people have shrugged off other obviously illegal behaviors. Like using Air Force One or the White House for political events without paying for them out of campaign funds. We’ve seen them refuse to honor legal subpoenas, we’ve seen them use WhatsApp to dodge leaving an official record, we’ve seen them insist Trump’s tweets are official records and thereby subject to the Presidential Records Act (also insist they’re just Trump’s personal opinions, so NOT subject to the Presidential Records Act). We’ve seen them normalize illegal acts and not be held accountable for them, so it’s not a big stretch to assume they’ll engage in an orgy of document destruction and erasure.

“But me, I’ll get pardoned. By the greatest and most unappreciated president ever. ME!”

Finally, most of us probably expect a tsunami of presidential pardons. He’ll likely pardon everybody involved in the Russia investigation, and all his cronies and financial contributors, and all of his kids, maybe his wife, and he’ll probably try to pardon himself. Of course, he can only pardon people for federal crimes; there can still be state investigations and prosecutions.

But assuming a Biden win, we can expect a whole lot of ugly to follow. There will be a LOT of shit to clean up. Let’s face it, Trump, his family, and his supporters — they’re the types of folks who’ll take a dump in the toilet and let the incoming administration discover and flush it.

reading the comments

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A friend sent me a message this morning:

Read something about Trump and the Sup.Ct last night and made the mistake of reading the comments and couldn’t get to sleep for longest time. People are so hateful. Didnt you write something recently about not reading the comments.

My first thought was How am I supposed to remember stuff I might have written? I mean, I write a lot of crap every day. Sometimes several times a day. Much of what I write on social media is off the cuff and barely thought out. On the other hand, I’m one of those putzes who almost always reads the comments. So yeah, I probably did. It sounds like something I’d write.

My second thought was Dude, there’s a search function on the blog, why don’t you use it? And then I thought Why don’t I use it? So I used it. And hey, whaddayaknow? Turns out I wrote two things about the comments. Neither of them was recent, but still.

The most recent was in April of 2017. I’d written a thing about the Fearless Girl sculpture on Wall Street. It was the only thing I’ve ever written that actually went viral. It got a shit ton of comments, so I wrote about the comments. Not exactly about the comments, but about the fact that ordinary people were arguing and debating works of art. Which I think is really a pretty cool thing for ordinary people to do.

The living embodiment of the Comments section.

The other thing I wrote was almost exactly four years ago — October of 2016. And it was weirdly appropriate. It was about the reasons people give for NOT reading the comments. And it was also about Comrade Trump and his supporters. Here’s the last line of the post:

Donald J. Trump, his campaign, and his supporters are the living embodiment of the comments.

That’s a pretty good line. Still true.

insult politics

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3

At some point today or tomorrow Amy Coney Barrett will be given a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States.

Has she earned that seat? I don’t know, probably not–or at least not yet–but it doesn’t matter; it’ll be given to her anyway. Is she qualified? I don’t know, maybe, but it doesn’t matter; it’ll be given to her anyway. Do the American people support her? Some do, some don’t, and it doesn’t matter; it’ll be given to her anyway. At some point today or tomorrow Amy Coney Barrett will be given a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States.

It will be given to her in the same way SCOTUS seats were given to Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. It will be given to her as a display of raw political power. It will be given to her as an expression of the modern Republican Party’s sneering disregard to representative democracy. It will be given to her as a demonstration that Republicans in the Senate can do whatever they want and Democrats are helpless to stop them. It’s the legislative equivalent of the Trumpist slogan Fuck your feelings.

It’s hateful aggressive bullying, plain and simple. It’s the same thing Trump supporters are doing all across the nation. It’s deliberately coughing in the face of a person wearing a mask. It’s driving trucks decked with Trump flags and signs through a BLM demonstration, honking horns and shooting people with paint guns. It’s purposely mispronouncing Kamala’s name. It’s openly carrying semi-auto rifles into the coffee shop, into the supermarket, into the state capitol building. It’s a flag saying ‘Make Liberals Cry’. It’s blocking access to ballot boxes and harassing voters. It’s calling the police to report a black person for being a black person doing what a white person can do. It’s a t-shirt that says ‘Free Michigan, Fuck Whitmer’.

Modern Republicans didn’t invent insult politics. They’ve been around for centuries. It’s been written that the Roman emperor Caligula planned to appoint his favorite horse, Incitatus, a consul of Rome–the highest elected or appointed office in the Roman Republic. It didn’t happen, but it’s a classic example of insult politics.

I’m not comparing Amy Coney Barrett to a horse. Unlike Incitatus, Barrett may, in fact, be qualified to sit on a high court bench. Even the Supreme Court. It doesn’t matter, because she’s not being given the seat because she’s the best candidate to fill it. Republicans could have chosen any of dozens of interchangeable, reliably conservative judges who’d vote the way they expect her to vote. They chose her because she’s a Catholic woman, and would give them a chance to accuse Democrats of being against religion and women. They chose her because it’s easier to bully somebody when you think they can’t or won’t fight back.

Giving a SCOTUS seat to Amy Coney Barrett is a deliberate insult. It’s a general insult to democracy, and a very specific, intentional slap in the face to Democrats. Giving her a seat is an insult to the Supreme Court. It could be said it’s an insult to Amy Coney Barrett herself, because it’s entirely possible she could have earned a spot on the Supreme Court. (The same is true of Gorsuch, who might have earned a seat; it’s not true of Kavanaugh, who lacked the temperament and probity to occupy a SCOTUS seat.)

The fact that Barrett is willing to accept a seat on the Supreme Court as a gift is, sadly, telling. It meant she didn’t have to answer any tough, important questions during her confirmation hearing. Does a president have the power to delay an election? The US Constitution offers a clear answer: no. Elections are held “the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November.” But Barrett declined to give an answer, because it didn’t matter; she was to be given a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States. Should a president commit to the peaceful transfer of power? The answer is obvious: yes. But Barrett declined to give an answer, because it didn’t matter; she was to be given a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States.

My objection to Amy Coney Barrett isn’t grounded in her politics. Well, not entirely. My objection is the rank hypocrisy of Senate Republicans and their disregard for the process of democracy. They could have waited to give her the seat until after the election. They could have waited for the American people to speak their minds through their votes. They could have chosen NOT to just giver her a seat on the Supreme Court. But no. They could have acted decently and honorably. But no. They did what they wanted because they knew nobody could stop them, because they had the power to impose their will on American society.

That’s all there is to it. At some point today or tomorrow Amy Coney Barrett will be given a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States as a testament to the conservative commitment of pissing off Democrats.