FBI–King suicide letter reconsidered

I wonder if Obama got one of these letters two weeks ago. I wouldn't be surprised if he's been getting them for eight years.

Anyway, try not to puke if you read a 2014 New York Times Magazine article describing how "[t]he current F.B.I. director, James Comey, keeps a copy of the King wiretap request on his desk as a reminder of the bureau's capacity to do wrong."

A Forgotten Coup

I was depressed in the week before the election because - regardless of the ensuing outcome - an executive agency took a shameless hit on its non-preferred candidate at precisely the moment it could have the greatest impact on the election. I will go to my grave believing that it cost HRC the election but that's really beside the point. The points are that a domestic law enforcement agency more or less staged the closest thing it could to a coup. That this "executive" agency operated independently from the President that supposedly controlled it. And that, a week or so later, nobody, including that President, really seems to give a shit about it.

The Best Disinfectant

I remember watching videos of protesters being attacked by dogs and firehoses in Birmingham in 1963. I remember learning that this footage prompted a domestic and international shift in support for the Civil Rights cause. But I also remember drawing my own conclusion: if those photographers and cameramen hadn't been out there, it would have likely been bullets, not water and dogs, set upon the protesters.

There are many parallels between the rise of Trump and the rise of Hitler and Putin. But there are at least two important differences. The first is that the USA has a much older and more established government/institutions than the young Weimar and Russian republics. The second is that it is now possible for individuals to document their lives through photo and video without having to devote much attention to the task.

The ability to serve as one's own cameraman has important consequences. One, it protects the individual. If someone can stream video of their whereabouts and make it available to many others than they cannot just be "disappeared" without some documentation of it. This makes their disappearance or unlawful treatment less likely. When/if such things do happen, it makes it much more difficult for others to deny. (In Russia, for instance, motorists have turned to dashboard cameras as their best form of protection from corrupt officials and criminals.)

People have already been dismissing hateful acts and protests in the wake of the Trump election as fabrication, the work of hired protesters, etc. More than ever, people will believe what they want to believe. But, if a picture tells a thousand words, the content of a photograph or a video is 1000-fold harder to deny or ignore than a verbal account.

It is the task of those who feel vulnerable or threatened to document their lives electronically and make this documentation available. Sunlight is the best disinfectant; communication is antithetical to the control of perception and the atomization/isolation of the individual upon which totalitarianism/authoritarianism feeds.

The Dog who Caught the Car?

I've encountered some apparent-Trump-supporter sentiments amounting to "he didn't mean any of the shit he said so stop losing your mind" since the election. I've argued against this assumption before but I gotta admit, there's some merit to the claim. Trump, as I have explained here, is the platonic bullshitter. Bullshit is speech without its truth or falsehood on the speaker's radar. Bullshit usually has an ulterior motive. In this case it was clear: become President.

But I don't think he ever expected to be President. And I hope that now that he has ended up as President, like a dog that has caught a car, he decides that he wants to be regarded as a good President. It may involve a lot more bullshit, even in the best case. Trump is a bullshit artist. But he also seems to care about his daughter Ivanka's opinion and that of her husband, who as far as I know is involved in finance and thus wouldn't want to see American withdrawal from NATO. I think it will matter a great deal who gets his ear, and my best hope is that it's those two and that they have a moderating influence.

"Lessons from Mr. Rogers, Relevant Still"

http://millercenter.org/ridingthetiger/mr-rogers-newtown

Our Cold Civil War

I truly hope that Trump changes before the inauguration, that he develops some principle beyond his own profit and glorification, that he learns enough about the Constitution and our national workings for his Oath of Office to mean something, that he learns to listen to those that know more than he does, that he learns to take criticism without tantrums. I wish for his success, to quote George H.W. Bush in his letter to Bill Clinton, to be America's success, despite the vile persona that got him elected. If this gets him two terms then so be it.

And that is where I depart from the personnel of the current right wing faction in this country, whose Senate leader vowed to do everything in his power to keep Obama from getting a second term, cost to the nation be damned. One political faction in our country has rejected the legitimacy of and sought to undermine every President outside of it for the last 20-odd years, has rejected duly respected Constitutional procedures (hearings for SCOTUS nominees recently), has invited foreign heads of state into the Houses of Congress to rail against the President and has held the international economy hostage for political ends. In sum, the current right-wing faction has demonstrated a consistent willingness to spite this country's well being, in hitherto unprecedented ways, in order to further its own power.

I have a family history of Republican party affiliation. My great-grandfather chaired the party back when Roosevelt was king. I still can't bring myself to identify as a Democrat. But I'll be damned if I'm going to sit here and act like we should all just get along in America regardless of what happens going forward. The current right wing faction has declared cold civil war and has been waging it for two decades. I would be happy to see Trump try to end it - really. But I expect this cold war to be just heating up.

Yesterday and Today

Yesterday, I woke up at 5:30, dry heaved, got to the hospital and staggered around, white as a ghost, trying not to think.

When I did think, I thought of the soldiers in my family. The Union Major, wounded at Gettysburg, who refused to have his leg amputated and was later eulogized by Oliver Wendell Holmes. The veterans of World War I. The South Pacific. Vietnam. The Cold War. I thought about how honorably and professionally they conducted themselves (bravery just being a part of professionalism). I thought about our military, how its personnel have conducted themselves with such restraint and professionalism under rules of engagement more stringent than any governing domestic police force use, and how these professionals will come under the command of a vindictive child with financial obligations to foreign powers and there's not a goddamn thing they can do about it because they're good professional soldiers and they respect the chain of command. I thought about them having to raise a glass to this abominable embarrassment.

I thought about the women in my family, and how they must feel about a man that treats and speaks of women like Trump defeating a woman who was infinitely better for the job. I thought about the poor women who will have to choose between chastity and childbirth going forward.

I thought about ways to avoid televisions. I didn't think about how the news media had vigorously maintained a false equivalence between Trump and Clinton and acted in every way for their financial interests. I had no desire to read the news, to read some studiously detached analysis as if nothing happened yesterday and the NYT didn't have anything to do with it.

The only thing I hoped for in a moment of involuntary and misguided reflection was that, if it came down to it and the thought police came after me, I could die fighting rather than in acquiescence.

Today, there is some hope.

I have hope that there will be another election in 4 years. That Elizabeth Warren will run for President.  That she will not be hampered by the juvenile sanctimony, partisanship and gullibility that led so many to abdicate their civic responsibility to choose a President despite showing up at the polls by either voting 3rd party or not voting for President at all.

I have hope that the CIA or other shadow powers will not let Trump dismantle checks on Russia that are vital to the stability of Europe.  I have hopes that the groups oppressed by the most authoritarian elements of domestic law enforcement will be motivated to turn out to the polls. I hope that those of us not so oppressed will stand up for those who are in the mean time. I have hopes that John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy will not let the Supreme Court turn into an authoritarian or theocratic rubber stamp. I have hope that we will withstand the tide of authoritarianism and theocracy that will wash over us the next four years, that this nation will have a new birth of civic engagement to counter this tide, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from this land.

Election-eve ramblings

1) I appreciate this for some reason during impending-apocalyptic-feeling times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAzaaqXFpRM

2) If you're voting in hopes of expediting the end times or to spite elites that you despise you're not voting for the right reasons.

3) If you despise the elites - whoever they are - consider how much power they've lost. The Republican elites couldn't push their 1st, 2nd, 3rd . . . they ended up choosing between Ted Cruz, whom everyone who knows him hates, and the tangerine abomination. In 2008, the Democratic establishment's choice was defeated by a charismatic first-term Senator; this year, she was nearly defeated by a cranky septuagenarian Independent self-described socialist.

In a sense, our Republic has never been more democratic, in both the positive and negative senses. Yes, HRC is an establishment figure. But the "establishment" is losing the ability to dictate our choices to its satisfaction. So please don't use your vote this year to kick the elites while they're down; use it to keep a man who can't be trusted with a twitter account from the nuclear codes.

4) We're either getting a female president or someone who treats and speaks of women like Trump and who would appoint SCOTUS justices who would seek to reinstate government regulation of a woman's personal life.

5) I dictated this while walking in the woods the other day. Here is what the phone decided I said:

I am walking in the woods alone right now. Among the fallen leaves, at the end of the day. With the wrens singing. I think to myself: this woods will be here after Tuesday. These woods will be here after America, whatever that means.

America has not been alive for half the lifespan of the Roman Republic. Already, we are showing the signs of a decadent Republic or an empire that is dying. We have lost a sense of what civic virtue is. We have gotten into foreign wars for the glory or profits of men despite the lessons that history tells us about overextending a sphere of influence or occupied territory. And most importantly, I suppose leaders seem to have been compromised. We have investigative and intelligence agencies that go without supervision or consequences to their actions, giving them more or less the ability to do what they want. I cannot imagine what kind of explicit or implicit threats an incoming President might receive from the agencies that they supposedly control. The FBI director's leakage of "more Hillary Clinton emails to be looked at" and the public reaction to it illustrates the above concerns. It was a shameless hit job on the agency's non-preferred candidate, in favor of a more authoritarian candidate who will likely give them more power or let them do what they want unimpeded. And we have a public that can't differentiate smoke from fire.

We see the decline of civic culture and public spiritedness in our politicians, who do what they do need to do in order to ensure a good and steady income and whatever they define as personal success, and a news media that is much more interested in profit then in providing any public service in their reporting. We have two political factions, there's an industrial complex for each of them, and members of each will do what they need to do in order to toe the line and stay within the good graces of the faction. Toeing the line is much more important on the right wing of the spectrum, though. The right wing has acted with more political discipline among its voters. And they have finally expressed a desire for an authoritarian. And an executive agency that has acted with periodically authoritarian ends for decades has openly tried to get the authoritarian elected with less than a week to go.

My attention returns to the wrens as the dusk falls. They remind me that no matter what happens, America is temporary. We are temporary. That the world is temporary.That everything, even America, must die. I will I wish that my late mother were here to talk to me about this, but her unexpected and recent demise says everything to me. Enjoy good things while they last. Take nothing for granted.

Authoritarianism has been the default for most of history. Our avoidance of it is what makes us special, and whats so sad about seeing a boot coming down on our face. Even if it doesn't land this time, the future of America, as O'Brien claims, does look like a boot on a human face. Maybe it won't be. But if it is, I do not think, unlike O'Brien, that it will be on the face forever. Attempts at governments that are based on and seek to enable our best nature will fledge, and sometimes, if only for a while, they might soar. We must savor the times at which we are at our best; we will not be anything forever.

Choose Wisely

I have asked two Trump supporters if they really trust him to command the U.S. Military and conduct foreign affairs on our behalf. In each case, the answer eventually got to "not really, but the [military/state department/Washington establishment] won't let him do anything too rash."

That's not how it works.

Most of us have lived in an era of relative global peace and American prosperity that has depended on the (mostly) judicious use of American military force and diplomacy. To vote for an unjudicious man atop the military and diplomatic chain of command with (likely) undisclosed financial obligations to foreign powers is to risk great disturbance in the balance of global powers, with consequences we cannot forsee nor imagine. For what it's worth, it's absolutely unconservative to vote in such a way: conservative philosophy was largely born in response to the upheavals of the French Revolution.

But, to pay some attention to a Trump supporter's unphilosophical concerns: things over your lifetime may not have turned out the way you thought they would for you. Maybe you do not like the way the country has turned out and would like to see it be made "great again." Whatever that means to you, I promise you one thing: one man cannot do that. He can either tread water - like the alternative - or make things worse than you've ever imagined they could be. I ask for y'all to join me in doing the most moderate, prudent and, yes, conservative thing on Tuesday.

One of two people will be President next year. Choose wisely.