Tuesday, November 15, 2016
Shadow Man
This is not a political post. It's just about the joy of sun pouring through the windows and setting up every changing images of light and shadows on the walls.
Monday, November 14, 2016
Eating At An Immigrant Owned Restaurant As Act Of Support And Defiance
There are many ways you can stand up for freedom, equity, decency, and the US Constitution in the new Trump reality. One is to eat at immigrant owned restaurants to show the owners you support their rights and also to help keep them in business.
I hadn't thought of this until I saw a retweet from Mark Meyer that said Eater would NOT send out lists of immigrant owned restaurants. They write that they've had requests for maps and lists of immigrant owned businesses so that people could patronize and support them. But . . .
"For all that we agree with the spirit of solidarity and inclusion behind these requests, however, Eater will not be publishing lists specifically of immigrant- or minority-owned businesses. We feel that it would be irresponsible to publish guides specifically highlighting restaurants owned by people whose lives and livelihoods may right now be threatened, because of the very real possibility that they would double as cheat sheets to help intolerant actors find new people, businesses, and families to target. In this chaotic moment, we believe it would be indefensible to widely broadcast the cultural affiliations or immigration status of any individuals or their families without their explicit permission."
 |
| Pouring Tea at Moroccan Restaurant |
owners know you are there, support them, and if they have any trouble to let you know.
I suspect there aren't that many people likely to cause trouble, but 1% of Anchorage's 300,000 people is 1,000 people. One percent of that is still 10 people. 49,573 people in Anchorage (some absentee votes are yet to be counted) voted for Trump. (45,700 voted for Clinton.)
Sunday, November 13, 2016
Responding To Oxo Beppo's Comments On Whether Progressives Listen To The White Working Class
In a previous post, I wrote:
Oxo, I think we’re talking past each other. I agree with much of what you say. I’ve been sitting on this while I thought out how to respond.
1. I shouldn’t have used the term ‘working class.’ I don’t even know what that means any more and the issues I was talking about spread beyond economic class.
2. Yes, right wing propaganda demonized Clinton. And there were a lot of people who simply can’t deal with a strong woman, so the emails and all the other charges gave them a non-sexist ‘cover’ to hate her. But the hate was all out of proportion to the ‘crimes’ she was charged with and how these people have responded to men who have much worse records, including Trump.
3. Unions? I agree and disagree. Unions have done and still do a lot of good for workers. Historically, they got workers to 40 hour weeks, they got sick leave, and vacation time. They got health care and pensions. (Though if health care hadn’t been tied to work, maybe we would have gotten national health care a long time ago and people wouldn’t have been tied to bad jobs just to keep the health care.) And eventually businesses without unions began matching union benefits and pay to keep unions out. And as the right has been successful in breaking union power, pay and benefits for workers has lost ground. So yes, unions have done a lot of good. But like any powerful institutions, unions also attracted the power hungry and the greedy who took advantage of the fact that most workers didn’t pay a lot of attention to their union politics, or rules that made it easy to keep workers uninformed. Many people resented paying union dues and corrupt or callous union leaders. And, most importantly, very few people are even members of unions. Union membership was 20% of workers in 1983 and now it's 11%. Today 32% of government employees are unionized and only 7% of private sector employees are unionized.
But the key difference between us is the notion of listening. Yes, Democrats did all the traditional things that they have done for the working poor, if it was about jobs or health care - pushed for day care, minimum wage, health care, and on and on. But those aren’t the pains I was talking about. When the complaints were about blacks and other minorities getting treated better than they were being treated, progressives didn't listen. And I understand why. But they didn't even listen; they just dismissed them.
These are the people I was alluding. People who had fallen out of the comfortable middle class, or had never been in it. Mostly white people on the margins. They’d bought into the American dream and when they had money they did what advertisers told them to do - they spent it. And as they got older, they found themselves without enough money to maintain that life. Liberals can make all the smug arguments they want - "where is your self-reliance and your belief in the free market?" but that's besides the point.
Many of them came from dysfunctional families where the father was the head of the household and everyone had to follow his rules. [See George Lakoff on this. Scroll down to Conservatism and Liberalism and the two models of family.] And there may have been physical as well as verbal abuse. The pain I was talking about is the pain of not being respected, of being condescended to, of not being taken seriously that often stems from parental belittling. It’s the pain that Palin appealed to and won applause for when she talked about elites, about the college professors, the ‘experts,’ the people who thought they were ‘better’ than ‘us.’
Liberals have supported every group that was outside the ideal American WASP image - blacks, Hispanics, Asians, LGBT, women, Native Americans, and on and on. Rightfully so. In an attempt to encourage tolerance, liberals have made racial epithets and other derogatory terms against the rules - sometimes actual enforceable rules, sometimes just social rules of decency. All the derogatory terms except for slurs for WASPS, particularly poor whites, words like trailer trash, poor white trash, and hillbillies. It was still ok to use those. And the people who no longer were allowed to use their traditional epithets in public, found themselves as the only people against whom epithets could be used with impunity.
It’s the anger over that double standard that I’m talking about. Liberals have not heard those cries to be treated with respect, to not be called stupid and ignorant.
Admittedly, it’s hard for liberals to be accepting of people who make racist and sexist remarks. Rich and powerful racists get deference, but when they aren’t in positions of power that liberal intolerance comes out.
It's a dilemma. I don’t find racial and sexual discrimination acceptable. I don’t find treating others badly acceptable. We have to separate the behavior from the human being. We can condemn the behavior, but in a way that is respectful of the human being. And that's strategically difficult. When you deal with a bully, standing up to that bully is often the only successful strategy. And after watching Democratic presidential candidates like Gore and Kerry get creamed by bully politics, the Clinton campaign did stand up to every Trump attack. But for the Trump supporters it was about being respected not about rational arguments.
I’ve talked about being more sympathetic and understanding of people I disagree with on this blog from early on. The first post that I remember, because I got flak for it, was when I complained about liberals trashing Vic Kohring after he’d been convicted and sentenced to prison. He still was a human being, he was down and out, and I thought continuing to kick him was mean spirited.
There's the behavior. But more interesting to me is what personal history deep inside causes someone to be mean and nasty to others based on their race or gender or sexuality or religion. I'm of the belief that people regularly attack innocent others when they are unhappy about themselves. Being mean and angry and controlling isn't being happy and at peace with oneself. When people understand the source of that unhappiness they have a chance to start changing the behavior. And parental modeling plays a big role in whether we lash out or talk quietly and rationally. The quiet rationality, that liberal ideal, can also cause problems if one is suppressing great anger and pain.
What I was trying to say was that Trump heard those people who felt they were looked down on as stupid, ignorant, bigoted white people. And he told them they were ok. He did it by defying liberal standards of acceptable speech. The very things that alarmed liberals so much resonated with his supporters. He was saying the things they were thinking but had been told were unacceptable to say out loud. He said them on national television. He said them unapologetically. And he did it as a presidential candidate. He was saying with his behavior - you're ok! I suspect for many of them who had authoritarian fathers, he had the additional appeal as a familiar father figure.
Liberals haven’t been able to get past the sexist and racist comments. They generally overlook the sexism of rap, excusing it because of the context of racist oppression. But the context of white racism is never treated with the same tolerance. I’ve talked about listening and needing to talk, and that racists are humans too. (And let's not forget that in the US, everyone has been infected by racism. For some the symptoms rarely show, but others become full blown racists. But that's a discussion for another day.)
This post describes just one segment, probably a large segment, of Trump voters. People voted for Trump for many reasons and Clinton's message and manner didn't swing enough people in enough key states to win the electoral college vote. That's not blaming Clinton, it's just descriptive of what happened.
I've used the terms liberal and progressive and generally used the pronoun 'they' even though I fall in that category. While I have advocated for treating conservatives as people and for listening to them on this blog, I haven’t done a lot about it, so I’m not excusing myself here either.
". . . Trying to be positive, I was thinking that how I feel now is how many conservatives have felt since Obama was first elected. I'd like to think that my feeling is more legitimate, but feelings are feelings. They may or may not be tied to a rational, realistic assessment. But it's clear that progressives haven't really listened to the pain of the working class. . . "Oxo Beppo took issue (third comment) with that part about not listening:
". . . wait, it's not at all true that anyone can say, 'progressives haven't listened to the pain of the working class'.
That's not a true statement, progressives are the only people who have paid any attention to the pain of the working class. That hasn't changed.
What's changed is the propaganda from the right has 'trumped' that reality.
We know that unions are good, we know that healthcare for all is good, we know that minimum wage is good. Progressives have and still do champion the working class. The right never has and never will. . . "
I think that he's right and I'm right. I've sat on this for several days trying to figure out how to articulate what I meant. It seemed this was getting too long for the comment section, so I'm putting it in a new post. But do go back and see the old one to see the full context.
Oxo, I think we’re talking past each other. I agree with much of what you say. I’ve been sitting on this while I thought out how to respond.
1. I shouldn’t have used the term ‘working class.’ I don’t even know what that means any more and the issues I was talking about spread beyond economic class.
2. Yes, right wing propaganda demonized Clinton. And there were a lot of people who simply can’t deal with a strong woman, so the emails and all the other charges gave them a non-sexist ‘cover’ to hate her. But the hate was all out of proportion to the ‘crimes’ she was charged with and how these people have responded to men who have much worse records, including Trump.
3. Unions? I agree and disagree. Unions have done and still do a lot of good for workers. Historically, they got workers to 40 hour weeks, they got sick leave, and vacation time. They got health care and pensions. (Though if health care hadn’t been tied to work, maybe we would have gotten national health care a long time ago and people wouldn’t have been tied to bad jobs just to keep the health care.) And eventually businesses without unions began matching union benefits and pay to keep unions out. And as the right has been successful in breaking union power, pay and benefits for workers has lost ground. So yes, unions have done a lot of good. But like any powerful institutions, unions also attracted the power hungry and the greedy who took advantage of the fact that most workers didn’t pay a lot of attention to their union politics, or rules that made it easy to keep workers uninformed. Many people resented paying union dues and corrupt or callous union leaders. And, most importantly, very few people are even members of unions. Union membership was 20% of workers in 1983 and now it's 11%. Today 32% of government employees are unionized and only 7% of private sector employees are unionized.
But the key difference between us is the notion of listening. Yes, Democrats did all the traditional things that they have done for the working poor, if it was about jobs or health care - pushed for day care, minimum wage, health care, and on and on. But those aren’t the pains I was talking about. When the complaints were about blacks and other minorities getting treated better than they were being treated, progressives didn't listen. And I understand why. But they didn't even listen; they just dismissed them.
These are the people I was alluding. People who had fallen out of the comfortable middle class, or had never been in it. Mostly white people on the margins. They’d bought into the American dream and when they had money they did what advertisers told them to do - they spent it. And as they got older, they found themselves without enough money to maintain that life. Liberals can make all the smug arguments they want - "where is your self-reliance and your belief in the free market?" but that's besides the point.
Many of them came from dysfunctional families where the father was the head of the household and everyone had to follow his rules. [See George Lakoff on this. Scroll down to Conservatism and Liberalism and the two models of family.] And there may have been physical as well as verbal abuse. The pain I was talking about is the pain of not being respected, of being condescended to, of not being taken seriously that often stems from parental belittling. It’s the pain that Palin appealed to and won applause for when she talked about elites, about the college professors, the ‘experts,’ the people who thought they were ‘better’ than ‘us.’
Liberals have supported every group that was outside the ideal American WASP image - blacks, Hispanics, Asians, LGBT, women, Native Americans, and on and on. Rightfully so. In an attempt to encourage tolerance, liberals have made racial epithets and other derogatory terms against the rules - sometimes actual enforceable rules, sometimes just social rules of decency. All the derogatory terms except for slurs for WASPS, particularly poor whites, words like trailer trash, poor white trash, and hillbillies. It was still ok to use those. And the people who no longer were allowed to use their traditional epithets in public, found themselves as the only people against whom epithets could be used with impunity.
It’s the anger over that double standard that I’m talking about. Liberals have not heard those cries to be treated with respect, to not be called stupid and ignorant.
Admittedly, it’s hard for liberals to be accepting of people who make racist and sexist remarks. Rich and powerful racists get deference, but when they aren’t in positions of power that liberal intolerance comes out.
It's a dilemma. I don’t find racial and sexual discrimination acceptable. I don’t find treating others badly acceptable. We have to separate the behavior from the human being. We can condemn the behavior, but in a way that is respectful of the human being. And that's strategically difficult. When you deal with a bully, standing up to that bully is often the only successful strategy. And after watching Democratic presidential candidates like Gore and Kerry get creamed by bully politics, the Clinton campaign did stand up to every Trump attack. But for the Trump supporters it was about being respected not about rational arguments.
I’ve talked about being more sympathetic and understanding of people I disagree with on this blog from early on. The first post that I remember, because I got flak for it, was when I complained about liberals trashing Vic Kohring after he’d been convicted and sentenced to prison. He still was a human being, he was down and out, and I thought continuing to kick him was mean spirited.
There's the behavior. But more interesting to me is what personal history deep inside causes someone to be mean and nasty to others based on their race or gender or sexuality or religion. I'm of the belief that people regularly attack innocent others when they are unhappy about themselves. Being mean and angry and controlling isn't being happy and at peace with oneself. When people understand the source of that unhappiness they have a chance to start changing the behavior. And parental modeling plays a big role in whether we lash out or talk quietly and rationally. The quiet rationality, that liberal ideal, can also cause problems if one is suppressing great anger and pain.
What I was trying to say was that Trump heard those people who felt they were looked down on as stupid, ignorant, bigoted white people. And he told them they were ok. He did it by defying liberal standards of acceptable speech. The very things that alarmed liberals so much resonated with his supporters. He was saying the things they were thinking but had been told were unacceptable to say out loud. He said them on national television. He said them unapologetically. And he did it as a presidential candidate. He was saying with his behavior - you're ok! I suspect for many of them who had authoritarian fathers, he had the additional appeal as a familiar father figure.
Liberals haven’t been able to get past the sexist and racist comments. They generally overlook the sexism of rap, excusing it because of the context of racist oppression. But the context of white racism is never treated with the same tolerance. I’ve talked about listening and needing to talk, and that racists are humans too. (And let's not forget that in the US, everyone has been infected by racism. For some the symptoms rarely show, but others become full blown racists. But that's a discussion for another day.)
This post describes just one segment, probably a large segment, of Trump voters. People voted for Trump for many reasons and Clinton's message and manner didn't swing enough people in enough key states to win the electoral college vote. That's not blaming Clinton, it's just descriptive of what happened.
I've used the terms liberal and progressive and generally used the pronoun 'they' even though I fall in that category. While I have advocated for treating conservatives as people and for listening to them on this blog, I haven’t done a lot about it, so I’m not excusing myself here either.
Saturday, November 12, 2016
Everybody Knows Leonard Cohen Has Departed
This is the song the first brought me to Leonard Cohen. It played repeatedly (as I remember, but I know the brain plays tricks) in the movie Pump Up The Volume about a high school kid who sets up a pirate radio station in his house that catches on with the kids in his high school, but no so much with the principal. I checked Netflix - they have it on DVD, but not streaming.*
I think you'll find this song pretty current.
*I did find Pump Up The Volume on youtube. And "Everybody Knows" starts during the credits, three minutes into the film. This isn't a great copy, it looks like heads are cut off and it's got ads embedded in the movie.
I think you'll find this song pretty current.
*I did find Pump Up The Volume on youtube. And "Everybody Knows" starts during the credits, three minutes into the film. This isn't a great copy, it looks like heads are cut off and it's got ads embedded in the movie.
Attending A Concert As An Act Of Defiance
[I'd suggest you first start the video below so you have appropriate background music to the post.]
Obama, when talking about Trump's election, reminded people that the sun would still come up tomorrow morning. I want to remind everyone that the sun came up every morning over the killing fields of Cambodia. It came up every day over the Bosnia-Herzogovenia massacres. And it rose when people were hacking their neighbors to death in Rwanda. The sun rising doesn't measure normalcy of human behavior. And while I'm not anticipating mass murder, if Trump carries out any of his key campaign promises, millions of lives are going to be severely disrupted. Suicide hotlines have lit up since the election, particularly among the already vulnerable LGBT community. And if protesters are are labeled as traitors. . . . As the Gessen Rules for Surviving Autocracy tell us, we can't accept slippage of our standards of democracy as the new normal.
Thursday night we went to musical event to support the protestors at Standing Rock. There was a series of different bands who played short sets. Lots of dancing and good music at Anchorage Community Works near Ship Creek.
But you don't have to go to something that is specifically a protest concert or a fund raiser. Good artists are the most consistent speakers of truth in any society. When you create art without using words, it's harder for authorities to detect the offense. But authoritarian governments often shut down artists because they know they are among the least obedient members of society.
That's all the more reason to go see their work - to support them morally and financially.
Friday night we went to UAA to an Anchorage Festival of Music presentation of "The People United Will Never Be Defeated!" by Frederic Rzewski. The UAA ticketing website describes it this way*:
This work was more than appropriate for the beginning of the Trump era. Cedille Records writes:
Drury gave a brief introduction about the structure of the piece, then sat down and started playing - no sheet music - for nearly an hour from genre to genre united by the familiar theme.
It was almost like magic that a man could sit at the piano, stretch out his arms and make such incredible sounds come out of the piano. There were moments when I though there must be a couple more people playing that piano with him because there was such an overwhelming wall of music. And, of course, the UAA music recital hall is a gem of space to hear live music. It's intimate and the acoustics are incredible.
So this post's recommendation for standing up against autocracy is to patronize the arts. Go to museums, to galleries, to concerts, to theater. Invite artists to play when you give a big party. Give money if you can to support artists to keep their creativity and honesty alive. Your support allows artists to work on truth. Smart dictators coopt artists - paying them to compose the soundtracks for tyranny and to illustrate propaganda posters. That's much cleaner than having to detain them or kill them.
So we need to support artists so they can survive financially making honest art.
Below is a Youtube of The People United Will Never Be Defeated. It is NOT from Friday night's concert, but it's to get you in the mood. Youtube identifies this pianist as Yuji Takahashi.
Obama, when talking about Trump's election, reminded people that the sun would still come up tomorrow morning. I want to remind everyone that the sun came up every morning over the killing fields of Cambodia. It came up every day over the Bosnia-Herzogovenia massacres. And it rose when people were hacking their neighbors to death in Rwanda. The sun rising doesn't measure normalcy of human behavior. And while I'm not anticipating mass murder, if Trump carries out any of his key campaign promises, millions of lives are going to be severely disrupted. Suicide hotlines have lit up since the election, particularly among the already vulnerable LGBT community. And if protesters are are labeled as traitors. . . . As the Gessen Rules for Surviving Autocracy tell us, we can't accept slippage of our standards of democracy as the new normal.
Thursday night we went to musical event to support the protestors at Standing Rock. There was a series of different bands who played short sets. Lots of dancing and good music at Anchorage Community Works near Ship Creek.
But you don't have to go to something that is specifically a protest concert or a fund raiser. Good artists are the most consistent speakers of truth in any society. When you create art without using words, it's harder for authorities to detect the offense. But authoritarian governments often shut down artists because they know they are among the least obedient members of society.
That's all the more reason to go see their work - to support them morally and financially.
Friday night we went to UAA to an Anchorage Festival of Music presentation of "The People United Will Never Be Defeated!" by Frederic Rzewski. The UAA ticketing website describes it this way*:
A Tour de Force for Solo Piano(*since the concert's over this page may disappear soon.)
One of the most magnificent piano works of the 20th century, this 'tour de force' is a theme and variations of epic proportions. It is frequently compared to Beethoven's Diabelli Variations or J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations. Taking his theme from a Chilean worker's song, American composer Frederic Rzewski crafts 36 variations exploring a variety of music styles from neo-romanticism to jazz and the avant-garde. Commissioned for the celebration of America's Bicentennial.
No matter what happens in the November elections, remember that The People United Will Never Be Defeated!"
This work was more than appropriate for the beginning of the Trump era. Cedille Records writes:
"This riveting, audience-pleasing tour-de-force is a nearly hour-long set of 36 variations on a popular Chilean protest song from the era of Augusto Pinochet’s repressive right-wing military dictatorship. AllMusic.com applauds it as a work “of bewildering and amazing variety, ranging from serialism to jazz to romanticism to the further reaches of the avant-garde and back” and culminating in 'a superbly emotional climax.'” [emphasis added]
Pianist Stephen Drury is a world class pianist. Again from the ticketing page,
"The Anchorage Festival of Music joins forces with UAA to present Stephen Drury, one of only a handful of pianists who give live performances of this piece. According to the New York Times: 'Mr. Drury’s playing is extraordinary. He plays the entire program with technical command, keen ear for color, vivid imagination and probing intelligence.'”
 |
| Stephen Drury at UAA |
It was almost like magic that a man could sit at the piano, stretch out his arms and make such incredible sounds come out of the piano. There were moments when I though there must be a couple more people playing that piano with him because there was such an overwhelming wall of music. And, of course, the UAA music recital hall is a gem of space to hear live music. It's intimate and the acoustics are incredible.
So this post's recommendation for standing up against autocracy is to patronize the arts. Go to museums, to galleries, to concerts, to theater. Invite artists to play when you give a big party. Give money if you can to support artists to keep their creativity and honesty alive. Your support allows artists to work on truth. Smart dictators coopt artists - paying them to compose the soundtracks for tyranny and to illustrate propaganda posters. That's much cleaner than having to detain them or kill them.
So we need to support artists so they can survive financially making honest art.
Below is a Youtube of The People United Will Never Be Defeated. It is NOT from Friday night's concert, but it's to get you in the mood. Youtube identifies this pianist as Yuji Takahashi.
Friday, November 11, 2016
Rules For Surviving Autocracy
Masha Gessen was born in Russia and moved with her family to the US when she was 15. Later she went back and worked in Moscow. She has dual US and Russian passports.
I first found out about a her when a friend lent me her book The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. She's knows how things work. When she writes, we should pay attention.
I found out about this article by Gessen, Autocracy: Rules for Survival from the same friend. (Thank you.)
The world has plenty of examples of countries sliding out of democracy. I choose to take these rules very seriously. Starting late Tuesday night, we stepped into an alternative universe. We have some time of apparent normalcy, but it's going to be obvious soon that things are seriously wrong.
Below is a greatly abbreviated version of her six rules.
Rule #1: Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization. This will happen often: humans seem to have evolved to practice denial when confronted publicly with the unacceptable. Back in the 1930s, The New York Times assured its readers that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was all posture. . .In a previous post I said I was going to try to include in each political post, something useable, something for people to do, so they gain some power in the fight we have looming ahead. Today it is these rules. They're tools for not letting yourself be misguided into ignoring all the signs.
Rule #2: Do not be taken in by small signs of normality. Consider the financial markets this week, which, having tanked overnight, rebounded following the Clinton and Obama speeches. Confronted with political volatility, the markets become suckers for calming rhetoric from authority figures. So do people. . .
Rule #3: Institutions will not save you. It took Putin a year to take over the Russian media and four years to dismantle its electoral system; the judiciary collapsed unnoticed. The capture of institutions in Turkey has been carried out even faster, by a man once celebrated as the democrat to lead Turkey into the EU. Poland has in less than a year undone half of a quarter century’s accomplishments in building a constitutional democracy. . .
Rule #4: Be outraged. If you follow Rule #1 and believe what the autocrat-elect is saying, you will not be surprised. But in the face of the impulse to normalize, it is essential to maintain one’s capacity for shock. This will lead people to call you unreasonable and hysterical, and to accuse you of overreacting. It is no fun to be the only hysterical person in the room. Prepare yourself. . .
Rule #5: Don’t make compromises. Like Ted Cruz, who made the journey from calling Trump “utterly amoral” and a “pathological liar” to endorsing him in late September to praising his win as an “amazing victory for the American worker,” Republican politicians have fallen into line. Conservative pundits who broke ranks during the campaign will return to the fold. Democrats in Congress will begin to make the case for cooperation, for the sake of getting anything done—or at least, they will say, minimizing the damage. . . .
Rule #6: Remember the future. Nothing lasts forever. Donald Trump certainly will not, and Trumpism, to the extent that it is centered on Trump’s persona, will not either. Failure to imagine the future may have lost the Democrats this election. They offered no vision of the future to counterbalance Trump’s all-too-familiar white-populist vision of an imaginary past. . .
I've read Rule 4 carefully. I tend to remain calm and outrage isn't my style. But all the rules Americans have come to assume were simply part of nature, no longer can be certain. Without strong and vigorous opposition - overt and covert - the America we know is toast.
Gessen criticizes Obama and Clinton for being so gracious to Trump. She rightfully tells us that he simply isn't going to be gracious back. Being a total jerk (is there a word for jerk that suggests something more menacing?) won him the election. Why would he stop now? Even if he could.
Thursday, November 10, 2016
Dismantling Democracy Starts With Restricting The Media
I said yesterday it felt like part of the USA had died. It appears others have felt the same. This piece by Neal Gabler at Moyers&Company starts out with that focus, but then goes on to look at the death of the American media.
And as AP News pointed out today, excluding the media was one of Trump's first moves.
"President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday refused to let a group of journalists travel with him to cover his historic first meeting with President Barack Obama, breaking a long-standing practice intended to ensure the public has a watchful eye on the nation's leader.The media, when doing their job well, and a lot of the media did NOT do their jobs well during this campaign, are the bulwark of democracy. They are the key to keeping government accountable. And restricting the media is one of the first steps a dictator takes.
Trump flew from New York to Washington on his private jet without that "pool" of reporters, photographers and television cameras that have traveled with presidents and presidents-elect.
Trump's flouting of press access was one of his first public decisions since his election Tuesday."
In 2007 I posted Naomi Wolf's Ten Steps For Dismantling Democracy. Now's a good time to review those steps. I suggest putting them up on the refrigerator.
Restricting the press (8) already began during the campaign, and was one of the first actions newly elected Trump has taken that we know of. And Bush had already begun on this road and Obama has also contributed to it (4).
Yesterday I decided that all posts about American politics need to have a positive step that readers can take. Here are two.
___ Clipping the list and putting it on the refrigerator is one.
___ Check out Klein's website, her Wikipedia page, or The Economist's rejection of her ideas
Remember There's No Mandate: Clinton got 59,755,284 votes, Trump Only Got 59,535,522*
Popular vote 2000 Bush = 50,456,002 Gore= 50,999,897
*The actual popular vote for 2016 will still change as absentee ballots continue to be counted, but it's important to remember when Trump supporters talk about a mandate, that the majority of the voters picked Clinton.
The world would be a spectacularly different place had Gore won - we'd have been much further along on the most important issue facing the world, climate change for one thing. The same is true in this election.
Trump warned us that the election was rigged. The electoral college is one of the ways that the election is rigged. (But, let's be honest, if Clinton had won the electoral college, but not the popular vote, Democrats wouldn't be complaining. Though I suspect the Trump supporters would be in the streets much more aggressively than Clinton supporters are.)
But there is something you can do about this. There's a movement to make the electoral college irrelevant. From the Daily Kos:
But there are no simple solutions, as Trump and his supporters are soon to find out, and as Nate Silver pointed out in a Five Thirtyeight article in 2011. He argues that the money follows the important votes and with the electoral college as the important vote, political money is focused on swing states. If the electoral college no longer existed, that money would be spent trying to get the popular vote instead. So, he suggests, Bush might have spent his money to win the popular vote instead of the swing states.
And let's remember that the states still are relatively autonomous. According to the LA Times, Californians still believe in collectively making their state a better place to live:
*The actual popular vote for 2016 will still change as absentee ballots continue to be counted, but it's important to remember when Trump supporters talk about a mandate, that the majority of the voters picked Clinton.
The world would be a spectacularly different place had Gore won - we'd have been much further along on the most important issue facing the world, climate change for one thing. The same is true in this election.
Trump warned us that the election was rigged. The electoral college is one of the ways that the election is rigged. (But, let's be honest, if Clinton had won the electoral college, but not the popular vote, Democrats wouldn't be complaining. Though I suspect the Trump supporters would be in the streets much more aggressively than Clinton supporters are.)
But there is something you can do about this. There's a movement to make the electoral college irrelevant. From the Daily Kos:
"Eliminating the Electoral College does not even require a constitutional amendment. An effort known as The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is an agreement among several U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their respective electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the overall popular vote. Once states totaling 270 electoral votes join the compact--which only requires passing state laws-- then the next presidential election will be determined the the popular vote, not the Electoral College.
As of November 9, 2016, ten states and the District of Columbia have signed the compact, totaling 165 electoral votes. So, we are already over 60% of the way there. If we can make this a national issue now, and if Democrats can do well at the state level in the 2018 midterm elections (which could happen under President Trump), then the winner of 2020 presidential election will be determined by popular vote."
But there are no simple solutions, as Trump and his supporters are soon to find out, and as Nate Silver pointed out in a Five Thirtyeight article in 2011. He argues that the money follows the important votes and with the electoral college as the important vote, political money is focused on swing states. If the electoral college no longer existed, that money would be spent trying to get the popular vote instead. So, he suggests, Bush might have spent his money to win the popular vote instead of the swing states.
And let's remember that the states still are relatively autonomous. According to the LA Times, Californians still believe in collectively making their state a better place to live:
"[California] Voters embraced $94 million per year for parks, $1.2 billion to house the city’s homeless, $3.3 billion for community college facilities and a stunning $120 billion to pay for subways, light rail lines and other transit projects over 40 years. Those measures, backers say, will help Los Angeles tackle two of its most intractable problems — traffic and homelessness — and potentially reshape the region."
Wednesday, November 09, 2016
Still In Denial - Keeping Election At A Distance
I had a meeting downtown today. I knew there'd be no exercise time, so I decided to just walk the 3.5 miles. I don't have studs on my bike tires and I wasn't sure how icy the trail would be. I know the sidewalks aren't great, so walking would have to do.
Urban hiking is an idea we came up with when we were living in Hong Kong. A three mile hike is no big thing in the woods on a trail, so why not do the same in the city? In Hong Kong we could go explore new places that way and we could always get a bus or train back home if necessary.
Today I just took the bike trail downtown. As I knew it would, an hour of walking through the woods would clear my head.
I even got to see a young moose eating grass at a playground. The trail veers to the right and through a tunnel under C Street.
The meeting was fascinating in a troubling way and one day I hope to be able to post about this project.
It did feel like there had been a death in the family and I wanted to go by the cemetery downtown and hang out a bit with the departed. But the meeting was on the other end of downtown and I was on foot. Like with a death, I was trying to keep busy with my to do list and increase the distance from the initial shock before I deal with it. Though in this case, the magnitude of the loss is going to grow and grow.
Trying to be positive, I was thinking that how I feel now is how many conservatives have felt since Obama was first elected. I'd like to think that my feeling is more legitimate, but feelings are feelings. They may or may not be tied to a rational, realistic assessment. But it's clear that progressives haven't really listened to the pain of the working class. As I walked I thought about Trump's childhood. From what I can tell, it was about always trying to please his father and avoid his wrath, avoid being a loser. I suspect that a lot of families had similar dynamics and that Trump has that in common with many people who come from families with a strict and mercurial father. He understood that pain and his audiences caught that. And his own mercurial behavior - sometimes glowing and kind, as with his first speech as president elect, and other times nasty and insulting and bullying - is something they recognize from their own fathers. What many of us saw as outrageous and unacceptable behavior, many others recognized as very familiar.
People know when they aren't being respected and I think liberal rejection of frustrated white working class was part of their resentment against Clinton. Every other group is given a context - discrimination, poverty - with which to excuse unacceptable behavior. But poor whites are called hillbillies or trailer trash or poor white trash when equivalent ethnic slurs are not allowed. This is why in this blog I try not to use any kinds of slurs, try to respectful of the people I write about or who comment. We need to talk and come together. This is probably a good time for liberals to talk to Trump supporters, because now they are happy and feel like they matter.
Good night. Don't let this fool you into thinking that things aren't going to get lots worse before they get better. That I don't expect the mean and brutish Trump to be back soon. He's 70. He's not going to change. As soon as someone crosses him, we'll see the nasty Trump back.
Urban hiking is an idea we came up with when we were living in Hong Kong. A three mile hike is no big thing in the woods on a trail, so why not do the same in the city? In Hong Kong we could go explore new places that way and we could always get a bus or train back home if necessary.
Today I just took the bike trail downtown. As I knew it would, an hour of walking through the woods would clear my head.
I even got to see a young moose eating grass at a playground. The trail veers to the right and through a tunnel under C Street.
The meeting was fascinating in a troubling way and one day I hope to be able to post about this project.
It did feel like there had been a death in the family and I wanted to go by the cemetery downtown and hang out a bit with the departed. But the meeting was on the other end of downtown and I was on foot. Like with a death, I was trying to keep busy with my to do list and increase the distance from the initial shock before I deal with it. Though in this case, the magnitude of the loss is going to grow and grow.
Trying to be positive, I was thinking that how I feel now is how many conservatives have felt since Obama was first elected. I'd like to think that my feeling is more legitimate, but feelings are feelings. They may or may not be tied to a rational, realistic assessment. But it's clear that progressives haven't really listened to the pain of the working class. As I walked I thought about Trump's childhood. From what I can tell, it was about always trying to please his father and avoid his wrath, avoid being a loser. I suspect that a lot of families had similar dynamics and that Trump has that in common with many people who come from families with a strict and mercurial father. He understood that pain and his audiences caught that. And his own mercurial behavior - sometimes glowing and kind, as with his first speech as president elect, and other times nasty and insulting and bullying - is something they recognize from their own fathers. What many of us saw as outrageous and unacceptable behavior, many others recognized as very familiar.
People know when they aren't being respected and I think liberal rejection of frustrated white working class was part of their resentment against Clinton. Every other group is given a context - discrimination, poverty - with which to excuse unacceptable behavior. But poor whites are called hillbillies or trailer trash or poor white trash when equivalent ethnic slurs are not allowed. This is why in this blog I try not to use any kinds of slurs, try to respectful of the people I write about or who comment. We need to talk and come together. This is probably a good time for liberals to talk to Trump supporters, because now they are happy and feel like they matter.
Good night. Don't let this fool you into thinking that things aren't going to get lots worse before they get better. That I don't expect the mean and brutish Trump to be back soon. He's 70. He's not going to change. As soon as someone crosses him, we'll see the nasty Trump back.
John Foelster's Research Into Alaska's AV-OS Voting Machines And How To Hack Them
As the early election results came in, I put the presidential race into a box and put it outside, turned off the radio, and did other things. I wasn't ready to address what was happening. I'm still not.
This post is something of a guest post. I posted about John Foelster in 2014. He alerted me several weeks ago that he was close to completing his website with all his evidence. I wrote this last night but decided to wait until I'd slept before posting it. I'm still not ready to address much and I have an afternoon appointment on something totally different today. John's also posted this on Daily Kos.
My one bright bit of news this morning is that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. Imagine Trump's supporters if he had won the popular vote but lost the electoral college.
I've never met John Foelster, but we have exchanged emails. This 2014 post gives my thoughts about John and why I posted about his work then. I got some education in computer voting hacking while covering the Anchorage Municipal election fiasco in 2012. The posts on that election are listed in the 2014 post linked above.
I posted Foelster's stuff in 2014 and I'm posting his recent stuff for several reasons:
1. While I don't totally understand all that he's saying, I'm convinced that he's done his homework on the technical side. He's found everything that's to be found online about the machines we use in Alaska and how we handled them.
2. He doesn't have an agenda other than righting what he perceives as a wrong.
3. The work he's done should be seen by those who can review it technically and determine its value. And if there are others looking at this topic, they may find John's work useful. Or can point out his errors.
I have less confidence in Foelster's ability to fill in the gaps that are left by what is NOT available online. It's reasonable that he try to explain how this could have been done. But I wish he'd talked to people to find out if his suppositions about how this was carried out have merit.
My thoughts on all this, including a list of my posts about the 2012 Municipal election fiasco are on the 2014 post I devoted to Foelster's work then.
I've looked at his private website. It's massive. There is lots and lots of information. His statement is like a two second look through a hole in the fence around his work. I couldn't get through it all. Whether it is fact or fiction, it is, in its own way, a work of art. While John may not have tied all the loose ends, and may have tied some of them incorrectly, he is not a crazy conspiracy nut. He's done way too much detailed study and analysis to not be taken seriously. If his work is full of holes, exposure to the world will demonstrate that. If it is worthwhile, not putting it up would be wrong. I'm willing to put it up here since all this is related to Alaska elections.
Here's what John Foelster has to say.
[I've cut this out based on a request from the author - see comments below.]
This post is something of a guest post. I posted about John Foelster in 2014. He alerted me several weeks ago that he was close to completing his website with all his evidence. I wrote this last night but decided to wait until I'd slept before posting it. I'm still not ready to address much and I have an afternoon appointment on something totally different today. John's also posted this on Daily Kos.
My one bright bit of news this morning is that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. Imagine Trump's supporters if he had won the popular vote but lost the electoral college.
I've never met John Foelster, but we have exchanged emails. This 2014 post gives my thoughts about John and why I posted about his work then. I got some education in computer voting hacking while covering the Anchorage Municipal election fiasco in 2012. The posts on that election are listed in the 2014 post linked above.
I posted Foelster's stuff in 2014 and I'm posting his recent stuff for several reasons:
1. While I don't totally understand all that he's saying, I'm convinced that he's done his homework on the technical side. He's found everything that's to be found online about the machines we use in Alaska and how we handled them.
2. He doesn't have an agenda other than righting what he perceives as a wrong.
3. The work he's done should be seen by those who can review it technically and determine its value. And if there are others looking at this topic, they may find John's work useful. Or can point out his errors.
I have less confidence in Foelster's ability to fill in the gaps that are left by what is NOT available online. It's reasonable that he try to explain how this could have been done. But I wish he'd talked to people to find out if his suppositions about how this was carried out have merit.
My thoughts on all this, including a list of my posts about the 2012 Municipal election fiasco are on the 2014 post I devoted to Foelster's work then.
I've looked at his private website. It's massive. There is lots and lots of information. His statement is like a two second look through a hole in the fence around his work. I couldn't get through it all. Whether it is fact or fiction, it is, in its own way, a work of art. While John may not have tied all the loose ends, and may have tied some of them incorrectly, he is not a crazy conspiracy nut. He's done way too much detailed study and analysis to not be taken seriously. If his work is full of holes, exposure to the world will demonstrate that. If it is worthwhile, not putting it up would be wrong. I'm willing to put it up here since all this is related to Alaska elections.
Here's what John Foelster has to say.
[I've cut this out based on a request from the author - see comments below.]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)