Category Archives: politics

history has its eyes on you

In today’s Washington Post, Dana Millbank published an op-ed titled We have no excuses now. Our eyes are wide open. He closes by saying:

On Tuesday, voters will make a decision in what is the purest midterm referendum on a sitting president in modern times:
Will we take a step, even a small one, back from the ugliness and the race-baiting that has engulfed our country?
Or will we affirm that we are really the intolerant and frightened people Donald Trump has made us out to be?
If we choose the latter, 2018 will in some ways be more difficult to take than 2016. This time, we don’t have the luxury of saying we didn’t really know what Trump would do.

Our eyes are wide open.

I keep saying this: history doesn’t just happen. The world isn’t a story that someone tells, and we all ride along inside the narrative, unable to affect it in any meaningful way.

I am 46. I was raised in an America that claimed to be The Land of Opportunity, a place where all people are equal under the law, and anyone who was willing to do the work could make something special for themselves and their families.

That is painfully not the America we are living in now, and that didn’t just happen. This America, this country that is so xenophobic, so profoundly unequal, which treats nonwhite lives like they are disposable, which is currently lead by the most despicable, dishonest, openly racist and misogynist man to ever hold the presidency … this America didn’t just happen. This America was slowly and deliberately built by people like Ronald Reagan, John Bolton, Dick Cheney, George Bush and his idiot son, Newt Gingrich, The Koch Brothers, The Mercers, Fox News, Stephen Miller, and their malignant voice of hate and fear, Donald Trump.

Taking a look at my 46 years in America, it starts to become clear that, at least at the national political level, presidents like Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter are not our norm, as much as I wish they were. Looking at just the last 25 years, we see two presidents who were not elected by the majority of Americans, and we see a Senate that continually and gleefully abuses its anti-Democratic power to keep shaping America further and further away from the ideals of freedom and equality and opportunity that America at least claimed to stand for when I was a child.

What we are witnessing now is a fight for not just the future of America, but for her present, and for the rest of my life. Will America continue her march toward open civil war between the revanchist, paranoid, bigoted army of racists who make up the incredibly small but powerful Republican base, and the majority of Americans who are not bigots, anti-Semites, white nationalists, and misogynists? OR will we send a clear message that our voices, which are the overwhelming majority, will not be silenced, and we will not allow ourselves to be governed by Trump and people who support him?

Dana Milbank is correct in his column and in his assessment: our eyes are wide open now, and we know exactly what we get when Republicans are in power.

This election is powerfully and unambiguously clear: you are with us, or you are against us. You are with Trump and his hateful, violent, paranoid, racist values, or you are against him. This is the reality in which we are living, and you have to choose a side.

History doesn’t just happen. Every election matters and every election helps decide what our country is going to look like not just for us, but for our children and for the future. And though it isn’t just this election, (because we aren’t going to undo thirty years of right wing paranoia, voter suppression, and assaults on basic human and civil rights with just a single election any more than the Kochs and Adelsons and Mercers corrupted America’s free and fair elections in a single election) this is the first nationwide, congressional election of the Trump era. This is the first election since the Republicans stopped winking and dogwhistling and giving themselves plausible deniability, and openly embraced racism, bigotry, xenophobia, violence, and started proudly and stridently embracing the most deplorable ideas and beliefs in American politics since the Confederacy.

Put simply: if they can hold onto the House, if they can consolidate their power after they have made their intentions and beliefs crystal clear and without any doubts, they will be empowered to go even further toward taking civil and human rights away from people, because that’s what they’ve been promising to do since Trump’s election. History doesn’t just happen by accident, and what’s acceptable in America doesn’t just happen. In America, elections and the people they elect decide what history will be written, and by whom. In the past, a person could make the case with winks and nods and dogwhistles, and a voter could credibly claim that they were voting on the economy, for example. This election is different. This is the first election in my lifetime where openly racist, antisemitic, white nationalists are telling you exactly who they are and exactly what they will do if you vote for them.

It may seem like one vote doesn’t matter, or one election doesn’t matter. It may seem like “they’re all the same” or “there’s no difference between the parties” but I want you to consider that there is one main group of politicians in America (and their supporters) who don’t have a problem tearing a child away from its parents, who claim to be good, honorable, God fearing moral Christians, yet whose deeds consistently hurt the poor, the marginalized, people of color, and immigrants. There is one main group of politicians in America (and their supporters) who are appalled and revolted by the abuse of children and the destruction of any family, regardless of that family’s nation of origin. They believe that women’s rights are human rights. They believe that healthcare is a right. They believe that workers should have rights and protections, that the air we breathe and the water we drink should be clean and safe, that we can do more together than we can when we’re divided, and that all people, regardless of their gender, who they love, where they were born, who their parents are, how they pray (if they pray), and how much money they earn, deserve to live their lives in safety and prosperity.

Every election in America is a choice between these two parties. I know it shouldn’t be that way. I know that we should have more nuanced choices. But the reality is, we don’t. We can choose between a party that will tell nonwhites that they don’t matter and don’t have basic, fundamental, human rights (that are also their Constitutional rights, by the way), and a party that says their lives and their rights and their families matter. That’s the choice. In the past, they muddied things up with fear and economics, but this time is different. This time our eyes are open and we know exactly what this election is about, because they have told us what this election is about.

History doesn’t just happen. Elections have consequences. If Republicans hold on to power or — god forbid — expand it, they will make good on their antisemitic, misogynist, bigoted promises, because their voters will have told them that’s what they want.

On Tuesday, we all vote with our eyes wide open, and we have a chance to grab the pen that’s writing our history. Don’t let anyone tell you that your vote and your voice doesn’t matter, because history has its eyes on you.

Last night, KCAL credulously repeated Trump’s lies about Sprint.

If you turned on the news yesterday, you probably heard this story about Donald Trump taking a phone call from executives at Sprint, working that Make America Great Again magic, and hanging up the phone with the promise of Sprint creating 5000 jobs for Americans. Trump says that “Because of what’s happening and the spirit and the hope I was just called by the head people at Sprint and they’re going to be bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States.”

Wow. That’s kind of amazing, isn’t it? If it’s so easy for Donald Trump to get on the phone and make that happen, why can’t that loser Obama do it? Why does Obummer hate America so much?

Oh. Wait. Sorry. I fell into the Stupidsphere for a moment.

The truth is, Donald Trump lied yesterday, Sprint went along with his lie, and then an appalling number of news organizations repeated the lie so much, it’s become accepted as truth in less than 24 hours. This, in spite of the common knowledge that Donald Trump is constantly lying about everything.

Despite what Trump and the press release from Sprint said (and what its CEO recently tweeted), these jobs were part of a previous announcement from Softbank (Sprint’s parent company) CEO Masayoshi Son — not the direct result of working with Trump.

I saw this lie repeated last night on the 10pm broadcast of my local news on KCAL 9, here in Los Angeles. It was upsetting to me, because KCAL is a trusted local news source for one of the largest media markets in the country, and it’s one of the only local news sources available to people who live here and don’t have cable or satellite. Here’s what I posted on Twitter about it:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This happened on the 10pm broadcast. It wasn’t a fast-breaking story that needed to be covered as it unfolded. Trump’s claim that he worked his magic on the phone had been debunked many times, earlier in the day.

First of all, Sprint announced these jobs back in April. Here’s the Kansas City Star: “Sprint Corp. is launching a nationwide service to hand-deliver new phones to customers in their homes. The Direct 2 You service, which first rolled out in a Kansas City pilot, will lead to the hiring of about 5,000 mostly full-time employees as it spreads nationwide.”

Second, the Japanese owner of Sprint, Softbank, announced in October that it was creating a huge tech investment fund.

Third, in December, Softbank’s CEO announced the fund again after a meeting with Trump, and said that one part of the whole package was the creation of 50,000 new jobs. Today, Sprint reluctantly conceded that its 5,000 jobs were part of the previously announced 50,000 jobs.

And finally, these jobs were announced yet again today.

That makes four times these jobs have been announced. Donald Trump was responsible for none of them.

As I said last night, there’s a huge difference between “Trump makes jobs happen” and “Trump claims he made jobs happen”.

Jennifer Pierce, who apparently works at KCAL, responded to me:

The problem with this response is that it doesn’t address the fundamental issue: the lie isn’t about whether the jobs are new or not. The lie is that he had anything at all to do with the decision. I pointed that out:

All of this was easily researched and fact-checked in a matter of minutes by me, and I’m not a professional journalist whose primary job and responsibility is to inform and educate the general public. This leads me to draw one of two conclusions: 1) KCAL’s news director knew Trump was lying but went ahead and ran the story for some reason I won’t speculate about. 2) KCAL didn’t do simple and basic fact checking for some reason and reported a story that was fundamentally untrue as fact.

Either one of those is completely unacceptable for a news organization. A lot of people went to bed last night thinking that Trump did something he didn’t do. Today, they are telling their friends and co-workers that Trump personally made 5000 jobs happen, because they heard it on the news.

Once more, from Engadget:

This is where we are, folks: Our president-elect is tying his name to something he didn’t have anything to do with, much like he did with “saving” 1,100 jobs at HVAC company Carrier, including 300 that weren’t moving to Mexico in the first place. In November, Trump exaggerated that he stopped Ford from moving a Kentucky production plant to Mexico. In reality Ford announced it wouldn’t move production of one model line to Mexico.

The most troubling thing here is that Sprint played along, even though, when pressed, it admitted the claims weren’t the result of working with Trump.

I would argue that the most troubling thing here isn’t actually that Sprint went along with Trump’s lie (Sprint wants deregulation, Trump wants to take credit for something he didn’t do, so they both benefit by agreeing to deceive the public). The most troubling thing here is that news organizations whose only job is to inform and educate the public, became an integral part of spreading this lie, and giving it credibility.

In this morning’s Plum Line in the Washington Post, Greg Sargent advises that the media stop giving Trump the headlines he wants, and, you know, do their job:

I would like to propose a rule of thumb for these situations: If the headline does not convey the fact that Trump’s claim is in question or open to doubt, based on the known facts, then it is insufficiently informative.

[…]

Look, it’s obvious that Trump has adopted a strategy of actively trying to game such headlines in his favor. Trump’s claims about Carrier jobs staying in Indiana turned out to be significantly less rosy upon closer inspection. And remember when Trump falsely claimed credit for keeping a Ford plant here that was going to stay anyway? It really doesn’t take much to convey it in a headline when Trump’s claim is in doubt.

[…]

Now that it’s obvious that President Trump will strategically employ exaggerated announcements of “saved” jobs to rig the headlines in his favor, maybe it’s time to rethink how to handle that, too.

We need to hold news organizations accountable, so that they will hold Trump (and anyone in government) accountable..

A lot of people don’t have the time, energy, or resources to separate truth from lies, and it’s not unreasonable for those people — for all of us, really — to expect fact checking from news directors and their reporters. Last night, KCAL failed in that primary responsibility. The 10pm broadcast I watched didn’t report the truth of this story; it amplified and gave credibility to a lie. That’s not okay, and KCAL should apologize to its viewers and correct the story.

Indivisible Against Trump: A practical guide to fighting back.

I posted this on my Medium thing, and I’m putting it here, too, for today’s Daily December.

(The American Nightmare, from Hyperallergic dot Com)
(The American Nightmare, from Hyperallergic dot Com)

There’s a lot of triumphant “get over it you Libtard you lost” going around. I understand that. I get it. It’s shitty, and it’s obnoxious, but I understand that impulse. In 2008, I felt so relieved that President Obama was elected, because I felt like it was a chance to repair a lot of the damage done by the Bush/Cheney administration. I really wanted to believe that voters — that America — had repudiated Bush and Cheney. The vote totals certainly told us that. The polling certainly told us that. Unfortunately, when President Obama had majorities in both houses of congress, and progressive policies could be passed with relative ease(relative to the unprecedented obstructionism that was to come), the Democrats and the president didn’t really seem that invested in doing that. They seemed to be infuriatingly focused on “healing the country,” and making the Republicans who ran deceitful, hateful campaigns feeel better, which is something that right wingers always call for when they lose elections. Hey, how did appointing Republican James Comey to head the FBI work out for you? And taking that public option off the table? Letting Lieberman off without any consequences? All good, right? Yeah.

I understand why the deplorables are walking around with their dicks out, setting couches on fire and flipping over cars every chance they get. They know that nobody is going to stop them. They are as empowered as they’ve been in a generation, and they’re just getting started.

This isn’t about that election, but it’s an introduction to give context to this: I understand why the deplorables* are walking around with their dicks out, setting couches on fire and flipping over cars every chance they get. They know that nobody is going to stop them. They know that they can get away with it. They are as empowered as they’ve been in a generation, because even though they didn’t actually win a contest of ideas, and there’s a ton of evidence to support the contention that voter suppression efforts in states controlled by Republicans worked exactly the way they were designed to work, they still won. If you thought those shitbags were obnoxious when they were relegated to the gutter where they belong, just wait and see how terrible they can really get.

Donald Trump is not just profoundly unqualified to be president, but poses a legitimate and clear danger to the safety of Americans and the stability of the world.

But I understand their impulse. It’s got to feel really great to know that even if only 25% of the country agrees with you, you still get to have your guy in the White House, and you make life miserable for the majority. Everyone gets a trophy, but your trophy is even bigger than the one that was earned by the actual winner. Congratulations!

Continue reading… →

Trump’s reckless “second amendment” comment isn’t just a threat to Secretary Clinton

I wrote this yesterday. Since it was published, I’ve read a lot of columns from people who had the same thoughts I did, more or less, with one significant difference: a consensus has emerged that Trump knew exactly what he was doing, exactly what he was saying, and that this wasn’t just what he thought was a joke. Trump has a documented history of inciting violence at his rallies, and everyone who is in Trump’s base (and adjacent to it, in the larger Conservative movement) knows precisely what someone means when they say wink wink second amendment wink. Look no further than the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords by a lunatic with a gun who bought into the paranoid Right Wing fantasy, peddled by the NRA, that aggrieved citizens can take up arms against their government if they believe the government is “tyrannical” (which is entirely subjective, of course). So with that context:

I don’t think Donald Trump sincerely believes that anyone will actually go shoot Hillary Clinton. I don’t think he was explicitly saying Hey someone go shoot her. I think he was trying to make what he thought was a joke, but because he’s such a complete asshole, it wasn’t funny.

But that doesn’t matter, because the threat that he made today isn’t limited to Secretary Clinton. When someone in the position he is in — a celebrity entertainer who is the Republican nominee for president — suggests that not only would it be acceptable for the Second Amendment Crowd to go take care of her, but laughs about it, he is normalizing violent behavior, on a national stage.

Someone who wants to go shoot Secretary Clinton doesn’t need Donald Trump to tell him (because it’s almost always a man who does this sort of thing) to go do it. But what about the angry alt-right guy who wants to go use his Second Amendment Remedy to take care of another high-profile woman who bothers him? What about the unhinged guy who hates me, or John Scalzi, or Jessica Valenti, or Anita Sarkeesian? What about that guy, who is waiting to hear someone say what the voices in his head are saying? How much did the danger to us and people like us go up today, because Donald Trump normalized and amplified his thinking?

We never know what it’s going to be that sets a dangerous and mentally ill person off. Charles Manson heard The White Album, and in his disturbed mind, that was the call he needed to hear to set his murderous rage into action. John Hinckley was inspired by a movie. David Berkowitz was moved to kill by a barking dog.

My point is that there are mentally unstable people out there who don’t need a lot of encouragement to turn their fantasies into real life tragedies,and Donald Trump may have spoken loudly and clearly to them today. That is truly dangerous, and — like so many things he’s said and done — it further disqualifies him from holding elected office.