Month: April 2022

2022 Election, GOP

“The Rot Within” – A Conservative Drama in Three Acts

Posted on by mjohnson

The stories of Utah Senator Mike Lee and California Congressman Kevin McCarthy, both Republican grandees, represent the perfect end to Act Two of the play entitled “The Rot Within,” a fable in three parts that will shape the future of our country.

This gripping drama – utterly compelling for anyone who believes a disgraced, debased former president should never again be anywhere close to the Oval Office – is now playing in several new books, many newspapers, on National Public Radio and on a few cable outlets. Don’t miss this show it if you enjoy watching the crumbling foundation of American democracy.

Just to catch you up on the plot: Lee, once thought to be a serious and sober Constitutional conservative and a forthright member of the Mormon Church, was caught red handed conspiring with Donald Trump’s White House to reverse the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

“Please tell me what I should be saying,” Lee texted to the White House as they sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election

Lee’s text messages to then-Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, first breathlessly desperate and finally, reluctantly resigned, indicate, as the Salt Lake Tribune reported, that the senator was a player in a “plot to help former President Donald Trump overturn his 2020 election loss.”

The text messages show Lee repeatedly urging the White House to pursue the Constitution shredding strategy of convincing several state legislatures to reverse correct and legal decisions to certify Joe Biden’s election.

“Even if they (state legislatures) can’t convene,” Lee wrote in one message, “it might be enough if a majority of them are willing to sign a statement indicating how they would vote. And I’ve been working on doing that all day today.” In another message Lee literally begged Meadows to tell him what he should be saying publicly about the plot.

Consistent with the central focus of our play – “The Rot Within” – Lee first went mum about the messages he clearly thought would never become public. Then he justified that this bit of light treason was merely a suggestion that Trump and his collection of legal charlatans exhaust all available avenues to contest the election outcome. There were, of course, no legal avenues to contest as court after court after court ruled.

Near the end of Act Two, Lee could be heard mumbling the by now hackneyed words of the GOP playwright: “I knew what a disaster Joe Biden would be.” There you have it friends of political drama, the ultimate conservative rationale for a coup in the night.

Meanwhile, entering stage right is the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy. McCarthy is rather like another disgraced Kevin – Spacey. At one time earnest, seemingly sincere, yet with a menacing side. Beneath the veneer of respectability lurks something fundamentally fraudulent and, well, sleazy. With McCarthy – as with Spacey – you know he’s not what he seems to be. He’s always worse.

The man and his man

In our Act Two of the drama our Man from Bakersfield, who would, Macbeth-like kill to be speaker, acts out a vast jumble of deflections, numerous bald-faced lies and, of course, ultimately just sleazy rot. Ah, but the lies are the thing.

Two New York Times reporters, Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin, wrote a book – part of our play is based on their story – where McCarthy, in the immediate aftermath of the January 6 attack on the Capitol, said he was so done, so over with Donald Trump that he was washing him right out of his hair.

As Burns and Martin wrote: “Mr. McCarthy went so far as to say he would push Mr. Trump to resign immediately: ‘I’ve had it with this guy,’ he told a group of Republican leaders.” When that story got out, McCarthy issued a categorical denial. Never happened. Made up. Fiction.

It wasn’t.

Burns and Martin had it all on tape, and richest of all – our playwrights are flirting with farce here – McCarthy said he was done with Trump in a conversation that included Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney, one of the few Republicans immediately after the Capitol attack vowing to hold Trump to account. McCarthy, of course, never followed through on Trump, but instead drummed Cheney out of Republican leadership, attacked her patriotism and is hoping to prevent her re-election.

At first McCarthy’s obvious world-class lying seemed to put his leadership position in question, but that’s not how this conservative drama rolls. Our Kevin dismissed his prevarications as just typical old efforts to divide Republicans ahead of the November election. In other words, McCarthy lied about lying, then lied about why he had lied.

I know it’s difficult to follow the plot, but just know that lying is what it’s all about in this play. To explain just how contemporary this drama is you must understand that such fable-making was once, in a democracy far, far away, a disqualifying action by such senior and seasoned actors. Now, getting caught on tape saying one thing while doing another in public or denying the content of text messages you wrote is just the conservative brand.

We need to stay tuned for Act Three to see how this production ends, but here is a spoiler. Politicians like Lee and McCarthy are nothing more or less than what they appear to be, and they never change. The craven, opportunist given to manipulation and lying to keep status, or power or to save face is a standard character on stage. Shakespeare had many such louts – Iago, Cassius and Richard III – and the modern conservative movement does, as well.

But in our drama, it’s the bit players who bear watching in Act Three, the silent, striving senators like Risch and Crapo in Idaho and Daines in Montana and the get along-go-along members of Congress like McMorris Rodgers in eastern Washington, Rosendale in Montana and Simpson and Fulcher in Idaho. These minor, but still important characters knew back at the beginning of Act One, back when the lying conman at the center of our drama rode down his escalator, that this could all be a horror show. Many of them said so at the time, but then the plot shifted, and craven became cozy. Looking away became commonplace.

By the end of the first act – January 6 – they had so enabled the lying, the conspiracy theorizing and the demonization of all opposition that they found themselves paralyzed by fear. Fear of their own supporters. Fear of losing. Fear of the truth. These characters know the old rule: the weapon that appears in Act One must always be used. And so, it was in the attack on the Capitol.

Act Two, as King Kevin and Mike the Malicious have show us, was about old-fashioned degradation. Humiliation in public in service of advancing the plot.

Act Three will open soon with a great reveal, the documented knowledge that there was a genuine conspiracy afoot to steal an election and degrade democracy, and the conspiracy and degradation continues. The bit players might yet assert themselves, but the playwrights say this show is destined to be a tragedy, so that isn’t at all likely.

But do stay tuned.

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Additional Reading:

If you are inclined to read on … a few suggestions …

Building the “Big Lie”: Inside the Creation of Trump’s Stolen Election Myth

“ProPublica has obtained a trove of internal emails and other documentation that, taken together, tell the inside story of a group of people who propagated a number of the most pervasive theories about how the election was stolen, especially that voting machines were to blame, and helped move them from the far-right fringe to the center of the Republican Party.”

If you want to know how the vast majority of Republican voters came to believe the greatest lie ever told in American politics, ProPublica has the receipts.

The Rise and Fall of World’s Fairs

Smithsonian Magazine has a great piece on the World’s Fair phenomenon and how it’s basically gone away.

Seattle World’s Fair model

“Also known as the Seattle World’s Fair, Century 21 was in many ways no different from its predecessors. Its showcases—designed by architects, corporate leaders and cultural tastemakers—spotlighted a glorious, Cold War–era vision of what the U.S. (and the world) might look like after embracing Space Age technology and mass consumption. Collectively, these displays asserted the strength of the American way of life.”

Great cultural history.

“Everywhere I stop bookshops are thriving”: novelist Jon McGregor tours his latest book by bike

“I am cycling – as well as jumping on the odd train – to as many bookshops as I can get to in a week. Having conducted my last book tour entirely online, it feels good to be outside again: meeting people and holding books and putting miles beneath my wheels. It’s been a while since I’ve been out in the world like this, and I’m interested to know what the place is like. The roads are quiet all the way to Carlisle. There are Ukrainian flags hanging from windows, and builder’s vans outside every other house, and the occasional stink of a lawnmower. The hedgerows are getting ready to come out.”

This is kinda my idea of heaven. From The Guardian.

Thanks a million for following along. Stay in touch. Stay involved.

Great Britain, Journalism, Politics

Political Accountability …

Posted on by mjohnson

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, he of the rumpled suit and head of hair that looks at all times as if he’s just rolled out of his bed, has had a bad few days.

Fined for breaking the law by having a crowded, boozy party at his official residence while all of the UK was in Covid lockdown, Johnson apologized, at least sort of. The mess has been dubbed “Partygate.”

One of Johnson’s parties occurred while Queen Elizabeth, strictly observing the government’s lockdown rules, sat alone at her husband’s funeral. Members of his own party have called on Johnson to step down. He’s adamantly refused.

The British prime minister at “question time”

It’s not difficult to make a 96-year-old hereditary monarch more sympathetic than a boorish and bumbling Boris Johnson, but this one was literally no contest. Boris is the first prime minister in British history to be cited for breaking a law while in office. Potentially even more damaging for the PM is the growing belief that he lied to Parliament about the booze parties. Imagine that – a politician held to account for a lie.

Johnson is additionally under fire for a hare-brained scheme to transport some UK asylum seekers to Rwanda for “reprocessing.” The idea was immediately denounced by, among others, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the leader of the Church of England. Johnson then privately criticized the archbishop, and the comments leaked. Of course they did.

Meanwhile, Johnson made a much-publicized trip to Ukraine recently to show solidarity with that beleaguered nation’s president and people. The trip was a not so thinly veiled attempt to divert attention from the scandals swirling around Johnson who is this week off to India for the same reason.

Amid cries that Johnson should “pack his bags and go,” the prime minister endured 40 minutes this week of that wonderful British tradition – question time. With support for Johnson eroding among his own Tory Party, but without, at least yet wholesale abandonment of their leader, the opposition pounded away. Oh, to have such debates in our system.

As the Conservative back benchers tried to shout down demands for Johnson’s resignation, opposition leader Keir Stamer couldn’t resist twisting the blade: “The party of Peel and Churchill reduced to shouting and screaming in support of this lawbreaker!”

Britain’s opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer /Jessica Taylor/via REUTERS

At one level this story confirms that British democracy – and British voters – are every bit as capable as American democracy and voters of electing clowns. But what is different between these two old and venerable democracies is the apparent willingness of the British ruling class – we’ll see soon enough if Johnson survives – to hold politicians to account for their actions, separate from merely relying on voters to eventually correct their silly mistakes.

If Johnson is ultimately forced out of office, it will be because his own party has had enough of him and his nonsense. American conservatives should take note.

The former American president has been credibly accused of inciting an insurrection. There are hours of videotape of what happened after he sent a mob to the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. His words of incitement are on the record. We now have text messages and phone logs confirming much of the basic story line, even a recording of the former guy demanding that election officials change votes to allow him to win in Georgia. A federal judge recently determined that the former president “more likely than not” was engaged in a criminal conspiracy to obstruct Congress and derail the process that certified Joe Biden’s presidential victory.

What Boris Johnson did and eventually admitted to pales in comparison to our recent attempted coup. Nevertheless, the British political system, including elements of Johnson’s own political tribe, are trying to hold him to account. The police already have held him to account, rendering a verdict that the most important politician in the country violated the very law he put in place.

Additionally, as he did this week, the prime minister must stand, uncomfortably and often awkwardly, before his critics and absorb their brickbats. His job is to give back, if he can, a coherent response. It’s all carried live in television. By contrast, we may never hear directly from our own inciter-in-chief about his actions before, during and after January 6.

This American problem of political accountability has metastasized and grown more serious. Most politicians now routinely avoid any regular interaction with journalists or real voters. They gravitate to friendly talk radio shows where a tough question would be “what did you have for breakfast?”

Reporters in Montana have noticed that the state’s Republican governor routinely demolishes his own schedule after it’s been published, showing up an hour early for an event typically including a handpicked audience, and safely avoiding reporters. Veteran Idaho politicians who once would have climbed over their mothers to get in front of a TV camera are stiffing long established debates where they have to face opponents and answer pesky questions. The current occupant of the White House rarely holds a news conference or sits for tough questions.

There are a few notable exceptions that should more correctly be the norm. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden annually holds all-comer town hall meetings in every county in his state, as does Senator Jeff Merkley. Together they have held over 1,500 such events. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley visits every one of the 99 counties in his state every year and is often confronted with pointed questions. The video of many of the exchanges is both informative and gratifying for what it says about political accountability. Good for Grassley that he thinks it’s part of the job to keep showing up.

Grassley did say at a recent town hall that he supports term limits. He’s been in the Senate since 1980 – 42 years.

American democracy has a lot of problems. Too much face time between voters and politicians isn’t on the list. Submitting to pointed questions from journalists isn’t some quaint tradition that can be discarded by someone seeking the public trust.

Holding bumbling public officials to account for mistakes, law breaking and disregard for common sense is the very essence of democracy. Answering questions about their plans and blunders is a minimum requirement for public office. If politicians won’t comply, they don’t deserve your vote. And that is what accountability should look like.

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Additional Reading:

Some suggestions …

Mike Lee’s Role in Trump’s Attempted Coup

Mike Lee and the scandal behind his text messages

This is a truly amazing story about the senator from Utah, one that has received a fraction of the attention it deserves.

“In short: Lee outlined paths for Trump nuts to reverse the election. But, after giving these clowns all his attention, time, and effort, he didn’t, in the end, like how the Trump nuts tried to reverse the election. His disagreement was about tactics, not the mission. But his error was accepting the mission at all.

“And somehow Lee’s defenders look at this and say, ‘BOOM! Hands clean.'”

Here is Amanda Carpenter’s opinion piece from The Bulwark.

And here is a report on the interview the senator gave to his home state newspaper, The Deseret News. Read them both: what happened and the attempt to justify it.

As I said – amazing.

Opinion | The Jan. 6 Committee Can Make a Difference: Simply by Revealing What It’s Found

A good assessment here on what to look for in the public phase of the congressional investigation into the events of January 6.

” … the committee’s principal focus should ultimately be on how to present its investigative findings to the public, irrespective of a referral. The committee may indeed have a good deal of information that the Justice Department does not — depending, again, on the scope and intensity of the department’s work, which even the committee and President Joe Biden do not seem to know. The committee should lay out that information straightforwardly and professionally, just as it did recently in a lawsuit concerning Trump’s legal adviser John Eastman, who tried to withhold emails from the committee.”

I personally think a criminal referral is warranted and necessary, but getting the full story – or as much of it as possible – in front of the public is essential. From Politico.

Will Putin Use Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine?

Hard to believe we are really thinking about this, but we certainly are.

“In plain English, as the Russian war effort to subjugate Ukraine falters and as the West pours in more weaponry, Putin is more than ready to brandish the nuclear saber. This is precisely the kind of development that haunted George F. Kennan during the Cold War—and should haunt contemporary Western statesmen as well.”

A very sobering read from National Interest.

Jackie Robinson was a Republican until the GOP became the ‘white man’s party’

Jackie Robinson’s parents named him “Jack Roosevelt Robinson” after Teddy Roosevelt. Robinson was a Republican until the party moved away from him.

Robinson in October 1960 with then Vice President Richard M. Nixon

“By 1968, Robinson was done with the GOP. He refused to support Nixon when he ran for president again in 1968. He also became more active in the civil rights movement and appeared with King on frequent occasions.

“Robinson also became a prolific writer, including a column for the Amsterdam News, a weekly Black newspaper, where he further developed his fierce opposition to the Republican Party.”

A very interesting piece on Jackie’s politics and activism. What a great American.

All the best. Be well.

GOP, Idaho Politics

Idaho’s Déjà vu … 

Posted on by mjohnson

The Idaho Republican Party is divided, deeply divided. The incumbent governor faces a serious primary challenge from the far right. The challenger is a favorite of what was once considered the party’s “fringe,” and benefits from a grassroots movement to take the party back from its more moderate wing.

The governor can – and almost constantly does – boast of a booming economy that he contends happened only because of his careful management of the state budget.

The challenger counters that the incumbent is not a true conservative and is out of touch with the party, claiming “If I am elected, the office of governor will become a place where the governor listens.”

The governor recently signed controversial legislation that has drawn condemnation from many quarters. The legislation has been challenged in court and will certainly be an issue in the coming election.

The Republican Party’s ideological battle lines are further defined by the role of the party’s last presidential candidate, a charismatic and deeply controversial figure who some worship, cult-like, as a political savior and others condemn as a threat to American democracy.

Overall voters are in a sour mood. The economy is strong, but inflation is problematic. The Democratic president is unpopular. Federal spending is a concern and Washington is consumed by a little understood war in a far-off place. The conflict has international implications that threaten to pull the country ever deeper into the conflict. In many ways it’s a difficult time to be an incumbent.

Idaho in 2022? Yes.

But also, Idaho in 1966, the last time an incumbent Republican governor was seriously challenged within this own party.

Today the names are Brad Little, Janice McGeachin and Donald Trump. Fifty-six years ago, the names were Bob Smylie, Don Samuelson and Barry Goldwater. The parallels between the two elections are, frankly, a bit eerie.

Barry Goldwater campaigns in Boise in 1964

History does not repeat, at least not precisely. But, if history were to repeat, incumbent Governor Brad Little would be losing sleep, as his predecessor Bob Smylie did toward the end of his 1966 Republican primary.

Smylie, a three-term incumbent and a moderate, was coming off two major accomplishments: he had engineered passage of the first ever Idaho sales tax and in the wake of a Supreme Court mandate had championed a sweeping reapportionment of the state legislature. Both remain part of Smylie’s very impressive legacy during his 12 years as governor, and each also contributed something to his downfall.

Samuelson, a Sandpoint state senator and darling of the far right, was a little-known legislative backbencher when he announced, at the urging of some of the party’s most fervent Barry Goldwater supporters, that he was going after the governor of his own party. Hardly anyone gave Samuelson, a big, backslapping politician with a flattop haircut, any chance. Many ridiculed his less than polished speaking style. He had no legislative record to run on short of opposing Smylie’s sales tax measure. Still, he had what often counts for a lot in politics. Samuelson was in the right place at the right time.

Much like Brad Little now, Smylie barely acknowledged in 1966 that he had an opponent. He touted the economy on his watch and pretended to be above the bitter controversy roiling the Republican Party. A good deal of that controversy related to Goldwater’s candidacy in 1964, when the very conservative Arizona senator lost the presidency in a landslide, but arguably became the most consequential loser in American political history. As William F. Buckley famously quipped: Goldwater lost the presidency to Lyndon Johnson but won it for Ronald Reagan in 1980 when the most conservative wing of the GOP established itself as the dominant force in Republican politics.

The fight raging in Idaho now will help determine if the party goes even farther right and embraces the most militant elements of the right, the foot soldiers and Trumpy loyalists who power Janice McGeachin’s insurgent campaign. In words that fit today’s circumstances one Democratic Party leader called the 1966 Republican race: “a melodrama complete with confusion and terror.” Maybe history does repeat.

Smylie realized too late that basically ignoring Samuelson’s challenge was a mistake. The two men got into a squabble over whether Goldwater had effectively endorsed the incumbent – Goldwater said he hasn’t – which made Smylie look a bit desperate. By late July – Idaho primaries were held in August at the time – Smylie, the polished political pro, was playing defense with Samuelson attacking him on the oldest issue in the Idaho political playbook: water. Smylie had complete control of the state water resource board, Samuelson charged, and was constantly overriding the board’s “wise and important” decisions. The implication was clear. Smylie wasn’t protecting Idaho’s water. (Paging Mike Simpson.)

The other millstone around Smylie’s neck was that old and fatal political disease: the voters were sick of him and ready for change. Combine the substantial and frequently warranted criticism Little has received for his lack of management of Covid-19 with the reality that he has been, as lieutenant governor and governor, at the top of Idaho’s political ladder for 14 straight years, his sell by date could be a factor next month.

Don Samuelson, the guy very few took seriously as a challenger to an entrenched incumbent, absolutely crushed Bob Smylie in the Republican gubernatorial primary in 1966, winning more than 61% of the vote. He went on to win a close contest in November that featured an up-and-coming young Democrat from Orofino by name of Cecil Andrus, as well as controversial third-party candidates – another parallel with 2022, perhaps.

Four years later, Andrus came back and defeated Samuelson who had been a barely competent chief executive. That election ushered in 24 consecutive years of Democratic control of the governor’s office. Here’s where the parallels break down – maybe.

McGeachin is a profoundly flawed candidate who has demonstrated she can’t manage the low six figure budget of her own office let alone the state’s billion-dollar finances. She’s also advanced wacky positions on education and public health, any of which ought to be disqualifying. Yet she has the Trump’s endorsement. And as for wacky positions, if those were disqualifying a lot of Republicans would be looking for work.  

Little, a lackluster campaigner, is sitting on a lead hoping to run out the clock, never a smart political play. A month out from the May primary he must be considered the heavy favorite, if only because a lot of Idahoans see him as a safer choice than a candidate who associates regularly with white supremacists and militia radicals. Little is, in other words, the lesser of evils, a McGeachin lite in blue jeans with many of the same policies packaged more presentably. It’s probably enough to get him across the finish line.

Then again lots of people said the same about Bob Smylie.

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Additional Readings:

A few more things I hope you will find of interest …

The guy who brought us CRT panic offers a new far-right agenda: Destroy public education

Hard to believe, but believe it – some on the far right, well-funded and passionate, are out to destroy public education.

“The man in question is Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. Since he helped elevate CRT into a national culture war in 2020, Rufo has frequently been cast (or cast himself) as the new master strategist of the right, playing three-dimensional chess as he lays out his battle plans publicly and counts every media mention of them as a win. In the spring of 2021, he famously crowed on social media that he’d ‘successfully frozen’ the CRT ‘brand’ as the overarching ideology behind almost everything conservatives dislike. This January he tweeted about his new goal to ‘bait the Left into opposing [curriculum] ‘transparency,’ in order to trigger conservative suspicions that public schools have something to hide.”

Be worried. These jokers are serious.

Ginni Thomas Is Not A Liar

Politico has a provocative look at the ideology – and belief system – of the wife of the most prominent Supreme Court justice.

Justice Thomas, his very politically active wife and some guy I can’t place

“[Ginni] Thomas’ fervid text messages to then-Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and others, urging vigorous efforts to halt Biden’s ascension to the presidency and keep the incumbent in place, have some evidentiary value to the House’s select Jan. 6 committee as it develops a chronology of events leading to the deadly mayhem on Capitol Hill.

“The Thomas texts, however, are far more revelatory as psychological disclosures — a breathtaking window into the mind of a Trump believer. In that sense, there are three distinct ways in which the Thomas texts illuminate the broader historical moment.”

Worth your time.

In the Judiciary Wars, Republicans Like Lindsey Graham Play Dirtier Than Democrats

Speaking of the judicial branch. From Bill Scher in The Washington Monthly.

“Politics ain’t beanbag, and that’s doubly true for judicial politics. But let’s have a clear-eyed assessment of how both parties have waged battle. 

“Democrats have been more selective in their targets, aiming to block far-right ideologues and set high standards regarding past sexual misconduct. Such an objective does require harsh treatment of individuals. Republicans have sought to deny Democrats the ability to fill seats with anyone.”

Read the entire piece.

The Notorious Legends and Dubious Stories of 10 Literary Deaths

Emily Temple on how some writers left us, like say Evelyn Waugh.

“His body was found in the bathroom, by some accounts with a gash on his forehead and water in his lungs.”

From LitHub.

Thanks for reading. Stay in touch.

Politics, Russia, Ukraine

Disinformation is the Story of Our Age …

Posted on by mjohnson

Vladimir Putin’s criminally deadly war on Ukraine provides huge warnings to the democratic world about what happens when an entire population becomes captive to a thuggish authoritarian who lies with the kind of ease that most of us associate with taking the next breath.

Putin has been in power for 22 years, having successfully looted the country to enrich himself and a handful of his billionaire cronies, he now owns something even more valuable – the minds of most Russians. This ownership of public opinion appears so complete that Putin can transform the reality of his brutal invasion into a narrative that claims Ukrainians are the aggressors. The dead of Mariupol or Kharvik are, in Putin’s world, the “Nazis” threatening Mother Russia rather than the other way round.

Some of the awful scenes of Putin’s war from Bucha, Ukraine

We are witnessing a profound, real-time display of the power of misinformation, lies, hypocrisy and deception that truly is a warning as much as it is a tragedy.

It has been impossible this week to miss the horrific pictures and extensive first-hand reporting from Bucha, the Kiev suburb destroyed by Putin’s genocidal army. Yet, Putin and his henchmen have dismissed the images as propaganda. It’s an old, tired and disgusting tactic.

As the Associated Press has noted: “Denouncing news as fake or spreading false reports to sow confusion and undermine its adversaries are tactics that Moscow has used for years and refined with the advent of social media in places like Syria.”

Russian television, a veritable Fox News of lies and distortion and totally controlled by Putin, dishes a daily misinformation diet to people who have been lied to for so long that many have given up trying to ascertain the truth. While it would be foolish to put much faith in public opinion polling emanating from a country so thoroughly brainwashed, it appears most Russians, without ready access to independent reporting about the war, believe the lies pushed by the former KGB agent who is responsible for this madness.

Here’s how this disinformation reality connects to domestic politics, and the clear and present danger it presents to American democracy. For a decade or more the politics of the United States have been swamped by a deluge of lies with much of the lying amplified by people in high places and by cynical and manipulative media figures. Where to start?

The lies about Barack Obama’s birth certificate. The lies about school shootings being “false flag” operations. The lies about a pedophile ring operating from a Washington, D.C. pizza parlor. The lies about a presidential election being stolen.

The purpose of all this lying is, of course, to fuel grievance – make people mad – but also to confuse. Is there really a world-wide child sex abuse network, as QAnon has claimed? Did presidential election ballots disappear in Michigan? Was Covid-19 a Chinese communist plot?

The confusion has worked. The lies have penetrated deeply into the political world. A December opinion poll “found that 17 percent of Americans believed that the core falsehood of QAnon – that ‘a group of Satan-worshiping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media’ – was true.”

This helps explain, indeed may explain in its entirety, why a handful of the most craven Republican members of Congress verbally assaulted Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson at her Supreme Court confirmation hearing over the lie, advanced by Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, that Jackson’s jurisprudence might “endanger children.”

Hawley’s nonsense was immediately rejected by a review of the facts of Judge Jackson’s record, but as Georgetown professor Donald Moynihan pointed out in the Washington Post the allegation was never about facts. “The goal,” Moynihan wrote, “was to portray Jackson, and by extension Democrats, as players in the QAnon narrative that public institutions are overrun with child predators.” This line was immediately advanced by Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton and Marsha Blackburn, each clearly vying for the title of worst United States senator in the modern era.

The child predator narrative has become so prevalent among the fact-free alt right that when Utah Republican Mitt Romney said he would vote to confirm Jackson to the high court he was attacked online, an assault barely short of accusing the former Republican presidential candidate – a Mormon in good standing – of being soft on child abusers.

The disinformation – the lies – have become so prevalent that it is nearly impossible to keep track, and that is another aspect of what one-time Donald Trump “strategist” Steve Bannon infamously called “flooding the zone with shit.” This is the fatigue of confusion. Putin has mastered this, and Trump has long mimicked the man he called a “genius” for invading Ukraine. And it has worked, especially in this deadly moment for Putin who increasingly can count on a pro-Putin wing of the GOP to spread his lies.

From Tucker Carlson, the Russian propaganda peddling Fox News star, to 63 House Republicans – including Idaho’s Russ Fulcher and Montana’s Matt Rosendale – who voted this week against a resolution of support for continuing U.S. engagement with NATO, Putin’s disinformation has broadly entered the country’s conservative political bloodstream.

Altogether, as Will Saletan noted in The Bulwark, 21 Republicans have opposed, or sought to constrain, aid to Ukraine or sanctions on Russia. “That’s a group three times the size of ‘the Squad,’ which Republicans claim is in control of every aspect of Democratic policy. Imagine how much power those 21 Republicans would wield in a GOP-controlled House.” And lest we forget a former and potentially future American president has been his willing accomplice, while once responsible members of the Republican Party have aided and abetted his repeated lying.

“Disinformation is the story of our age,” says The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg. I would take the observation a bit farther. It seems entirely possible that we are living in the advanced stages of a Putin-like capture of millions of American minds; minds filled with mush and grotesque nonsense, the kind of rank garbage that poisons democracy.

But who is really to blame for this softening of American minds? And is what we are experiencing really any different than the John Birch Society’s communist under every bed conspiracy of the 1950’s or who killed JFK narratives that have never ended?

The answer is a definitive – yes. This is different. An entire political party has willingly permitted this to ripen and grow rancid. That party, preparing to regain control of Congress this year, has proven beyond any doubt it will use disinformation to not only discredit its opponents, but delegitimize democratic institutions, including courts and elections.

As for who is to blame – we are, all of us. While we’ve been busy with the myriad distractions and trivialities of modern life, we allowed our democratic system to crumble into terrible disrepair, electing unserious, craven people and acting as though truth and character no longer matter.

While hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians fight for their lives and their democracy, we can’t bring ourselves to discard the liars who threaten ours.

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More Reading:

My “carefully” curated selections that just might be of interest …

Baseball’s Labor Wars

Well, there was some good news this week. Baseball is back, but perhaps with an asterisk.

Fenway last year

“Today, twenty-four of baseball’s thirty owners are billionaires. Many inherited their wealth or made it in other sectors, such as real estate, banking and finance, and communications. Almost all of them have seen their wealth increase during the pandemic. The wealthiest among them, Mets owner Steve Cohen, built his fortune in the hedge fund industry. Since 2020, his net worth has increased from $13.9 billion to $15.9 billion.

“Total MLB revenues grew from $9.5 billion in 2015 to $10.7 billion in 2019. Even though the pandemic emptied the ballparks in 2020, revenues recovered to pre-pandemic levels in 2021.”

A good historical assessment of players and owners. Enjoy the games – I will – but there is always a backstory.

How did cockroaches survive the asteroid that led to the extinction of dinosaurs?

Turns out the pesky cockroach survived the meteor that killed the dinosaurs. Who knew?

“How could roaches a couple of inches long survive when so many powerful animals went extinct? It turns out that they were nicely equipped to live through a meteoric catastrophe.”

This actually explains a lot.

Sugar Daddy of the Right

Turns out the founder of the John Birch Society – the wacky rightwing outfit is enjoying a new moment of relevance – also invented the Sugar Daddy candy.

Robert Welch founded the John Birch Society, and opened the floodgates of conspiracy

I’ve been reading the new bio of Robert Welch by Edward H. Miller. It’s good.

“The mid-20th-century United States was a place where Robert W. Welch Jr., a bankrupted candy manufacturer and inventor of the Sugar Daddy lollipop, could found a national organization that would leave a conspiratorial imprint on modern conservatism — planting the seeds for today’s fever dreams.”

As I said, there is always a backstory. A review of Miller’s book.

Thanks for reading. Defend democracy. It really is under attack.