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Saturday, August 31, 2024

Harris interview shows she's ready—it'd be nice if the media could rise to her level

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024, in Savannah, Ga. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)
Kamala Harris spoke at a packed campaign rally on Aug. 29 in Savannah, Ga., after her first TV interview earlier in the day.

Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz sat down in the traditional first interview as a ticket (no matter how much Republicans and the media are pretending that it’s some sort of unprecedentedly cowardly thing).

It’s been a Beltway media obsession for weeks, pretending that they’re the only ones who can explain to voters what the ticket is all about (despite doing what they do so poorly). 

When CNN interviewer Dana Bash began asking for Harris’ “day one” agenda, the vice president spat out a bunch of policy proposals, and the response? “You were vice president for three years already, why haven’t you done it already.” Well, for one, she was vice president. It was right there in her question. But the question also feigns ignorance about the political situation in D.C. Bash knows the Republicans have run the House the last year and a half. She knows the Supreme Court has thrown out various efforts as well, such as student debt relief. 

An honest interviewer needs to contextualize the political situation, otherwise it rewards obstructionism. Republicans don’t pay a price for their obstructionism, and the Supreme Court doesn’t get the criticism it so plainly deserves.

So how to approach it?

“What would you do if your party had complete control of Congress?”

“If Republicans retain control of any part of Congress, what could you accomplish in a gridlocked government?”

“The Supreme Court has made it harder for administrative agencies to issue rules. How does that change your view of your potential role as president?”

Those questions would be honest, give viewers proper context, and educate them about the political reality. Instead, people walk around wondering why government doesn’t work, and the Beltway media has zero interest in educating them. 

Bash spent a significant bit of time trying to “gotcha” Harris on an issue—fracking—which she has been consistent on since 2020. Republicans are trying to make “flip-flopping” a thing, despite Donald Trump suddenly being pro-choice. For the record, voters don’t generally care about such things. Politicians are all assumed to be flip-floppers, corrupt, self-interested, etc., etc. The attacks that land are the ones that run counter to expectations and assumptions. (Which is why Trump doesn’t seem to suffer in the press or the polls from his relentless insanity.) 

Regardless, whatever the issue—immigration, climate change, the economy, Gaza—Harris showed she knows her material. She spoke in clear, concise, plain language. And both the questions and answers were far more substantive than anything Trump has ever done. Bash was quick with follow-up questions that Trump never faces (the media should try it sometime). Any hope by Republicans that they could paint her as a lightweight went up in smoke. Republican anxiety levels for the Sept. 10 debate have likely ramped up significantly, especially since Trump hopes to use the debate to reset the campaign and regain momentum. 

Also, Bash did that thing where she was like, “this thing happened, what do you say to voters?” She did it to Walz on his military service and former drunken driving arrest. It’s that bullshit conceit that she speaks for the voters. The stark reality is that those (and other issues) have all been litigated already, and will continue to be litigated online as long as they have salience. For example, Republicans tried to attack Harris as a “DEI hire,” and it didn’t stick. That had nothing to do with the Beltway media and everything to do with a lack of traction in the places where people actually argue these things (social media). 

This was made stark by Semafor’s Benjy Sarlin, who yesterday tweeted, “To use an example Dems will hate: [Sen. JD] Vance did a couple big interviews, got a lot of tough qs on the cat lady stuff, then was freed to do nonstop media promoting the campaign message with that out of the way.” Imagine thinking that because Vance did some interviews, that we still won’t keep talking about his weird obsession with “cat ladies” and the breeding habits of human females. 

Harris’ discussion about President Joe Biden’s call was lovely, as was the discussion about national treasure Gus Walz, the governor’s son. 

Ultimately, it was a good look for Harris, while Walz mostly lingered in the background (as was appropriate—this is her show). We don’t have to hold our breath with Harris and hope she doesn’t… pull a Biden. It’s a relief knowing that we’ve got an incredibly competent candidate. 

However, this was a little… boring? There was nothing new here, no big revelations that we didn’t already know because Harris is already communicating all this to votersIt’s hard for the media to internalize this, but they don’t matter as much anymore. 

In any case, she did her interview. Now let’s all get back to the business of saving our democracy.


ON THE ROAD AGAIN: At her CNN interview,
whatever the issue—immigration, climate change, the economy, Gaza—Harris showed she knows her material. She spoke in clear, concise, plain language. And both the questions and answers were far more substantive than anything Trump has ever done.

Friday, August 30, 2024

Trump’s Arlington scandal gets worse and worse

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Donald Trump during a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on Aug. 26, 2024.  It was all downhill from here.

A cynical photo op for Donald Trump’s campaign is spiraling into a disaster. As more details of his campaign’s disgraceful behavior on Monday at Arlington National Cemetery become available, some veterans are “furious” and demanding an apology. But instead of offering one, Trump’s team is making things worse. On Wednesday, in violation of federal law, his campaign posted a TikTok video promoting his visit.

It’s “exactly what military officials tried to prevent,” The Washington Post reported. “The use of the footage marked a flagrant violation of the law against partisan actions at military cemeteries, defense officials said.”

And much more about what happened at Arlington has come to light:

  • Members of Trump’s team had a verbal and physical altercation with a member of the cemetery staff who has now been identified as a woman

  • The woman was reportedly pushed aside by a large male member of Trump’s campaign staff when she tried to prevent the campaign from taking cameras into Arlington’s specially protected Section 60 area, where recently deceased veterans are buried.

  • In advance of the visit, Trump’s team was told personal aides could come but not campaign staff. They came anyway. 

  • Trump’s team was expressly told that “photographers, content creators or any other persons” attending for a political campaign were not allowed, according to a statement from the cemetery. His team brought them anyway. 

  • In statements after the event, Trump’s team insulted the cemetery official repeatedly, saying that she was “suffering from a mental health episode,” “despicable,” and “a disgrace.”

Trump and his team disrespected America’s most hallowed military cemetery, ignoring its rules, shoving and insulting a woman on staff, and turning it into a backdrop for a campaign video in open violation of federal law. 

And if you can believe it, it gets worse.

According to The New York Times, the woman who was assaulted by members of Trump’s campaign has reportedly declined to press charges. And the reason she declined is as distressing as everything else about this story.

Military officials said that the cemetery worker feared that pursuing the matter with the authorities at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Virginia, which has jurisdiction over the cemetery, could subject her to retaliation from Trump supporters. [Trump campaign spokesman Steven] Cheung said in a statement on Wednesday that “that is ridiculous and sounds like someone who has Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

On Wednesday, Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, attempted to defend the altercation, dismissively saying that “apparently somebody at Arlington Cemetery, some staff member, had a little disagreement with somebody” and “the media has turned this into a national news story.”

Repeating statements from Trump’s campaign, Vance claimed that there is “verifiable evidence” that the Trump campaign was allowed to have a photographer present, though the best evidence he provided was that Trump was invited by family members of some of those who died at Abbey Gate during the evacuation of forces from Afghanistan. (Vance initially referred to it as “Abbey Road”—i.e., the famous recording studio—before correcting himself.) 

No matter how many times Trump’s team makes this claim, permission from a handful of families does not allow them to violate cemetery rules. It certainly doesn’t allow them to violate federal law. 

One clear reason that camera use is restricted in military cemeteries—and why footage is not to be used in campaign ads—is that it doesn’t affect the sanctity of just one or two graves. It affects the families of many other fallen veterans who are buried in the area. 

And on Wednesday, the family of Green Beret Master Sgt. Andrew Marckesano expressed concern at how his grave marker ended up being a part of Trump’s campaign stop. Marckesano earned Silver and Bronze Stars for his service, and he happens to be buried beside one of the veterans whose families invited Trump to visit. Marckesano’s family gave no such invitation, but now this solemn reminder of their loss is being splashed across Trump’s campaign videos and photographs.

“[A]ccording to our conversation with Arlington National Cemetery,” Marckesano’s sister wrote, “the Trump campaign staffers did not adhere to the rules that were set in place for this visit to Staff Sergeant [Darin] Hoover’s gravesite in Section 60, which lays directly next to my brother’s grave.”

“We hope that those visiting this sacred site understand that these were real people who sacrificed for our freedom and that they are honored and respected accordingly,” she added.

No one is upset that Trump went to Arlington. He’s welcome to do so. And no one is bothered by him going with family members to visit graves in Section 60.

What’s upsetting—and illegal—is using Arlington, or any other military cemetery, for a campaign event. And that’s exactly what Trump’s team did.

There is no doubt that his campaign staff planned this event for campaign purposes. They released an email on Monday touting Trump’s visit to Arlington and claiming that Vice President Kamala Harris disparaged the military by not attending. The TikTok video released on Wednesday features narration by Trump criticizing the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. “We didn’t lose one person in 18 months,” Trump says in the video. “And then they took over, and that disaster, the leaving of Afghanistan.”

Retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, whose father is buried in Section 60, called Trump’s actions at the cemetery “nauseating.”

"They see no issue bringing partisan politics there, even if it means getting into physical altercations with cemetery staff," Eaton told USA Today. "I truly cannot think of something more repugnant than starting a political fracas on land where Gold Star families mourn. Someone who would do that should never be Commander in Chief.”

Trump and his staff also see no issue in assaulting and demeaning a woman who was attempting to enforce federal law and protect the dignity of a site that serves as the final resting place for over 400,000 men and women who served this country.

The pretense that what Trump did was somehow supporting veterans is a twisted, upside-down version of the truth. Trump’s actions show that he has no respect for the hundreds of thousands of veterans buried at Arlington, or for their families, or for the workers who care for this sacred space.

“You guys in the media, you're acting like Donald Trump filmed a TV commercial at a gravesite,” Vance said at a Pennsylvania campaign stop on Wednesday.

Which is exactly what Trump did.

A jovial Trump gives the thumbs-up sign at a veteran's grave site where photography for political purposes is strictly prohibited.  One more example of his disregard and disdain for those who sacrificed their lives fighting for our country.

Thursday, August 29, 2024

Trump doesn't like being called 'weird.' Weird RFK Jr. sure isn't going to help

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TWO PEAS IN ONE WEIRD POD: Donald Trump and former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

What do you do when you're angry because your opponent keeps calling you "weird" and you’re also behind in a race you were expecting to easily win? For Donald Trump, the answer seemed obvious: Flatter independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. into dropping out and endorsing you, then collect his 4-5 percentage points in national polls. And Trump did that just last week.

Only there’s no guarantee that Kennedy’s exit will shift those supporters to Trump. We’ll have a better idea about that as new polls come out in the next few days.

In the meantime, what is certain is that, by putting Kennedy on his team, Trump gets … Kennedy and all his fun issues. So open up the door, Johnny! Let’s show him what he bought! 

No, we’re not talking about the brain worm. Open the other door. No, not the dead baby bear. Next. Not the sexist emu. And not the time he chainsawed the head off a dead whale and took it home as a hideous souvenir—though there is someone who would like to talk to him about that.

No, it’s that other thing. The one that may be sillier than Kennedy’s other exploits combined.

Ahh, there it is.

In this tweet, posted Monday, the “crime” Kenendy is promising to stop is something called “chemtrails.”

The chemtrails conspiracy theory emerged in the 1990s and evolved alongside the internet. Though by now it has accumulated so much legend and lore that proponents can rant about it endlessly, at its core is nothing more than this: Someone saw the lines in the sky that followed a jet and thought it wasn’t just moisture stirred up into fog by a passing wing, but instead a chemical being sprayed on everyone by someone

What kind of chemical? Secret. For what purpose? Mind control. Or making us all sterile. Or fighting climate change. Or causing climate change. Or something. Who is behind it? The government, or maybe aliens. Possibly, it’s a team-up.

What the proponents of this conspiracy theory call a chemtrail is known back in the real world as a contrail, short for “condensation trail.” And it’s possible that no other conspiracy theory has been so thoroughly debunked by so many sources on so many occasions. Of all the conspiracy theories Kennedy might believe in, this is the most profoundly foolish. And unlike what he once did to a bear or a whale (or that poor worm), this is a nuttiness with which Kennedy is still actively engaged.

More importantly, notice that Kennedy doesn’t just step in to express his support for the theory, he says, “We are going to stop this crime.” 

We

That sounds very much like Kennedy is speaking as a member of the potential 2025 Trump administration. He’s promising the government will get right on this problem of chasing literal clouds.

And that’s apparently the case. A couple of hours after that post, Kennedy was on with Tucker Carlson’s web show, claiming that Trump has made him a member of his transition team

“I’ve been asked to go onto the transition team to help pick the people who will be running the government and I’m looking forward to that,” Kennedy said. (On Tuesday, a Trump campaign adviser corroborated this to The New York Times.)

Now we can only wait until he appoints a Secretary of Chemtrails and Chainsaw Dissection.

In bringing Kennedy on board, Trump gets all of Kennedy. Trump has now made himself the candidate of planted cub carcasses, highways awash in whale juice, and chemtrails. That’s sure to stop people from calling Trump weird.

They’ll just call him what he is: ridiculous.

And speaking of weird, don't forget these two peas in a pod.

Wednesday, August 28, 2024

‘Ignore Bobby’: Kennedys unite unanimously against RFK Jr. and Trump

GLENDALE, ARIZONA - AUGUST 23: Former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (R) speaks as Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump listens during a campaign rally at Desert Diamond Arena on August 23, 2024 in Glendale, Arizona. Kennedy announced today that he was suspending his presidential campaign and supporting former President Trump. (Photo by Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)
Former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks as Republican nominee Donald Trump listens during a campaign rally on Aug. 23, 2024, in Glendale, Arizona.

Members of the storied Kennedy family spent the weekend disavowing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. following his rambling announcement that he was suspending his independent presidential campaign in swing states and throwing his support to Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Five of Kennedy’s siblings fired off a response right after his announcement.

“Our brother Bobby's decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear,” they wrote. “It is a sad ending to a sad story.”

Kerry Kennedy appeared on MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki” Sunday to deliver a blistering attack on her older brother and express unwavering support for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

“The stakes this November couldn't be higher, which is exactly why my whole family will be fighting so hard to reelect Kamala Harris and Coach Walz, who've been champions for the values that my family has fought for for years,” Kerry Kennedy told Psaki.

“I’m outraged and disgusted by my brother's gaudy and obscene embrace of Donald Trump,” she said. “I completely disavow and separate and dissociate myself from Robert Kennedy Jr. and this flagrant and inexplicable effort to desecrate and trample and set fire to my father's memory."

Trump is “a threat to most basic freedoms that are core to who we are as Americans. The right for women to control our bodies, the right to live in communities safe from gun violence, to love who you love. And I think if my dad were alive today, the real Robert Kennedy would have detested almost everything Donald Trump represents,” Kerry Kennedy said. 

His lying, his selfishness, his rage, his cynicism, hatred, racism, fascism, the deliberate misinformation about vaccines, criminal felony convictions—Dad, he was the attorney general of the United States—his rape of E. Jean Carroll, his contempt for the poor, and suffering, for ethics, democracy, healing, his cruel sneering at human rights, for suffering of people in America and around the world.

The extended Kennedy family joined in blasting RFK Jr. over the weekend. Robert F. Kennedy’s grandson Joe Kennedy III retweeted the Kennedy siblings’ statement with a simple “Well said.”

And cousin Jack Schlossberg, son of JFK’s daughter Caroline Kennedy, was scathing in his assessment while reiterating his personal support for Harris.

 

Never been less surprised in my life. Been saying it for over a year — RFKjr is for sale, works for Trump. Bedfellows and loving it. Kamala Harris is for the people — the easiest decision of all time just got easier.

RFK Jr. sibling Max Kennedy didn’t sign on to the initial rapid response Friday, but wrote his own piece for the Los Angeles Times Sunday. 

“I’m heartbroken over my brother Bobby’s endorsement of Donald Trump,” he wrote.

To pledge allegiance to Trump, a man who demonstrates no adherence to our family’s values, is inconceivable to me.

Worse, it is sordid. Earlier this month, as Harris surged in the polls, my brother offered her his endorsement in exchange for a position in her coming administration. He got no response.

Now he has offered that same deal to Trump. His is a hollow grab for power, a strategic attempt at relevance. It is the opposite of what my father admired: “the unselfish spirit that exists in the United States of America.”

“With a heavy heart, I am today asking my fellow Americans to do what will honor our father the most: Ignore Bobby and support Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic platform,” Max Kennedy wrote. “It’s what is best for our country.”

RFK Jr's father, Bobby Kennedy, served as President John F. Kennedy's Attorney General. 

Tuesday, August 27, 2024

FASCINATING PERSPECTIVE: Trumpy Republicans trying to trigger an ancient part of our DNA

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“Identity politics” can be either helpful to society or destructive of social cohesion and democracy itself. When used to bring people of different races, religions, and gender identities into the larger structure of society — to empower and lift up those who’ve traditionally been oppressed — identity politics becomes a platform for ultimately ending itself; once everybody has equal opportunity, it’s no longer needed.

The dark side of identity politics occurs when the dominant race/religion/gender (in today’s America that’s white Christian men) identifies people who aren’t part of their group as an “other” and uses this otherness as a rallying cry to enlist members of the powerful in-group against the “outsiders.”

This is what the GOP has been doing ever since 1968, when Richard Nixon picked up the white racist vote that Democrats abandoned in 1964/1965 when LBJ pushed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act through Congress.

Nixon talked about his white “silent majority.” Reagan emphasized “states’ rights” to suppress the civil and voting rights of minorities. GHW Bush used Willie Horton to scare white voters in 1988 the same way his son vilified Muslims to win re-election in 2004. And, of course, Trump has been “othering” nonwhite people and women ever since he started his notoriously racist and hateful birther movement in 2008.

Science, however, is catching up with the Republican’s strategy, and showing us both how powerful it can be and also how to defeat it.

Rob Henderson’s excellent Newsletter turned me onto the new book The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution by Richard Wrangham, who does a deep dive into the past 600,000 years of our species and its immediate predecessors.

Wrangham points out how violent our chimp cousins are: female chimps are routinely beaten into submission before being raped and impregnated by the most powerful of the male chimps. He notes, “One hundred percent of wild adult female chimpanzees experience regular serious beatings from males.”

The consequence of this is that over generations genes for aggression have come to dominate that species; chimp society very much operates along the lines Thomas Hobbes argued human society would without “the iron fist of church or state.” Chimp life is nasty, brutish, and short.

But at some point in our prehistory, as humanity was evolving into its modern form, we developed language. Using that new ability to communicate, we developed complex societies.

Citing biologist Richard Alexander, Wrangham writes:

“In his 1979 Darwinism and Human Affairs, Alexander argues that at some unknown point in our evolution, language skills developed to the point where gossip became possible. Once that happened, reputations would become important.

“Being known as a helpful individual would be expected to have a big effect on someone’s success in life. Good behavior would be rewarded. Virtue would become adaptive.”

For human societies to survive and prosper in the face of an often-hostile natural world, cooperation became more important than dominance. We left behind the violence of alpha male chimps and instead embraced human teamwork and social harmony.

In my most recent book, The Hidden History of American Democracy: Rediscovering Humanity’s Ancient Way of Living, I document how Native Americans had, at the time of first contact in the 15th through 17th centuries, shared with Europeans how they’d developed highly democratic systems of governance. To a large extent, our Constitution was based on things learned directly from native people.

As I showed from that era, and Wrangham does with hunter/gatherer tribes across the world while examining anthropological evidence of early humanity, psychopathic and hoarding alpha males were consistently brought under control by the rules of human society itself.

Wrangham shows how, in multiple ancient and modern hunter/gatherer societies, when what we’d today call sociopathic or psychopathic alpha males would begin hoarding wealth or asserting dominance over others, they were simply killed.

Over thousands of generations, he posits, this altered our gene pool in a way that only a very small percentage of us — psychologists estimate between one and five percent — still carry and can act out the alpha male role in a way that involves high-level hoarding and social dominance. We call them sociopaths, billionaire hoarders, and violent psychopaths.

The good news is that they’re very much in the minority; the majority of us are not psychopaths, and are deeply wired for cooperation and social cohesion.

This evolutionary process, which I also document in American Democracy, makes societies more stable, enhances a culture’s or nation’s chances for survival in the face of crises, and improves the quality of life for the largest number of members of a society.

But, as both Wrangham and I point out, when societies are taken over by hoarding, violent, psychopathic men (Hitler, Saddam, Mussolini, Putin, Trump, Iran’s Ayatollahs, etc.) they become top-heavy and brittle, and thus more vulnerable to disruption by both external and internal events (including the death of the leader).

While the evolutionary basis of this, which Wrangham brings to us in his book, is new, the idea of a society or nation being most resilient when it’s most democratic is not; it’s been the subject of speculation, documentation, and scientific and social inquiry from the time of Socrates through the Enlightenment and the creation of the United States (as I detail in American Democracy).

What struck me from Wrangham’s book as most relevant to this moment, though, was his assertion that we humans are, both genetically and socially, vulnerable to psychopathic alpha males taking over when they use one particular strategy to gain and hold power: identifying an “other” who they can successfully characterize as a threat.

On the one hand, Wrangham points out how we’re capable of great tenderness and compassion. In his book’s introduction, he writes:

“In short, a great oddity about humanity is our moral range, from unspeakable viciousness to heartbreaking generosity. From a biological perspective, such diversity presents an unsolved problem. If we evolved to be good, why are we also so vile? Or if we evolved to be wicked, how come we can also be so benign?”

The answer, in short, is that we’re tender and loving to our own group, but perfectly willing to be astonishingly violent toward any “other” group that we see as substantially different from us and believe is a threat to us.

This, on the other hand, is a key part of preparing soldiers to fight in wars and violate that core human imperative of not killing: First, we must “other” the enemy. My dad, who volunteered to fight in World War II straight out of high school in 1945, referred to Germans and Japanese as “krauts” and “japs” to his dying days. Such a racist “other” perspective was pounded into our soldiers throughout basic training, just like veterans of George W. Bush’s Middle Eastern wars often refer to Arab people as “ragheads” and other slurs.

This “othering” of members and supporters of violent dictatorships we must go to war against is arguably a useful or even necessary tool to prepare our young men and women to kill or be killed on the field of battle.

Because it’s grounded in genetically-mediated survival instincts and strategies as ancient as humanity, it’s relatively easy to intentionally program into people, and, once they come to believe there is a  real threat from an “other,” very hard to defy. During both WWI and WWII in America, for example, those who protested against those wars were vilified, ostracized, and, in some cases, even imprisoned, all with popular support for that separation from society.

It becomes particularly dangerous, though, when violent psychopathic alpha males in a political leadership position turn that same strategy against members of their own society, turning average citizens into monsters. As Wrangham writes:

“The killers who committed genocide in World War II, Cambodia, and Rwanda were caught up in societies where moral boundaries became excessively crystallized. Yet most were not sadistic monsters or ideological fanatics. They were unremarkable individuals who loved their families and countrymen in conventional moral ways.

“When the anthropologist Alexander Hinton investigated the Cambodian genocide of 1975–79, he met a man called Lor who had admitted to having killed many men, women, and children. ‘I imagined Lor as a heinous person who exuded evil from head to toe….I saw before me a poor farmer in his late thirties, who greeted me with the broad smile and polite manner that one so often encounters in Cambodia.’ The combination of horror and ordinariness is routine.

“According to the anthropologists Alan Fiske and Tage Rai, ‘When people hurt or kill someone, they usually do so because they feel…that it is morally right or even obligatory to be violent.’ Fiske and Rai considered every type of violence they could think of, including genocide, witch killings, lynchings, gang rapes, war rape, war killings, homicides, revenge, hazing, and suicide.”

Like Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler used this “othering” strategy against Jews, Gypsies, and homosexuals so successfully that “good Germans” largely went along with the Holocaust, often enthusiastically. Stalin did the same against Ukrainians who were part of his Soviet Union, starving to death over four million human beings — men women, and children — in the Holodomor.

And now Donald Trump and his followers and enablers in the Republican Party — and thirty or so almost certainly psychopathic alpha male billionaires — are using this “othering” strategy against American citizens and immigrants to gain and hold political power.

In doing so, they’re playing with the most deadly form of fire known to humanity.

Because our instinctual willingness — or even enthusiasm — for dominating, destroying, and killing any “other” we see as a threat is deeply rooted in  our genetic code, it’s damn near impossible for people who’ve been inculcated with a clear identification and deep fear of an “other” to resist embracing forms of violence ranging from discrimination to excessive policing and imprisonment to outright extermination.

It’s so archetypal that it’s the essence and message of every Bruce Willis-type movie: “Use violence to destroy the bad people.” As we watch that story play out on the screen, and we cheer the murder of the bad guys, we feel a release and exhilaration that keeps bringing people back to the theater.

We didn’t “learn” to love this violence: it’s wired into our DNA. All of us. We are all vulnerable to this type of emotional manipulation.

Trump’s open embrace of rounding up 12 million “other” immigrants and putting them into concentration camps prior to deportation seems unspeakably cruel, but we forget the brutality of his family separations and caging of young Hispanic children at our own peril.

He and his acolytes are fully capable of committing horrors like the world sees in various places every few generations when an alpha male psychopath uses “othering” to gain and hold wealth and political power.

In both Wrangham’s book and mine, we find the way to combat this: shatter the “othering” meme by converting the “them” Republicans identify (queer people, racial and religious minorities, “liberals,” and women) into a massive, collectively diverse “us.”

This fracturing of the GOP “othering” efforts was hugely on display last week during the Democratic National Convention, as people of all races, religions, gender identities, and disabilities were featured as part of a grand, collective “us.” Increasingly, we’re also seeing it in our media, from commercials featuring queer and multiracial couples to movies and TV programs with diverse casts.

To restore to our society the kind of resilient culture that has helped humanity survive to this point, we must defeat Donald Trump, JD Vance, and the psychopathic hoarder billionaires funding their attempt to take over America.

We must stop their effort to convert us into a fractured society with rich white Christian men in charge and everybody else subservient for another generation or more. As President Dwight Eisenhower warned in his prescient farewell address:

“…America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.” He added: “We pray … that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.”

America defeated fascists who had used “othering” to seize and assert power eighty years ago; they forced us to do it on the battlefield. Here at home, we fought back against and thwarted the psychopathic alpha male Robber Barons of the 1880-1930 era with antitrust law, union organizing, and heavy taxation of the morbidly rich.

Now we have an opportunity to bring Americans together, to embrace a collective and inclusive “us,” and to repudiate hate and “othering” as a political strategy.

If successful, we’ll usher in a new and beautiful America, and a grand example for the rest of the world. This could quite literally be a positive turning point for humanity for generations.

If only enough of us show up at the polls this November, and then stay engaged for at least a few years thereafter. As Tim Walz said, “We can sleep when we’re dead.”

"The majority of us are not psychopaths, and are deeply wired for cooperation and social cohesion."

Monday, August 26, 2024

The Democrats pulled off a miracle!

TOPSHOT - US Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris waves as she leaves the stage on the fourth and last day of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois, on August 22, 2024. Vice President Kamala Harris formally accepted the party's nomination for president today at the DNC which ran from August 19-22 in Chicago. (Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP) (Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images)

By J Ash Bowie

Community

Daily Kos

I am utterly shocked at what the Democrats pulled off at this convention. Honestly, I don’t even know how they did it. I’m 55 years old and I’ve never seen the Dems do what they did over these last four days. I’m genuinely gobsmacked. Here’s what they did...

The Democrats pulled in center and even center-right voters without sacrificing progressive values and ideals. 

This was not Third Way triangulation. This was not avoiding issues that the GOP believe are lines of attack. Harris and Walz did not tack to the center. Here’s what they did…

The Democrats redefined the middle! 

They pulled off this magic trick with unapologetic punch, with joyful humor, with clarity of vision, and with a strong eye on national unity. Every speaker up there made it clear that Democratic priorities are moral, achievable, and just plain common sense. More than that, the Democrats finally, finally, FINALLY framed liberal policies in terms of core American values. Here’s what they did…

The Democrats framed us as the party of freedom and patriotism. 

When Democrats talk about justice, fairness, equality, and the rule of law, we are ultimately talking about freedom and we are embracing patriotism. 

When Democrats prioritize reproductive rights, public education, affordable health care, reducing gun violence, keeping Americans safe, and tackling the climate crisis head on, we are prioritizing freedom and patriotism. 

When Democrats stand up to autocrats, tyrants, abusers, and bullies, we do so to promote freedom and patriotism. 

And it was wonderful to see how everyone embraced this framing with so much exuberance, pride, optimism, and energy! Clearly we Democrats have been hungry for this and it has unified the party beyond anything we’ve seen for decades. 

Obviously not all the credit for this astounding transformation belongs to the Harris team. We’ve all been pushing the Overton Window leftward for decades. And the overreach of the right, starting with the Tea Party movement and culminating with the MAGA movement, has helped push the right far out of the middle, leaving a political void for us to walk right into. But I will say that the Harris/Walz team has been pitch perfect at defining the GOP as “out of their minds” and the Democrats as good old-fashioned Middle America common sense. 

For younger members here, I cannot overstate how badly we center-left folks have been begging the Democrats for years to stop ceding the middle to the Republicans, letting them wear the mantle of freedom, liberty, patriotism, strength, and common sense. But no more!


Time to roll up our sleeves and win this war for liberty.

Sunday, August 25, 2024

Values and principles espoused at the Democratic National Convention

By George Templeton

Gazette Blog Columnist

August 25, 2024

GAZETTE BLOG EDITOR'S NOTE: Last month, Gazette Blog Columnist George Templeton wrote about how the Republican Party platform misaligns with Christian principles and values.  In his new column which follows, he offers a similar analysis of Democratic Party principles as espoused at their recently concluded convention.  To compare the two analyses, we have reprinted the Republican Party column following the Democratic column.

Reviewing the DNC Convention

Truth

The truth is always incomplete. We make the mistake of thinking that for anything to be real, we must be able to stub our toes on it.

You cannot put a ruler on love, appreciation, intention, patriotism, and God, but these reveal patterns in measurable behaviors (proxies). They are our character and, in the long run, our destiny.

Some things must be understood from the top down.  We cannot understand the interactions between the individual particles of the moral universe.  Theology finds them from above.

We seek the truth, but we fear it.  Our bright side wants to pursue truth wherever it leads. Our dark side balks whenever the truth leads us to where we do not want to go.  It is easier to change the minds of men than their hearts.  For only one to be right, everybody else must be wrong.  It leads to “us versus them”.

Independence 

Returning to the past and marching into the future depends on the path taken, not just the start and end point.  Life is not a reversible process.  We must believe in something beyond ourselves.  We belong in this world.  We are free to choose, but we are responsible. Jesus freed us to do what we ought to do.

Dreaming

We do not dream the impossible dream.  Reality Demons create opportunities, and solutions need optimism.  In Second Corinthians 4:18, the Apostle Paul admonishes us to “… look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

Healthy

Immanuel Kant claimed that good comes from intentions and cold-hearted duty, not self-interest.

It’s evolution.  We have a subconscious scaffolding that makes us defend our children and not want to kill our babies.

I am pro-life.  My mother died giving birth to me.  A long time ago, I was the future.  Now, our children are our future.

Jesus had empathy and compassion for suffering people. He would have agreed that health care is a human right, not The Art of the Deal.

Our Economy

Saint Thomas Moore wrote that ethics is all that is not the self.   When we are self-interested, we want and admire wealth without understanding its price.

In Matthew 25:35-36, 40, Jesus says that whatever you do for the least of his brothers and sisters, you do for him.

Criminal Justice

How are you a force for good?  Does a bad apple spoil the bushel?  Is justice revenge or redemption?  Does force work better than encouragement?

We are stuck halfway between forgiving and punishing.   It is assertive but not brutal.   Kindness promotes non-aggression.  Our dark side is satisfied when someone gets what we think they deserve.  It makes hatred seem O.K.

Ephesians 4:31-32 Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, and forgiving, as God in Christ forgave you.

Climate Change

Global warming is a big problem.   But the world does not heat isotropically, and we don’t know its natural frequencies. Its tipping point depends on feedback amplitude and timing.  It could have already tipped.

Heat is energy in motion, and this causes local weather.

Immigration

America should be inclusive.  Our Statue of Liberty reads, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, …!"

Wars

Immanuel Kant found evil in self-interest taking priority over the general good.  Striving is not the same as fighting.

Carl Jung did not just believe.  He knew that God existed, finding him in the archetypical scaffolding of humanity.  He said, “Good and evil do not derive from one another but are always there together.”  We must learn to recognize the evil in ourselves. 

The Real GOP

The 2013 news by Megyn Kelly claimed that Jesus was a conservative white man.  Let’s look at the GOP platform’s alignment with this view of Jesus.

1.            Make America Rich Again (I’ll buy your vote): 

While the pursuit of wealth can be a noble endeavor, the 'Make America Rich Again' policy, with its implied Faustian bargain, raises concerns.  The Art of the Deal, which trades souls for wealth and power, should give us pause to think about the potential consequences of such a policy.

It is in the famous Sermon by Jesus: “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God… But woe to you that are rich, for you have received your consolation.  (Luke 6:20-25)

2.            Make America Safe (From Immigrants and Muslims) Again:

When a leader lets go of what he is, it opens the door to what he could be.  A strong leader’s concrete results, not measured by himself, speak truth to power.  When Loyalty is all that matters, the truth dies.

Jesus said: “… everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council; and whoever says, “You Fool” shall be liable to the hell of fire.”  (Matthew 5:21-22)

3.            Make America Strong Again (quarantining, punishing, and forcing instead of persuading):

Do we want to live in the world, with all its joy and sadness, with all its misunderstanding and controversy, or will we withdraw? 

Is tough smart?  Knowing that you don’t know is more important than thinking that you do.  The effective leader must take care not to see what he believes and then subsequently believe what he sees.  He must enjoy being wrong when it is in our favor.  He must remember that for every force, there is an opposite reaction that divides instead of bringing people together.

According to this analysis, a great president is one who embodies understanding and compassion in politics. He is quiet, contemplative, deep, inscrutable, philosophical, and professorial.  He has empathy because he has been in that situation himself.  He comes from what he manages over.  He is not a carnival barker.  He helps others understand themselves, invoking a sense of empathy.

Heidegger described it by saying, 'Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.' This emphasis on empathy and the meaning of life underscores the need for understanding and compassion in politics, which seems to be overlooked in the current political landscape.

4.            Make America Great Again (White, segregated, Christian, patriarchal, uneducated):

No leader can make us great.  That can only come from us.  We must humbly search for the “good” in America and work to continually improve it.

There is no smaller package than an America all wrapped up in herself.  We grow when we are selfless.  It is not a feigned love, contrived put-on, or stage show. 

Thousands of years ago, the big questions were “why” and “who”.  Now we must ask “what” and see “how” things work.  Our judgments should be based on facts and truth, not politics and religious dogma.  It is not a game or popularity contest.

Cause and effect could be fundamentally religious or a consequence of human perception. When God becomes the prime mover, controlling the minutiae of everyone’s life, there is no need for Newton’s laws or understanding anything academic.

There is a moral imperative not to neglect the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faith lest we become “blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!” as Jesus put it. (Matthew 23-24)