As Will Rogers used to say, a century ago, all I know is
what I read in the papers. [Let us recall
that he also said, “I don’t belong to any organized political party – I am a
Democrat.”] But I am beginning to think
we are at a tipping point. All of you
are as aware of the evidences as I am: the
mushrooming protests, that have actually gone international; the top generals
and admirals breaking silence to condemn Trump; the Mayor of Washington DC
responding to Trump’s fascist moves by painting BLACK LIVES MATTERS in enormous
letters on the street that leads to the White House; the NFL Commissioner, who
answers to the rich white team owners, publicly endorsing the George Floyd
protests; the polls showing Trump losing the support of White Catholics and
mainline Protestants. From time to time,
I check the little gadget at the top of the Daily Kos page that gives a
longitudinal record of approval and approval of Trump, and it has just ticked
down to minus 15, his worst showing in three years. That graph has been astonishingly stable for
Trump’s entire presidency, but if it falls to – 17 or -18, he is toast.
Why is this happening and what does it mean? Well, I can assure you of one thing: It is
not happening because one hundred million people have been reading James
Baldwin and Toni Morrison and Karl Marx while in quarantine and have all had a
Come to Du Bois moment. Some of the
protesters are stir crazy and eager for a reason to get out into the streets. Some are out of work and have nothing better
to do. Plenty have been angry their
whole lives about the rank injustices of American society and are ready to put
their bodies on the line for justice.
The generals are appalled at the political use of their troops. The NFL owners smell boycotts and falling
revenues. The cable news commentators,
their fingers wetted and held aloft, can tell which way the wind is blowing. But this is always the way with organic political
movements. As I never tire of pointing
out, they resemble chaotic landslides, not precision brain surgery.
What does it mean? Where
will it lead? We know that Trump and the
Republicans, with the help of their Russian brothers, will do everything they
can to rig, to subvert, to steal the November election. Eternal vigilance, and all that. But I do not think they will succeed.
I think we will take the White House, hold the House, and
win the Senate. We will also continue to
win down ballot races across the country.
If we should actually winning Texas, the Republican Party as we know it
may go the way of the Whigs.
Then, of course, the real work begins.
Martin Seligman of learned helplessness fame for what it's worth advises that cheerfulness helps us through the quarantine while optimism helps us rebuild- he's too far on the right for my taste- but glad you have both.
ReplyDeleteOptimism of some variety is a plus for a revolutionary
https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=webp_1024x576&url=3oaNma_0PDhc9lw00
ReplyDeleteRegarding the phrase: "with the help of their Russian brothers" -
ReplyDeleteI realize that if anyone gets their news from the MSM, they may not be aware that
1. Sean Henry, president of Crowdstrike, admitted under oath in recent congressional testimony that they had never had EVIDENCE that Russia hacked the DNC:
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/05/13/hidden_over_2_years_dem_cyber-firms_sworn_testimony_it_had_no_proof_of_russian_hack_of_dnc_123596.html
2. That declassified Mueller investigation transcripts confirm that there never was evidence that WikiLeaks colluded with Russia
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/15/assa-m15.html
3.That the Justice Dept. dropped charges against the Russian firms filed by Mueller, once the "shell companies" fought the charges in court:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/us/politics/concord-case-russian-interference.html
...which means that the endless, breathless statements from people like Congressman Schiff and others who claimed to have seen intelligence confirming Russia hacking, not to mention all the talk about 17 intel agencies, were either lies or evidence of massive dissembling. Just add this sorry affair to the Gulf of Tonkin and all the rest of the efforts of false intelligence used to bamboozle Americans. Let's hope the charade doesn't help Trump when they hold hearings on "Obamagate."
*My fantasy is that Rachel will have Bill Binney on (former intel official with NASA who explained how the Russian hack was impossible)so she can run through her shtick and ask, "Mr. Binney, have I got anything wrong in my presentation on Russiagate thus far?"
Jerry, are you paid in roubles? To paraphrase RPW, fu and your commie comrade whose whose back you rode on. --Dave F.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jerry. It's too bad that we can only be rid of the present monster by relying on someone who will rely on fantasists of another sort (do they all think the Russians are communists, or is the one above who wants people to believe you've been bought with roubles an exception?) and who will likely surround himself with these same fantasists should he win in November.
ReplyDeleteBack when the belief that Trump was only elected because his pal Putin backed him was progressive common sense, Jerry had the cojones to insist and to insist that it wasn't so and to send article upon article to this blog showing that it wasn't so. So thank you, Jerry.
ReplyDeleteNow if progressives once again are going to rerun the fantasy that Trump's electoral success is due to Russian backing, they are going to miss out, as they so often do, on the real social forces behind Trump and while that probably will not prevent Biden from being elected this time, it will not prevent the resurgence of Trumpism in the future, probably with an even shrewder demagogue as its political expression.
I’m always amazed at how, under normal circumstance, people will readily admit that governments everywhere are constantly involved in espionage and cyber-infiltration operations; yet when it comes to the idea of Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign, those same people insist that nohow, no way, under no circumstances is such a thing even conceivable. They’ll insist that there’s no evidence of the kind — despite the fact that there IS plenty of evidence, despite the fact that Putin himself said on camera that T***p was his preferred candidate, and despite the current occupant of the White House’s documented history of involvement with Russia generally, which goes back decades.
ReplyDeleteI think we are a decade of more from getting the full story on T***p and Russia. Has the issue been a political “winner” for the Democrats? Certainly it hasn’t swayed the GOP rank-and-file. But I suppose only the next election will tell for sure. In any case, a few points should be kept in mind.
1) It’s simply not true that Shawn Henry of CrowdStrike admitted under oath that they found no evidence that Russian agents hacked the DNC. He very clearly stated that there was strong *circumstantial* evidence — which, contrary to popular belief, does not mean bad evidence. As Crowdstrike rightly says in their write-up on this (pasted below), DNA and fingerprint evidence are normally considered circumstantial evidence. In his testimony, Henry likened the distinction to one in which video-taped evidence of a crime is lacking, even though other evidence left at the crime scene points to guilt. To spin this as an admission of “NO EVIDENCE” is to take advantage of what is essentially an epistemological nicety (or so it seems to me).
https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/
2) The FBI first assessed that Russia was attempting to hack DNC servers in September 2015, before anyone thought T***p had a snowball’s chance in hell.
3) The Russian agent Joseph Mifsud told George Papadopoulos (then an advisor to the campaign) that Russia was in possession of “dirt” on Clinton in the form of emails — weeks before the email hack was known publicly.
4) Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort took a meeting with a Russian agent after being *expressly told* that Russia was engaged in an effort to aid the T***p campaign and that they were in possession of dirt on Clinton.
5) Manafort handed over polling data from the campaign to Konstantin Kilimnik, who is known to have connections to Russian intelligence.
6) The actions of the Justice Department under Barr — vis-a-vis dropping charges — are pretty much meaningless, at least to me.
Ed Barreras,
ReplyDeleteI have a weak memory and so I'm not going to get into the details of this debate.
I certainly would never or have never expressed a doubt that the Russians engage in espionage and cyber interference in the U.S as does the U.S. in Russia.
However, even my weak memory recalls that maybe two years ago it was common sense in progressive circles to affirm that Trump was a Russian agent, that he worked for Putin and above all, that Russian interference had been the decisive factor in Trump's 2016 electoral victory.
There has been no evidence that Trump is or has been a Russian agent and in fact, the very language reminds me of McCarthyism.
As I said above, blaming Trump's electoral victory on the evil Mr. Putin without more evidence than has been evinced until now is a way of not seriously analyzing why Trump and other rightwing populist demagogues appeal to large sections of the population and above all, of not changing the policies which lead those people into embracing rightwing populist demagogues.
Trump is a crook and is surrounded by a circle of other crooks and there is no doubt that
he and his circle have had contact with members of the Russian kleptocracy, but from there to conclude that Trump works for Putin is a long leap of faith.
These reactions are priceless. It is interesting to me how a number of genius academics (and I am referring to some of the commentariat here, not the Professor) who can reach back centuries and into foreign languages at that, and reveal the most subtle nuances and attendant meanings of the most gifted thinkers of all time, much as a surgeon would delicately and with precision probe the brain, will then like butchers whacking away at a carcass, sloppily mutilate the meaning of concepts like "evidence," "assessment," and "hacking." As soon as I catch up on the Professor's latest Hume installment, I will go back and review his lectures on ideology, which seem to be especially relevant here.
ReplyDeleteDave F: You might find the comment of Ralph Nader's father as insightful as I did when I first heard it. He said to little Ralphy coming home one day from grammar school: "Ralphy, did you learn to believe today or did you learn to think?"
And Russia, if you're listening, please send along some roubles, lot of them...and quickly! - if that's not possible, Rachmaniov's Preludes will do.
Ed Barreras,
ReplyDeleteI was going to say what s wallerstein said in response to your comment. But he says it so well, I'll just indicate my agreement with him. The conflation of Russian intervention with the charge that Trump engineered the Russian intervention has contributed to the failure of the Democrats to seriously come to grips with what they and the Clinton campaign got very wrong in 2016.
PS. Were I a Russian, I would have looked at what Clinton and the Democrats had been pushing with respect to the expansion of NATO, their manipulation of the complex Ukraine situation, their mounting anti-Russian propaganda, and I, too, would have done what I could to try to ensure that they didn't get elected in 2016. And I certainly wouldn't have needed Trump to talk me into doing so. And today, looking at the Democratic rhetoric during the impeachment hearings/senate trial, and suspecting that many of these rhetoricians will be put into positions of influence should Biden win in November, were I a Russian I'd be working for their defeat.
As it is, not being a Russian, for a whole host of reasons I hope Trump is defeated, but I am very apprehensive as to what a Biden victory might mean for peace in Europe.
Since people seem to be laying cards on the table, briefly:
ReplyDelete1) I've never thought Trump was a Russian agent, whatever that means exactly, but I do think the Russians interfered in the 2016 election, though whether it was a decisive factor or simply one factor among others is hard to know with any certainty. The main charge from Dems has always been not that Trump *engineered* the Russian intervention but that he *invited* and welcomed it (which
is quite different from engineering it).
2) I doubt Biden poses any greater threat to "peace in Europe" than Trump, and perhaps less of one. It's Trump who has recently ripped up a series of arms control agreements with the Russians, claiming Russian violations. 0f course there hasn't been a general continent-wide war in Europe since WW2 and there's not going to be another one of that sort. As long as tensions between Russia and NATO remain fairly high, there's always the possibility of a flashpoint leading to an accidental or unwanted escalation. In terms of a nuclear exchange, this kind of accidental or miscalculated escalation has been a possibility for a while (see e.g. the Able Archer incident in 1983). It's worrisome but there are other things I'd worry about more (e.g. climate change just to mention one).
3) There's an ongoing, presumably, "hot" war in e. Ukraine but it hasn't made headlines in the U.S. since the impeachment ended, and I confess I have not been following what's been going on there in recent months.
LFC,
ReplyDeleteDon't you remember all the talk about Trump being the "Manchurian Candidate"? That is, the agent of a foreign power whose role was to subvert our freedom-loving nation.
Well I'm sure there was some such talk but I guess I don't remember it being in the amount that you recall. Which doesn't nec. mean that my recollection is more accurate.
ReplyDeletePeople "in the street" might rave about any nonsense (as I know first-hand from having a [menial] part-time job that brings me into direct contact with such ravings and "theories" -- e.g. someone the other day shouting that there is no virus, it's all a "bank heist" [verbatim quote] and a Dem plot to defeat Trump). Question is how far such stuff, in this case Trump-as-Russian-agent, was expressed in "serious" and punditry circles.
I googled "Trump Manchurian Candidate" and this is one of the first articles which came up: it includes links to many other articles with the same theme if you're interested in investigating.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/01/13/some-call-trump-a-manchurian-candidate-heres-where-the-phrase-originated/
Thanks
ReplyDelete"People "in the street" might rave about any nonsense (as I know first-hand from having a [menial] part-time job that brings me into direct contact with such ravings and "theories" "
ReplyDeleteSure...nonsensical ravings are monopolized mainly by the 'people in the street' who work 'menial part-time jobs'. lol. Get a grip.
You misread me, Anonymous.
ReplyDeleteI have the part-time job referenced (not someone else), but more to the point, nowhere did I say anything about such remarks being "monopolized" by any particular type of person. I do think wacky theories are more likely to be found outside certain circles, but there is no question of "monopolization" here.
So get a grip yourself, and stop willfully and maliciously misreading what people write.
When wacky theories are held by serious and distinguished people, they are no longer called
ReplyDelete"wacky theories", but strategic errors or some such euphemism. For example, the wacky theory that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or the wacky theory that the Soviet Union aimed at world domination.
LFC
ReplyDeleteMaybe you see a lot of difference between “engineered” and “*invited* and welcomed.” I don’t. To repeat, given what the Russians surely perceived to be the dangers to themselves of a Clinton/Democratic victory in 2016, they needed no invitation or welcome from Trump to act in their own self defence. (My god, am I becoming a realist?)
Looking to the future, (and to try to invalidate the question/charge I've just parenthetically levelled against myself) how about this:
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/06/joe-biden-foreign-policy-military-liberal-interventionism-obama
Though it does get wearisome, having offered that reference I suppose I also have to repeat that I want Trump driven from office. But I’m not at all optimistic concerning the future of that. Whether they actually believe what they say or whether they’re manipulatively acting in bad faith, not least to marginalise the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, those pushing fantasies and conspiracies will likely occupy significant places in the regime returned from exile. Though the personnel will, SOME THINGS WON’T CHANGE.
R McD
ReplyDeleteI've looked at the Jacobin piece, thanks for linking.
In a way the authors' conclusions aren't surprising, as no one has mistaken Biden for a leftist on foreign policy. They somewhat grudgingly admit that Biden "reportedly" (sic -- actually it's a well-established fact) opposed the 2009 Afghanistan "surge" (and also "reportedly" opposed the 2011 Libyan intervention). They conclude however that he lacks an overarching f.p. "vision" and that the Dem f-p "establishment" will be back in power. Prob. right, but even these authors concede, if you look at the last graph, that in some matters he will be better than T. and on those Biden shd be supported.
Anyway, have bookmarked for possible closer perusal or re-reading. Notable that the Jacobin authors don't appear to mention T's withdrawal from the INF treaty w Russia and just recently from the Open Skies agreement. Even more notable, the Jacobin piece says nothing, even in passing (unless I missed it), about global North-South relations, prospects for the poorest countries and poorest people in them, issues of corruption/underemployment/mismanagement of economies in the Mideast and elsewhere, and whether/how the U.S. can get more on the 'right side' of all these issues. Did they mention refugees and immigration?
Ok, I'm sure they had space limits and they can't mention everything. But in Jacobin, of all places, you might expect a piece critical of liberal interventionism and the establishment to include an explicit acknowledgment that foreign policy is about more than what is sometimes called "high politics" (plus crises of the moment such as the pandemic) and encompasses a whole range of other issues, which are really at least of equal importance.
Btw Presidents, even the worst ones, are usually at least a slightly mixed bag on foreign policy broadly considered. Example: G.W. Bush, in addition to all the terrible things he did, set up the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which since its inception has saved millions of lives, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President%27s_Emergency_Plan_for_AIDS_Relief
https://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/14/the-real-story-about-bush-hivaids-and-africa/
ReplyDelete