Come dance with me

Ah, Halloween. I usually avoid the festivities. I don’t have children. Because of previous dietary issues I don’t eat candy and wouldn’t want to deal with leftovers if I didn’t accurately judge the number of kids coming to the door. So I usually disappeared for the evening, going to a restaurant for supper (they’re usually rather empty on this night) and a movie (attendance also sparse). I’d get home about 9:00 and spend some time with the neighbors who have gathered around a fire in a portable fire pit. But tonight there were no movies worth risking a trip to a theater. So I’m sitting with the lights off to give the impression no one is home. I’m helped by rain falling in the prime visiting hours. If the rain clears up I may join the crowd around the fire pit. In the meantime a neighbor has a recording of a scream that goes off about every half minute. A good Halloween comic in today’s paper. And the origin story of the Jack O’ Lantern. On Friday evening I went to the Detroit Film Theater in the Detroit Institute of Arts. The movie this time was In Balanchine’s Classroom. That’s George Balanchine, dancer and choreographer, the most influential choreographer of the 20th century. His early training was in Russia. He fled to Paris during the Russian revolution of 1917 and joined up with Sergei Diaghilev and his Ballet Russe. When Diaghilev died, Balanchine didn’t know what he would do next, so when he was invited to America in 1933 he took the offer. He quickly opened the School of American Ballet (backed by the people who invited him). He eventually co-founded the New York City Ballet. The State Theater at Lincoln Center was built to his specifications. One interpretation of the title is working with Balanchine was so informative it was like being in his classroom. That’s not correct. He literally ran a ballet class as part of being part of the ballet company. The dancers needed to learn a lot of basic technique. So every day he had an hour of class. It may not have been required but dancers soon learned to get a role in an upcoming ballet one had to show up frequently. Much of the movie is discussions with his dancers. Many of those now have prominent roles in other dance companies and we see them at work. While these dancers are talking we see Balanchine in action in the classroom and leading the dancers in creating a work. The classroom was a training ground for technique. It was also Balanchine’s lab where he tried things before including them in a work. How fast could dancers move? Was it possible to do this move or that? How could these steps be combined? It was during class that Balanchine saw which dancers needed to have the choreography laid out in detail and which ones were good co-creators. One of his dancers talked about him insisting that dancers move to the music. The music must guide what they do. That made me think of Merce Cunningham, about a generation younger than Balanchine who choreographed a style where the people moved and there was music but neither had anything to do with the other. Balanchine pushed his dancers so they got past thinking about the technique and got past thinking about what steps were done in what order into just dancing. Towards the end one of his dancers talked about the feeling Balanchine was after. I don’t know if I heard it right, though what I heard is pretty sweet. He wanted us to think God was inviting us. It doesn’t matter if we’re good or felt worthy. God was saying just four words: “Come dance with me.” From this week’s Michigan COVID data: The weekly peaks in the number of new cases per day dropped! Over the last five weeks the peaks have been: 3926, 4378, 4432, 4153, and 4174. Some of those have been revised from earlier weekly reports. The deaths per day have been adjusted. One day six weeks back has been adjusted up to 53. During the week before last and the week before that the death count has risen to 50 twice, otherwise mostly above 42. Last week scientist Yaneer Bar-Yam spoke to Daily Kos about the COVID pandemic. Mark Sumner reported on what Bar-Yam said. The scientist is a specialist in complex systems and played a key role in ending the Ebola epidemic in West Africa in 2013. Some of his major points: * We have little understanding of what it means to live with a deadly disease as a constant in life. We don’t think about taking a trip and picking up a virus that can kill us. * We don’t think about orphanages that are filling because caregivers have died. * We have an economy that had worked as a well-oiled machine with workers who had an assurance of safety and of coming home at the end of the day. An ongoing epidemic would be an ongoing disruption where schools, businesses, and sporting events close when the number of cases got high. * COVID, and other viruses, don’t become milder over time. * So we must work to eliminate the disease. This must be a community effort. Government response is critical, but not the only component, because government amplifies conflict. Then media focuses on that conflict, amplifying the worst behavior and most outrageous statements. * Instead of focusing on the individual (as in contact tracing), focus on the community. Create a response appropriate for the community. Enlist community members to work for their community. Check on neighbors and know their situation. * We don’t have a safe place for people to go when they are sick. There is the hospital and there is home – where they can infect the rest of the family. * Yes, this takes work. The alternative is orphanages. “Remember the Alamo” was a famous battle cry in Texas history. SemDem of the Kos community wrote that we would be better to Forget the Alamo. That’s the first part of the title of a book by three Texas researchers. Texas Republicans quickly tried to ban it from classrooms. Yeah, there was a siege at the Alamo and a lot of people inside died. But there is a lot more to the story. * Texas wanted to be independent from Mexico because Mexico banned slavery and those settling Texas considered it crucial to their economy (they were also highly racist). Antonio López de Santa Anna, newly elected president of Mexico, attacked the Alamo to enforce the end of slavery. * Those in the Alamo were warned several times of Santa Anna’s approach. They ignored it, then they were trapped. Davy Crockett begged for mercy. * The story excludes the local Tejanos and African Americans, who fought alongside the white rebels. * That story of William Travis drawing a line in the sand never happened. That myth was promoted by Disney (see: Fess Parker) and John Wayne’s The Alamo. The truth of the Alamo matters because a lot of important decisions are based on that myth. * President Lyndon Johnson considered Vietnam just like the Alamo. * Bush II built a replica of the Alamo on a military base outside Bagdad. * A lot of Texans feel this origin story gives them a reason to consider their state special. * The story makes people of color dread that part of social studies classes. * This attempt to hide the truth and promote the myth is a part of the current attempt to ban teaching of certain topics, such as racism. It is also a part of the attempt to gerrymander the state so white people will maintain control of government. Leah McElrath tweeted a quote that said we have no right to Elon Musk’s money. She also quoted a Bloomberg Business tweet saying the combined net worth of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos is approaching a half trillion. McElrath added:

Money is a social construct that represents stored value in excess of tangible goods and services. In no rational or moral universe does any individual have an inherent right to stored value as massively disproportionate as that claimed by Musk and other multi-billionaires. The only way to accumulate this much stored value is via theft: Theft of worker value, via inadequate compensation. Theft of consumer value, via overpricing and elimination of competition. Theft of planetary value, via privatizing resources and ignoring environmental costs. Etc.

Mark Zuckerberg announced the parent company of Facebook changing its name to Meta. I’m familiar with the term metaverse through reading lots of science fiction. It is similar to virtual reality and means living our lives within a computer generated world. Zuckerberg, of course, wants that to be his computer generated world. Responding to the announcement. Zamandlovu Ndlovu tweeted:

I wish I had the English to explain how scary it is that billionaires are at the point of selling us a virtual reality of the lives they live to keep us distracted from the deterioration in the real lives we are living.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included late night commentary:

The constant refrain we hear from cops every time they kill an unarmed Black person is, 'They should have complied with the law, because as long as you comply, things will supposedly go well.' But that only seems to work one way. Because when officers are asked to follow simple rules or face consequences, a not-insignificant amount of them flip their s---. So you know what? If an officer wants to quit over this [vaccine mandate], f---ing let them. Let the individuals who clearly don't care about public safety stop being in charge of public safety. —John Oliver

The neighborhood gathering at the portable fire pit didn’t happen this evening.

When do we get to use the guns?

April Siese of Daily Kos reported that there was a conference of devotees of the QAnon conspiracy in Las Vegas last weekend. One of the speakers was Jim Marchant. He’s running for the Secretary of State job in Nevada. He’s part of a coalition of candidates hoping to solve the nonexistent issue of voter fraud – so we know what their goals are. Siese wrote:

“I can’t stress enough how important the secretary of state offices are. I think they are the most important elections in our country in 2022,” Marchant said at the “For God & Country Patriot Double Down” event. “And why is that? We control the election system. In 2022 we’re going to take back our country.”

David Neiwert of Kos discussed ...

The politics of eliminationism—in which ordinary democratic discourse is replaced by the constant drumbeat of demonization that depicts one’s political opponents as inhuman objects fit only for extermination—has been growing steadily in America for well over a decade, reaching a fever pitch during Donald Trump’s tenure in the White House. But now, in the post-Trump era, his rabid fans have ripped off the mask of plausible deniability and are now openly calling for killing liberals and Trump critics—which includes anyone who believes he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden.

At a conservative event in Nampa, Idaho an audience member asked Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA:

At this point, we’re living under a corporate and medical fascism. This is tyranny. When do we get to use the guns? [Crowd whoops.] No, and I’m not, that’s not a joke, I’m not saying it like that. I mean literally, where’s the line? How many elections are they gonna steal before we kill these people?

Kirk replied:

No, uh, hold on. Stop, hold on. I’m gonna denounce that and I’m gonna tell you why. Because you’re playing into their plans, and they’re trying to make you do this. That’s okay … They are trying to provoke you and everyone here. They are trying to make you do something that will be violent, that will justify a takeover of our freedoms and liberties the likes of which we have never seen. We are close to have momentum to get this country back on a trajectory using the peaceful means that we have at us. So to answer your question—and I just think it’s, you know, overly blunt—we have to be the ones that do not play into the violent aims and ambitions of the other side. They fear—let me say this very clearly—they fear us holding the line with self-control and discipline, taking over school board meetings. They’re the ones that are willing to use federal force against us.

There was more to Kirk’s response, though what I quoted has enough projection to demonstrate what Kirk is all about. Neiwert concluded:

The impulse for eliminationist violence, moreover, is latent in all of this: Even if Kirk’s audience takes his advice and bides their time, the threat remains intact to overthrow local authorities if they fail to enact their extremist ideas and displace reality—such as Joe Biden’s election as president—with their conspiracy theories and disinformation. We already saw how that played out on the ground on Jan. 6 at the Capitol after the “Stop the Steal” rally, an event at which TPUSA was a major sponsor, providing seven buses carrying 350 people. If right-wing propagandists like Charlie Kirk and his army of devoted followers have their way, that scenario will be playing out again. But the next time, if the eliminationist extremism of his army’s footsoldiers continues to fester, it may very well be with guns.

Hunter of Kos started a post by writing:

There are two things to know about the Republican Party's organized attack on non-corrupt secretaries of state and other state election officials. The first is that it is resulting in more chaos in more places than you might think. The second is that it is working. It is having exactly the effects Republican lawmakers and party leaders intended when they grabbed hold of Donald Trump's absolutely false hoaxes claiming a random and varying assortment of supposed election plots against him.

I could quote a large part of Hunter’s post. Instead, I’ll quote a bit and try to summarize. When you whip up your base into a frenzy based on lies, then say that person is stealing the country from you, your base is will act against where your finger is pointing.

The point needs to be made again: The threats of violence being delivered to elections officials, from secretaries of state to local precinct volunteers, are the intent of Republican lawmaker's repetitions of election-hoax language. Unleashing the rage of a propaganda-fed base is the point of crafting that false propaganda to begin with.

Up to 40% of poll workers in the largest jurisdictions have said they will not return for the next election, according to CNN. The reason is the expectation of violence. Some of those positions won’t be filled, resulting in long lines, reduced turnout, and general chaos. Some will be filled by the people who drove out the previous workers, ready to do their part in cheating for their party. Calls for election integrity, if they are raised with false information, are invalid.

You craft a propagandistic hoax only to achieve a goal that cannot be justified using the truth. The moment Republicans adopted the Big Lie as touchstone and as test of loyalty, the moment they claimed that the country was in peril due to fictional conspiracies by the movement's opponents, it became self-evident that they were seeking remedies against their enemies that normal politics could not supply. The moment the once-conservative, now ideologically vacant party adopted flagrant hoaxes as means of stoking public fury, it turned to fascism.

Macomb County, Michigan borders on Detroit to the north and is along Lake St. Clair. It is very much a red county. Krery Elevled of Kos reported the GOP chair of the county said, “We are determined to make the fraud of 2020 the issue of the election.” That is not what the national GOP wants to hear. They want to make the issue Biden and his agenda, not the loser who left Washington for Florida. They’re afraid the county’s focus will depress the vote. A few days ago I wrote about the Great Resignation. Dartagnan of the Kos community noticed a couple things about the states with the highest numbers of resignations. First, these states had the highest rates of COVID infections in August, the middle month of the Resignation. People forced back to work in an unsafe environment chose to quit instead. Second, the states with both the highest rates of turnover and the highest infection rates are also “right to work” states, where the legislatures passed policies to discourage unions. And unions protect against unsafe workplaces. So a crappy job in a labor market that encourages looking elsewhere and workers are going to use the little leverage they have. There is another thing states who have passed right to work laws and have high COVID rates have in common. They’re controlled by Republicans. Abraham1771 of the Kos community wrote about Sen. Sinema and the things she is wrecking to please her corporate paymasters. Rather than writing about that again, I’m mentioning this post because of the chart at the top. It is a graph of the national debt as percent of GDP since 1940. It goes back that far to include the debt from WWII, which was above 120% of GDP. From that peak it fell until 1980, when Ronald Reagan cut taxes, claiming Supply Side Economics. The debt was about 35% of GDP at the time. When Bush I left office the debt had climbed to about 65%. Clinton championed budget surpluses and brought the debt below 60%. Bush II pushed it above 80%. Obama slowed the growth of the debt, though it went above 100% of GDP. And it has jumped upward again under the nasty guy, getting close to 120%. Conclusion: Starting with Reagan every GOP president has increased the speed at which the debt has risen. Both Democrats reversed the rise or tried to slow it. Republicans break the economy. Democrats clean up after them.

Zero punitive policies to wind down old stuff

In the recent edition of Between the Lines, Michigan’s LGBTQ newspaper, I read about the HBO show We’re Here. It’s a reality show hosted by Bob the Drag Queen, Eureka O’Hara, and Shangela Laquifa Wadley, all former contestants of RuPaul’s Drag Race. In each episode these three queens go into a Southern town and help three locals prepare to be in a drag show. I watched an episode. In this one they went to Del Rio, Texas (recently in the news because of the encampment of Haitians at the border, but this was taped before then). Bruno is the mayor of Del Rio. The townsfolk knew he is gay when they elected him. His opponent tried to make a big deal of a photo of Bruno in a tutu. Didn’t work. He wanted to be a part of the drag show to demonstrate he will always be true to himself. Joey wasn’t sure of their identity. There is a scene where Joey tries to talk to parents about what they’re going through and parents keep talking about Joey as a son. Esael lives in Del Rio and frequently visits parents and sister across the border in Mexico. He isn’t out to his parents, so there is discussion about that. He wants to be their son, not their gay son, where that is the most important thing about him. His drag mama suggests Esael use Bruno as an ongoing mentor and we see their first meeting. He wants to be in the show to boost his confidence because it is they gayest thing he can do. Some of the show is about how to do drag. Much more is about how to live an authentic life. I enjoyed the show and I appreciate it is out there, though I doubt I would watch another episode. I watched it through broadcast TV. The episodes can be streamed. One thing the show did not mention is how the three locals are chosen. Does the show advertise? Do they search for people to be on the show? They don’t say. Ten days ago I wrote about listening to a Gaslit Nation bonus episode (available to subscribers) because I had asked a question. They didn’t answer in that episode, but did in the next (though I am about a week late in actually listening to it). I was probably helped in posting my question to one show’s comments rather than trying to send a message through Patreon, which hosts Gaslit Nation. Bonus episodes do not have a transcript for me to read. So I listened (all 52 minutes) while I prepared supper. That means I didn’t take notes to share all the juicy details. My question: Democrats in Congress say all the right things but act like they’ve been bought by corporations. Do we know how many or what percent have been bought? The answer from host Sarah Kendzior: We don’t know. That would be worthy research. One reason why we don’t is the gutting of the news departments of major newspapers and media outlets. But the party is definitely acting like a majority have been bought. The first evidence is their tepid response to the Mueller Report. Those who have obviously not been bought – such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – have been getting a lot more in campaign donations than those who have accepted money from Exxon. I asked a second question, but she didn’t exactly answer it, so I won’t comment on it. The first part of the episode was a discussion of bad book deals by former nasty guy cronies. The crony is encouraged to save juicy details for the book (as in not disclosing it to the public in a timely manner to matter in public opinion or legal prosecution, which is a form of a non-disclosure agreement). The crony is paid a big advance, whether or not sales will be worth it (he gets paid for keeping his mouth shut when it matters). Many Republicans and conservative organizations then buy lots of copies as a way of laundering money. Michael Harriot tweeted a thread, excerpts:

Ok, let’s not call it Critical Race Theory. We won’t even call it “Black History.” Instead, let’s accept the premise they propose. So, how does American history look if K-12 social studies & history teachers don’t teach kids about racism white supremacy. ... In 1776, America declared its Independence from Britain. Then there was a Revolutionary war. Then created a constitutional oligarchy that allowed 25% of the population to vote. But we’re going to call it a “Democracy” because words don’t mean things. We cannot discuss the legislative branch or Article I of Constitution because we would have to talk about race. We cannot discuss Article 2 because we would have to talk about the electoral college, which means we’d have to talk about race. We cannot talk about Article 4. We cannot talk about America’s Founding document because we cannot talk about race. America is not a racist country. ... In 1861, 11 states in the richest country in the world decided they would rather form their own country. No one knows why. I could say “it was about States Rights” but someone might reply: “The right to do what?” So we cannot talk about the bloodiest war in American history. ... Then came the Civil Rights movement. Martin Luther King said something about little girls and little boys. Some people did not like him (I can’t say who). ... This version will also mean people will THINK they know history because they got good grades in Social Studies, but they will have no idea that they’re really ignorant to the truth. And here’s the crazy part: THIS IS ACTUALLY HOW HISTORY IS CURRENTLY TAUGHT! Social studies is the only subject in the American education system that damn near EVERYONE is taught wrong. ... If you use legislation to create a system that protects ALL white kids from simply having to LEARN the history that Black and indigenous people actually endured… Then aren’t you PROVING that CRT was correct this whole time?

Jarrett Renshaw, a White House reporter for Reuters tweeted:

A Democratic proposal to impose a methane fee on U.S. oil and gas producers is not likely to be included in the party's massive spending bill amid opposition from within their own ranks, sources tell me.

That prompted David Roberts, who writes a newsletter about clean energy and politics, to respond:

That's it -- the last remaining policy in the BBB Act that actually restrained fossil fuels. Now the bill is exactly what Manchin wanted: a bunch of subsidies for new stuff; zero punitive policies to wind down old stuff. ... Worth saying: there is NO path to the US hitting its climate targets that does not involve rapidly shutting down all coal power plants & sharply reducing methane leaks. None. This isn't a subject of reasonable debate. Manchin is rendering Biden's stated target unreachable.

Leah McElrath tweeted a couple videos from Hunger Strike 4 Climate Justice, one of which included:

On Day 6 of our hunger strike, we find strength in solidarity with growing frontline power, demanding a government that works for us, not paid off politicians. We are putting our minds and bodies on the line because this is a life or death moment. #BidenChooseUs

McElrath added:

We are failing our children. We are leaving them a far worse world, not a better one. Prioritize action on global warming. Now. The idea of these babies hunger striking because my generation and the generations before me have failed you all so badly is almost too much to bear. In Matthew 27:46, Jesus is on the cross, fearful and facing death. He cries out in despair: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” That’s what these young people are asking all adults, but especially those with power like @POTUS.

Hunger Strike also tweeted with a video:

Abby, 20, confronts @Sen_JoeManchin on his fossil fuel corruption on his way out of a corporate donor luncheon on hunger strike day 7. Abby can stand up to Manchin, why can’t @POTUS? Joe Manchin is corrupt. He takes millions from the fossil fuel industry—he profits from the climate crisis. His corruption is deadly and dangerous—millions will lose their lives if the United States does not deliver on climate justice. We haven’t eaten in 7 days because @POTUS is caving to Manchin’s corruption and backtracking on his commitments to bold and transformative climate action. We will not eat until he delivers on climate justice. It’s us or Manchin, @POTUS #BidenChooseUs

Matthew Miles Goodrich tweeted a photo if a climate protest that include “Biden Lead or We Drown” and added:

Spent 11 hours in jail after protesting for the least cool thing possible - for the Democrats (who are in power) to pass their president’s agenda??

McElrath quoted a tweet from Greg Sargent of The Plum Line:

The idea that Manchin is to blame for killing the billionaires' tax is too convenient. Pelosi privately slammed the proposal hard at a meeting this week, aides tell me. And other Dems are waiting in the cloakroom to kill it w/no fingerprints.

McElrath added:

Thank you, @ThePlumLineGS. Much of what is happening to water down this legislation is political theater. Manchin and Sinema wouldn’t be getting away with this level of obstruction unless there was greater support for their actions within the caucus and leadership

In the same thread McElrath quoted the starting tweet of a thready by Dr. Thrasher, a professor at Northwestern University:

Lyndon Johnson would have dragged every one of Manchin’s & Sinema’s skeletons out of their closets, blackmailed them with them, cut off their donors, shamed them publicly & forced them to support his agenda. Bipartisan Biden is a BAD retail politician WITHIN his party!

McElrath added:

There are sticks to be used—some gathered by “opposition researchers” hired by Dem leadership to know our own lawmakers’ vulnerabilities—and an endless variety and quantity of carrots to be offered. Too many people have watched too much West Wing. I’ll just say this: I was punished more severely by national level Dem operatives for doing comms consulting for a local congressional candidate the DCCC didn’t want to win then Manchin or Sinema have been. Make that make sense.

McElrath offered another tweet:

Many of my generation who were activists have been fortunate: we lived at the right time both to witness progress and to receive some degree of resulting gratitude. Most of those on whose shoulders we stood didn’t. This is a different time. This is a time to become shoulders.

To exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth

Kos of Daily Kos has been writing daily Anti-vaxx Chronicles in which a person who is highly outspoken against the COVID vaccines dies of COVID. He gets the stories from a subreddit of Reddit. I may have shared one of these stories. I stopped reading them because they’re pretty much all the same. Kos documents how loudly the person was adamant about the vaccine on social media, then documents their death. Yesterday, Kos took a break from that (though those stories will be back) to start a series of stories from the Parler Watch subreddit of Reddit. Parler is, of course, a far right media platform used to plan the Capitol attack. Reddit goes to Parler and Kos goes to Reddit so you and I don’t have to yet still get a bit of the story. Today’s chapter (and I probably won’t share more) is about the insurrectionist fantasies of a conservative vs. liberal civil war. The fantasy is that several liberal bastions – Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, then Washington DC – would fall rather quickly to the conservative forces. Kos responded with laughter. Did the fantasist consider who in Chicago owns the guns?

I do wish they’d settle on a narrative: Are liberals violent and dangerous, driven by antifa and BLM, or are liberals weak and cowardly? Because if they’re really worried about antifa and BLM, then oh boy, best of luck, y’all!

Kos also discussed several other aspects of logistics that weren’t taken into account. However, he does say a Second Civil War would be catastrophic to the nation. Kos concluded:

They don’t want a war. No one wins in any civil war. We already had one here which pitted the industrialized, technologically advanced, populated side of America versus the rural agrarian side. It didn’t go so well. What these zealots really want is a genocide. And that’s the real terror in this. These are domestic terrorists. And like all terrorists, it only takes one to create mass carnage.

Even as we might laugh at these war fantasies the situation is still serious, as Ben Franklin tweeted in a thread:

Our opposition does not have the power to suppress a fully mobilized democracy movement. They just don’t have the numbers. This is why media and social media warfare is so important - it keeps people clueless, confused, waiting on a savior, totally demobilized. The primary tools used to stop a fully mobilized democracy is 1) convincing people that the situation is not serious 2) saying it's a serious situation but convincing people that the institutions have it under control 3) funneling political activity exclusively into voting. ... Has winning the White House and congress led to a meaningful change in law enforcement? Do you believe the GOP is going to honor unfavorable election results? Do you think they intend to allow fair and free elections to begin with? They are moving this outside traditional norms. So what, you may ask, can we possibly do? We are not the first country or democracy to face an authoritarian movement, a coup attempt. What you see in so many countries around the world is a mass civic mobilization in response. And sometimes - they beat the authoritarians.

Alas, Franklin didn’t discuss who is (or should be) leading us to mobilize to save our democracy. As one who has receive many solicitations for my help to get out the vote for this race or that, I’m sure Democrats won’t be leading this mobilization. So who? Garry Kasparov tweeted this back in 2016, then a couple months ago put it back in his Twitter feed, where it hid in my browser tabs for a while:

The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.

A couple weeks ago Ian Reifowitz of Kos sang the praises of bureaucrats who defied the nasty guy. These defiant workers included those at the US Census who worked to make the data as accurate as possible, that minority people were properly counted, while defying political interference. There was also General Mike Milley, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who quietly called his counterpart in Beijing that the Capitol attack would not include shooting off nuclear weapons in China’s direction. White House Counsel Don McGahn was ordered by the nasty guy to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller. McGahn refused and quit. Career scientists at NOAA had limited success in blocking directives supporting climate change denial. There are, of course, many others. Leah McElrath tweeted a thread:

Being an activist is a thankless task. No one likes you if you’re doing it right. The non-activists of your own people on whose behalf you’re acting will not like you. Read that again. Take it in. Then years later, they’ll rewrite history and pretend they too were activists. Activism makes people uncomfortable. Activism aims to create change. People don’t like discomfort, and people fear change—EVEN OPPRESSED PEOPLE. Everyone criticizes the work of activists when it’s happening because it makes them uncomfortable and fearful. Do it anyway. My words are not about a specific movement now but about the future: We are in a dark time headed into greater darkness. We have to be prepared to be our own light. We have to be ready to do what is right without guarantee of success in our lifetimes. And we will not be thanked.

McElrath was responding to a thread by Dan Canon:

Hi, I was one of the lawyers who won Obergefell at SCOTUS and litigated the Kim Davis case in Kentucky. Back when Trump was elected, I said same-sex couples didn't have to be worried about their marriages. I was wrong. ... The unwillingness of SCOTUS to do anything about SB8 sent a clear signal to red-state legislatures: 'do whatever you want, the courts won't stop you.' TX GOP heard that message loud and clear. Look for this in all other red states too, certainly by next session if not before.

Canon then linked to an article exploring the idea in more detail. Then he suggests that if you live in a red state maybe it is time to move. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who has been obstructing Biden’s Build Back Better bill, said she would refuse to support a bill that raises taxes on corporations and multimillionaires. That means there is room to consider a billionaire tax. This is a tax proposed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren during her 2020 presidential race. Sen. Ron Wyden, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, is now taking up the idea. The version being discussed now is a tax on the increase in the value of assets, even if the assets are not sold. The thresholds are set (at the moment) so that it would affect only 700 people in the country. Most Democrats are for it, likely even Manchin and Sinema. Those not in favor are concerned about how to figure out how much wealth a person has and how much that wealth increased in the last year (of course they’re going to cheat – tax them anyway). Mark Sumner of Kos discussed that climate change might hurt Republicans (and Sen. Manchin) and their fossil fuel donors in the place that matters most – their wallet. There have already been reports, even a few this week, on how the climate crisis is affecting and will affect things. There is the extreme weather and the cost of recovering from them, the hit to marginalized communities, and the likely appearance of climate refugees within the US (and many millions more around the globe). All these disasters prompt a reconsideration of how things are valued. The taint of fossil fuel stocks may become more widely acknowledged, causing a drop in stock prices. The sharply dropping cost of electricity from renewables plus the increased use of electric cars means prices for oil and natural gas could drop quickly. It’s already happened to coal. Sumner wrote:

The whole fossil fuel sector could see much of its value erased as demand for those fuels crashes and investors take flight. Considering the size and value currently assigned to some of these companies, such a shift could not just spell doom for the fossil fuel corporations, but leave state governments, retirement funds, and individual investors holding the (suddenly empty) bag. Homes in areas dedicated to coal mining or oil and gas drilling could become worthless. So could massive refineries, giant port facilities, and thousands of miles of pipeline.

Will we embrace the change and properly manage the switch away from fossil fuels, including helping all the people affected by the change? Or will we try to drag out the death of fossil fuels?

Following every inch of the hellbound highway

I went out Friday evening to see a movie in a movie theater. The theater was the Detroit Film Theater, a part of the Detroit Institute of Arts. They had advertised their COVID protocols – show proof of vaccine, wear a mask, and the audience size would be limited – so I felt safe enough. I also bought my ticket online. The show was the documentary On Broadway. Yep, a history of the Broadway theater district. There was a brief mention of the 1950s – Oklahoma and such – before delving into the 1968-72 era, which was about as low as Broadway has ever been. It was quite seedy at the time. Then the district tended to go in waves – everyone trying to do the tried and true until something came along to push things out of the rut and draw in a new audience: A Chorus Line (which was developed in a non-profit theater). Sondheim. Cats and the British Musical invasion, which happened because the American theater was decimated by AIDS. Rent. Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, which didn’t go well, followed by The Lion King, which went very well. Angels in America. August Wilson’s Fences and the rest of his cycle of plays. And Hamilton. During the 2018-2019 season several shows opened. One of them, The Nap, allowed the crew to film some of the rehearsals and a bit of opening night. These bits were spread through the documentary, allowing a discussion of how risky it is to put on a Broadway show. This show is important because a lead character is transgender, played by a transgender actor, and being transgender is not the point of the character. There was also a discussion of how high ticket prices are and one little bit showed that a ticket bought for over $400 could be resold for $1000. Yes, this was pretty much a valentine to Broadway. And a pretty good one too. This afternoon I saw a performance at the Metropolitan Opera broadcast into local movie theaters. This was the new opera Fire Shut Up In My Bones. The story is from Charles Blow’s memoir of that name, the libretto by Kasi Lemmons, and the music by Terence Blanchard. This is a big deal because it is the first opera by a black composer on the Met stage – yes there are operas by black composers dating all the way back to the 1930s (at least) that are worthy of being seen and heard on the Met stage. Since this is taken from a memoir the main character is Charles. The story starts at age 7 (played by a tall 13 year old who had played Young Simba in The Lion King). He is the youngest of five brothers and feels neglected. A ways into the first act he is sexually abused. Much of the rest of the opera is coming to terms with that. While that much of the story happens to kids of all races, there are black specific incidents as well. I’m pretty sure no other opera has a scene in a chicken processing plant. They also deal with persistent poverty and a chance to go to college only because he is offered a free ride. One scene happens in a black Baptist church. And, of course, there are a lot of black idioms in the music sung by an all black cast. It is nicely melodic and accessible, not at all the avant garde that many audiences dislike. In once scene, the college fraternity initiation, the instrumentalists stop and the music is carried on by the beat of the dancer’s feet. I very much enjoyed the afternoon. Though this opera is new to the Met, it has been around for a while and premiered in St. Louis. This was the Met’s last performance and it will be on the radio in February as part of their Saturday afternoon broadcasts. I’m glad I saw it with the visuals. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported that by Sen. Manchin fighting for coal and against the climate protection projects of the human infrastructure bill he is signing the death certificate of his home state of West Virginia. Coal is to the point where to maintaining a coal fired plant is more expensive than building new electric capacity powered by solar, wind, or gas. Coal isn’t feasible to burn even if coal mining companies gave it away. And when a coal mining company shuts down they leave behind huge environmental consequences they don’t pay for, huge health bills for their former employees, and a default on pension payments. When coal leaves a town there is nothing left.

I’ve been there. I’ve seen them. It’s not just that the only industry in town has left, it’s that the industry left behind valleys filled with rubble, streets edged with coal that spilled from passing trucks, a water supply spoiled by acid runoff. I’ve been there. I grew up there. And in my decades as a geologist for a major coal mining company, I helped perpetuate it. When the mining stops, what’s left are sick people and a failing town; the kind of community where even those who have worked themselves into “middle class respectability” suddenly find that their home is worth nothing, their local schools are bankrupt, and all their debts are as big as ever. Right now, Joe Manchin is standing in the way of a reconciliation bill that offers West Virginia an off ramp on the road to ruin. ... There is an alternative for Manchin. It’s one that was demonstrated ably by the state’s most successful legislator, Robert Byrd. Byrd didn’t fight against federal spending. He made the price of his support seeing that a disproportionate share of that spending went to his state. Manchin could do that now. Rather than fighting against the clean energy provisions of the reconciliation bill, Manchin could demand—and get—hundreds of millions, if not billions, of extra dollars channeled into his state. Manchin could demand an unreasonably high payout to his state for new jobs, new technologies, new opportunities. And he could get it. Instead, he seems dead set on following every inch of the hellbound highway. And we all know where it ends.

Manchin is acting like a supremacist. One way to make your life high in the social hierarchy look better is to make the lives of those under you worse. And Manchin is working quite hard to make the lives of his West Virginia constituents much worse. Joan McCarter of Kos reported the voting rights bill came up for a vote in the Senate on Wednesday. This vote was whether to debate the bill and required 60 votes to proceed. All 50 Republicans voted against it. That means Manchin did not find “10 good people” among the Republicans as he had said he would find (this is a bill he helped craft). The filibuster is still in place. We get the filibuster or democracy, not both. McCarter concluded:

How many doomed votes is Schumer going to have before the tactic loses all utility, before it becomes rote and no longer outrageous that Republicans would obstruct voting rights? We’re nearly there, and when that happens, when it’s business as usual for Republicans to openly plot the theft of our elections, pretty much everything is lost.

Michael Knigge tweeted:

Wow. Twitter’s algorithms amplify tweets from the political right more than from the political left in six (US, UK, Canada, France, Spain, Japan) out of seven countries studied according to Twitter’s own research published today. The outlier: Germany.

Knigge linked to a post in what looks to be Twitter’s own blog with the details. I scanned it and even that didn’t explain why Germany was the outlier. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, listed some quotes from people born in October. Here’s one:

There’s a reason white supremacy attacks history. Opposition to teaching bigotry’s history and where it leads—from the slave trade to the Holocaust—is about erasing society’s tools to recognize prejudice & prevent atrocity. Holocaust denial has no place in our society. None. —Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY)

And from a collection of late night commentary:

A California ranch once owned by Ronald Reagan is being threatened by a large wildfire. Crews are hoping to put out the blaze by pouring water onto a nearby hill and hoping it trickles down. —Michael Che, SNL

I downloaded Michigan COVID data today. As a reminder, I get it from here and the link labeled “Cases and Deaths by County by Date of Onset of Symptoms and Date of Death.” My charting program shows the new cases per day in Michigan might be leveling off after a steady three month rise. Last week I reported that earlier that week the cases per day hit 4990. That number has been adjusted and the peaks for the last five weeks are 3455, 3905, 4352, 4346, 4248. The deaths per day have been peaking in the 41-49 range for the last six weeks.

Do you remember the famous 97% climate study?

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported that Sen. Joe Manchin may have a plan to exit the Democratic Party to become independent or switch to Republican. If the latter he throws the Senate to Republican majority. And there goes Biden’s agenda. Or Manchin could be bluffing. Or someone is spreading rumors. Or the rumors are being spread because Manchin whispered in particular ears. Whatever the case he is making obnoxious demands on Biden. And McCarter has details on those demands. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported the latest poll about the Supreme Court, this one by Selzer & Company for Grinnell College. It shows 62% of Americans, broken down as 60% of Republicans, 63% of independents, and 66% of Democrats, believe that politics – not the law – drive Supreme Court decisions. Peter Hanson, director of Grinnell College National Poll, said:

This is a nightmare scenario for Chief Justice John Roberts, who has sought to protect the court’s reputation as an apolitical institution. The court faces a public convinced that its decisions are about politics rather than the Constitution, just as it prepares to make important decisions on abortion, guns, and affirmative action.

Eleveld wrote:

The public is unhappy—unhappy enough that they want to reform the court. That loss of legitimacy, coupled with public support for reshaping the Supreme Court, is indeed Chief Justice Roberts' nightmare scenario—not to mention that of Mitch McConnell.

Chitown Kev, in his pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Justin Rowlatt and Tom Gerken of BBC News. The BBC reported a huge leak of documents show several countries, including Saudi Arabia, Japan, and Australia, are asking the UN to play down the need to move rapidly away from fossil fuels. The documents also show wealthy nations questioning paying poorer countries to help them to move to greener technologies. All of this lobbying is before the Glasgow climate summit to start in about ten days. Mark Lynas, environmental writer, whose new book Our Final Warning: Six Degress of Climate Emergency is out now, tweeted:

Do you remember the famous 97% study - that 97% of climate science supported the consensus on human-caused climate change? Well we have just published an update for 2012-2021 papers in the same journal, Environmental Research Letters. The figure is now... drumroll please...99.9%!

Lynas linked to articles about the paper in the Cornell Cronicle and the Guardian. He also linked to the article. Then he included a profanity laden response from that last 0.1%. Over the last week Eleveld wrote several articles about the Republican Party’s interaction with the nasty guy. The whole mess got messier when the nasty guy threatened to tell his supporters not to vote in 2022 if the Republicans didn’t find a way to overturn the 2020 election. Last Friday Eleveld wrote that the party made a big misstep when it allowed the nasty guy to keep talking. Eleveld quoted a man who said the message of a stolen election made him think he may never vote again. Why do it if his vote will be changed? Several Republican members of Congress say the nasty guy’s obsession with the last election obscures the message they want to project for the coming election. But none of them have the guts, integrity, or political capital to confront the nasty guy. That includes Moscow Mitch. On Saturday Eleveld wrote about the nasty guy is pitting Republicans against Republicans. One way he is doing it is to endorse candidates in the most critical Congressional – the ones who most eagerly embrace the Big Lie. Another is to reach into state parties and demand more sham audits. A poll shows the effect – some GOP members saying others in their party don’t deserve to be reelected. On Tuesday Eleveld wrote:

Congressional Republicans worst-case scenario for 2022 is that Donald Trump's cultists—who tend to be lower-propensity voters—stay home while Trump's dominance of the party turns off higher propensity GOP voters who can't stand him. ... Gee, maybe if you turn your party into a cult and the cult leader tells everybody the whole system is a sham, then some of the cultists might divest from the system. ... For all the focus on Trump voters potentially not turning out, the possibility that anti-Trump voters will turn out but be dismayed by Trump's continued takeover of the party is perhaps just as big of a liability for the GOP next year.

Also last Friday Eleveld wrote the National Republican Congressional Committee has taken a page from the nasty guy in its fundraising. The text begins:

You’re a traitor… You abandoned Trump. We were told you were a tried & true, lifelong patriot.

Eleveld wrote there are several things to note. First: it says “You’re a traitor,” not “You will be a traitor if you fail to ...” The reader is put on the defensive. Second, the betrayal is to the nasty guy, not the NRCC or the Republican Party. There is a bit at the end allowing the reader to make amends. Eleveld wrote:

Of course, this is cult mentality at its finest. Two near-universal hallmarks of cults are the elevation of an authority figure to near-deity status, and the threat of “shunning” and ostracism for those who try to leave. Claims of “special” knowledge that only cult members possess—such as Trump’s promotion of the Big Lie—and an overriding “us versus them” mentality are also common characteristics of such groups. Nor should we ignore the distinct possibility that, as disciples of authoritarianism, many Republicans actually crave being addressed and debased by such terminology; it’s worth noting that when asked his opinion about these texts, Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger acknowledged their effectiveness. The fact that this text boils down to a mere solicitation for money shouldn’t obscure the more profound and troubling fact that one of this country’s two major political parties has become so beholden to a single personality that all significant decisions it now makes, including how to raise funds, are inextricably tied to that person’s fortunes. The fact that this individual has a proven, lethal track record of treachery, deceit, and complete indifference to basic principles of good faith—let alone the welfare of the country and all norms of human decency—makes that solicitation all the more remarkable.

Yesterday Eleveld wrote:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wants a mulligan on his failure to convict Donald Trump earlier this year during his second impeachment trial. McConnell's fumble is undoubtedly responsible for breathing new life into Trump, who has now overwhelmed the party McConnell fancifully imagined was under his command. ... "I do think we need to be thinking about the future and not the past," McConnell responded, obviously lamenting Trump's obsession with his 2020 election loss. "I think the American people are focusing on this administration, what it's doing to the country, and it's my hope the '22 election will be a referendum on the performance of the current administration, not a rehash of suggestions about what may have happened in 2020." Good luck with that, Senator.

Some interesting tweets from over the last few days: Leah McElrath tweeted quote of a tweet by A. R. Moxon:

It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied. It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination.

I add: They’re declaring themselves to be at the top of the social hierarchy by making the lives of others worse. McElrath quoted a tweet from Sewell Chan with the news that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott hired as the new Secretary of State a lawyer who helped the nasty guy challenge the PA election results. McElrath added:

I hate to tell y’all this, but we can’t out-organize this kind of institutional corruption. It doesn’t matter how many people we turn out to vote if they’re laying foundation to overturn the results when those results are unfavorable.

Another from McElrath:

We are taught to associate poor people with theft and to fear them accordingly. Yet it is the wealthy who steal the value of our labor and our common natural resources and leave behind broken bodies and denuded environments. Wealthy people are the real danger.

Ben Franklin tweeted (though he didn’t mention the context):

We have no idea what secrets were stolen, how badly our national security was damaged from within under Trump. It’s perfectly possible the government is so compromised that it is helpless to act now to do anything but avoid conflict.

Franklin also tweeted:

a lot of conspiracies against the public play out right in the open. you don't need total secrecy, you just need sufficient confusion.

I note he wrote “conspiracies” and not “conspiracy theories.” Adam Tranter, who advocates for safer streets for walking and cycling, included a video with his tweet:

Barcelona has an amazing school cycle bus every Friday. Wherever you are in the world, few kids will see this and think “I’d like to be driven to school instead”. When the project started there were just five children taking part. Change can happen fast.

The video shows a huge group of kids. I tried to learn more, but only saw other postings of the same video. I think describing it as a school cycle bus means there are adults to keep the kids together and safe. Ashton Pittman tweeted:

It is weird how humanity decided that genitalia makes for good insults. You never hear anyone talk about other body parts like that. Can you imagine? "I hate you, you stupid arm." "You f***ng neck." "What an elbow." "Goddam nosehole." "You pathetic fingernail bed."

Gerrymandered for black and white

The Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission has published their maps for Congress districts and state Senate and House districts. They actually produced three version of the legislature maps and five of the Congressional map. I didn’t see an explanation of why did it that way or how they will decide which one to put into official use. In the last couple days I looked over some of the maps, guided by analysis from the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. I saw the state House map labeled “Pine” which the Princeton group rated as “C” as in average, could be better and could be worse. It rated the map B for slight Democratic advantage, C for competitiveness, and F for geographic features due to non-compact districts. The Princeton analysis also noted that none of the districts are black majority, though several are minority majority. In looking at the map of the districts in the Detroit area I see a problem. Eight Mile Rd. is the boundary between the predominantly black Detroit and the predominantly white northern suburbs (the Eminem movie titled 8 Mile was given that name for that reason). This map shows nine long, thin state House districts that cross Eight Mile. Several others cross the city border to include parts of western suburbs that are just as white as the northern burbs. I think there is one, maybe two, districts that are completely in Detroit. Yeah, it looks like gerrymandering – not so much Republican and Democrat (all these districts around Detroit are strongly Democratic) but to keep blacks out of the state legislature. This afternoon and evening was the first time for citizens to give in-person feedback. Another four meetings will be held across the state this week and next. This meeting was in Detroit. I thought of attending, but didn’t think I had a particular comment to make that others would be better able to say. So I watched part of the afternoon proceedings online citizens came to the microphones and had 90 seconds to say what they though. The overall view of the maps is that the commission screwed up. Even the heavily gerrymandered 2010 maps had 12 black majority House districts (there are 110 members of the House). This map proposes two. Unacceptable. This doesn’t even fulfill the Voting Rights Act (which, alas, has been gutted). The commission must start over. Several Detroit people who worked hard to get the Redistricting Commission approved in the 2018 election spoke of their disappointment. We worked hard to get something better. These maps are better in that they may restore the balance in the legislature, but they are not better in minority representation in that legislature. Try again. Meteor Blades, Daily Kos staff emeritus, listed and commented on a few climate related stories. Here are some of them: * Congress had better act really quick so that Biden has something tangible of American plans to take to the Glasgow climate summit in about 10 days. It would be good if he could tell China and India we’re doing something, what about you? * That climate summit has a few corporate sponsors. One would think having corporate sponsors at a gathering to talk about the climate crisis would be a bad idea. At least Big Oil won’t be there. But Microsoft, Unilever, and Land Rover will. They’ll have space to tout how green they are. Sure. Unilever is among the top five largest producers of polluting plastics. * The US will need a big increase in the solar workforce. * There are two dozen fossil fuel projects waiting for some level of approval from the US federal government. If approved they will increase fossil fuel emissions by 20% at a time when we’re supposed to be cutting emissions. So don’t approve them. Sydney Pereira of Kos Prism wrote about what is now being called the Great Resignation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that nearly 4.3 million people quit their jobs in August. That’s 2.9% of the workforce. The reasons: The old job overworked them (or didn’t offer enough COVID protections) or didn’t pay enough. Workers are saying the old job just wasn’t worth it. Some employers are now reevaluating pay and benefits. Dartagnan of the Kos community added that workers aren’t looking for just more pay. They also want better benefits and better work/life balance. Chitown Kev, in his pundit roundup for Kos, included a couple quotes about the Great Resignation. From Derek Thompson of The Atlantic:

Nearly 7 percent of employees in the “accommodations and food services” sector left their job in August. That means one in 14 hotel clerks, restaurant servers, and barbacks said sayonara in a single month. ... As I wrote in the spring, quitting is a concept typically associated with losers and loafers. But this level of quitting is really an expression of optimism that says, We can do better. You may have heard the story that in the golden age of American labor, 20th-century workers stayed in one job for 40 years and retired with a gold watch. But that’s a total myth. The truth is people in the 1960s and ’70s quit their jobs more often than they have in the past 20 years, and the economy was better off for it. Since the 1980s, Americans have quit less, and many have clung to crappy jobs for fear that the safety net wouldn’t support them while they looked for a new one. But Americans seem to be done with sticking it out. And they’re being rewarded for their lack of patience: Wages for low-income workers are rising at their fastest rate since the Great Recession. The Great Resignation is, literally, great.

And from Paul Krugman of the New York Times who asked: Why now?

Well, it’s only speculation, but it seems quite possible that the pandemic, by upending many Americans’ lives, also caused some of them to reconsider their life choices. Not everyone can afford to quit a hated job, but a significant number of workers seem ready to accept the risk of trying something different — retiring earlier despite the monetary cost, looking for a less unpleasant job in a different industry, and so on. And while this new choosiness by workers who feel empowered is making consumers’ and business owners’ lives more difficult, let’s be clear: Overall, it’s a good thing. American workers are insisting on a better deal, and it’s in the nation’s interest that they get it.

Last Saturday Michel Martin of NPR talked to James Fallows, former editor of the U.S. News and World Report. The discussion was about that magazine’s ongoing ranking of best high schools and colleges and its new ranking of the best public elementary and middle schools. The magazine publishes these rankings because it is good for business. It appeals to the human desire for ranking. While ratings are good, ranking is not. Ranking West Point to Caltech to Julliard is preposterous. Ranking encourages abuse: Parents buying their children’s way into the top ranked schools, sometimes using fraud. Schools jiggering their ranking through their acceptance rate – the number of students they accept compared to the number who apply so they encourage more to apply. As for elementary schools, their quality is already tied too much to property tax differentials. Telling one elementary school they rank #2115 while another a few miles away is ranked 600 places higher is absurd, useless, and harmful. We shouldn’t rank elementary schools. Though there is a human desire for hierarchy and these rankings are not going away, it is essential to dilute the influence of one source through having more sources, such as other rankings that use different criteria. This discussion fits right in to my understanding that ranking and a hierarchy of either schools or humans are bad things. Joan McCarter of Kos wrote that Sen. Manchin’s end game is clear. He wants to decouple the two infrastructure bills, have the House vote quickly on the bipartisan bill already passed by the Senate, ... and let Biden’s Build Back Better plan die. Yeah, that’s the bill with all the climate saving programs. And Manchin has no interest in saving the planet. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported on Manchin’s fellow obstructionist, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.

Sinema, who raised $1.1 million in the third quarter, apparently thinks she can buy her way to reelection with the backing of corporate America and GOP donors while pissing off those that brung her. Lots of corporate lobbyists from the pharmaceutical and finance sectors took an interest in Sinema, as she and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia continue to erect roadblocks to President Joe Biden's potentially transformative agenda. ... But perhaps what is truly amazing about Sinema selling out her party for dollars is just how anemic her fundraising numbers look next to those of her fellow Democratic Arizona senator, Mark Kelly, who amassed $8 million in third-quarter fundraising.

Kelly doesn’t accept PAC donations. McCarter wrote that many Congressional Democrats are getting frustrated with Biden and his passivity on what is a huge chunk of his own agenda. So he has reengaged with tweets and speeches and sitting down with various groups of Democrats. McCarter didn’t report on Biden’s discussion with Manchin. Peter Doocy is the Fox News reporter at the White House. He uses his questions to try to get soundbites suitable for his network. Press Secretary Jen Psaki is pretty good at knocking down his idiotic questions. Laura Clawson of Kos reported on the latest round. Doocy blathered on about vaccine mandates for police officers. Mandate getting the jab and they’ll quit. Then, while understaffed, how will they deal with public safety – terror, murder, robberies, kidnappings? Psaki responded, “What was the number-one cause of death among police officers last year, do you know?” ... long silence ... “COVID-19,” she said. COVID has also been the number-one cause of death among police officers this year. As for police quitting in the face of mandates, very little of that his happening. Clawson wrote:

Terror? The U.S. is currently experiencing about a 9/11’s worth of COVID-19 deaths every two days. Murder? A year’s worth of homicide deaths from COVID-19 about every 12 days, at the current rate. Kidnapping? Abduction by strangers is extremely rare—you’d have to go to the state level to express the frequency of COVID-19 deaths relative to that.

Doocy and Fox News have shown they don’t care about the police or public safety or the people who have died from COVID. “Doocy and Fox News are concerned about the appearance of supporting police, using it here as a tool to attack efforts to end the pandemic.” Clawson also wrote about the latest use of the shadow docket by the Supreme Court. This time the unsigned decisions were involved in two cases of police brutality and their protections under qualified immunity. Clawson wrote:

These actions were protected, the court said, because there must be precedent that a specific form of brutality is extreme enough to wipe away qualified immunity—and that precedent must come from the Supreme Court. It’s not enough that a lower court has told officers it is unacceptable to put a knee on someone’s back with enough force to injure them. The Supreme Court must have signed on to that very specific opinion. It’s almost like if an officer can figure out what the court hasn’t ruled out in the way of harming suspects—which is a lot—he has a free pass to do that.

It sounds like the court is saying it isn’t brutal until we say that specific thing is brutal – and we’re the only ones who get to decide. Clawson concluded by writing:

Qualified immunity allows law enforcement to essentially torture at will, knowing that the courts will protect them in all but the most gratuitous, egregious, and outright disgusting cases—and even sometimes then. The Supreme Court earlier this year showed some willingness to say that there are limits to that. On Monday it qualified that with a “but not too often, not too many, not too strict.”

Aysha Qamar of Kos reported that the Center Academy, a private school in Miami, has announced that students are to be quarantined for 30 days when they are vaccinated. One would expect a quarantine to happen after being exposed, though perhaps they do that too. The school said they added the quarantine because of concerns of the vaccine side effects and the spread of COVID-19. Yeah, it’s all bunk – vaccines do not have a living virus and anything in the vaccine cannot be spread to another person.

We need to house a set of accurate history books

Walter Shaub, former director of the Office of Government Ethics, tweeted a thread:

Biden’s democracy saving efforts so far: No Supreme Court reform proposals No voting rights proposals No filibuster reform proposals No ethics reform proposals No campaign finance reform proposals No public campaign against the state voter suppression bills No public campaign to pressure Manchin and Sinema No public campaign against fascism No warnings about the authoritarian movement Continued expansion of executive power at the expense of legislative power Appointment of a timid institutionalist as attorney general One pretty speech about voting rights Massive expenditure of political capital on an infrastructure bill, coupled with massive compromise on the infrastructure bill, which still hasn’t passed Some good work on the pandemic ... Legally questionable military action in Syria Continuation of some of Trump’s worst immigration policies Appointment of extremely qualified experts to replace Trump’s bumbling, unqualified staff, restoring competence to govt leadership Cluelessness about the fascist threat Grade so far: C- (it would be a D, but I’m hopeful he’ll shift to filibuster reform after this coming week), which is up from Trump’s F- (and that was a gift because there is no grade below an F minus, so it’s not possible to truly grade Trump’s assault on the republic.

In another thread Shaub wrote:

Listen up, Europe, New Zealand other folks. Listen good. We’re gonna need you to carry some seed of democracy into the 22nd century. I know some of you aren’t up to the task. But we only need one or two countries to make it, so someone can house a set of accurate history books. We have some great books you can use. But you’re going to need to come get them very soon.

Brubs of the Daily Kos community wrote about an incident that rattled him. He was weeding his lawn and a young man came up and said he help. He was staring a yard service company using electric equipment and nature friendly chemicals. Two cop cars drove up.

Down went the window of the one closest to me. “Good afternoon sir, everything ok here?” the white officer asked. Not grasping the point of his question at first, I looked over to the young man; his head was down and body language was now stiff. I looked back to the cop, who was staring at him. That’s when the ridiculously obvious smacked me over the head: I’m an older white man in a fairly affluent white neighborhood, speaking to a young Black man standing over me while I’m on the ground.

The white person had to handle the situation. The blameless black person could do nothing. Brubs assured the officer he was fine. The cop cars drove off. He wondered if a neighbor had called the police.

The entire exchange lasted just a few minutes, and the chance to offer some witty comment calling out the officer was lost in my sudden awareness, and my desire to end the interaction. But I could, and I should, have done more. I wish I had asked the cop why? Why are you in front of my house? Why do you think you needed to make certain I was ok? Why didn't your dispatcher recognize the inherent racism in the initial call, if that is how you ended up on my doorstep? And why did you act like that young man was invisible during it all, with the exception of that initial look at him which was designed to signal why you were there?

Brubs gave the job to the black man. Commenter novapsyche wrote about having many white friends and ...

It took me until some time into my 30s that I realized that when I was out and about with my friends, I didn’t attract the baseline amount of ambient public monitoring. (That sounds paranoid; I assure you it is not.) It’s easier for Black people to go out in public when they have a White minder. I’m sorry to be so blunt about it, but it’s true. As long as I have a White friend or gaggle of friends around me, it’s like I have a societal hall pass. Someone’s vetted me and is vouching for me. Trust me, I do try to combat being so cynical.

TrueBlueMajority for Black Star Resistance of Kos wrote:

Which of these lines of asterisks is longest? Line One: ********************************* Line Two: *************************************************** Line Three: ****************** No one is watching you. No one has any idea which line you pick. Knowing the answer under these circumstances is one thing. Standing by your answer regardless of what others say is a completely different thing. ... [There is] evidence that even when people do know the factual answer, peer pressure will persuade them that going along with the crowd is better than making waves or standing out.

Here are a few of the situations that TrueBlueMajority asks us to consider:

* What if a close family member tells you excitedly in a phone call that s/he just heard line one is longest. Which line is longest then? * What if the highest spiritual authority in your worship community preaches that people who say line two is longest are damned for eternity? * What if you are in a work meeting with 20 people, and your boss goes around the table asking each person in turn which line is longest. All of the other 19 people say line three is longest. You are the last one asked for a response. What do you say? * What if a very highly educated person goes viral with a video insisting that smart people disagree about which line is the longest, because the word “longest” means something different to different people?

Dr. Lori commented:

There’s a direct and inverse relationship between one’s commitment to facts and one’s desire to be liked. If you’re secure in your self, it’s a lot easier to stand up to peer pressure.

The author replied:

That explains everything, Dr. Lori. Very few people have that kind of self confidence, and it is even discouraged in some fundamentalist cultures.

Commenter elfling added the answer one gives could be a matter of personal safety. The author noted some folks are not worth arguing with, then added:

Jane Austen has a wonderful phrase in Sense and Sensibility: “she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition.”

Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos, has a few quotes of interest. From an article in the New York Times (author not named):

As lawmakers debate how much to spend on President Biden’s sprawling domestic agenda, they are really arguing about a seemingly simple issue: affordability. Can a country already running huge deficits afford the scope of spending that the president envisions? Or, conversely, can it afford to wait to address large social, environmental and economic problems that will accrue costs for years to come?

I mention this one not because I agree with it but because the excerpt – and, judging from the tone, the whole article – doesn’t mention an important aspect. This bill doesn’t and doesn’t have to run up deficits. It includes provisions to tax the rich, which this article ignores. Taxing the hugely rich is beneficial to our society beyond just raising money for government programs. The rich get their money by exploiting the working poor and taxing them restores part of the balance. The other part of the problem of the hugely rich is they have enough money to buy the government, which loses a basic function of protecting the little guy and the environment from the big guy. Dworkin also quoted EJ Dionne of the Washington Post:

It’s important to acknowledge another reality that goes beyond Manchin, Sinema and the Democratic Party as a whole: Severe structural problems in our politics and institutions are making it far harder to solve problems — and to have productive debates over how to do so.

The roundup included a quote from an article by Peter Sandman and Jody Lanard on Sandman’s website.

If you acknowledge that your opponents’ case is strong, some of them just might be open to the argument that your case is even stronger. If you claim they have no case, you have no shot. We call this “even-though risk communication”: * “Even though vaccine mandates are a huge blow to personal freedom, what’s more important right now, sadly, is that they are also a huge and essential step toward ending the pandemic.” * “Even though vaccine mandates are a huge step toward ending the pandemic, what’s more important right now, sadly, is that they are also a huge and unacceptable blow to personal freedom.” Concede the merits of the other side’s case before you build your argument that on balance – not 100% but on balance – your case is even stronger. And build your argument sadly, not triumphantly, taking full cognizance of the sacrifice you are asking of your opponents.

One more from the roundup – Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who wrote that Sen. Joe Manchin doesn’t look or act much like a Bond villain.

And yet make no mistake: West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin has positioned himself to destroy the globe in a way that Auric Goldfinger, Ernst Starvo Blofeld, or Lyutsifer Safin could have only dreamed of. This Friday night’s news dump that Manchin will exercise his veto power as the most conservative Democrat in the 50-50 Senate to kill the lynchpin of President Biden’s climate change agenda — $150 billion to help utilities transition into clean energy and away from dirty fossil fuels including coal, from which Manchin and his family have earned millions — is a gut punch to the world’s environment.

Joan McCarter of Kos wrote:

The de facto president of the United States, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, had a busy weekend making decrees about the limits he is placing on the actual president, Joe Biden, in passing his big economic agenda plan in the Democrats’ budget reconciliation bill. He has informed the White House that he will not allow the core element of Biden’s proposal on climate change, the Clean Electricity Performance Program, which would accelerate utilities’ shift from coal- and gas-powered plants to renewable technology—wind, solar, and nuclear—to help reach the goal of zero carbon emissions in power generation by 2035. Manchin is having none of that.

McCarter then discussed the child tax credit (CTC) that is providing much needed income to poor families. Manchin doesn’t like it. So McCarter looked at details provided by the Niskanen Center that shows how much the CTC helps families of West Virginia and how Manchin’s demands for means testing and work requirements will make their lives worse.

He is purposefully harming his own constituents. Why he’s opposed to helping families isn’t clear, unless it’s because he is at heart a Republican. ... Manchin’s stranglehold on the Senate—and thus on everything from saving our democracy to taking this last opportunity to stave off catastrophic climate change—has to stop. He’s not going to change his mind on this out of altruism or enlightenment. It’s got to be raw political power at this point, the kind that only a president can [wield]. Biden has to stop treating Manchin as just another Senate colleague and start treating him as someone he can break politically.

As for that last one, see the first section of today’s post. Our future doesn’t look good. Lea McElrath tweeted:

Reporters keep pretending Manchin is acting in good faith and there’s a rational answer to the question of what he wants. Manchin picked means testing for Biden’s signature child tax credit on purpose because he knows it’s a non-starter. He wants to obstruct. He’s obstructing.

The nation can afford to take care of everyone

I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data on Saturday. In new cases per day the state hit 4990 This is the highest number of cases since June (peaks in April and November are above 8300). The CDC reports that cases across the country have been falling since early September, including in such hard hit states as Florida and Texas. Michigan is one of five states where cases are still rising (I don’t remember the other four and didn’t look for them). In contrast to previous surges in cases, this one has been a slow and steady rise over three and a half months. The peaks in deaths per day for the last five weeks (some of which have been adjusted) are 41, 47, 42, 42, and 33 (the last one likely to be adjusted). Joan McCarter of Daily Kos titled a post with “Biden’s Supreme Court commission proves to be the farce we all expected.” Her opening paragraph:

The “blue ribbon” commission appointed by President Joe Biden to study the problem of Republican court packing, particularly at the U.S. Supreme Court, has gone beyond being an ineffective and useless body (as most blue ribbon commissions usually are) to being downright dangerous. It released a draft report Thursday, ahead of a scheduled Friday meeting, full of Federalist Society narratives and Republican lies.

Since the commission was created in April the court has allowed the Texas abortion ban to go into effect, and blocked Biden’s extension of the eviction moratorium and his end of the “remain in Mexico” policy. They did this and more through the shadow docket where there is no formal argument and opinions are unsigned. In regular business they gutted the Voting Rights Act and made it harder to unionize. All that since the commission was created in April. Some of the things in the report: * Doubting that ideological balance should be a goal. * Justices aren’t partisan because they don’t always rule along partisan lines. * Saying that refusing to confirm Merrick Garland to the Supremes in Obama’s last year is standard practice. * Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh lacked “evidentiary support” (wrong – her testimony was evidence, besides the FBI botched its investigation of Kavanaugh). McCarter quoted a tweet by Southpaw, who quoted Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s statement on the commission’s report. Whitehouse said the report left out several things, some of which are: * During the last three nominations and confirmations the Federalist Society received enormous anonymous donations. * Anonymous checks, up to $17 million, funded advertising related to the confirmations. * There is a fast lane of cases of politically loaded cases that get to the Supremes through deliberate losses at lower courts. * There have been 80 cases with evident Republican donor interest and all 80 were won on a 5-4 vote (before Barrett joined the court). Much of Whitehouse’s complaints of the court are because of the power of the Federalist Society. So there is one thing Biden should do with this report: trash it. I listened to this week’s bonus episode of Gaslit Nation, the one I can listen to as a donor to Gaslit Nation on Patreon. I did not read the transcript of this week’s regular episode. I listened to the bonus because hosts Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa answer listener’s questions and I had asked a question (though I’m not sure how one goes about asking a question, so maybe they didn’t see the one I posed). My question wasn’t included. Before Kendzior got to the questions she discussed Merrick Garland. I didn’t take notes while I listened, so I won’t go into details. Here’s the general idea: Merrick Garland got the reputation of being a warrior against GOP because the GOP controlled Senate refused to consider him for the Supreme Court. But that reputation is not true. Garland was put in charge of the Department of Justice because he is a friend of the nation’s criminal elite and his job is to protect them. One of those friends is Jamie Gorelick. She’s been a friend since he was in college and she hired him as her assistant when she was deputy attorney general under Bill Clinton. She is also (as stated in the episode’s description)

an exemplar of the Big Law corruption we discuss so much on this show, that nexus where state corruption, organized crime, and corporate corruption meet under the protection of a broken system of lawyers and lobbyists.

Gay CA Democrat of the Kos community discussed (mostly quoted) a report by CNN about the cuts Sens. Manchin and Sinema are demanding be made to the $3.5t human infrastructure bill in Congress. First, Sinema was in a snit over a “breach of trust” because Pelosi didn’t call a vote by the end of September for the bipartisan infrastructure bill already passed by the Senate. Pelosi didn’t because there was also an agreement the two bills would be advanced together. Sinema is using this as an excuse for her bad behavior. On to the bill itself. Both Manchin and Sinema say it is too big. They want something below $1.9t. Then the article got into Manchin’s specifics. He doesn’t want Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing (and Bernie Sanders and other progressives say removing that coverage is a red line). He doesn’t like the enhanced paid family/medical leave. And ... Manchin, coal man that he is, rejected aggressive climate measures. He justified it saying Biden’s target of reducing emissions by 50% by 2030 won’t happen. Besides, he said, we’re in the midst of an energy crisis (no, we’re not, said those of us who lived through the energy crisis of the 1970s). Rebekah Sager of Kos reported that a new poll shows Sinema is loathed in her home state of Arizona. If she was running next year she would face an incredibly tough Democratic primary. Her current antics are putting her on a path out of office. Joan McCarter of Kos reported Manchin and Sinema, plus a few conservative Democrats in the House, are trying to force a choice between Medicare vision plans and extending Medicaid to twelve GOP states that refused to do so under the Affordable Care Act. McCarter, who noted that conservative Democrats again pit vulnerable communities against each other, wrote:

It’s an unnecessary trade-off. Because the nation can afford to take care of everyone, it should be the number-one principle of elected Democrats: no person left behind.

McCarter quoted Mark Pocal, who again made the point about how the cost of this bill is less than half of the Defense budget already approved. Rep Pramila Jayapal, head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which is holding firm, said:

A lot of people have asked: “Isn’t something better than nothing?” And the answer, quite simply, is no. Because when it comes down to something rather than nothing, it’s the same people who are forced to settle for nothing over and over and over again.

Meteor Blades, Kos staff emeritus writing the Climate Brief, wrote:

Without passage of a bill containing aggressive programs, Biden’s team is going to have a devil of a time in Glasgow at the climate summit persuading China, India, and Brazil that he can even deliver the U.S. pledges on emissions cuts, much less that their nations should do better than they are. ... It’s actually easier to respect a numbskull like Sen. James “Snowball” Inhofe, who wrote an entire book calling climate change a hoax and seems to truly believe it, than Manchin, who pretends he’s down with the science even as his bank account gets ever fatter feeding off the teat of the fossil fuel industry.

Some good climate news: Laura Clawson of Kos reported Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced plans to have seven, maybe more, lease sales for offshore wind farms. The areas for lease will be along the East Coast, in the Gulf of Mexico, and off the coasts of California and Oregon. This is a step towards Biden’s pledge of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. No movie tonight. I watched the Detroit Symphony Orchestra livestream last evening, then spent this afternoon teaching handbell techniques. So the two felt like my escape from daily stresses.

The opposite of the white flag of surrender

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has scheduled the Freedom to Vote Act for a floor vote next week. Finally! This is a bill that Sen. Joe Manchin spent time helping to craft (so it is a bill important to him). It is also a bill he’s been shopping around to Republicans, hoping there are “10 good people” on the Republican side who will vote for it. There needs to be ten GOP votes because Manchin also refuses to get rid of the filibuster. McCarter wrote:

Manchin has remained convinced that by the force of his personality and magical belief in bipartisanship, there will be enough Republicans who think every eligible voter needs easy access to the polls. Maybe the brick wall of opposition will do the trick of bringing Manchin around on the filibuster. Even though Mitch McConnell broke last week on the debt ceiling, supposedly out of fear that Democrats would nuke the filibuster to pass it, he’s not going to let 10 GOP senators loose on this one.

McCarter then reviewed all the good election protection stuff in this bill. Then she wrote:

“We cannot allow conservative-controlled states to double down on their regressive and subversive voting bills,” Schumer said in his letter, calling for a vote as early as Wednesday. “I hope that our Republican colleagues will join us in good faith,” he wrote. “But Republicans must come to the table to have that conversation and at the very least vote to open debate.” Or what? That’s where we’re all left dangling, including Manchin, who has staked an awful lot on this bill. So far, no Republican has expressed any interest in voting for it. Schumer has said, lots and lots of times, that “everything is on the table” in restoring voting rights. We might just see whether he means it next week.

David Neiwert of Kos reported there is a new flag being flown at far right events, a black American flag. It’s all black, though the small variations in color show the traditional stars and stripes. Neiwert wrote:

Black flags have a particular historical meaning for Americans: They first appeared on Civil War battlegrounds, carried by some Confederate Army units, and symbolizing the intent of the soldiers to neither seek any quarter nor give any—essentially, the opposite of the white flag of surrender, signifying that enemy combatants are to be killed rather than taken prisoner. It’s a vow to massacre their enemies.

This flag joins several others – the Gadsden “Don’t Tread On Me” flag, the Blue Lives Matter flag, and several other MAGA themed flags. It is a sign the person flying it is ready for a Second Civil War. Writing about the Capitol attack, Neiwert wrote:

If anyone believes the radicalized American right’s drive to push the nation into bloody civil strife was somehow expiated or exhausted that day, they only need check the presence of black American flags the next time there is a right-wing protest in their town. Or maybe they can just check the front porches in their neighborhoods.

Neiwert also began a post from last Monday with:

The scene in Rome this weekend had a disturbingly familiar feel to it: An angry mob, fueled by far-right conspiracy theories and disinformation, besieging and invading and vandalizing the stately offices of the country’s largest workers union at the culmination of a protest against public COVID-19 health measures. And leading the violence was a gang of far-right neo-fascist thugs. Yes, it had more than a passing resemblance to the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection in Washington—as well as similarities to the recent COVID-19 measure protests in Melbourne, Australia, not to mention multiple school and health board meetings in towns across America in the months afterward. Many of these scenes have been “mini-insurrections,” and their repetition on a global basis makes clear that this is the post-Trump strategy being adopted by the radical right: Generate controversy with disinformation that in turn leads to mostly localized protests to which violent far-right groups can then attach themselves and expand their campaigns of terrorizing both “the left” and the public generally.

Why a union office? Fascists – frequently sponsored by corporations – don’t like unions. Rioters also attempted to enter the residence of the prime minister, but police repelled them. A mob entered a nearby hospital emergency unit and trashed equipment. Other fascist parties, from Germany to Australia have also adopted these tactics. Neiwert wrote:

The model for this has been the Proud Boys’ chief strategy since Jan. 6: operating on a purely local level, consistently hijacking causes and events organized by local activists and communities. But as intelligence analyst Kristopher Goldsmith recently explained on MSNBC, these mini-insurrections are in fact a form of preparation for a much more overwhelming event farther down the road. "Every failed coup is just practice,” Goldsmith said. “What's, I think, most disturbing, to people now is that it's become out in the public." ... The constant drumbeat of mini-insurrections, he said, pose a real threat to democratic institutions. “Right now, everyone from Proud Boys to the Oath Keepers to QAnon influencers are trying to encourage their members, their followers, their maniacs to show up at school board hearings and intimidate members so that those people resign,” he said. “That creates vacancies so that they can run for elections and win. “It’s not just a spontaneous thing. It’s completely organized. And it’s not just organized by extremist groups, it’s organized by some of the most well-moneyed and flashy PACs, like Turning Point USA.”

Hunter of Kos wrote:

The Republican Party has now adopted the big lie, the hoax that looks to undermine democracy by declaring that important elections not won by Republican candidates are somehow "rigged" or "fraudulent," and are running with it. The chances are good that there will be another insurrection or similar act of terrorism in the next election. Fox News and top Republican leaders are both making sure of that. ... It is a frame that Fox News has been pushing: Not just the last election, but the next elections are also under threat due to unspecified, invisible supposed fraud unfairly cheating Dear Leader's party and minions out of their rightful places in office. That each of the Giuliani-pushed, Powell-pushed, Trump-pushed claims of fraud have been proven hoaxes at this point makes no difference to [Fox News host Maria] Bartiromo or the others. The goal of Bartiromo and other insurrection-backing Fox pundits is to use the false claims to create an overriding belief, in their audience, that the next elections will either be won by Republicans or will be "illegitimate." The Big Lie is not meant to be proven. It is a weapon. It is the knife that top members of new Republicanism will threaten each new election with, if the nation dares vote against them. We can see how important the election hoax is to Republican Party strategy in the absolute unwillingness of Republican leaders to concede its falseness. ... There will almost certainly be another insurrection. It may be in one of the state capitols, rather than inside the U.S. Capitol itself. It may again be violent, or it may consist of a state's Republican lawmakers simply nullifying an election outright with claims no more substantive than Rudy Giuliani's seditionist hoaxes. Everything Republican leaders are doing, from new election laws to the drumbeat of "fraud" rhetoric clogging the Fox News arteries, has the toppling of elections themselves as necessary end point.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat quoted a tweet from historian Dr. Joanne Freeman, who quoted an article in Slate:

"They no longer think they’ll have to answer to the entire public, ever...[A]bsolutely nothing else we do will be as imperative as ensuring that we have free & fair elections whose results are honored." Popularity doesn’t matter in a post-voting America.

Ben-Ghiat added

Correct. It's not about being liked. it's about getting people to submit to you & follow you blindly.