White people’s beliefs have value

Before the election the nasty guy frequently said he knew nothing about Project 2025. Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported he has “nominated at least seven people who either directly contributed to the document or who promoted it” with more people on the short list for other positions. Howard Lutnick, the nasty guy’s co-chair of his transition, had said Project 2025 is too “radioactive” for any of its people to be nominated for the cabinet. Lutnick is now the nominee for the Department of Commerce. The nominees from Project 2025: + Russ Vought wrote the chapter on how the president can amass more power by purging federal employees who are insufficiently loyal. His also a Christian nationalist. He is nominated for the director of the Office of Management and Budget. + Brendan Carr, currently an FCC commissioner, wrote the chapter on the FCC. He is nominated to be the FCC chair. + Tom Homan is listed as a contributor to Project 2025. He was a part of the inhumane family separation policy in the nasty guy’s first term. He’s nominated to be the border czar. I don’t think that’s currently a job title. + John Ratcliffe was director of national intelligence in the first term. He is a Project 2025 contributor. He’s nominated to head the CIA. The nasty guy praised him for “telling the truth” about Hunter Biden’s laptop. + Pete Hoekstra is currently the chair of the Republican Party in Michigan. He took over after the previous chair, a MAGA person who made a mess of things. So he’s seen as the calm establishment guy. Yet, he is listed as a Project 2025 contributor. He’s nominated to be ambassador to Canada. + Karoline Leavitt was a campaign spokesperson and is nominated for White House press secretary. She appeared in a Project 2025 training video to discuss how a loyalist should navigate working for the federal government. + James Braid worked as deputy chief of staff for JD Vance’s Senate office. He starred in Project 2025 videos on how to get its agenda through Congress. He’ll be the liaison to Congress to get the agenda passed. Not counted in the nominees and new hires is Vance, who is only one step away from Project 2025. The head of the project wrote a book and Vance wrote the foreword. So what’s this about the nasty guy knowing nothing about Project 2025? A week ago an Associated Press article posted on Kos reported that the nasty guy named several nominees for financial, health, and national security positions. I’m interested in only one of them, the guy nominated for Treasury Secretary. He’s Scott Bessent. He’s of interest because he’s gay, with a husband and children. The AP article also says he is closely aligned with Wall Street. Because of that he’s seen as a “safe” pick. He is also an advocate for deficit reduction and he has said that means slashing government programs while in favor of extending tax cuts for the rich. This guy has made a big change. He had donated to Al Gore’s presidential run and worked for George Soros, a big supporter of Democrats. At some point he switched to supporting and advising the nasty guy. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a quote I found worth mentioning. It is by Mark Hertling of The Bulwark:

The inculcation of personal values, or the understanding of organizational values and values-based decision making, are not as prevalent as they may need to be. I’ve taught values-based leadership and decision-making to healthcare professionals and MBA students. When I begin teaching each class, I ask, “What are your personal values, and do they align with your organization’s stated values?” Every time, I’m met with mostly blank stares. The same seems to be true in government. A few years ago, I was discussing some issue or another with a member of Congress. I asked him why he held a particular position on the issue, and he responded, “Because I support American values.” When I asked which specific value that policy was connected to, he couldn’t name one.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme:

Nasty guy: Elon you can’t sit there! Elon: It’s my presidency. I bought it!

Much further down is a Twonks cartoon with the caption “Freak out your new neighbors” and shows packing boxes labeled with such things as bowling balls, bagpipes, tap shoes, fireworks, crossbows, and crocodile food. Back in the middle of October Michael Harriot wrote a thread about “Race as an Economic Construct.” We’ve heard that race is a social construct and he wrote most social constructs are economic constructs. Most non-white school districts are underfunded. Some say it’s partly due to schools being funded by property taxes and a home in a black neighborhood is worth $48K less than the same home in a white neighborhood. So those schools there get less money. The big question: Why haven’t we fixed this? We as a society have agreed that black children are less valuable. It’s the only explanation. Through our history if there’s a problem we wanted to solve we did it. We’re not even trying to fix this one. Now think in terms of effort and return on effort. One would work a bit extra for a big boost in pay. But what if that increase went to your child and not you? What if it went to a child you didn’t know? Would you still work extra if the increase went to a black child? Harriot turned to belief economics. White people’s beliefs have value. The nasty guy made white people believe immigration was a big problem, when unauthorized immigration is down. Same with the economy, same with crime. White people think crime is getting worse when it is dropping. But white fixes to crime harm black people. Politicians and media focus on white people’s beliefs and not black people’s reality.

The far right media apparatus won’t let them know

While Sister and Niece were here for Thanksgiving yesterday I asked Niece where she gets her news. I asked because I’ve seen and written about articles saying where one gets their news correlated highly with how one voted. Niece says she ignores news as much as she can. When she feels she must know about an event she turns to the BBC for the British take on what Americans are doing. Or she checks out a Korean or other east Asian news source (she likes east Asian culture). If that still isn’t enough she turns to a service I think she called Ground that categorizes articles on how far to the left or right they are and puts that designation at the top of the article. I think it is wise for her to get her news in the way she does. Last Sunday I wrote about an article by John Stoehr, writing for his Editorial Board in which he disputed the idea that people who voted for the nasty guy would blame him for the damage he does to the economy. I summarized one of Stoehr’s points in part by saying, “the far right media apparatus won’t let them know...” On Wednesday Alix Breeden of Daily Kos reported that nasty junior talked to podcast host Michael Knowles, saying that the nasty guy was planning to install some conservative podcasters into the White House press briefing room. Though I shouldn’t have to, I’ll say it anyway, these are guys like Knowles and Joe Rogan who are strong supporters of the nasty guy. To make room for them nasty junior said that press passes for some traditional media would have to be revoked, “That's going to blow up some heads.” Breeden discussed an obvious problem with that – podcasters are not journalists and don’t have to (and won’t) adhere to any journalistic standards. While journalists in traditional media have varying standards, depending on the corporation behind them, at least they have some standards. Another big issue is we won’t know who is funding the podcasters. There was a case in September where far right influencers were found to unknowingly be funded by Russia. Those podcasters with direct access to the White House may not have any journalistic standards and may be funded by America’s enemies. The far right media apparatus won’t let us know what is really going on. Yesterday, Mark Sumner, Kos Emeritus, discussed the “joke” from Elon Musk that now that Comcast is spinning off MSNBC into a separate company Musk talked about buying it. Comcast is shedding several networks along with MSNBC. Comments on Musk’s X joked about Rachel Maddow being replaced by Joe Rogan. To think about what that would do to MSNBC one need only look at what Musk did to Twitter in turning it into X, a haven for far right trolls.

Musk is signaling that he has the limitless resources and unchecked power to purchase and shutter any outlet he believes represents a threat to Donald Trump or the incoming array of kleptocrats. He can not only silence perceived critics, he can do it on a whim. What Musk is suggesting is known as "media capture," and it's a common practice among authoritarian governments everywhere.

This is at a time when the right has media outlets at every level and is always available. There is no progressive media. The recent election showed how uninformed and misinformed many Americans already are. Yeah, conservatives like to decry PBS and NPR and other outlets as too liberal. But they still hold to the idea of “balanced” coverage that can leave lies unchallenged. These “centrist” news outlets skew right to avoid being seen as favoring the left. Notice how critical they were of Biden and Harris while sanewashing the nasty guy.

It has been clear, from 2016 to date, that there is no statement Trump could make that would cause the media to genuinely hold him to account. There has never—not even on the days when a jury held that he had sexually assaulted a woman in a dressing room, or when another jury found him guilty on 31 felony counts—been a time when news outlets barraged Trump in the way they did Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Kamala Harris in 2024.

And this is before being purchased by Musk. Authoritarian regimes do not tolerate independent reporting. In 2019 international agencies identified four steps that regimes use to capture the media. Capture the media regulator. In America that is the Federal Communication Commission, which regulates radio, TV, and the internet. The nasty guy selected Brendan Carr, who wrote the Project 2025 chapter on the FCC. He could revoke broadcast licenses that don’t parrot the administration. He could force Bluesky, the liberal haven from X, to reduce its content moderation. He could handle the lack of rural broadband with huge contracts with Musk’s Starlink. He could ignore the problems of Musk and other billionaires buying TV and radio stations. Control the public service broadcaster. For years Republicans have been reducing government funding for NPR and PBS. They could switch to controlling them – including programs for children. Use of state financing as a control tool. The drop in advertising has meant financial difficulties for newspapers as well as radio and TV stations that don’t have a deep-pocket owner. A lot of money could flow their way – if they’re willing to say the right things. Ownership control. Jeff Bezos may have spent $250 million on the Washington Post, but he spent twice that on one yacht, and he has several. Outlets owned by billionaires are ineffective in delivering news. They could easily switch to propaganda. Sumner listed a few possible headlines over the next few years. They haven’t happened – yet. Here’s a selection:

+ Fox News and Newsmax exclusively allowed on military bases + White House press conferences remove journalists under investigation for "treason" + Congress insists that Sesame Street include more Christian content

Sumner concluded:

America needs an opposition media. It needs one quickly. Unfortunately, there are no signs of that opposition emerging. Musk may be threatening to buy MSNBC, but in the meantime, the remainder of the media is signaling that they don't need to be captured — because they are willing to capitulate. This doesn’t mean the left should surrender. It just means that no one should expect the outlets that were unwilling to confront Trump when he was out of power, to stand up to him now that he has the backing of both Congress and the courts (and the money of Musk). We have to be our own heroes. Again.

The far right media apparatus won’t let them know. Crashing the economy with tariffs? Deporting millions whether or not they have citizenship? The fate of Ukraine and Gaza? The far right media apparatus won’t let them know. Hoomai29 of the Kos community wrote that Democrats should dump the Neoliberal economics that Reagan championed. The post begins with two wealth distribution charts. In France of 1760-90 the wealthiest ten percent of the population owned 60% of all wealth. In the US in 2016 that number is above 75%. The source is European Review of Economic History and the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances. The post then reviewed what Joseph Stiglitz says what 40 years of neoliberalism has given us: unprecedented inequality, stagnation of those with middle income and lost ground from those at the bottom, and declining life expectancy (including “deaths of despair”). Biden and Harris distanced themselves from neoliberalism but they didn’t rebuke it. General economy boosting measures that do not put more money in the pockets of the poor is killing the American Dream and killed Democrats’ chances at an American rebirth. Morgan Stephens of Kos reported several stories of various people who, after the election, are posting that they decided they will not visit MAGA relatives for the holidays. They are “defiantly speaking out about feeling betrayed by family and friends.” One mother said she will stay with her daughter, worried about birth control, and a trans son, who is a political target. A trans man in Colorado won’t go to Texas for the holidays and is considering whether to completely cut the relationship. One said you voted for a racist, a person who is taking away women’s and gay rights, so you’re not my friend. Fox News host Jesse Watters said he was disinvited by his Democratic mother. Another said they won’t unwrap gifts from people who voted for a party that talked about mass deportation. One said her relatives may come, though she’ll use “my special recipe of sarcasm, dark humor, and a heaping scoop of female rage.”

Those who voted for Trump have argued that “politics” shouldn’t come between friendships or family. But those who are choosing to cut ties aren’t buying it.

In 2016 people didn’t know if the nasty guy meant what he said. This time they do and some people are upset that family voted for him anyway. What the nasty guy and Republicans are saying feel like personal attacks. Vulnerable people aren’t able to stay in contact with family that voted to harm them. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted a tweet by Steven Dennis:

Looks like Democrats will end up ~7500 votes short of winning the House majority across three districts. That's the difference between having the power of the purse, subpoenas etc — or not — in a nation of 330+ million.

Dworkin added:

It’s not just a 220-215 House with a narrower margin than this year by one seat. Without Matt Gaetz (resignation), Elise Stefanik (headed to the UN) and likely National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, it’s essentially a 217-215 House until spring. Sounds manageable, eh? What could go wrong?

Dworkin also quoted Dave Wasserman:

Pretty amazing that the House (likely 220R-215D) would have flipped to Dems this year while the White House/Senate flipped to the GOP, had it not been for Rs winning a majority on the NC Supreme Court in 2022, allowing GOP legislators to redraw three Dem seats into oblivion.

In the comments Mike Luckovich has a cartoon of a Thanksgiving feast. At one end of the table they’re all wearing red and at the other they’re all wearing blue. The gap between is big enough that the father needs a megaphone to ask for the potatoes. A cartoon by Mickey Hodges shows a woman on the phone saying, “I’m making my Thanksgiving guest list. How did you vote?”

Who do I need to be worried about and angry at?

My Thanksgiving Day was quiet. Sister and Niece came for the afternoon and our meal did not require a lot of cooking. We sat and talked. And that was enough. Alix Breeden of Daily Kos discussed the many ways immigrants, frequently undocumented, supplied our Thanksgiving table. That includes, but is not limited to, the apples in our pie, the cheese in our mac and cheese, the green beans in our casserole, the mashed potatoes, and even the turkey. These workers are essential to our holiday meal (and every meal). They are under threat of deportation by the nasty guy and his minions. But because they are undocumented they are exploited, even as they are essential. I heard about half of an episode of the NPR show Hidden Brain at the end of September. I looked for it online, but something strange with the website kept me from finding it until recently. The episode is Sitting with Uncertainty. It is a conversation between host Shankar Vetantam and Dannagal Goldthwaite Young of the University of Delaware and the author of Wrong, How Media, Politics and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation. The first part of the episode shows that Young does not deal well with uncertainty. An example is when she and her husband Mike went to Hawaii and her luggage never got on the plane in Newark. Mike said, we’ll buy some clothes here. But Young was mentally stuck worrying about the missing luggage. Later Mike developed a brain tumor. He had surgery and it came back. That prompted Young to try to figure out why – which led her down conspiracy theory rabbit holes. She was angry and needed to know who to direct her anger towards. She could not understand this was a random event. As a university researcher Young was studying how people deal with uncertainty. As part of that she studied how people coped with ambiguity. She said:

People who have a high tolerance for ambiguity tend to be really comfortable with situations that are uncertain and unpredictable. They're really okay with change. They don't need a lot of routine in their world. They can be spontaneous and it doesn't stress them out. And people who are high in need for closure are quite the opposite. They really prefer routine and order and structure and predictability in their lives, in their interactions, and in their sort of physical environments.

Researchers are able to measure tolerance for ambiguity through a series of statements. If a person agrees with one set of statements they have a high tolerance for ambiguity. If they agree with another they have a high need for closure. Conspiracy theories take hold because a person who needs closure wants a quick explanation for a crisis event caused by a complex situation. Related to tolerance for ambiguity is a need for cognition. This is an enjoyment of thinking for the sake of thinking. Such people are less persuaded by emotional appeals. They want information and evidence they can analyze. A person who likes to think is one who has time to think, which means they aren’t constantly scanning their environment for threats. This affects our perceptions of art. Do you enjoy abstract art or realistic art? Do you want stories with a tidy ending or one where you can interpret the ending? Do you like improvisatory jazz or predictable pop music? Back to those constantly scanning their environment. Young said:

For people who are high-threat monitors, they are all about survival in the face of threat, and it's on their mind all the time. What serves these people best is making decisions quickly and efficiently based on heuristics, emotions, intuition, and shortcuts. That is what causes them to have this lower need for cognition. It's not that they can't, it's that it doesn't make sense for them based on their sort of psychophysiological predispositions. Similarly, these are folks who, because they're monitoring for threat, of course they're going to want to be in situations that are highly certain, ordered, predictable. They're not going to be very high in tolerance for ambiguity because that exposes them to threat.

When a threat is imminent one doesn’t want to take a lot of time to think through options. One needs decisive action. In other situations thinking through a situation is better. Both types of people have advantages in some situations and disadvantages in others. Different types of problems have different types of solutions Young did research into acceptance of transgender people. A need for closure is associated with negative opinions of transgender people. A person who needs a yes-no answer has a hard time with in-between things, such as transgender people. Young provides a long explanation on why people with a high need for cognition enjoy satire and irony and those with a low tolerance for ambiguity do not. In contrast, many shows, mostly conservative, emphasize outrage. It identifies threats, explains them clearly and in an emotional way, and it tends towards slippery slope language. When these shows are not conservative the level of outrage is much lower. Young said:

These traits of tolerance for ambiguity and need for cognition, they do cluster on the social and cultural left. And their opposites do cluster on the social and cultural right. And so to the extent that the people who are making these shows are of those ideological groups, and to the extent that they're trying to activate and appeal to audiences who are also of those ideological groups, then naturally, we're going to see these traits sort of manifest in the kinds of content that they create. You have Fox News very much in the spirit of Limbaugh, with their opinion hosts, really appealing to people who are driven by a need for closure, threat monitoring, and who are really just seeking to know, who do I need to be worried about and angry at, and what do I need to do?

We don’t recognize those on the other side think differently than we do. We just call them extreme. Part of why that happens is our media uses our political identities as shortcuts to activate our outrage. A society with a high need for cognition might be a society high in art and innovation, but could be attacked and conquered quickly. A society with a low need for cognition might be super safe, but not have much art or innovation. We need both. We who think one way should not demonize the other. Today’s pundit roundup for Kos has a couple good cartoons in the comments. Of course, there are several cartoons about Thanksgiving. After that, one by Dennis Gorlis is a commentary on the nasty guy’s cabinet picks. Two elephants are talking:

First: What do we do about the nominees who can’t pass background checks? Second: Can’t fail the test you don’t take! First: I like the way you think.

A cartoon by Nick Anderson shows the nasty guy walking a dog. The dog is labeled “DOGE (Department of Groveling to Elon)”

Maybe it is men who should be excluded from combat

An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos reports that Pete Hegseth, the nasty guy’s choice for Secretary of Defense, said earlier this month that women in the military should not be in combat roles. This opens a debate that was thought to be put to rest almost a decade ago. Hegseth insists the military lowered standards to allow women into the elite combat roles. The various branches of the military insist that’s not the case. Hegseth responded that opening positions to women means the standards were changed. The article includes responses from various politicians on both sides and from military personnel. Sen. Tammy Duckworth: “Where do you think I lost my legs, in a bar fight?” Also:

“Who’s going to replace them? Men? And we’re having trouble recruiting men into the Army right now,” said Lory Manning, a retired Navy captain who works with the Service Women’s Action Network.

Kathleen Taylor Logan contributed an op-ed for last Sunday’s Detroit Free Press. She served in Iraq with an infantry unit. She says maybe it is men who should be excluded from combat. Over the last few decades the military has underachieved – stalemated, mismanaged, and outright lost – while in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. And it was led by men. The military needs to move beyond the male-dominated command structures. Women tend to bring empathy to engagements that can deescalate a crisis. They have shown they can channel aggression effectively when needed. They can maintain adaptability and precision while demonstrating the same grit and ferocity. Strategic aggression and calculated restraint that woman often show is essential. Male dominated units have been implicated in atrocities against civilians. The military has been plagued by sexual harassment and assault with disturbing lack of accountability. If those same failures were attributed to women they would have been pulled from combat long ago. Teams led by women and gender-diverse people have shown exceptional leadership, strategy, and teamwork. They tend to outperform teams led only by men. Clinging to traditional gender norms is not a good way to achieve peace and security in the 21st century. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Benjamin Mazer of The Atlantic wrote about Robert Kennedy nominated for Health and Human Services, Marty Makary for Food and Drug Administration, and Jay Bhattacharya expect for National Institutes of Health.

These men have each advocated for changes to the systems and structures of public health. But what unites them all—and what legitimizes them in the eyes of this next administration—is a lasting rage over COVID.

Down in the comments exlrrp posted some good memes. The first is a photo of the sign at Grace Methodist Church: “Be sure to bring up politics at Thanksgiving. It’s going to save you money on Christmas gifts. Follow us for more holiday tips.” Further down in the comments exlrrp posted a cartoon (author not identified) showing a student struggling to scale huge steps. Nearby is a student whose way is eased by much smaller steps made of stacks of $1000 bills. Guy Venables drew a cartoon in response to Storm Bert that caused a great deal of flooding in southern Wales. It shows two workmen in boots with a mop and shovel. One says, “Right, well that’s got that flood cleared up. Same time next month?” Emily Singer of Kos reported:

Special counsel Jack Smith on Monday moved to dismiss the charges against Donald Trump both for trying to steal the 2020 election and for mishandling classified documents, meaning that—for now—Trump will almost certainly avoid consequences for his illegal actions while in office. Smith cited an opinion written in 2000 from the Office of Legal Counsel that says sitting presidents cannot be indicted or prosecuted. However, Smith said he wants the cases dismissed without prejudice, which would mean these cases could resume once Trump is no longer president. His term expires in 2029.

I heard the dismissal was granted not long after being filed. The classified documents case has two other defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira. Their case continues, though the nasty guy could pardon them. Yes, other cases are still around. The nasty guy was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records. Sentencing in that case has been delayed by the election. He faces charges in Georgia in his attempt to get the secretary of state to “find” enough votes to make him the winner in 2020. This is a state case, so he can’t force it to be dropped and can’t pardon himself if convicted. Even so, the judge might decide to follow the federal precedent of not prosecuting an Oval Office occupant. Yes, he ran out the clock. How depressing. Another pundit roundup for Kos, this one by Greg Dworkin, included a quote by Glenn Thrush, who quoted Mike Lee. First, Lee:

All that has changed is that Trump won the election And now Jack Smith is moving to dismiss Isn’t that tantamount to an admission that this was just politicized lawfare from the beginning?

And Thrush:

They would have pursued the case if not stopped by SCOTUS. All of our reporting (and that of others) indicates that Smith and DOJ believe -- right now -- that Trump committed crimes and failing to prosecute him represents a threat to rule of law.

In the comments is a cartoon by Michael de Adder. It shows Speaker Johnson peeking under the door of an occupied woman’s bathroom stall saying, “We’re just making sure there are no weirdos in the woman’s bathroom.” And more memes posted by exlrrp. One by Jen:

I have never once, in my 45 years of living, been harassed in a bathroom by a trans female. However, I have been harassed by a man walking down the street minding my own business many, many, many times. Gender neutral bathrooms aren’t the problem.

One showing Elon Musk:

Imagine you get to a point of wealth so surreal that you can literally solve world hunger. You can eliminate hunger at a planetary scale. And instead, you say, “nah, Imma focus on making life harder for trans people.”

And one by Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD:

I’m frankly disgusted by all of the “RFK Jr. might acshually have good ideas except for vaccines” hot takes. Being an anti-vaxxer is automatically disqualifying for any leadership role related to healthcare, because it is the hallmark of a person who neither understand science nor respects the work of trained scientists. It is a marker of a gargantuan, untamed arrogance.”

The nasty guy has threatened to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, as he did during his first term. This is a historic treaty signed by almost every country pledging to reduce emissions. Two weeks ago Singer reported that Darren Woods, CEO of oil giant Exxon Mobil pushed back, saying, “We need a global system for managing global emissions.”

The fact that an oil company is telling Trump not to make a disastrous decision that would negatively impact the climate is almost hard to fathom. However, Woods told CNBC on Tuesday that Exxon made investments in technologies to lower emissions, and that those investments are reliant on federal tax credits that Biden signed into law. “There needs to be an incentive to reward those investments and generate a return,” Woods told CNBC. “If we find that those incentives dissipate or go away entirely, then that would definitely change our investment plans.”

Yeah, that’s how much Woods actually cares about the environment. Meteor Blades, a Kos Emeritus, wrote about the current state of the climate. His post was written during the COP 29 conference in Baku Azerbaijan. At the top of the post is a chart showing as of September, 2024 is the warmest year since 1850, a bit higher than 2023. Comments further down add that this is the first full year in which the goal of limiting warming to 1.5C was breached. The chart is followed by a series of quotes. Climatologist Michael E. Mann said the US is poised to become authoritarian, ruled by plutocrats and fossil fuel interests, a petrostate. Jesse Jenkins said that the nasty guy can only slow, not stop the clean energy transition. And Bill McKibbin said:

“Clearly we are not magically resistant to authoritarianism—indeed we’ve now embraced a flavor of it. And clearly America is not going to play the commanding role in helping solve the climate crisis, the greatest dilemma humans have ever encountered. For the next few years the best we can hope is that Washington won’t manage to wreck the efforts of others—and that some parts of this big nation will demonstrate what’s still possible. And that many of us can join in a genuinely global citizens’ fight for rapid action.”

Beyond that Blades wrote about various organizations saying how bad the climate has gotten and will get worse. We may soon hit tipping points with accelerated change. That will risk violent conflict, which will undermine cooperation, leading to more climate change. There are also comments about how the nasty guy has declared he will make it worse. Blades ended with a quote from Rebecca Solnit. Here’s part of it:

They want you to feel powerless and to surrender and to let them trample everything and you are not going to let them. You are not giving up, and neither am I. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving. You may need to grieve or scream or take time off, but you have a role no matter what, and right now good friends and good principles are worth gathering in. Remember what you love. Remember what loves you. Remember in this tide of hate what love is. The pain you feel is because of what you love.

When one can no longer own the libs

I spent a good chunk of today and a good chunk on Friday cleaning my dryer vent pipes. Newspaper advice suggests doing this once a year as a way to prepare for winter. I doubt it had been done for at least two decades, likely three. Online advice says it should take about an hour. The actual cleaning took little time. Getting the pieces apart and getting them back together again took a lot longer. I sent several emails to Brother with photos and asking him how I might solve this or that problem. He replied with some help and much encouragement. Ever since Elon Musk took over Twitter and rebranded it as X there have been alternate sites hoping enough people would shift to them to be the place one needed to be as Twitter had been. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos reported since the election Bluesky is becoming that online place. In the last three weeks their user base has passed 20 million (what it was before isn’t reported). Of course, there are growing pains and it doesn’t yet have all the features users want. One would think liberals leaving a conservative playground would be a good thing. Conservatives could express their most extreme thoughts with plenty of support and no pushback. But they’re whining and fuming that liberals fled.

Over the last decade-plus, conservatism has adopted a culture best described as “owning the libs.” The overriding drive behind this is to publicly demonstrate some sort of dominance over liberals as a way (they think) of exhibiting the superiority of conservatism. One would think that if conservative ideas are so great that they could merely win any argument—cutting taxes for the wealthy, deregulating big business, supporting discrimination, what’s not to like? For the right, it’s a lot easier to try and point and laugh, eternally arguing that conservative ideas and memes are so good, so powerful, so correct that liberals are constantly “triggered” and having “meltdowns.” The way conservatives seek to demonstrate this is through cruelty... Conservatives on the social network, taking their lead from Musk and his troll army of devoted followers, live to “own the libs.” Bluesky has said they value community over harassment and have put in tools and functions that—while flawed—are more in line with the tools available on Twitter before Musk took over. So if the “libs” move somewhere else, like Bluesky, there aren’t any liberals to own. ... Not having the libs to own, after making the behavior such a big part of their lives, has created a vacuum for the right. In that way, the libs have now owned them.

To me this sounds like classic hierarchical behavior. They are claiming a high position in the social hierarchy and using it to oppress those they claim are below them. And they’re mighty annoyed at the refusal to be oppressed. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a few quotes of interest. EJ Dionne, in advertising his article in the Washington Post, tweeted:

Progressives won the argument on abortion rights & same-sex marriage. How do you know? Trump & the GOP abandoned both issues, switching to trans rights. The hidden liberal victories of 2024, the limits of Trumpism & the path to long-term progress.

I’m not a subscriber to WaPo, so I don’t know what other hidden victories may be on the list. Robert Reich tweeted:

What's behind Trump’s gonzo cabinet noms? Flood the zone? Yes, but it's deeper than that. Trump wants to deflect our attention while he and his fellow billionaires loot America. He's on his way to creating a government of billionaires, by billionaires, for billionaires.

Dworkin quoted a New York Times article that reported the nasty guy has not agreed to disclose the donors paying for his transition. We should know who is giving and how much and what they expect in return. Tom Nichols tweeted the results of a YouGov poll. Nichols says this is what demographic panic looks like. This is not good for democracy. If this is what many believe no wonder they are freaking out. The poll asked “What percentage of Americans do you think are ___” The results were way off. Here are some of the results. Americans think their fellow citizens are: + Transgender: 21% + Muslim: 27% + Jewish: 30% + Black: 41% + Live in New York City: 30% + Gay or Lesbian: 30% Yes, the numbers are absurd. Muslims and Jews do not make up more than half of the country – do you see more mosques and synagogues than churches? NYC does not contain 90 million. And if 30% are gay or lesbian where are all the kids coming from? These are my answers off the top of my head: + Transgender: 2% + Muslim: 5% + Jewish: 5% + Black: 13% + Live in NYC: 5% + Gay or Lesbian: 4% The actual percentages were not included in the tweet I have access to and I didn’t easily find the survey online. I did some online research to see group populations based on 2024 numbers. I was off by a bit. + Transgender: 0.6% + Muslim: 1% + Jewish: 2% + Black: 14% + Live in NYC: 2.5% + Gay or Lesbian – 3.1% bisexual, 1.4% gay, 0.7% lesbian for a total of about 5%

Just dismiss any evidence that clashes with your prejudices

No movie tonight because my entertainment was this afternoon. I saw a performance of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo that was a part of their 50th anniversary tour. The “Trocks” are an all male ballet troupe, even the dancers wearing tutus. First, they are quite good in all the things one expects in ballet dancers. These men are able to dance en pointe and do it well. They do all the leaps and spins, as well as the solo, partnered, and ensemble dancing one expects. Second, a part of their performance is parody. There are frequent little things that don’t fit classical ballet – the “dying swan” that enters losing feathers, the glide around the stage the looks more like power walking, the dancer who appears onstage a bit too soon, steps that fit more with modern dance than ballet, and many more. In watching the swan ensemble dance in their white tutus I could tell these men do not shave their chests. The program lists the names of sixteen ballerinas and eleven male dancers. Their bios are similar to this:

Varvara Laptopova is one of those rare dancer who, with one look at a ballet, not only know all the steps but can also dance all the roles. As a former member of the Kiev Toe and Heel club, she was awarded first-prize at the Pan-Siberian Czardash and Kazotski Festival for artistic mis-interpretation.

But the page after the bios lists only fifteen men in the company. The Detroit Opera Orchestra supplied live music and did a fine job supporting the dancers. I had seen the Trocks once before, at least 35 years ago. They have been a part of several TV programs, including with Kermit and Miss Piggy in Muppet Babies. I’m sure they can be found online somewhere. Of course, with a ballet troupe in which men dance the women’s roles and where nearly all of the dancers are gay Between the Lines would have a nice article about them. Lindsay Beyerstein of The Editorial Board discussed that the nasty guy campaigned against reality and won. Every plank in his platform was based on easily provable lies. He created a “conspiracist permission structure” to ignore facts and focus on hate. An Ipsos poll towards the end of the campaign found the more a person believes the conspiracy theories the more likely they were to vote for the nasty guy. The more they understood the truth the more strongly they voted for Harris. Part of that is media that is shy about calling out the nasty guy and is in the game for the bucks, not the truth. Part of it is the conspiracist mindset that says the media is controlled by the deep state.

Once you adopt a conspiracist mindset where you can dismiss any evidence that clashes with your prejudices as part of the conspiracy, you are free to create your own reality. Since it’s a worldview that scapegoats your fellow citizens as diabolical deceivers, that reality is bound to be ugly. Worse still, your willingness to discount mainstream sources of evidence in favor of the outlandish claims of demagogues becomes a badge of ideological purity. You welcome the lies. This is why social scientists have been warning about the link between conspiracism and totalitarianism for a century. There was never any evidence that the Jews secretly controlled the world – but it didn’t matter because lack of evidence was proof that the Jews controlled the press, and the universities, and science and the arts. Jews in pre-war Germany didn’t control any of those things – but no evidence to the contrary could penetrate the conspiracy theory. And the complete absence of evidence for their hegemony was just proof of their total domination.

This mindset also removes the possibility of good-faith debates.

If everything you don’t like becomes evidence of your opponent’s plot to destroy you, you can’t discuss anything rationally.

An example is evidence that vaccines save lives and prevent suffering. A conspiracist would respond, “Well, that’s what conspirators to kill our children would say.” We have to address the conspiracist mindset. There is an adage that’s been around for a while: fool around and find out (though the original has a different first word). It essentially means do something wrong (even through omission) and you will discover the consequences. That adage is now being applied to nasty guy voters, especially the ones who voted for him out of some vague economic malaise that the few policies he’s stated will make worse. Once they suffer the consequences they will turn to Democrats. John Stoehr, also of The Editorial Board doesn’t believe these people will make the link to consequences. Yes, they’ll suffer. But they won’t connect their suffering to their vote.

So let me get this straight. People who can’t or won’t understand tariffs are going to deduce all by themselves that tariffs are the reason they’re now paying three and four times more for their sneakers, T-shirts and video-game consoles? People who voted against their own economic interests are going to figure out on their own what exactly those interests are, but only after they’ve been screwed over by the president they voted for? To paraphrase Mark Twain, it would be easier to continue scamming these people than convince them that they’ve been scammed. And the scamming will continue.

Stoehr lists several reasons why they won’t recognize what they did. + The the far right media apparatus, global in scale, blocked these people from knowing all the good things the Biden-Harris administration did to set the economy on a great path. That same apparatus will make sure the same people don’t know the cause of any economic downturn. + The nasty guy administration will certainly corrupt government data that would normally show what is happening in the economy. + No voter dissatisfaction will prompt the nasty to change from his stated goals. Either he won’t run because he’s term limited (or dead) or there won’t be elections. + See above about not believing in reality. + Even if they recognize the source of their suffering the far right media apparatus won’t let them know the Democrats are offering something better. + The don’t take democracy or their own lives seriously.

I’ll put my faith in good people who seek out good trouble in the name of liberty, equality and justice for all. They’re a minority these days, but that’s OK. The world never changed for the better because a majority wanted it to. It changed because a righteous minority demanded it.

A month ago – before the election – Kos of Daily Kos wrote about how Democrats can unintentionally hurt their cause. Kos criticized something Obama said at a campaign stop for Harris. He talked about the pandemic stimulus checks. Obama criticized the nasty guy for putting his name on the check that went out while he was still in the Oval Office. Those checks weren’t supposed to be about “feeding his ego.” But people remembered the first check came from the nasty guy. They did not connect that the second and third checks came through Biden’s efforts. They credited the nasty guy for caring about them. Biden didn’t get the same credit and people wonder why Biden didn’t care for them. A savvy marketing moment missed.

People have no clue what the government does, how it works, or how it serves them ... even when they’re getting checks from the government.

That same savvy marketing has been playing out with Republican members of Congress who voted against the big infrastructure act yet are taking credit when the dollars flow to their state or district. I’ve written a lot over the last two weeks about what the nasty guy has been doing. Here’s a bit of what the opposition is doing. Two weeks ago Morgan Stephens of Kos wrote that Biden and his team have been preparing for the last few months of his administration, no matter who won. Some of the things they’ve been doing: + Getting all of the already approved funds and weapons to Ukraine. + Getting infrastructure project money out the door. + Getting the money for clean energy projects spent and shifting as much policy as they can from executive orders to government regulations, which are harder to undo. + Help the Senate appoint as many judges as possible. A week ago Stephens reported that “Governors Safeguarding Democracy” is being formed. It already has Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado, and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California. The number of additional governors is unclear and may include a few Republicans The group will have think tanks, legal experts, and democracy advocates. They will share tools and resources. They are working out how to protect their residents from deportation and are preparing legal challenges to efforts to undermine democracy. Also last week, Stephens discussed what Democratic governors might be able to do when the nasty guy sets his deportation plans in operation. But what can they reasonably do? Immigration advocates are pushing Democratic governors for executive orders and laws to tell state personnel to not voluntarily help with federal immigration enforcement. But some sheriffs will be glad to work with the feds. Beyond such laws there isn’t much Democratic governors can do. Last week Jon Stewart of The Daily Show noted a big difference between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats respect norms and traditions. Republicans look for loopholes. And with a bureaucracy as complex as our federal government there are always loopholes to the rules. Democrats need to also look for the loopholes. Alas, too many still are still respecting the norms and traditions Republicans rejected long ago.

Blurring the lines of acceptability, making the abhorrent palatable

One of the big discussions that are a result of the colonial era is what to do about cultural treasures taken back to the colonizing country and put in a museum there. An example of this is the Elgin Marbles, sculptures from Ancient Greece now on display at the British Museum in London. That museum has treasures from more countries than Greece. A movement has been around for a while now demanding such treasures be returned to the original culture. A lot of colonizers resist, giving reasons that are condescending. Today I went down to the Detroit Institute of Art and in addition to looking at the art I went to the Detroit Film Theater to see the documentary Dahomey. That had been a country along the southern edge of west Africa colonized by France. In the 1890s about 7,000 cultural treasures were taken from Dahomey to France, and put on display in French museums to be seen by French citizens. In 2021 President Emmanuel Macron approved the return of 26 treasures to the modern country of Benin. Many are significant works – statues of Dahomey kings, an ornate throne, and an ornamental display to guide a person’s soul to heaven. The story begins with the voice of Artifact No. 26 who speaks about being in a strange place. With the news of returning to Africa it wonders if it will still be relevant. Then we see the works being packed – and a rather cool shot when the camera is in the box as the lid is put on and fastened down. They’re loaded onto a plane, then unloaded in Benin. Only when Artifact No. 26 is removed from the box, after the sounds of unfastening and the lid lifted off, do we learn it is a statue of Benin’s King Ghezo. These treasures are put on display, Benin dignitaries come for a grand opening, and their new museum is opened to the public. Those scenes are interspersed between scenes of students at the University of Abomey-Calavi talking about what they think of all this. That was the most interesting part of the movie. Some of the points they made: Getting these 26 pieces back is great, but what about the rest of the 7,000 that were taken? Giving us only 26 is an insult and Macron did it only to say see how generous I am! I grew up on Disney, I didn’t grow up watching animated movies about King Béhazin. Why am I speaking French and not the native languages of the area? This is an important movie and important to the discussion of colonial theft. But the discussion should encompass a lot more than this. Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported that even though Matt Gaetz has been elected to another term, starting in January, he has said his resignation last week is permanent. His seat will need to be filled by someone else. The House Ethics report, supposedly damning, can remain sealed. There are several idea of what Gaetz might do next. Fox News commentator? For now he is unemployed. Singer also reported the nasty guy is getting real touchy when people point out his win was not the mandate he keeps claiming, that he actually got a tiny bit under 50% of the popular vote. His tally is just 1.6% over what Harris got. Voters in four states voted for him while voting for a Democratic senator. And his House majority is the smallest since there were 50 states. Kos of Kos wrote:

It will never make sense, but people believed Donald Trump when he lied—about Vice President Kamala Harris, about President Joe Biden, about the economy, about immigrants, about trans people, about his accomplishments. Yet, when he told the truth about what he would do if elected, people didn’t believe him. But it’s not just regular voters who are shocked, mind you. So are the high-paid lobbyists who supposedly do this for a living.

They’re stunned the Robert Kennedy Jr. got the top health job, though the nasty guy never talked about anyone else. They’re also scrambling to staff up to make sure when the nasty guy announces his tariffs the rules will be written to exempt their business. Which is a recipe for corruption. I’ve written about Sarah McBride being the first transgender person in Congress which was followed quite quickly with Speaker Mike Johnson segregating bathrooms according to “biological sex.” Morgan Stephens of Kos wrote that Natalie Johnson, former aide to Rep. Nancy Mace who proposed the bathroom rule, has a few things to say.

“‘Protecting women’ in Congress would be introducing a bill to bar Matt Gaetz, a sexual predator with an affinity for underage girls, from ever walking those halls again, rather than dropping a messaging bill that’s sole goal is getting on TV,” Johnson wrote on X on Wednesday. ... "If you think this bill is about protecting women and not simply a ploy to get on Fox News, you've been fooled," Johnson also wrote on Wednesday.

Mace is fundraising off her success, using a text about McBride, “I don’t want to see your junk in my bathroom.”

Johnson replied to the text on X, writing, “I don’t want to see your botched, cheap hooker-inspired boob job on my television. Can we introduce a bill to bar that?”

Mace posted in 262 times in 36 hours on X about McBride and bathrooms. That prompted:

“If I tweet 262 times in 36 hours about anything please come do a wellness check,” wrote Alyssa Farah Griffin, who was Trump’s White House director of strategic communications and who currently co-hosts “The View.”

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quotes a few things worth mentioning. Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that for most people what the nasty guy does is still an abstraction.

It’s very different in the transgender community. There, leaders like Sanchez are having gut-wrenching conversations with people wondering if they need to accelerate major life moves, like gender-affirming surgery or a legal name change, before an openly hostile government arrives on Jan. 20. Indeed, fears of what life might be like under Trump 47 for at least 1 million transgender Americans already began to hit home this week when the community’s one bright star on Election Day — a victory for the first-ever transgender member of Congress, Delaware’s Rep.-elect Sarah McBride — quickly became a symbol of the GOP’s determination to turn ugly campaign rhetoric into harsh governing reality.

Michael Li tweeted on Bluesky that we don’t have to look to Europe for examples of authoritarianism.

A lot of people think of the Jim Crow South as a non-democracy for Black people & a democracy for white people. But the reality is that it wasn’t especially a democracy for white people either. Many scholars, in fact, refer to the Jim Crow South as a series of authoritarian enclaves.

I’m pretty sure a referenced this article yesterday though Dworkin chose to quote a different part than Chitown Kev had. The article is by Sam Wolfson for The Guardian discussing the Manosphere or the Rogansphere, named for Joe Rogan and his popular podcast. This is Fox News for young people.

Steve Bannon always said the doctrine behind Breitbart was that “politics is downstream of culture” and that to change politics one must first change culture. It’s a doctrine that guided Trump to victory during his first campaign, mostly with older white voters, but has been taken to a new apex by these podcasters. They blend liberal and conservative culture, blurring the lines of acceptability and making figures like Trump more palatable to those who might have previously abhorred him. ... These podcasters are nothing like the extremist far-right white nationalist and men’s rights influencers, such as Andrew Tate and Gavin McInnes, who are explicit in their hate speech. Instead, they feature left-leaning and comic guests alongside hard-R Republican ones and then include extreme voices, normalising them by association (McInnes appeared on Rogan and Andrew Tate has appeared on Carlson; Rogan says Tate “says very wise things” among “ridiculous s---”). Kill Tony has an incredibly diverse mix of regular comedians, including a huge number of comics with disabilities. It also has lots of white comics who say the N-word. It’s not simple.

Natalie Jackson tweeted:

I wrote about the things I think are missing from the Democrats discourse: 1) scope of the losses (you'd think this was 1984) 2) how media struggles to explain a second Trump win; easier to yell at Dems 3) there might not be a grand theory. it might be uninformed voters' vibes. We're still doing it. We're still obsessing over what Dems did wrong instead of sitting with the uncomfortable reasons voters went with Trump. Some of them - including how voters made decisions - are pretty uncomfortable to consider. Trump ran an objectively terrible campaign. Making this about campaign decisions is missing the point.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme. I don’t know who is speaking – the woman is shown, but I don’t recognize her. She said:

I have shared the same bathroom with Sarah McBride on several occasions, and she never once made me feel uncomfortable. She did however help me fix my makeup. That Congresswoman knows how to blend her foundation, which is more than I can say about Donald Trump.

In another pundit roundup Dworkin quoted a tweet by Steven Dennis:

Not sure people realize just how close Democrats were to taking control of the House of Representatives. ~10K votes or so = the difference between Mike Johnson controlling the House agenda and Hakeem Jeffries. Trillions in taxes and spending changes likely hinged on those 10,000...

Heather Cox Richardson of Letters from an American noted that Pete Hegseth, nominated to run the Department of Defense, has no relevant experience.

According to Heath Druzin of the Idaho Capital Sun, Hegseth has close ties to an Idaho Christian nationalist church that wants to turn the United States into a theocracy. Jonathan Chait of The Atlantic did a deep dive into Hegseth’s recent books and concluded that Hegseth “considers himself to be at war with basically everybody to Trump’s left, and it is by no means clear that he means war metaphorically.” Hegseth’s books suggest he thinks that everything that does not support the MAGA worldview is “Marxist,” including voters choosing Democrats at the voting booth. He calls for the “categorical defeat of the Left” and says that without its “utter annihilation,” “America cannot, and will not, survive.”

I read that and wonder about Hegseth’s definition of “America.” I’m sure it is centered around America being a white ethnostate, which it never was, though there has always been a strong belief in white supremacy. He isn’t talking about the wonderfully diverse and culturally rich place modern America is. In a tweet Mark Joseph Stern quoted Jacob Rubashkin:

When RFK was running for president he said he would stop research on drug development and infectious diseases for eight years.

Stern added:

Just a massive "f--- you" to the millions of families relying on advancements in treatment for loved ones with ALS, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, cancer, and so much more. Confirming this lunatic would amount to killing people.

The New Yorker tweeted a cartoon by Robert Leighton from 2016. A woman opens the door to her cartoonist husband’s studio and says, “Stop — that Trump cartoon you came up with this morning just happened.”

People had cultivated the habit of apathy

A couple days ago my friend and debate partner sent an email saying he had received emails that say computer hacking experts think the presidential election was cooked in the swing states. The fraud was done through votes that were entered electronically without a matching paper ballot. They were “bullet ballots” with a vote for the nasty guy but no votes for any other races. He asked if I had heard anything about it. I replied that I hadn’t. Shortly after replying to my friend I saw an email that mentioned bullet ballots. That email is from Gaslit Nation. As part of an episode’s description are notes for the show. That includes a link to an article posted on Free Speech for People. It describes a letter from computer hacking experts warning Harris of the ways the vote tally could be hacked and that she should ask for recounts. The article summarizes the letter saying that after the 2020 election nasty guy operatives accessed voting equipment to get copies of its software. In the years since they could have studied it for vulnerabilities, ways to introduce malware. While this sounds dire, the letter does not allege specific misdeeds or say whether or how the vote count was affected. It only says election fraud is possible and that a recount is highly recommended. I then got a link to an article on Snopes, the site dedicated to affirming or debunking internet stories. I’ve referenced Snopes in the past, though not for several years (is it now owned by msn?). This article is by Jordan Liles and is in response to allegations by Stephen Spoonamore made in a letter to Harris and posted on Spoutible that made much more specific descriptions of bullet ballot counts, which are high enough to overturn the election. The lengthy analysis by Liles, which I scanned, but did not entirely read, essentially says Spoonamore’s numbers don’t add up and he doesn’t back up his statements. Spoonamore made a claim of a particular count of ballots that voted for only president, but reported state statistics are well under the claimed number. Irontortoise of the Daily Kos community (not verified by DK staff) that (in two parts, here and here) linked to the Snopes report. They also ran the numbers and concluded the number of bullet ballots this year is not far from historical rates, which means there weren’t many extra bullet ballots and they weren’t enough of thems to change the election. Emily Singer of Kos wrote about Matt Gaetz’ withdrawal from the nomination for Attorney General. Singer said that withdrawal was actually pushed by the nasty guy, who recognized there are enough senators to block confirmation and they weren’t going to change their vote. Singer said Gaetz’ departure a mere eight days from nomination is out of character for a wannabe strongman who made “fight” his motto. It is also surprising the nasty guy didn’t use his threat of recess appointments, though Republicans have been telling him they won’t let him shred their advice and consent power. All this is typical for a man known for chaotic decisions. That prompted Jessica Sutherland of Kos to wonder which of the nasty guy’s other hasty and problematic picks will fall next. Sutherland lists plenty of reasons to reject Pete Hegseth for Defense, Robert Kennedy for Health and Human Services, Kristi Noem for Homeland Security, Linda McMahon for Education, Mehmet Oz for Medicare and Medicaid, Sean Duffy for Transportation, Tulsi Gabbard for national intelligence, and Elon Musk for that made up department. Maybe Republicans will assert themselves and reject them all. This morning Tamara Keith of NPR talked about the speed of the announcements for various cabinet positions. She also talked of the things the nasty guy has not done. There are three documents the transition team has not yet signed. The documents are not named. They were instituted after the disputed 2000 election shortened the transition time and also after the issuing of a report on the Sept. 11 terror attack which emphasized the need to have a fully functioning government as quickly as possible. They were designed to make the transition go smoothly. The FBI (still controlled by Biden) isn’t doing background checks on the nominees, something the Senate has required. There seems to be no effort to get the nominees properly vetted before confirmation hearings in January. In addition to the FBI check each nominee is supposed sign an ethics agreement that says they have resolved conflicts of interest, such as divesting stock or ending a business relationship. Since this takes weeks it is usually done before the nominee is announced. In 2017 many nominees were delayed because of the process. Did the nasty guy learn the wrong lesson and instead of starting earlier is trying to circumvent the process? Does he know some of them will not meet ethics rules, which his Department of Justice will not prosecute? So will the Senate demand these background checks and ethics declarations? We’ll see. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted several people with interesting views. Heather Digby Parton of Salon wrote:

But for all the nuts and kooks Trump is appointing to some of the top jobs to accomplish his revenge agenda, there are some areas where he's stocking the administration with people who are determined to fulfill their own. Many of them are Project 2025 veterans.

So much for the nasty guy claiming he had nothing to do with Project 2025. Makena Kelly of Wired looked at one of those nominations. This one is Brendan Carr to head the Federal Communications Commission. Carr wrote the Project 2025 chapter on the FCC. And it looks like Carr, in addition to giving communication companies all the goodies they’ve been asking for, wants to transform these companies into speech police. Sam Wolfson of the Guardian discusses how destructive the “manosphere” might be because of its ability to corrupt youth. This couples with many people getting their news from influencers, rather than actual news sources, which I mentioned yesterday.

It’s not on one channel on a DirectTV box, but its audience is far bigger, potentially reaching 10 times as many people [as Fox News]. It’s an amorphous network of podcasts, YouTubers, Twitch streamers and meme accounts from Kill Tony to Joe Rogan to Dilley Meme Team. They encompass entertainment, comedy, sport, health, relationships – but a distrust of the Democrats and the mainstream media permeates them all. Like Fox News and conservative AM radio, the audiences of these podcasts are scared about a changing world, but their fears are very different from those of older viewers and listeners. They’re less susceptible to bogeymen stories of violent migrants, socialism or kids watching pornography (they are the kids watching pornography). They’re more worried about money in politics, ongoing wars, the #MeToo movement, and liberals who can’t take a joke. They’re also curious about heterodox thinking, history and the environment.

Kev objects to the word “heterodox.” These people are saying the same old stuff supremacists have always said. They simply have the luxury of being able to blast it out. Kristen Ghodsee of The New Republic discussed the people who lived behind the Iron Curtain and the dangers of withdrawing from public life.

Yes, escapism through art, culture, and nature helped East Europeans persevere despite the many hardships of life in a command economy. But it also left them uniquely unprepared to deal with the sudden changes that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall. Because people had cultivated the habit of apathy, they stood helpless as the lofty promises of free markets and democracy descended into kleptocratic chaos.

If you must retreat into a private sphere, do it with cherished others. Binge watch with a friend. Play board games. Stay active in your faith community. “Practice ‘scruffy hospitality’ by inviting friends and neighbors over even when your house is a mess and you can only serve a frozen pizza.” Joe Stanley-Smith of Politico Europe discussed a memoir by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and what she had to say about the nasty guy. A bit of it:

“He judged everything from the perspective of the property entrepreneur he had been before politics,” she wrote of Trump. “Each property could only be allocated once. If he didn’t get it, someone else did. That was also how he looked at the world.” “For him, all countries were in competition with each other, in which the success of one was the failure of the other; he did not believe that the prosperity of all could be increased through co-operation.”

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme: “Let me get this straight, you want to know what is on Hunter’s laptop but not what is in the ethics investigation on Matt Gaetz.” Dennis Goris posted a cartoon of two men in a bar. One says, “After I posted the cartoon I realized my mistake was assuming disdain for Nazis was universal.” Another meme posted by exlrrp: “It’s really something to watch the party whose supporters poop on the floor in the Capitol and wipe their feces on the wall tell us which bathrooms to use.” A cartoon by Drew Sheneman shows a whale talking to a dolphin, “The oil companies want you to worry about theoretical wind turbines when our stomachs are full of actual plastic.”

To show his iron grip and sow chaos and despair

Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported Matt Gaetz withdrew from consideration for Attorney General. He said his nomination was becoming a distraction to the nasty guy. Gaetz said he had “excellent meetings” with senators to start the confirmation process. Likely some said they would oppose him – he’s hated my many fellow Republicans. What prompted the withdrawal was the renewed interest in his sexual transgressions his nomination stirred up. The House Ethics Committee deadlocked along party lines on whether to release their report on him. And women are coming forward to testify they had sex with him when underage. Gaetz resigned from the House to forestall the Ethics Committee report. Yet, he won another term that begins in January. If he takes the oath for that term he would be again under the jurisdiction of the Ethics Committee. I had reported that Sarah McBride of Delaware will be the first transgender person elected to the House. Oliver Willis of Kos reported it didn’t take long for Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina to introduce a resolution to segregate the Capitol bathrooms, banning McBride from using a woman’s room. And Speaker Johnson didn’t bother going through the motions of a resolution, he simply announced the bathroom segregation – and he did it on Transgender Day of Remembrance. Johnson said the policy will be enforced, but didn’t specify how that’s to be done – who is going to do the checking and what will be done with a violator. Mace and Johnson were praised by conservative lawmakers and pundits and decried by progressives. McBride, bless her, said don’t make a big deal of this, it’s just a distraction. There are more important issues. Willis concluded:

The effort to reinstate a form of segregation as official American government policy is the first major action by Republicans since their victory in the 2024 election. Based on the party’s clear support for attacking an oppressed minority group, more is sure to come.

Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna is one of the conservative firebrands in the House, though quieter than Gaetz or Marjorie Taylor Greene. She also gave birth in 2023 and that and complications meant she missed dozens of House votes. Singer reported that last January Luna and Democratic Rep. Sara Jacobs of California introduced legislation to allow House members who give birth to vote remotely for six weeks afterward. Now, about ten months later, Johnson said he would not bring Luna’s legislation up for a vote. Luna said this is a very anti-family thing to do for a person who declares they are pro-family. A woman should not have to choose between serving their constituents and having children. I understand, though don’t agree with, Johnson’s position. He says he’s pro-family because getting pregnant can keep a woman out of politics and the business world. Giving birth keeping her out of the House, that’s just fine. Never mind he would lose a vote from a thin majority. Luna says when the next Speaker is voted on in January she will only vote for one who will allow women to vote remotely after giving birth. Singer noted there is a precedence for remote voting. Congress did it during the pandemic. Republicans ended it when they took the majority in 2023. In a pundit roundup for Kos, Greg Dworkin had a few good quotes. Mike Madrid of The Great Transformation discussed two previous mass deportations. Both affected Mexicans and US citizens of Mexican descent. One happened at the start of the Great Depression when politicians needed a scapegoat. Their story isn’t covered in American history because Mexicans don’t matter as much as Okies and Dust bowlers. Margaret Sullivan of American Crisis noted that the nasty guy got 49.99% of the vote. Also...

Don’t believe that these unfit nominees for Trump’s cabinet represent some lofty idea of making America great again. Despite all his effusive language about the supposed statesmanship of Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard, these picks are meant to do two things: show his iron-grip control over the Senate; and sow chaos and despair in the non-MAGA members of the American public.

Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer said all those op-eds discussing various cabinet picks and using facts to explain how bad they are falling into the nasty guy’s trap. They’re playing the game the way he wants it played. I see arguing with facts is meaningless because all it does is show he is working from a position of power, where facts don’t matter. In the comments are a couple good cartoons. Ella Baron drew one of The Ministry of Truth. Above the entrance are statues of the nasty guy, RFK Jr, Elon Musk, JD Vance, and Matt Gaetz. Annie for Truth posted a meme of three dinosaurs in red hats watching the incoming meteor. One of them says, “This is gonna be great!” In a second pundit roundup Chitown Kev had a couple quotes. One is from the Pew Research Center looking at people who get their news from “news influencers.” About 20% of Americans and 37% of adults under 30 get news from influencers. Most influencers are on X, though many are also on Instagram and YouTube. A few more influencers identify themselves as conservative or Republican than identify as Democratic or liberal. That leaves about half who don’t explicitly identify. Almost two-thirds are men. More than three-quarters are not affiliated with a news organization. I see they are called influencers, meaning they are advocating for a particular position. They are not reporting news. Having that as a person’s primary source of news is deeply troubling. Jennifer Berry Hawes and Mollie Simon of ProPublica discuss “segregation academies.” A big reason why many conservatives want to pay for schools with vouchers, which is tax dollars, is somewhat about the conservative schools that churches sponsor. The bigger reason is race. These academies are far whiter than the communities they are in. They play an integral role in perpetuating school segregation and racism. John Cassidy of The New Yorker thinks Elon Musk’s support of the nasty guy is about money and not about making the world a better place, as is the case for George Soros. Cassidy offers evidence.

On Wall Street, there is a more self-serving explanation for Musk’s bear hug of Trump. “It’s a poker move for the ages,” Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities who has long been bullish on Tesla’s stock, told CNBC. If that’s true, the play has already paid off big time. Between Trump’s victory on November 5th and the close of trading on Friday, Tesla’s stock price went from $251.50 to $320.72. According to Tesla’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Musk owns about 715 million shares, so based on that figure the value of his stake has risen by almost fifty billion dollars. ... The run-up in Tesla’s stock reflects investors’ conviction that the policies of a second Trump Administration will be favorable to the carmaker. But the presence of Trump in the White House could also have important implications for Musk’s other companies, many of which are subject to oversight by federal agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission, or which have big contracts with government departments.

In the comments are a few good cartoons. One by Mike Luckovich shows Natives and Pilgrims around the table. A chief says, “Dinner’s over. Please make your way to the deportation wagons.” A cartoon by Sheneman posted by the Tennessee Holler shows a white man talking to an ICE agent who has detained a person of color, saying, “I think there’s been a misunderstanding, I only wanted you to deport the immigrants I don’t know personally.” Many of the nasty guy’s cabinet picks now have dirty pasts coming to light. That prompted RJ Matson to show two men on the National Mall.

First man: Let’s face it, I’ve got no future in this town without a felony conviction or an ethics probe. Second man: What about me? I’ve never paid hush money to anyone for anything!

Pedro Molina posted a cartoon on Kos. Two men are in a bar. One says, “OK, you voted for Trump, convince me I’m wrong about my worst fears.” The other replies, “Are you kidding?! I hope you’re right!”

A sledgehammer to the federal government

My Sunday movie was Joel Kim Booster, Psychosexual, a live taping of his stand up comedy act in Los Angeles in 2022. It’s just over an hour long. I had first heard Booster on the NPR show Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. He is Korean, though adopted and raised by a white family, so he wasn’t raised in Asian culture. He’s also gay. I chose this one because I didn’t want a long movie and many towards the top of my to-see list are close or over two hours. I had also seen a few LGBT comics over the last few months (some great, some OK) and was willing to try another. I thought with a title of Psychosexual he would get into some interesting insights about the difference between men and women and LGBTQ and straight. Yeah, there was some of that. But the jokes and stories were a lot raunchier and there were more jokes about drugs than I would have liked. I guess I’ll need to check reviews some of the other comedian shows before watching. I’m done with the book The Fire Dwellers by Margaret Laurence. Being done with it isn’t the same as finishing. I bought the book at the Stratford Festival in Canada back in August. I had watched The Diviners and was delighted by it and how well it did what theater does best (quite different from what cinema does best). The play is based on a novel by Laurence that take place in the fictional town of Manawaka, Manitoba. This novel is part of a series based in that town. The series is highly regarded in Canada. Since I enjoyed the play so much I considered buying a novel in the series. Most of them are quite thick. I chose the one on the thinner side (300 pages) that had an appealing blurb on the back. The story is about Stacey, wife and mother of four ages 14 to 2. The setting is Vancouver (I presume) of about 1960. This story is part of the series because Stacey is from that small Manitoba town. The problem with the story is while there are incidents that happen, nothing seems to change. Stacey and her husband Mac are very bad at communicating – he tends to misinterpret her intent, then doesn’t want to talk about it, and she backs down way too easily. I got halfway through it, hoping the characters would show a little growth or there would be some explanation of why things are they way they are. But none of that by the halfway point. So I stopped. I wonder if my dissatisfaction with the story is part of the difference between what Americans and Canadians expect from their national stories. I know Americans want conflict, resolution, and a happy or triumphant ending. I’m not Canadian and haven’t read many Canadian novels so I’m not sure what they prize in their stories. This past Sunday was the 17th anniversary since I started this blog. This post is number 5363. Over the last 30 days there have been 13,500 views from Singapore, 5,380 from Hong Kong, 3,920 from Canada, 610 from the US, 580 from France, and smaller numbers from other countries. Since I was able to start keeping track of views in 2010 the top ten countries with the most views are the US, Singapore, Italy, Hong Kong, France, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Canada, and Britain. I know I wrote that I won’t be able to comment on all of the nasty guy’s horrible picks for cabinet positions and the horrible things they do. But some of them have to be mentioned. One that needs mentioning is the pick of Robert Kennedy Jr as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported on the pick and wrote:

Kennedy's history of pushing pseudoscience and debunked claims about vaccines is long and distressing, and his ideas to “Make America Healthy Again” are dubious at best.

Some of Kennedy’s ideas: He wants to remove fluoride from public water. He wants to “investigate” vaccine research. He wants to promote healthier diets (the same topic first lady Michelle Obama tried to promote). That last one could be good, or not, depending whether his definition of “healthy” is influenced by Big Ag. Einenkel also reported on reactions to Kennedy's nomination. Democrats are horrified. Republicans praise the pick or defer to the nasty guy. In an article posted on Kos, Arthur Allen of KFF Health News discussed the reaction of scientists to Kennedy's nomination. And much of that reaction is dread.

Should Kennedy win Senate confirmation, his critics say a radical antiestablishment medical movement with roots in past centuries would take power, threatening the achievements of a science-based public health order painstakingly built since World War II.

Allen wrote that Kennedy says Americans have been crushed by industrial food and drug company deception. I might agree about being crushed by industrial food. But the second part might mean new vaccines may never get approval and vaccine mandates might wither. Dangerous or useless therapies might be promoted. Scientists at National Institute for Health, Federal Drug Administration, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are considering retirement or work elsewhere amidst the talk of trimming the number of research institutes. In the comments of a pundit roundup for Kos exlrrp posted a meme:

got polio*? Me neither. Thanks Science. * or diptheria, pertussis, tetanus, measles, mumps, rubella, HPV Haemophilus, Pneumococcus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, varicella.

Morgan Stephens of Kos reported that Caroline Kennedy, sister to Robert, has disavowed her brother because of the man and conspiracies he has embraced. Caroline’s siblings have also spoken against him. Oliver Willis of Kos wrote:

Republicans are expressing surprise in both public and private that with the announcement of his slate of unqualified Cabinet picks, Donald Trump is still as unhinged as he has always been. ... These picks are in line with Trump’s demonstrated leadership style, valuing people who appear on Fox News to say nice things about him over qualified experts. It is the leadership style that, in his first term, led to results like the failed response to the COVID-19 pandemic and a net job loss when other presidents, even Republican George W. Bush, managed to increase jobs. Despite this, there are new signs of supposed confusion and bewilderment from the GOP establishment. ... Republicans chose Trump to lead their party almost a decade ago. He hasn’t changed. Their purported surprise that he hasn’t changed is the only “shocking” part of this equation.

An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported that nasty junior said pushback from Washington establishment means the cabinet picks are the disruptors voters are demanding (well, some are, and they’re not a majority). And, compared to 2016, the nasty guy knows what to expect. One of those picks is Tulsi Gabbard, “a former Democratic lawmaker who has in the past publicly expressed sympathy to Russian causes, as director of U.S. intelligence services.” Embrace Moscow or get out. Max Burns of Kos wrote that a new president’s cabinet picks are a great view into how he will will govern. And the nasty guy’s picks are “a sledgehammer to the federal government.” They’re also a loyalty test for any Republican dissenters. Fall in line or a loyal candidate will be run against you in the next primary. And they nasty guy has been good at removing disloyal Republicans. That’s a good reason to fall in line.

How Senate Republicans respond to Trump’s list of patently unqualified grifters will determine the shape of our democracy not just over the next four years, but for future administrations. History is littered with the painful stories of legislatures voluntarily surrendering their independence to a corrupt and powerful leader. None of those stories have happy endings.

The nasty guy is the least intellectual occupant of the Oval Office. But he understands how weak people respond to pressure. Each of these nominees requires a different way to declare loyalty.

Kennedy requires the GOP to elevate a known kook and science denier to a critical science-based gig. Gaetz marks an explicit acceptance that the Department of Justice is now a Trump-captured body. [Defense nominee Pete] Hegseth is an admission that decades of Republican tough talk about standing by the troops has been a lie. And in Gabbard’s case, a final acceptance that Republicans are now an overtly pro-Russia, pro-Putin, NATO-skeptical party.

The nasty guy is demanding complete submission. It will redefine the relationship between Congress and the executive branch in ways that will affect the balance of power for years. Senate Republicans can protect the country. Do they have it in them? Republicans have been claiming this election and their sweep of the federal government gives them a “mandate.” Einenkel says don’t believe it. The nasty guy got under 50% of the popular vote. This is the most Senate races lost in states the presidential candidate won since 2004. One must go back 50 years for a smaller House majority. Tom Tomorrow posted a cartoon on Kos. It shows two guys in a car accelerating towards a cliff. The driver insists the last time the nasty guy was in the Oval Office was great and this time will be better. The passenger insists it will be a disaster. Once over the cliff the driver blames the passenger’s condescending attitude. Einenkel reported Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a few things to say about the election results. She mentions an ad that was anti-transgender.

"There is something to be said about—it doesn't matter that [Trump’s] lying. He's saying that ‘I'm fighting for you,’” she added after being asked about the seeming incongruence of being angry at billionaires and still voting for Trump, a billionaire. ... “What I think people are paying too much attention to is the first half of that ad, which says … 'Kamala Harris is for they/them,’” she said. “They're not focusing on the second half of that ad, where he said, 'Donald Trump is for you.'” “Political races are not about one candidate versus another candidate,” she added. “Too often it gets pigeonholed like that. It is a race to convince a person about who cares about you more."

Kos of Kos wrote about a tweet from October 2015 and how it applies today. The tweet is from Adrian Bott and says:

‘I never though leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.

Kos offered some examples. Biden was the most pro-union president. The Teamsters refused to endorse him. Project 2025 “is an anti-union corporatist’s wet dream.” Leopards will feast. Muslim Americans didn’t vote for Democrats because of Biden’s support for Israel against Hamas. Muslim leaders are now deeply disappointed in the cabinet picks. It seems Netanyahu ignored Biden’s peace efforts in hopes of the nasty guy winning. Farming communities have been the bedrock of the nasty guy’s support. The farm industry is alarmed at the nasty guy’s proposed tariffs and that sales of soybeans and corn to China could be affected. They are also alarmed by his pick of Kennedy. The nasty guy has been talking about tariffs for quite a while. Weren’t they listening? Or did their source of news leave that part out? Perhaps Democrats should avoid bailing out farmers until they consider voting for Democrats. Immigrants believed that their undocumented relatives were safe because they weren’t “criminals.” Many women voted for both abortion rights and the nasty guy. Many in red states are thankful Obamacare saved their lives, yet voted for the party that has been trying to kill it.

From Social Security cuts to curbs on press freedoms, and from higher grocery prices to raw-milk illnesses, and to say nothing of the return of measles, polio, whooping cough, and other once-eradicated diseases—these next four years will be awful. And those bearing the brunt of the awfulness will be disproportionately Trump voters. And the rest of us? For now, all we can do is look on and ask every time a leopard takes a bite, “Is this what you voted for?”

"The Onion takes over Infowars" is not an Onion spoof

Mark Sumner, Daily Kos staff emeritus, wrote about why one must be very careful when reading someone’s ideas on what Democrats need to do to win the next election. A big sign is they say Harris should have said something she clearly already said or complain about a policy position that Harris definitely did not put forward.

They're engaging in convenient strawman arguments that attack non-existent Democratic campaigns. Those arguments are defined by accepting nothing but Republican talking points. And the prescriptions for how to "fix" the Democratic Party all seem to come down to the same thing: Surrender.

Then Sumner looked at a nine point plan put out by Matthew Yglesias. I saw that name and thought isn’t he highly conservative? So I didn’t read those proposals carefully and skipped over much of Sumner’s point-by-point rebuttal (yes, Yglesias is conservative) and went to the summary.

To bring Yglesias' list into plain English, here's his plan for Democrats Cut taxes for billionaires Drill, baby, drill Protesters are perverts All lives matter Trans people are perverts Experts don't know more than you. Racist, sexist, and abusive language is cool Build the wall. build the camps, deport them all The government exists to help corporations and billionaires This platform may be slightly familiar to you. It's the Republican platform. It also happens to be the platform that Yglesias and others in the why-can't-Democrats-be-more-like-Republicans? faction have been pushing for eternity. What's most astounding is that some people seem to be taking this seriously.

Some of those are media people who hold up such plans as a way for Democrats to “fix things.”

Their arguments are worse than surrender; they're collaboration. These are people who have hankered for nothing so much as the downfall of the Democratic Party and progressive values. They see this moment as an opportunity to sell disheartened Democrats on the benefits of hate, disdain, and ignorance. Anyone who buys their arguments might as well pop on that MAGA hat and unfurl a Confederate flag. And a Democratic Party that followed their advice would only be the Republican Party in a donkey suit.

This story has been getting a lot of play in the media. The version I’m working from is by Oliver Willis of Kos. Alex Jones and his Infowars website and media show was an early and the most prominent voice in conservative conspiracy theories. He made up many of his claims. He funded his operations partly through selling dietary supplements (in the US supplements are not regulated). One of his big stories a decade ago was that the Sandy Hook school shooting didn’t really happen. The families of the murdered children sued Jones. The trial took a good long time. When the verdict was handed down the families were awarded nearly a billion dollars, a judgment large enough that Jones was ordered to liquidate his assets to pay it. The Infowars name and assets were bought by ... The Onion, the site known for its satirical take on the news. This news is so weird one could accuse The Onion of making it up. But it really happened. The group Everytown for Gun Safety helped seal the deal and vowed to support the site through advertising and the Sandy Hook families heartily agree with the deal. The Onion gains a new platform and that source of hurtful information has been stopped. A pundit roundup by Greg Dworking for Kos has several reactions on how bad Matt Gaetz will be as Attorney General. I’ll let you read those (or not) and turn to the memes and cartoons posted in the comments. One posted by exlrrp is from Mehdi Hasan, which looks to be from Bluesky rather than X. Hasan wrote:

The party that is obsessed with child sex offenders, & is close to a cult that claims child sex offenders run the government, just nominated a guy once investigated for allegedly sex-trafficking a 17 year old girl to be in charge of the country’s legal system. Beyond parody.

Some look at “child sex offenders” and think drag queens. They don’t run the government, though we would be in a better place if they did. Others look at that phrase and see Jeffrey Epstein’s clients. Many of them do run the government. Another one posted by exlrrp shows Putin toasting with a glass of champagne and says, “Thank you Republicans! I couldn’t have screwed your nation without you!” David Hayward, the naked pastor, posted a cartoon with a standard format: “How it started” shows people gathered around Jesus as he teaches. “How it’s going” shows people outside a church bowing to an American flag. Collins Dictionary has released its word of the year with several other worthy mentions. The top word is brat, a confident, independent, and hedonistic attitude. It was created by Charli XCX and made famous when it was applied to Harris. Some of the other top words this year: Brainrot: an inability to think clearly caused by excessive consumption of low-quality online content. Looksmaxxing: attempting to maximize the attractiveness of one’s physical appearance. Rawdogging: the act of undertaking an activity without preparation, support, or equipment. Romantasy: a literary genre that combines romantic fiction with fantasy. Supermajority: (it is a word of the year only now?) Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted late night commentary. A sample:

“Since the election, internet searches for ‘how to move abroad’ are up by more than one-thousand percent. … Additionally, U.S. searches for ‘move to Canada’ increased by 1,270 percent, making this a perfect time to debut my new reality show: Who Wants to Marry a Mountie?” —Stephen Colbert