No evidence for his claims isn’t a bug: it’s the point

My friend and debate partner wasn’t done with his debate. A week ago Saturday I wrote about an essay by Trenz Pruca about the life cycle of capitalism and that it ends oligarchy. My debate partner asked what is Pruca’s relationship to reality? On Wednesday I addressed that question by discussing Pruca’s sources. My debate partner agreed that Pruca is credible. But is he effective? What is he doing to achieve the reform he says is so urgently needed? My debate partner (yes, he’s still a friend) pulled in Daily Kos, my primary source of news, and Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York City. What are they doing to achieve effective reform? I’m going to leave Mamdani out of the discussion. He hasn’t started his term of mayor yet and we don’t know how effective he will or won’t be. I am aware that my friend has a much stronger tie to NYC than I do so he might be right that Mamdani might be thwarted at every turn. And my friend might be surprised. Back to Kos and Pruca. Kos is a news service that supports a community and Pruca is one voice in that community. That leads to a basic question: How effective is a news service supposed to be in prompting change? Do we expect that effectiveness from the Detroit Free Press or the Sacramento Bee (just pulled that one out of thin air), or the Washington Post? Yes, some opinion sections of newspapers and online news sources, grab hold of an important idea and make a lot of noise about it, loud enough to get significant public and political attention. But their job is to report the news and to spread ideas through the readers. Daily Kos does that too. The site spreads ideas through its progressive readers, making all of us aware of the things progressives should know. Some of that is “preaching to the choir” and it is also making sure the choir knows all the songs and can accurately sing them when away from the choir loft. Another aspect is that several prominent Democrats are readers (or at least have accounts). Essays like Pruca’s might be read by lawmakers. Also Kos has an activist arm. Every day they send out an email about how the reader can do something for democracy or the progressive cause. That included donating to a cause or suggesting how a lawmaker could be contacted. I got them for a while, but decided they were just filling up my email inbox. Kos is more effective than a visitor to their website might see. Is my own blog supposed to be effective? I didn’t begin it that way. Back in 2004 I started sending blurbs of important LGBTQ news to family, starting with Massachusetts legalizing same sex marriage. In 2007 a relative suggested I switch to blogging. My focus has shifted from LGBTQ issues into the nasty things politicians are doing. Through it all my purpose has been to spread what I see as important ideas out into the world (yes, it is the world, Singapore, Hong Kong, and China are at the top of viewer countries at the moment and the US is a distant 5th). In my friend’s email he mentioned the Trust Busting that happened between 1904 and 1919. He mentioned it because I had said I didn’t know how the US got through the age of Robber Barons, a time similar to now. My friend suggested I search for Trust Busting. I did, and learned a lot about Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and Howard Taft applying an anti-trust law to break up big corporations. They did it by bringing cases through the court system to a Supreme Court willing to apply the law against corporations. Yeah, today we have neither a president willing to take on that fight nor a Supreme Court willing to go against their billionaire friends. In my friend’s discussion he mentioned Roosevelt’s efforts were backed by newspapers of the day. I’m sure my friend was saying see, here are newspapers being effective. But the websites I read, and I read several, said nothing about the role of newspapers. I hope I’ve shown Kos is more effective than my friend can see. As for Pruca, does he need to be the one to turn his ideas into policy or law, or is stating the ideas plainly enough for him to do, letting more appropriate people to take up the ideas? Also, I don’t know what Pruca does when he’s not writing for Kos. From his bio, which I quoted before, he does interact with government officials about government policy. Perhaps he has explained these ideas to them, about as effective as he can be. As always, dear friend, I’m open to the debate continuing. One more Trenz Pruca essay. His question is: Why are we so reluctant to tax the rich? Adam Smith, working in the 18th century, warned that insufficiently taxing the rich jeopardized democracy. But it also noted we admire those who strive with unrelenting industry, even if what they strive for is hollow. Pruca thinks in the last decade (and I think all the way back to Reagan and his tax cuts) there has been a shift from wealth affecting tax policies at the margins to a deference to wealth shaping the tax agenda. The wealth are portrayed as persecuted victims – of taxation, of regulation, of journalists, and of democracy.

If the wealthy are victims, then taxing them is cruelty. If they are persecuted, then oversight is tyranny. If they are heroes of capitalism, then regulation is sabotage.

No, the wealthy are not victims. They are not persecuted. They are not heroes. The middle class identifies upward, awaiting their ascent. Taxing the rich feels like taxing their aspirations. Tax law feels like an attack on “success.” The nasty guy has promoted the shift from billionaires influencing tax policy to authoring it. The government becomes a service provider for wealth, to remove “burdens.” The IRS is an inconvenience, regulators become enemies, and public spending becomes a threat. Pruca concluded:

Taxation, regulation, oversight, and enforcement have all been reframed—not as civic obligations, but as moral trespasses. And in that transformation, the democratic project itself has been bent. The task before us is not merely raising taxes on the rich—though that remains necessary. It is dismantling the cultural machinery that convinces us that the wealthy are fragile, persecuted, and unimpeachable. Smith would tell us plainly that our sympathy, however understandable, is misplaced. The wealthy do not need our protection. Democracy does.

Last week I reported that several senators released a video reminding those in the military that rejecting illegal orders is their duty. One of those senators was Mark Kelly of Arizona. On Monday this week Oliver Willis of Kos reported that the Pentagon announced it is now investigating Kelly. That may include recalling him to active duty for a court-martial. In response Kelly said he won’t be silenced by bullies. A reminder who Kelly is:

Kelly served as a captain in the Navy and flew 39 combat missions in the first Iraq War. He then went on to a distinguished career as a NASA astronaut and was inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame before successfully running for Senate.

The rest of the post is a review of the case. On Tuesday Emily Singer of Kos reported that polls show the public is siding with Kelly. Yesterday Thom Hartmann of the Kos community and an independent pundit discussed the incident behind Kelly’s notice to the military and the recent revelation from the Washington Post. The incident was back on September 2, the first time the nasty guy used the military to strike a boat in the Caribbean. The nasty guy and his goons claimed the boat was carrying drugs to the US and the people on board were members of the violent Tren de Aragua gang of Venezuela. The nasty guy and his goons provided no evidence either of the drugs or the connection to the gang. Hartmann wrote:

If these men had truly been high–value cartel operatives, Trump would be parading names and photos across every rally stage in America. The silence tells its own story.

Since that first strike there have been “more than 20 other missile strikes on small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing at least 80 people.” Now to the WaPo revelation. The first missile ripped the boat apart and set it burning. Two men clung to the wreckage.

They were unarmed. They were wounded. They were no threat to anyone. They were simply alive; inconveniently alive for a man who had allegedly already given the order that there be no survivors. And so, according to two officials with direct knowledge of the strike, the Special Operations commander overseeing the operation ordered a second missile. It hit the water and blew those two men apart.

Congress was told the second missile was to “remove a navigation hazard.” That’s an attempt to rewrite history. An order to kill wounded and unarmed survivors is defined by the Geneva Conventions as a war crime. Civilized states do not execute helpless people.

This, too, has been part of the authoritarian playbook since ancient times. Pick a foreign or criminal “other,” paint them as subhuman monsters, and then declare that the normal laws of war, morality, and basic decency no longer apply. ... The fact that the administration has produced no evidence for its claims isn’t a bug: it’s the point. When the government fabricates an omnipresent threat, it gives itself permission to kill whoever it wants.

These senators calling to disobey illegal orders makes sense. This was an illegal order. That the nasty guy called for their death also makes sense. The nasty guy (or at least his goons) know the order was illegal.

If Hegseth gave an order to “kill everybody,” he must be removed and prosecuted. If U.S. commanders falsified reports to mislead Congress and the public, they must be held accountable. And if Donald Trump approved or encouraged these actions, then impeachment and criminal referral are not optional: they’re required to defend the rule of law. America doesn’t have many chances left to prove to the world, and to ourselves, that we still believe in the value of human life and the restraints of democratic power. This is one of them.

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin called Hegseth the “Secretary of War Crimes.” Dworkin starts with an excerpt of that WaPo article, which I’ll let you read. In the comments Lady Haha posted a cartoon by Jeff Danzinger showing two generals talking:

First: OK... Here’s what the secretary wants you to do: Go through Mark Kelly’s records and find anything we can use to court-martial him. Understand? Second: Yes, General, but that sounds like an illegal order.

In the main body of the post Cliff Schechter of Blue Amp talked about the nasty guy’s theory of politics. I think Dworkin’s summary at the start of the quote is good enough, I’ll stick with that.

Trump's never been guided by ideology — only ego. His one rule's simple: flatter him, you’re in; don’t, you’re done. From Pence to Putin, it's the real theory that explains every move he's ever made.

After all that this next detail is a bit of a toss-off. Willis, working from a segment on NPR, reported that Hegseth has prepared a draft memo that would pull the Pentagon’s support form Scouting America, formerly known at the Boy Scouts. His reason is the group is “detrimental to national security.” That phrase is important because the law compels the Pentagon to support scouts unless there is a security risk. The reason behind this is that scouting has become too woke. They are now genderless (girls and gays can join) and they support diversity, equity, and inclusion.

“The organization once endorsed by President Theodore Roosevelt no longer supports the future of American boys,” Hegseth’s memo alleges. He also argues that the scouts contribute to “gender confusion” and no longer “cultivate masculine values.”

If that memo becomes policy the military would no longer provide support for the National Jamboree and US military installations would be banned from hosting scout meeting. Many bases host the scouts because that’s a place of familiarity to boys whose parents move from base to base.