Train a generation to be afraid of being shot

End of the week and lots of stuff in the browser tabs.

Kerry Eleveld of the Daily Kos Staff reports on the faceoff between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the nasty guy as she tells him 129 Republicans voted for the House resolution condemning his withdrawal of troops from supporting the Kurds. Pelosi said he had a meltdown.

Frank Figliuzzi, FBI assistant director of counterintelligence, commented on the nasty guy’s mental state:

He is spiraling down into a dangerous, dangerous posture. … He is in a corner all by himself and if you're a foreign leader trying to assess him, you actually don't know where this is going except that he is incredibly vulnerable.

Eleveld added:

Essentially, any foreign leader could call up Trump right now, just like Erdoğan did, and bend him to their will because he's just that fragile. If Trump didn't pose a clear and present danger to this country before, he sure does now, and that danger increases with every passing minute that he continues to occupy the Oval Office.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat is an expert on authoritarians at New York University. She tweeted:

A cowed and traumatized population is a population that doesn’t rebel against authority - we are going out our way to train a generation to be afraid of being shot. Take NRA and gun lobby right-wing politics, add police huntings & shootings of people of color=despot’s delight.

The Kyiv Post, the English newspaper in Kyiv, Ukraine, has a big front page story today. It’s titled Shady Cast of Characters, Engineers of Trump-Ukraine scandal. Below that are 20 photos and brief descriptions of the nasty guy, Rudy Giuliani and other Washington players, the lawyers, the dirt diggers and beneficiaries in Ukraine, those with a supporting role in Ukraine, and the Oligarch in exile.

It sure would be nice to have something like that in an American paper.



Sarah Kendzior, also an expert on authoritarians, is concerned Democrats won’t be thorough in their impeachment investigations (as we all urge speed). She tweeted:

When one limits the scope of the crime, one limits discussion of the numerous complicit parties -- and then those parties are not held accountable. This is currently the proposed plan for impeachment and it's dishonest and destructive there too.

Eli Friedmann responded:

Power cannot police itself.
If you go too wide you risk your own power.

It's a catch 22.
If one is powerful enough to (for example) take trump down then one is ALSO probably powerful enough that some of one's own support flows from a place that trump feeds from as well.
Thus: narrow focus to avoid taking one's self down.

Daily Kos has a regular Open Thread for Night Owls. As part of that there is a quote and tweet of the day. The quote:

When you live under such an oligarchy, there is always some crisis or the other that takes priority over boring stuff such as healthcare and pollution. If the nation is facing external invasion or diabolical subversion, who has the time to worry about overcrowded hospitals and polluted rivers? By manufacturing a never-ending stream of crises, a corrupt oligarchy can prolong its rule indefinitely.
--Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018)

And the tweet was a little something that’s being passed around (author unknown):

I got a speeding ticket but my attorney, Rudy Giuliani, pleaded it down to first degree murder.

Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren tweeted a thread:

For decades, administrations of both political parties appointed big donors as ambassadors. They're usually not experts in the country, foreign policy—or anything else relevant to the job. But Donald Trump perfected the act of selling swanky diplomatic posts to rich buffoons.

Warren then lists people who have donated to the nasty guy’s inaugural committee:

* Gordon Sondland gave $1 million and got to be ambassador to the European Union. He’s been in the news lately testifying what he knows about the Ukraine scandal.

* Robert “Woody” Johnson gave $1 million and is ambassador to the United Kingdom. He saved $300 million in a tax scheme.

* Doug Manchester gave $1 million and is nominated to be ambassador to the Bahamas. He’s been accused of inappropriate behavior with female employees at the newspaper he owned.

And several more. Warren then calls for getting campaign money out of politics.



Bree Neewsome Bass tweeted a thread:

Every article of impeachment against 45 that's introduced to public should be presented along w/ proposed changes for how we prevent this in future. If the charge against 45 is soliciting election interference, follow it up w/ restoring *& expanding* the Voting Rights Act, 4 ex.

Place both of these matters before the Senate at the same time, in relationship with each other. Like I've said before, I think the public needs to see both why the 45 admin has to go and the forward-looking vision for how we achieve democracy & equality in this land.

In the matter of election interference, we also can't allow Republicans, as they may try, to remove 45 from office for that crime & then otherwise continue with their party's domestic effort to deny Americans free & fair elections. Another reason it's key to connect these matters.