With all the force of a projectile labeled “Nerf”

Last night’s offering on the Metropolitan Opera free streaming service was Porgy and Bess by George Gerswhin. It was involving enough I didn’t get any writing done. It was long enough I watched the third act this morning.



A big story in the news right now is about the nasty guy calling military people “suckers” and “losers.” Losers for dying, suckers for being willing to serve their country without a hefty compensation.

A lot of military people are responding. One that caught my attention was by Charlotte Clymer. She was part of a casket team that went to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. The team’s job was to transfer caskets from an aircraft to ground vehicles with high dignity and precision. She did not want to mess up in giving these fallen soldiers the honor and respect they were due. She ended with this:

I cannot adequately describe my anger at Donald Trump for being so willing to send service members halfway around the world to die on his own behalf and then call them "losers" for doing so. This coward is unfit for his office and the power it holds. He needs to go.

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos fills in the details of the nasty guy’s reactions, beginning with:

From even before Donald Trump declared that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without losing support it’s been … kind of true. No matter what Trump has done, not matter what scandals have emerged, everything has seemed to strike with all the force of a projectile labeled “Nerf.” However, the word that Trump not only denigrated John McCain’s military service, but called the fallen soldiers at a military cemetery “suckers” and “losers” seems to have cracked Trump’s tacky gold-plating.

Why this particular affair has Trump running scared after he’s survived been caught out: Trying to extort lies from a foreign government, putting children in cages to demonstrate deliberate cruelty, and attempting genocide against blue states is not exactly clear.

Sumner also listed ten things more outrageous than calling dead soldiers “losers” from least outrageous to most:

Extorted Ukraine to say they were investigating Joe Biden (yeah, he was impeached over this, but not removed – and this was the least outrageous).

Remained silent after the death of Jamal Khashoggi.

Got rid of inspectors general so he couldn’t be held accountable.

Handed out pardons to guilty pals.

Encouraged police to use violence.

Ignored Russia’s offer of bounties for the murder of US troops.

Lied about building a border wall – he declared it a national emergency, but very little has been built (which is a good thing, so keep the focus on the lie).

Encouraged racism in everything.

Put children in cages.

And the most outrageous: Turned the COVID-19 pandemic into genocide.

Sarah Kendzior responded to the nasty guy quote that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and he wouldn’t lose support:

The real question of that quote though isn't "Why do they support him?" It's who gave him the gun. It's who loads the gun. It's who refuses to arrest him after the murder. It's who creates the propaganda to whitewash the murder.

*That's* why he can shoot anyone on 5th Ave.

Leah McElrath tweeted:

[To be clear]: The military is NOT actually “betraying” Trump, but he experiences himself as entitled to their support, both because of his position and because of his grandiosity. Since he feels entitled to support he’s not receiving, he will experience the lack of it as a betrayal.

Bernie Sanders tweeted a thread saying we must consider what to do if the nasty guy loses and tries to hold onto power. He offers things we can do to prepare.

States should change laws to allow votes to be counted (or at least prepared for counting) before election day so that battleground states are not counting votes days and weeks later.

News media should prepare Americans to understand we might not know the results on Nov. 4. Without media acting conspiracy theories will thrive.

Social media companies need to stop people from using them to harass elected officials and intimidate voters.

Congress should hold hearing with local officials on how they plan to handle Election Day, as a way of getting the story out.

We must prevent the nasty guy from staying in power if he loses.

Jennifer Cohn, an election security advocate, tweeted:

Some of the people who helped Bush stop the election recount in Florida 2000 – Kavanaugh, & Roberts – are in positions of power today. Roger Stone organized the Brooks Brothers riot to intimidate recount workers & stall the recount so it wld be hard to complete b4 the deadline.
...
We can expect Trump to similarly weaponize election deadlines in November, especially as to vote by mail. They will use the signature match requirement to argue & delay.

It sounds like after they argue and delay, they’ll say the count has gone on for too long, we have to stop it (though that will depend on who is ahead at the time).



Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos quoted Greg Sargent of The Washington Post.

As a new wave of unrest breaks out, some commentators have cracked open their well-worn pundit handbooks and recited a trusty old trope: Violence simply must help the “law and order” candidate. It cannot be any other way, because the handbook says so: Violence must beget backlash — a craving for the candidate vowing “strength.”

But what if a public backlash is brewing against what President Trump is doing? What if many voters see Trump’s exploitation of the situation as part of the problem, and are recoiling from that? If so, this could challenge the conventional pundit playbook, and prompt a revisiting of how cycles of racial nationalism and attempts at reconciliation play out in our politics.

New polling suggests this possibility. A CNN poll finds that 58 percent of Americans say Trump’s response to the protests has been “more harmful,” while only 33 percent say it’s “more helpful.”

In another pundit roundup Dworkin quoted a couple essays from David Graeber, who recently died. The first was printed in Gawker.

The Department of Justice's investigation of the Ferguson Police Department has scandalized the nation, and justly so. But the department's institutional racism, while shocking, isn't the report's most striking revelation.

More damning is this: in a major American city, the criminal justice system perceives a large part of that city's population not as citizens to be protected, but as potential targets for what can only be described as a shake-down operation designed to wring money out of the poorest and most vulnerable by any means they could, and that as a result, the overwhelming majority of Ferguson's citizens had outstanding warrants.

And from The Baffler, an article titled The Bully’s Pulpit and subtitle On the elementary structure of domination.

In late February and early March 1991, during the first Gulf War, U.S. forces bombed, shelled, and otherwise set fire to thousands of young Iraqi men who were trying to flee Kuwait. There were a series of such incidents—the “Highway of Death,” “Highway 8,” the “Battle of Rumaila”—in which U.S. air power cut off columns of retreating Iraqis and engaged in what the military refers to as a “turkey shoot,” where trapped soldiers are simply slaughtered in their vehicles. Images of charred bodies trying desperately to crawl from their trucks became iconic symbols of the war.

I have never understood why this mass slaughter of Iraqi men isn’t considered a war crime.

Graebler went on to describe some attempts to cover it up.

Such a “turkey shoot” is definitely an act of domination, of not just being victorious over your opponent, but eliminating them.



Time for fun. The annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest for the worst possible opening line for a novel is out. A few of my favorites:

Although Snake-Eye Slade had told him to get out of town (in some old-timey western vernacular), Allthumbs McGubbins reckoned that ever since the unfortunate pistol-in-the-holster discharge accident, he couldn’t quite manage a skedaddle but felt that his departure would require something faster than a mosey.
- Tim Metz, Kokomo, IN

Farmer Bob, unlucky in love and life in general, received yet another Dear John letter, this time from Bubbles Magaggaggey, the last blind woman in town, so here he was, alone and penniless; so penniless, in fact, that he neglected to make the payments on his tractor and soon received a John Deere letter, coincidentally from Bubbles, who ran the Tractor Emporium.
- DJ Hicks Jr., Manchester NJ

Gasping for breath as she lay in the dew-laden lakeside grass, Rifka Lieberman's chest heaved with rising passion as Saul Cohen approached with the inhaler she had left behind at the assisted living facility.
- Leo Gordon, Los Angeles, CA

“You may know my true name,” gloated Archmage-Emperor !Gfńatt’ Bdúnśṽiobfhńr to the foolish traitor who had dared try to end his glorious mage-empire’s reign, “but can you pronounce it?”
- Gideon Gordon, Boston, MA

When she walked into my office on that bleak December day, she was like a breath of fresh air in a coal mine; she made my canary sing.
- Yale Abrams, Santa Rosa, CA