Both being transparent and ensuring transparency

Happy two day: 2-2-22! Or 02-02-2022! Rain when I got up today, though about an hour later it turned to snow. By mid afternoon there were a couple inches on the ground, though morning hourly forecasts suggested I might get twice that. About 3:00 this afternoon neighbors with noisy snow blowers were out even though forecasts say snow is going to fall for another 30 hours and dump maybe another foot. I stayed inside, waiting to do my shoveling after the snow stops. Why shovel twice? Looking at the weather map at 10:00 this evening a bit before posting I doubt the storm will last until 10:00 tomorrow evening. My exercise for tomorrow will be definitely be shoveling. A couple weeks ago there was news that the nasty guy had written an executive order to have either the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, or the military seize voting machines in certain states after the 2020 election. Once impounded they nasty guy could say the machines show whatever he needed them to show. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos supplied details about how much action went with that order. Sumner concluded:

All of these accounts show the same thing: Trump didn’t “consider” having to seize voting machines; Trump tried to seize the voting machines. This wasn’t something that ended with papers passed around a desk and a decision not to go forward. On each occasion, Trump agreed with the scheme to take control of machines, ballots, and supporting materials. With the equipment and results in hand, he could have issued whatever lies he wanted about what his team “found.” Donald Trump schemed openly to overthrow democracy and install himself as an authoritarian ruler. His party—from bottom to top—is complicit in this scheme which is, without qualification, the greatest threat the United States has ever faced. Why isn’t the media treating it that way?

I’ve written that because of possible reforms to the Electoral Count Act the nasty guy claimed the vice nasty had the power to overturn the Electoral College count. Sumner reported since the vice nasty didn’t the nasty guy is calling for an investigation of the vice nasty for failing to carry out a coup plot. In a third post Sumner praised Scotch tape for both being transparent and ensuring transparency. The National Archives are turning over documents to the January 6th Committee and many of them are covered with tape. That’s because the nasty guy, in violation of national records laws, frequently ripped up a document when he was done with it. Perhaps he got into that habit when he started being investigated for shady real estate deals. Career civil servants reconstructed the documents for proper archiving – and for proper governmental transparency. Back to what the media isn’t doing. Dartagnan of the Kos community discussed how media should treat the nasty guy. Simply reporting on what he says means amplifying his lies. Another option is to not report on him at all. But now he is again trying to incite a mob to prevent justice. And Americans need to hear that. As front page news. Media can’t ignore that, though they are doing a good job of ignoring right now.

The impetus to minimize Trump’s poisonous rhetoric makes sense. But he’s playing solely to his base at this point, and his intent here is to stoke them into violence on his behalf. The comforting assumption that by choosing to not give Trump a “voice” will lessen the toxic effect he has on the country ignores the reality that his hardcore base no longer occupies the same universe most media conglomerates take for granted. They don’t read the New York Times or the Washington Post. They don’t watch CNN. ... For the rest of us—Democrats, including those few truly independent and swing voters who will likely help determine whether Trump and his foul minions ever again despoil the Executive Branch—it would be really useful to be prepared when our streets in 2024 are suddenly filled with gun-waving Nazis driving their pick up trucks and threatening us. It would be helpful for Americans to understand exactly why volunteering to help at the polls is now a recipe for death threats, or why Democratic votes are now suddenly, routinely subject to being thrown out or otherwise challenged on wholly specious grounds.

The coverage of one rally talked about the “upsides and downsides” of the incitement at the rally.

There’s no sense that these are the same people who regularly intimidate elected officials with death threats, come armed and ready to shoot up state capitals, plan to kidnap and execute state governors, fly Nazi and Confederate flags, and spit hatred at Jews and people of color in the name of white supremacy. No acknowledgment that these are the very same people Trump wants to turn loose on American society if he’s not treated like he’s above the law; turned loose not to peacefully “protest” or exercise their right to free speech, but to intimidate, attack and, if necessary, kill other Americans.

Media people are trained to never take sides because that can alienate millions of Americans. But media is also in business to tell the truth. They nasty guy is calling for actions that get people killed and the media is ignoring the threat. Their complacency makes them complicit. Another old browser tab, this is one from the beginning of December. The media aren’t the only ones complacent these days. Joe Cardillo tweeted:

As a marketer who's studied positioning/messaging for many years it pains me to say it but... The biggest risk to our democracy comes from Democrats in power not fundamentally dealing with what's at stake. ... Conservatives + far-right extremists know what's at stake, and their positioning is dialed in... The far-right authoritarian and totalitarian types are testing, finding out how far they can go in literally calling for violence and encouraging their followers to do so, too They're setting up their own militias. Republicans are clear on their positioning/messaging, it's based on defining American ideals as focused on exclusion, on dehumanizing and otherizing Conservative & far-right positioning is also about controlling the narrative of history, facts, and who gets to tell their story A la the made-up hysteria over CRT which is actually about refusing to see/hear the stories of anyone who isn't white As @EricBoehlert notes, that positioning is WORKING for conservatives and the far-right with mainstream media, and Democrats are failing to deal with it ... So, what is the positioning that Democrats need to respond with? It's about: - Our foundational understanding of the American ideal - Our notions of power, who has it, what it means to use it responsibly - The courage needed to be responsible and accountable to each other How this positioning actually plays out... - With power comes responsibility, anyone who wants the easy way out hasn't earned the right to wield it - We put the work in, we say "I'll go first, and I'll keep working at it because that's who we are" I believe the hardest part of this positioning is that it's not about a new frontier, b/c that's the standard colonial, pioneer, extraction model with all of its racist & sexist features

Another old tweets. Back in November Leah McElrath wrote:

The fact that we allow people to be unhoused involuntarily for extended periods of time is a moral stain on a nation as wealthy as ours. We seem to have become inured to a preventable, cruel reality that didn’t exist here on this scale when I was a child. ... In downtown Houston, countless offices are still empty due to the pandemic, all lit and heated. Right outside are people sleeping on the concrete. They can’t even sleep on the bus stop benches because those have built-in anti-homeless “armrests.” It’s cruel and immoral. Anyway, I didn’t mean to write about this. It’s just that our unhoused neighbors are human beings. And it’s winter. And some won’t make it through without help. The existence of an unhoused population who die in the cold is a policy choice. It doesn’t have to be this way. People being unhoused is a policy choice.

McElrath included a comparison of giving every unhoused person a home to the cost of an aircraft carrier. A commenter disputed the specific comparison, but agreed the money to house the approximate 550K homeless would be up to $70B a year. It is a great return on investment. Even if it wasn’t, it’s a paltry sum.