The tacit consent of the voters

Since I discussed memes yesterday in my post about the book A Thousand Brains it is appropriate to link to a tweet by Lean McElrath that includes a definition of meme. A bit of it:

A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices, that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.

McElrath added:

You know what “Q” is? It’s a meme. Nothing more. There never was and is not now a secret plan. Q is a meme that was seeded and grew out of control, like psychological kudzu. As kudzu does, it’s destroyed many structures in its path. I don’t think that those who initially propagated the Q meme meant to contribute to the possible end of democracy in this country. But the law of unintended consequences is a bitch and you can’t kill an idea. In the context of Murdoch/Koch/Mercer, etc. ops, it got out of hand. At this point, a significant percentage of the American electorate is in a shared delusional state based on a meme that got out of hand. What’s even more frightening is that—while this time it wasn’t entirely intentional—next time it might be purposeful.

In a Ukraine update Kos of Daily Kos wrote about the Russian mobilization of fresh soldiers intended for fighting in Ukraine and how badly it is going. Regions of the country are evaluated on how much they might protest and the percentage of men taken is higher in non-protest regions. Many of those are taken from small villages where, to limit protest, all the men are taken at once, at least those easily found. The fresh conscripts are complaining about not being paid (which is a feature of the system). There are videos (of unknown veracity) of Russian soldiers surrendering to Ukrainians. Is that actually happening or is it great propaganda? Mark Sumner of Kos noted today is Vladimir Putin’s 70th birthday. Our wish for him is this is will be the last birthday of him in power. An aspect of the way Russia is fighting this war:

Russia is moving into each village by destroying every single home in that village. That’s their strategy. There’s no indication that there are Ukrainian troops in these buildings. There’s no sign of any military vehicles in the streets or yards. They don’t even pretend that there are. Russia is just going block by block and converting every house to rubble. Which sort of explains why they’re making such slow progress. Ukraine is working to defeat the Russian army. Russia is working to erase the Ukrainian nation.

How do Ukrainian soldiers keep their boots clean during the mud season? Wipe them on Russian flags. Joan McCarter of Kos, working from analysis done by the Washington Post, reported that for major races across the country – governor, attorney general, secretary of state, US House and Senate – there are 299 Republican candidates who embrace the Big Lie. That’s more than half of all Republicans in these races. Only North Dakota and Rhode Island don’t have Republican nominees who deny Biden won in 2020. Of those who embrace the Big Lie, 174 are either incumbents or are running in reliably Republican seats – they’re likely to win. Another 51 are in close races. In Michigan there are election deniers in 10 of 16 major races, including governor, AG, and SoS. McCarter wrote:

“Election denialism is a form of corruption,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present and a historian at New York University. “The party has now institutionalized this form of lying, this form of rejection of results. So it’s institutionalized illegal activity. These politicians are essentially conspiring to make party dogma the idea that it’s possible to reject certified results.”

McCarter added if Republicans win either chamber of Congress it will be dominated by the nasty guy. He will most certainly take advantage of it. McCarter also reported that there are more than 700 MAGA candidates running for seats in state legislatures, as identified by the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. That includes several dozen just added to the list. There are 21 Republican candidates who were present during the Capitol attack.

Eighteen of the new MAGA candidates they’ve identified are from Michigan, “meaning over 30% or nearly one-third of Michigan’s Republican candidates for state legislature pose an active threat to our democracy and future elections.” The DLCC has named Michigan “ground zero for the GOP’s continued threat against our democracy.” They’ve identified 47 incumbents or candidates who “attended the insurrection, took active steps to overturn the presidential election results, or spread conspiracy theories undermining confidence in our election system.”

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Tim Alberta of The Atlantic:

The great threat is no longer machines malfunctioning or ballots being spoiled. It is the actual theft of an election; it is the brazen abuse of power that requires not only bad actors in high places but the tacit consent of the voters who put them there. This makes for a terrifying scenario in 2024—but first, a crucial test in 2022.

Catching up on some of my saved posts. David Neiwert of Kos reported that members of the Constitutional Sheriff’s movement (sheriffs who have declared they are the ones who get to decide what the constitution says) and other election denialist groups are recruiting poll watchers. These are people who will be in polling places ready to prevent the ballot stuffing they claim cost the nasty guy’s win in the 2020 election. These watchers, including sheriffs and other law enforcement officers, were assisted by some state legislatures that expanded the roles and powers of poll watchers while lowering the requirements to become one. Wrote Neiwert on the intent of this effort:

“The specter of law enforcement at the polls is already enough to discourage people from going to the polls,” observed Devin Burghart of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights. “Moreover, the threat of surveillance of polling places and drop boxes proposed by groups like True the Vote is meant to intimidate voters, particularly people of color, and deter them from casting ballots.”

Dartagnan of the Kos community wrote:

Ever since Donald Trump took office in 2016, we’ve been reminded over and over that the preservation of our democracy depends on both political parties observing unwritten, unspoken norms of basic “good faith.” These norms are—often unconsciously—embedded into our system of government. The most important of these norms is the unspoken agreement that a loser of an election will respect the outcome and abide by the results. If that simple act of good faith is not adhered to, our democratic and constitutional system simply will not function the way it is designed to function. Instead, it is put at risk under the weight of its own implicit assumptions. The Republican Party, under the influence of Donald Trump and his criminal mentality and in its zeal to retain power at all costs, has made the conscious decision to abandon those norms of good faith. That is the essence of the “Big Lie” and all that it represents: By conjuring up imagined accounts of voter fraud as a justification for ignoring those established, implicit norms of basic fairness and decency, Republicans have laid the groundwork for disrupting and finally destroying the free and fair elections that are the core of our democratic system.

Dartagnan then discussed a video put out by Johnny Harris, a video journalist and member of the New York Times editorial board, and by columnist Michelle Cottle. The video describes the legal means Republicans are implementing to disrupt the election. The first step is to recruit Republican poll workers, the people who actually run the election. Many will be election denialists. Alas, Democrats are not engaging in a corresponding effort. On election day their purpose is to challenge any voter who doesn’t “look right” – and we know what kind of person that means. These challengers will likely be as intimidating, or thuggish, as they feel they need to be. Each challenge, even if false, creates a paper trail. This trove of manufactured evidence will be used to justify challenges to elections that Republicans lose. They hope this mound of false evidence will allow sympathetic state officials to overturn the results. The way to limit this is more Democrats taking poll worker jobs. Sarah Kendzior tweeted:

Think beyond bipartisan politics. The extreme right wing and the transnational crime networks backing them are not going for control of Congress: they are going for control, period. Congress is just a bonus. This was never purely a US crisis. This is a transnational operation by an axis of autocrats and their backers. In their formulation, the United States is cog in the machine, at best. To many, it is more useful broken down and sold for parts.

McElrath tweeted:

Some people don’t want to acknowledge that there’s a difference between overt fascism and omnipresent systems of oppression and abuses of power. Differences in degree constitute qualitative and quantitative differences in suffering and death. I don’t know how else to put it.

Progressive Secretary tweeted a cartoon by Steve Greenberg showing two talking (singing) heads of Equivalency News. Here’s the first part of their song:

Truth and lies and alibis We play them up at equal size If pundits shout they must be wise Regardless of the facts.

An update on the scandal of the nasty guy and the classified documents taken from his estate. Sumner wrote about a report from WaPo that all those boxes of documents – the nasty guy packed them himself. There goes the excuse that he is innocent because someone else packed them. Also, attorney Alex Cannon (not to be confused with pro-nasty guy judge Aileen Cannon) was given the job of taking a few boxes of documents to the National Archives and telling them that’s all the documents. When actually asked if that’s all, Cannon refused to answer. The nasty guy fired him. In a second post Sumner reported the nasty guy appealed his case to the Supreme Court. This is the case in which Judge Cannon is helping him keep control of (at least some of) the documents while the 11th Circuit Court is striking down her rulings. Sumner wrote that the Supremes are not likely to take the case. In a third post Sumner reported the nasty guy likely still has other documents. And there are a lot of places on his properties where he might have hidden them. The nasty guy claimed he could declassify documents just by thinking about it. Pat Byrnes drew a cartoon of a few more places he might try to use that excuse. New Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has now taken part in two oral argument sessions and is definitely making her voice heard (whether it sways any of the conservative members is, alas, a different matter). Lauren Sue of Kos reported that one of those cases is from Alabama. They drew one Congressional House seat that is black majority when they should have drawn two. Edmund LaCour, the state’s solicitor general, said they drew the districts in a race-neutral manner. How can we draw race-biased districts when our computers don’t display racial makeup? This perfectly constitutional. I add: Because, dude, you know where black people live, even if your mapping program doesn’t display it. And since you know where they live you can gerrymander them so they will elect only one black representative. Wrote Sue, referring to KBJ:

She said “they were in fact trying to ensure that people who had been discriminated against, the freedmen during the Reconstruction Period, were actually brought equal to everyone else in society.” She cited a report submitted by the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, which drafted the 14th Amendment: “And that report says that the entire point of the amendment was to secure rights of the freed former slaves,” Jackson said. “The legislator who introduced that amendment said that, quote ‘Unless the Constitution should restrain them, those states will all—I fear—keep up this discrimination and crush to death the hated freedmen.’” Jackson added: “That’s not a race-neutral or race-blind idea in terms of the remedy, and even more than that I don’t think that the historical record establishes that the founders believed that race neutrality or race blindness was required.”