In 1949, George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four to warn of the dangers of totalitarian governments — the sort that he saw cropping up in Spain and Russia during that period. He wrote of a harsh world where truth becomes fungible. The all-powerful, all-seeing Big Brother controls everything. Thought police weed out dissension. Facts and history are altered to meet the needs of the party in power.

Little did Orwell know he might be describing the United States in the second decade of the 21st century.

Over the course of the past year, the Republican party has chosen to downplay the events of January 6. A recent Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found about two-thirds of Republicans viewed the attack as not violent or only somewhat violent. Yet overall, about two-thirds of Americans described the day as violent or very violent.

Immediately after January 6, Republican leaders denounced the insurrection. On January 19th, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said, “The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the President and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like.” House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy said, “The President bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. These facts require immediate action by President Trump.”

But before long, the back-pedaling began. The landscape of reality for Republicans quickly began to change. Impeachment efforts were blocked. So were attempts to establish a bi-partisan commission to investigate the attack. McCarthy is now refusing to testify before the January 6 commission, despite previously having agreed to do so.

Throughout 2021, Republican members of Congress downplayed the events of January 6. For example, Georgia Rep. Andrew Clyde (R) characterized the attack as a “normal tourist visit.” And now the Big Lie — the claim of a stolen election — continues to gain traction. Of course, the former President is beating the drum the loudest. But plenty of others are joining the parade.

Republican legislatures are working hard to limit voting rights, all under the guise of preventing another “stolen” election. According to a recent Washington Post-University of Maryland poll, 30 percent of Americans say there is solid evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. Among Trump supporters, 69 percent say Biden’s election was not legitimate. Numerous court cases and state election audits have proven otherwise.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell dives deep into the nature of truth and how a party in power can change it. A substitute language, Newspeak, is created to stamp out the truth of what is happening.

“There is need for an unwearying, moment-to-moment flexibility in the treatment of facts. The keyword here is BLACKWHITE. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to BELIEVE that black is white, and more, to KNOW that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. “

Orwell saw a society in which the party was all-powerful. History was altered to support that.

“…the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it… All the beliefs, habits, tastes, emotions, mental attitudes that characterize our time are really designed to sustain the mystique of the Party and prevent the true nature of present-day society from being perceived.”

In a Washington Post opinion piece, Ellie Silverman notes the deep divides in America. She cites remarks by Cassie Miller of the Southern Poverty Law Center: “It suggests that we’ve actually moved beyond just partisanship. Americans are living in two wildly different realities and are viewing each other increasingly as enemies that they have to contend with.”

The bending of truth is nothing new to Trump world. Think back to remarks by Counselor to the President, Kellyanne Conway, defending false statements about Trump’s inaugural crowd. She termed the lies “alternative facts.”

One would think the blatant alteration of facts would backfire. But it doesn’t. The facts don’t matter. It’s the emotion that counts. In a Washington Post essay, Philip Bump uses as example NPR host Steve Inskeep’s challenge to Trump regarding the audit of the vote in Arizona.

“Put succinctly, you can’t combat irrationality with reason.
When Trump defended his position by mentioning the vote result in Arizona, Inskeep pointed out that the partisan review of ballots in that state’s Maricopa County had not changed the actual result.
To a rational person, this is damning: Trump’s allies pushed for an “audit,” got one, and Trump still lost. How can you rebut that? But the point of the audit was always to codify doubt. The audit accomplished what it was intended to accomplish: Give Trump and his allies something full of “questions” to which he could point as evidence that something sketchy happened.”

Codify doubt. Create confusion. Fuel conspiracy theory. That’s the real purpose of alternative facts. This blurring of reality happens at all levels — think local school boards, social media, conversations around the family table. And now, the Republican National Committee has cast the violent January 6 insurrection as “legitimate political discourse.”

Thomas Friedman recently wrote in The New York Times about the crisis we now face. He fears we are headed for a very dark place because once “there is no more truth, only versions, and no more trust, only polarization — getting them back is almost impossible.”

Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four did not end well for its protagonist, Winston Smith. Let’s hope our ending is better.

(Updated February 8. 2022)

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What a bizarre month this has been.

We’ve had Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-Texas) ask if the National Forest Service might change Earth’s orbit around the sun to alter the effects of climate change. An Ohio doctor pushes the idea that the vaccines can magnetize people and make them susceptible to government monitoring — an idea readily accepted by Republican legislators there.

Now comes Rep. Ann Wagner, (R-Missouri) proposing a bill that would hold China accountable for “deliberate, reckless action that allowed the coronavirus to spread, killing millions worldwide.”

She recently warned constituents that the government must pass this legislation, “to make sure China pays for their reckless actions.”

Talk about reckless actions, I bet she can’t wait to read “Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History,” a new book by Washington Post journalists Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta that captures the Trump administration’s dysfunctional response to the unfolding pandemic.

The book details some of the inner workings of Trump world early on in the pandemic. We knew he wanted to block cruise ship passengers from re-entering the country. But did we know he also wanted to bar infected Americans returning from abroad? His solution: send them to Guantanamo. All to keep the COVID numbers down in the U.S.A.

The book is not without its ironic moments…

“Testing is killing me!” Trump reportedly exclaimed in a phone call to then-Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on March 18, yelling so loudly that Azar’s aides overheard every word. “I’m going to lose the election because of testing! What idiot had the federal government do testing?”
“Uh, do you mean Jared?” Azar responded, citing the president’s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
– Washington Post

Trump fired key people to stifle sound scientific commentary. And, of course, he espoused ideas like using hydroxychloroquine and bleach injection. He repeatedly claimed the whole pandemic was all a hoax. He downplayed the need for masks and he failed to encourage widespread vaccination.

Crazy, right? We laughed. But Abutaleb and Paletta take a more somber view.

“One of the biggest flaws in the Trump administration’s response is that no one was in charge of the response… Was it Birx, the task force coordinator? Was it Pence, head of the task force? Was it Trump, the boss? Was it Kushner, running the shadow task force until he wasn’t? Was it Marc Short or Mark Meadows, often at odds, rarely in sync?… Ultimately, there was no accountability, and the response was rudderless”

Yeah, Ann Wagner, people need to be held responsible for making the pandemic much worse than it needed to be.

The post Strange times, reckless behavior, nightmare scenarios appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In June of 1950, Joe DiMaggio got his 2,000^th hit. Guam was designated a United States Territory, and its residents were granted US citizenship. Budge Patty won his first of 2 Grand Slam titles at the French Men’s Tennis Championships, beating Jaroslav Drobný 6-1, 6-2, 3-6, 5-7, 7-5. Doris Hart was the women’s French Tennis Champion.

All through June of 1950, The Third Man Theme, an instrumental played on the zither by Anton Karas, was the most popular song on Billboard’s Best Sellers in Stores chart in the US. It was also the Most Played in Jukeboxes. The most popular song Played by Jockeys was Hoop-Dee-Doo by Perry Como. Jukeboxes, Jockeys, yes we are that far away from then now.

I was born in June 1950. Although that fact ages me now, until recently I knew nothing about the month in which I was born. The New York Times on June 9, 1950, the day of my birth, saw a scary world. U.S. Reds Go Underground To Foil F.B.I., Hoover Says is centered on the front page. The sub-headline goes on to state that 540,000 Communists and Followers Seek Our Atomic, Military, Industrial Secrets, He Tells Closed Senate Unit Session. Page 2 tells us that the FAR EAST SITUATION is VIEWED AS GRAVE. In fact, Peace Treaty With Japan Now Would Throw That Country to Russia, Navy Expert Says.

Reds was a word much in fashion in 1950.

But even so, over at the New York Times not all was doom and gloom. The paper, on page 26, had a Coco-Cola ad touting the beverage as the Natural Partner of Good Things to Eat. Who knew!  Altman & Co showed DISTINGUISHED DRESSES OF HOPE SKILLMAN COTTONS, all in caps, for $19.95, on page 7. These dresses were available in 1950 with a cool well-bred air all of their own. Not only that. You could have the first dress in blue, maize or rose as shown – as shown was in black and white, a minor detail – or in a different stripe design in brown, blue or green, size 10 to 20. But wait. For the second dress, there were other options. The second dress was available in orchid, gold or rose; or in a stripe with amber, blue or green predominating, sizes 12 to 20. Unfortunately, those size 10 were out of luck with the second dress option.

But just a minute, what about those sizes 4, 6 or 8, much in demand today? So sorry, those sizes did not seem to be available in the 1950’s. Everybody was big then, or so it would seem.

On page 28 of the New York Times on June 9, 1950, were the movies of the day. Annie Get Your Gun, The Picture the Country’s Been Waiting For – News. Maureen O’Hara and Macdonald Carey were in Comanche Territory. Elizabeth Taylor (the Bride of the Year) was in Conspirator, an MGM hit. The Little Carnegie on West 57^th (between 6^th and 7^th Avenues, the ad adds for reference) was showing Faust and the Devil, BEST FILM OF ITS KIND YET MADE – Journal American.

What was news in June of 1950 is today just an annotation in history, patchily available on Wikipedia and Google Images. It might be good for us to remember that in another 50 to 100 years, our preoccupations of today, our pandemic, the newly hatched harebrained notion that Trump might be legitimately reinstated as President in August 2021, however we define the world as we know it now and no matter how impassioned we are about our present, all of our concerns will one day be lodged somewhere as just plain ole yesteryear.

Zeroing in on June 9, 1950, the Panhandle Herald in Carson County, Texas noted on page 2 that there was a problem getting good seed wheat that year. On its front page the same paper reported that a radio and rifle had been stolen from a farm belonging to one Jim Mecaskey. On page 5, we discover that Alma Medlin, Bride-Elect, was Given a Shower. And on page 7, we learn that Frank Duby Took a Business Course.

Regional newspapers around the country and around the world reported on everyday events going on that same day. The Amherst News-Times in Ohio reported that their Council had authorized Parking Meters Here, and that Funeral Services would Be Friday for Adam Hahn.

In Ireland, sometime during that day of June 9^th 1950, I was born, one among an estimated 266,848 babies born on that date worldwide.

I have just recently discovered that there are web sites dedicated to revealing to me essential facts of my existence that I might have missed. One site tells me that according to their calculations, it’s most likely I was conceived on Friday, September 16, 1949. In all honesty, I had never wondered about that before they brought it to my attention. Now I’m wondering if I should somehow celebrate September 16 as a sort of alternate birthday. Happy Conceived Day!

I was born, it turns out, just weeks before the outbreak of the Korean War. That war began on June 25^th 1950 when forces from North Korea invaded South Korea. On June 28^th, North Korean forces captured Seoul, the capital of South Korea. The times were not so innocent after all. I have no memory of the Korean War at all: nothing, no images, no sound bites, no anecdotes.

My memories of the 1950’s are bathed in dull colors, sepia browns, indistinct grays and dusty blues. If there were reds (other than Hoover’s) or yellows or greens in those years, then they were dull too. I often think of that when I look at the vibrant, soul enhancing and screamingly alive colors of David Hockney who also lived through the dulled colors of the1950’s. Hockney is the anecdote to the visual world in the 1950’s, even the 1940’s.

Who else was born in 1950? Do I want to do this and date myself? I guess so.

Among those in the public eye born in 1950 were Bill Murray, Dr. Phil, Stevie Wonder, Joan Lunden, Victoria Principal, Daniel Auteuil, Morgan Fairchild, Natalie Cole, Mark Spitz, Peter Gabriel, Cybill Shepherd, Miou-Miou, Neil Jordan, Julie Walters, Bobby McFerrin, William Hurt and Martin Short.

For the rest of us born in 1950 still alive, untouched by fame, we too have achieved a milestone. We have witnessed 71 years.

The post What June 1950 can teach us about June 2021 appeared first on Occasional Planet.

As I write, Miley Cyrus’s Party in the U.S.A. is sitting at number 17 on Apple’s iTunes US singles chart. Nothing remarkable, you may think. Except that Party in the U.S.A. was originally released in 2009, some 12 years ago. Suddenly it’s back on the charts. Gwen Stefani’s Hollaback Girl is sitting at number 21 on the same chart. That song was released in 2005. Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain, from 1972, is at number 39. Hootie & the Blowfish’s Let Her Cry, 1994, is 32.

The Four Seasons’ Oh What a Night, 1975, is in position number 48. The Pet Shop Boys’ Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money,) 1985, is a couple of slots below at 50. Jackson Browne’s Somebody’s Baby, 1982, is at number 55. And the Monkees’ Daydream Believer, 1967, is right behind at number 59.

What’s going on?

Well, it seems that the pandemic has unleashed an intense longing for the way things used to be before the world as we knew it came crashing down in March 2020. The decades before lockdown have now become a golden era, and people seem to be reaching out to the music that defined those years for affirmation and reassurance. In these uncertain times, people are reaching back to the oldies but goldies. Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline, 1969, went to number 5 on the Apple Music chart on Mar 7 of this year. And it’s not just a US trend. Sweet Caroline reached number 1 on the Canadian iTunes on March 1, and number 16 in the UK.

The soul classics have been resonating during the pandemic. Otis Redding’s (Sitting 0n) the Dock of the Bay, 1968, got to number 8 on the chart just about a month ago. The Temptations have charted again with My Girl, 1964. It was number 10 on iTunes on February 22 of this year. Smokey Robinson’s Cruisin’, 1979, made it up to number 26 in January. The Supremes’ Baby Love, Where Did Our Love Go, and Stop in the Name of Love were all back on the chart this year. Stevie Wonder’s Isn’t She Lovely, 1976, was number 20 on February 18.

The phenomenon is not confined to singles. Carole King’s Tapestry album, 1971, got to number 3 on the Canadian iTunes chart this February. It was in position number 6 in Spain, also in February. Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, 1977, was the number 3 album in Australia in January and number 1 in Canada last October. Madonna’s Bedtime Stories, 1994, was the number 1 album in the US, Brazilian and Canadian iTunes stores on April 30, 2020. James Taylor’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 1, originally issued in November 1976, was back to soothe rattled nerves in 2020. It got to number 3 in the US, 4 in Australia, 4 in Brazil, and 7 in Canada. One of Taylor’s greatest hits, included on the album, tellingly was Shower the People (You Love with Love.)

Are we living a time warp? Not really, we’re just trying to get through a difficult patch leaning on some songs that made us feel good in the past. This month, the 1985 Tears for Fears hit Everybody Wants to Rule the World was back at number 8 on the chart, number 5 in Canada. Rule can be read as a stand-in for just get back to some semblance of the lives we used to have. And lest there be any doubt about our shared need for comfort and consolation right now and for our desire to get well past where we find ourselves, look no further than number 80 on today’s chart. It’s the ultimate song of resilience, Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive, originally released in 1978.

The post The Pandemic’s Greatest Hits: Musical Blasts from the Past appeared first on Occasional Planet.

A reader asked me to analyze the statutory and constitutional tools that could and should be used to fight Trumpism now that Trumpism has been irrefutably revealed for what it is: Fascism. Having studied for decades the interactions between constitutional law and constitutional politics, I actually have some expertise on this topic. That experience does not mean any recommendations are “right answers,” particularly because there are so many competing ends and thus competing means. Hopefully, my training provides reasonably acute analysis. The following is predicated on publicly available facts; we may soon learn of more seditious acts that justify far more severe sanctions.

Before evaluating particular options, we need to determine the scope of the problem, rank desired outcomes, and sort them by time (short term, intermediate term, and long term).

First, how serious is this threat to the Republic? Over the past few years, I would occasionally come across polls indicating that a vast, growing number of Americans no longer believed in democracy. They want a “strong leader,” unencumbered by Congress, the media, or Courts. Alas, my response consisted of more denial than fear: Most of those people didn’t really mean it. Large anti-democratic factions are on both sides, so neither side is very dangerous. They won’t act, either out of fear or lack of conviction. Most Americans don’t like domestic violence. The polls are probably wrong. This is just macho Locker Room or Chapel talk. Those thoughts somewhat calmed an underlying dread that our Nation was in a downward spiral.

The World Values Survey published in 2017 a poll stating that 38 percent of Americans support an unchecked leader. This movement had grown from 24 percent in the mid-1990s to 29 percent in the early 2000s. The number may be greater now, but we can hope this tragedy has enabled some people to change their minds. I could not find a good poll indicating the different political ideologies of these anti-democrats, but my current guess is almost all are Fascists. Remember how bewildered many of us were at Trump’s ability to keep his approval ratings above 35 percent no matter what he did? Trump, who often said he wanted to be “President for Life,” either knew those numbers or instinctively sensed his opportunity. He really meant that he would not support a peaceful transfer of power. Trumpism is not just a temporary, freakish cult of personality; it is a potentially fatal political movement that long predates Trump’s rise to power.

The attempted coup on January 6 proved that neither Trump nor his most devout followers were play-acting. We can add Fascism to our exploding list of existential threats. Incidentally, while those poll numbers should not be admitted in a court of law, they confirm the odious intentions of Trump, his enablers, and many of his followers when they assaulted the Capitol. The only Legal Vote is a Republican Vote. The only Legal Party is the Republican Party. If you assume those principles, the election was stolen.

Fortunately, many Republicans disagree. Some Republican House and Senate members have indicated that they will vote for impeachment. Mitch McConnell strongly intimated that he wants the President impeached. State Republican officials did not succumb to Trump’s relentless public and private pressuring. I never thought I would write that Governor Kemp of Georgia acted heroically. Right now, we must build upon this burgeoning bipartisan response. Maybe this crisis provides us with the chance to make a few sorely needed legislative changes to improve our political economy, address some of our systemic social injustices, and better protect our environment.

The stakes could not be much higher, so we must think very clearly. We can’t let “hot emotions” like revenge and fierce partisanship cloud judgment. It is time to act like a lawyer or a Machiavellian politician, using cooler passions to cripple this political movement, which long predates Trump and is not going away soon. We must drive these cretins back into their holes, where they can grumble about their inability to impose their totalitarian, often religiously inspired visions on the rest of us.

SHORT TERM ENDS AND MEANS

Until Biden becomes President, Trump can start a nuclear war, plot against the Inauguration, start a conventional war with a country like Iran, attempt assassinations of foreign opponents, declare martial law, and/or foment another rebellion. Obviously, he should resign. But that will never happen. Once he leaves office, he plans to run for Dictator in 2024.

Given these horrifying stakes, it is easy to conclude that Pence and the Cabinet should use the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to remove this unstable idiot savant. But there is one crucial fact that we do not presently know: Have they already cut off Trump’s hands? Is Pence currently the real President of the United States? General Milley, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, might still politely answer Trump’s calls, treating him like a rich mental patient, but should only be taking orders from Pence. Trump can fondle his nuclear “football,” but the launching code has been turned off.

If Trump has been stripped of all meaningful power, then Pence’s unwillingness to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment is not an outrageous dereliction of duty. Forcing Trump out of office will enrage the dangerous part of his dwindling base, increasing the likelihood of imminent violence. But if Trump retains any power over the use of force, Pence and other leading Republicans failed, risking all our lives.

For the moment, let’s give Pence the benefit of the doubt. Pence’s admirable performance on January 6 reveals that many Evangelicals believe in democracy. Not all Evangelicals are members of Vanilla ISIS (Super kudos to the person who coined that phrase). We must create a new, broad movement of Constitutional Americans, consisting of all Americans who still believe in democracy.

A military coup is the final short-term protection against Trump monstrosities. Fortunately, our military leadership firmly stated that Biden will be President in a few days. If Trump tries to do something outrageous, the military will probably stop him, install Pence, and withdraw after Biden becomes President. The Proud Boys and a few rogue cops won’t stand a chance against the United States Marines.

Everything else takes too long. Congress should have immediately conducted a Zoom Impeachment and conviction, but that moment has passed. Legislatures are generally incapable of reacting quickly, a trait is a strength and a weakness.

1. INTERMEDIATE TERM

We cannot let this conflict distract us from starting to address the underlying forces that caused it to arise. We must provide more hope and opportunities to average citizens, giving them reasons to be loyal. Aside from the incorrigible Fascists, there are millions of voters and nonvoters who think our system has become corrupt and unresponsive. Machiavelli wrote that a republic can be the strongest form of government, because it takes the best care of its citizens. He also warned that corruption was the greatest internal threat. Democrats need to act boldly, hoping some Republicans join them. Politics as Usual will guarantee more Unusual Politics in the future. Some Democrats would like to use this event as an excuse to do very little, thereby pleasing their wealthy patrons.

On the other hand, it is vital to act firmly against Trump, his enablers, and his most violent followers. This is not the time to simply “move on.” Strength is the only thing these Fascists admire and fear. In terms of legal sanctions, we must separate insurrection leaders and the most violent from their sympathizers. Economic and social sanctions are also appropriate. Private companies should never support leaders like Cruz and Hawley. Coup participants ought to be fired. Boycott companies that give money to men like Cruz or advertise on Fox Television unless it stops spewing its toxic nonsense. It may be years before one has Thanksgiving Dinner with crazed Uncle Ralphie.

Impeachment seems like the best tactic to immediately punish the President. Above all, it will be bipartisan. Several leading Congressional officials, including Liz Cheney, have already committed. McConnell probably will join Romney, Sasse, and others in the Senate. The incoming Senate may well convict him. Stripping Trump of his federal benefits and any opportunity to run for federal office will be provocative, but his fans already think he is a martyr. He remains a unique threat, because of his long history of celebrity, his Presidency, and his strange, telegenic charisma. There will be more Fascist aspirants to the Presidency, but few have his twisted skillset.

Of course, if it turns out that Trump and his minions actively planned the attempted coup and supported it by stripping Congress of police protection, then there are additional grounds for criminal charges and impeachment (Right now, Congress should also impeach him for failure to act once the coup began).

One advantage of this horrible tale is that we now know the names of many of our enemies (sadly, that is what they are). Anyone who continued to support Trump’s Big Lie after the coup is presumptively anti-democratic. Thus, the Gang of Six in the Senate and the Congressional rabble in the House have effectively become a dangerous, separate political party. McConnell and Cheney, two tough Republicans who are not afraid of a fight, have already begun the Republicans’ civil war.

While Democrats need Republican allies to combat Trumpism and to deal with pressing political problems, they also should use this opportunity to drive a wedge through the Party’s existing heart. Just as the chaos surrounding the 1968 Democratic Convention signified the beginning of the end of the New Deal Democratic coalition, it is time to fracture the Republican Party. Fortunately, McConnell, Pence, and Cheney are patriotic enough to finally put country above party. You can certainly argue they took too long, but better late than never.

The Republican Party must clean its stables. Supporting impeachment is just a start. At a minimum, Cruz and Hawley should be permanently kicked out of the Party. The other four Senators and the hundred-plus House members ought to be given a chance to apologize, admit they promoted a big lie, and vote for impeachment. Otherwise, they are also out.

Should Congress use the Fourteenth Amendment or the Expulsion Clause to purge their dangerous colleagues? Assuming there was no direct Congressional collaboration with the invaders, those moves would create a dangerous precedent, making it far easier for future Fascists to create a one party system of government. Better to leave the leaders’ fates to Republican colleagues, donors, and voters. Hawley and Cruz achieved their desire to be remembered in history, joining such luminaries as Benedict Arnold and Jefferson Davis.

Neither the Fourteenth Amendment nor Expulsion should be pursued unless we find that some Congressional members clearly and actively conspired with the invaders. Expulsion is slightly better than the Fourteenth Amendment, because it requires a two-thirds vote. Congress usually cannot expel members unless there is some bipartisan support. A bare majority cannot purge its opposition. But it is very likely that any expulsion vote based upon what was said in Congress would pretty much proceed on party lines, reaggravating partisanship at the very moment that we desperately need bipartisanship.

The Fourteenth Amendment seems applicable, because we witnessed something resembling an “insurrection,” the event that triggers the federal power to remove seditious federal office holders. Of course, The Civil War was a classic example. However, it is not clear that Congress can act unilaterally. The Supreme Court has already appropriately held that Congress violates separation of powers whenever it adjudicates individual cases (aside from impeachment). Arguably, Congress must pass appropriate legislation under Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment to empower Article III Courts and juries to determine whether or not Congressional leaders like Cruz and Hawley committed “insurrection.” Even if the Supreme Court holds that Congress has the power to remove these scoundrels by a mere majority, a Congressional purge creates a dangerous precedent. Indeed, the Fourteenth Amendment is a worse path than Expulsion since it might only require a majority to reconstitute Congress.

Until the failed coup, I was inclined to conclude that Trump should not be sent to prison for the crimes we know he committed. Whatever else you want to say about Bill Barr, he did the country a great service last year when he did not indict Biden or Obama. “Lock her up” or “Lock him up” are disturbing, divisive chants. My wariness extended to state criminal charges. Imprisonment would be too divisive and set a terrible precedent. It would be hard to get a conviction, because at least one silent Trumpster would probably sit on any jury.

I am no longer so sure about such restraint. In addition, there may be other, even worse crimes that will be revealed after Trump leaves office. Perhaps this fraught decision should be made after our political life settles down a bit and his popularity hopefully drops quite a bit. For quite a long time, I am going to be as interested in anti-democracy polls as Republican-Democrat polls.

On the other hand, state and federal officials should aggressively pursue all possible civil and criminal fraud cases against Trump, his sleazy family, and grifter associates. If they are guilty, they should be fined to the maximum extent permitted by law. We also can wish success to all the private plaintiffs, ranging from Michael Cohen to violated women, who seek damages from this predator. Punitive damages seem particularly appropriate in all possible situations.

At a bare minimum, there needs to be a thorough, public review of his Presidency. Truth and Reconciliation for his followers, Truth and Non Reconciliation for Trump and his most dangerous enablers.

None of the Congressional authoritarians should be indicted unless they directly collaborated with the attackers. Representative Mikkie Sherrill claims to have seen Republican lawmakers giving “tours” to rioters one day before the attack. If they did conspire in advance to terrorize Congress and thus the People, those acts are not vague, political crimes. They should be locked up. The same applies if there was a conspiracy to not protect the Capitol.

While almost all the rabble who invaded the Capitol were guilty of numerous felonies and misdemeanors, we should focus on their leaders and the most egregious and flamboyant actors. The murderers of Officer Sicknick should face manslaughter charges, at a minimum.

LONGTERM GOALS

Two questions framed the first third of the Twenty-First Century: Would the human race learn to control its desires enough to preserve the planet for itself and other species? Would the United States gracefully accept the inevitable decline in its relative power?

The rise of Fascism in America, based in significant part upon denial of climate change, shows that we are off to a terrible start. Perhaps we can build a new political ideology out of the wreckage, a viewpoint that attracts an enduring supermajority. The Fascists and Left-Wing purists won’t be happy, but that would be a clear sign we are on the right path.

A few years ago, I was talking to a thoughtful checkout person at a Whole Foods. After the usual commiseration about the state of our society, he asked me what he should do next. I replied, “Read good books.” One of the main goals of this newsletter is to demonstrate the utility and pleasure of reading of good books.

[Editor’s note: This article was reprinted, with permission, from James Wilson’s newsletter: hopebutnoexpectations@substack.com ]

The post Time to Act: But what are the crucial goals? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In an interview with Madrid’s El País newspaper, published on January 10, Pulitzer-prize winning historian, Anne Applebaum didn’t hold back. “The Trump adventure is over,” she is quoted as saying. “He will spend the rest of his life in court.” Amen to Applebaum’s assessment.

And who is Applebaum? London’s Prospect magazine included her in its list of the world’s top 50 thinkers for the Covid-19 age:

Applebaum, long an authority on the abuses of Communist and post-Communist Eastern Europe, in her new book Twilight of Democracy is unsparing in exposing the moral bankruptcy of Trumpian Republicanism.

El País mentions that her vision and informed judgment have “made her one of the leading global political analysts of recent years.”

Applebaum was a columnist for the Washington Post, and at one time a member of its Editorial Board. Since January 2020, she has been a staff writer at the Atlantic. In a piece entitled What Trump and His Mob Taught the World About America published in the Atlantic on January 7, she wrote:

 …and yet by far the most important weapon that the United States of America has ever wielded—in defense of democracy, in defense of political liberty, in defense of universal rights, in defense of the rule of law—was the power of example. In the end, it wasn’t our words, our songs, our diplomacy, or even our money or our military power that mattered. It was rather the things we had achieved: the two and a half centuries of peaceful transitions of power, the slow but massive expansion of the franchise, and the long, seemingly solid traditions of civilized debate.

Applebaum distills us to our essence, the power of example.

We, the United States were for two and a half centuries, a beacon of light for so many others. And then came Trump. And with Trump the lights of democracy flickered not only for many of us here at home, but for America’s partners and admirers abroad. On January 6. Thump definitively showed the world his true colors. “We love you,” he said in a videotaped address to a mob that at that very moment was assaulting the Capitol. He didn’t have the wits about him to address the American public, just his demented followers. The royal we only undermined Trump’s slender connection to reality. The beacon of light, the power of example, came close to being extinguished.

In her El País interview, Applebaum notes that Trump “treated NATO like a mobster would.” And she adds that:

He scared the Europeans so much that they decided to come up with a plan b. They should adopt their own position and voice in security matters and also as sole defenders of democratic values.

In other words, Trump’s lasting legacy will be that he attempted to strip the United States of America of its democratic principles from the beginning of his shameful tenure to its calamitous end. Sadly, he tried to quit us of our democratic pillars of strength, aided and abetted by his family, cohorts within the Republican Party, and supported by millions of Americans.

In the El País piece, Applebaum makes a telling observation of Russia’s Putin, mentioning that he is:

Someone trained to be paranoid, to constantly detect conspiracies around him.That leads him to change the terms and to ensure that there is no opposition …, but a plot of other powers against him. That he must control all those who meet, argue and oppose. Therefore, there is nothing spontaneously articulated or a trace of    honesty, everyone lies, nobody trusts anyone and there is a mixture of deep cynicism     with paranoia. … And so he has largely transferred that to the rest of the country: a lot of cynicism, a lot of immorality and a tremendously conspiratorial environment.

She could just as well have been talking about Trump. Yes, we knew all along that Trump had a strong attachment to Putin, but now we can understand why Trump found his soul mate in the Russian autocrat. They are peas of a pod. And just like Putin before him in Russia, Trump has transferred his paranoia, his cynicism, his lack of morality and his conspiratorial mindset to many citizens of our country.

The man is feckless, depraved and now, if Applebaum’s assessment is correct, about to spend the rest of his days facing prosecution in the courts of our land.

The post Goodbye Washington. Hello Courtroom appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I’m a glutton for punishment. From time to time, I dip into Donald Trump’s @realDonaldTrump Twitter feed just to see what kind of insanity is on the menu. Recently, it seems like every time I did, there was a rash of rage about the election he lost and how unfair the world is to him.

How bad was Trump’s obsession with his election loss? Mother Jones just published a revealing tally of all his tweets since election day and the numbers are mind-boggling. Not including re-tweets, from November 3 to December 16, Trump posted 506 original tweets about his lost election. There are probably about half that many more re-tweet postings. In a recent sampling, about half of Trump’s election-related postings were flagged by Twitter as being factually disputed. A glance at the chart below paints the picture.

Contrast those 500 plus election fraud tweets to the mere 13 he has posted about the virus that has cost more than 300,000 American lives. No tweets were posted about the COVID-19 death toll.  There were only 32 tweets about the vaccine that we so desperately need.

I guess the man has his priorities, but they’re likely different than yours or mine.

The post Trump’s obsession with grievance appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I was first introduced to Civitas through my middle school gifted program. My teacher had us participate in the Civitas Model United Nations program, which I found both stimulating and engaging. Since my mother is from the island nation The Kingdom of Tonga, I opted to represent Tonga in the Model U.N. program. This would be a trend that continued as I sustained my participation in the Model U.N. program throughout my high school career.

One of the early resolutions I drafted was focused on providing clean water sources to under-resourced communities throughout the islands. The plan of action was to bring over LifeStraws, a water purification and filtration device that can provide an individual user with clean drinking water for approximately five years. Doing research and drafting this resolution opened up my juvenile mind to real issues that citizens face in Tonga, and for the first time ever, as a thirteen year old, I began to think about plausible solutions.

Fast forward 9 years. I graduated from the University of Missouri – Columbia with a degree in International Studies with an emphasis in Peace Studies and a minor in Leadership and Public Service. Following my May 2018 graduation, I went off to Tonga in August to serve as an English Literacy Facilitator with the United States Peace Corps. It was decided by the Peace Corps that I would serve on the outer island of ‘Eua in the most remote and under-resourced village on the island. They hadn’t sent a Peace Corps Volunteer to this village in over 10 years.

My primary assignment was working at the village’s government primary school, G.P.S. Houma. There were only 3 staff at the whole school, with a student body of approximately 47 students. Each staff person was a teacher for one of the composite classes (grades 1 and 2, grades 3 and 4, grades 5 and 6), and the grade 1 and 2 teacher also doubled as the school principal. My chief role within the school was to teach English to grades 3-6.

While working at the primary school I quickly noticed that the principal was calling half-days most days of the week. When I inquired with her why this was the case, she said it was because there was no drinking water for the children on the school compound, and that the only water available was reserved for the use of teachers and their families living on the school grounds. Given this information, I constructed a grant proposal to install rainwater tanks on the school compound. My grant proposal received many rejections from various organizations. Eventually, I was able to pitch the idea to a Rotary Club in the United States and obtain funding for the purchase and installation of rainwater tanks over two fiscal years. 2020 is the second fiscal year, and as of September the Rotary Club has already initiated the second installation of rainwater tanks in the village.

Participating in Model U.N. and other enrichment activities with Civitas has greatly influenced how I have showed up in the world in my adult life. Had I not begun thinking about global issues at age 13, I may not have completed my first global aid project by age 23. I strongly believe that having conversations with young people about the impact they can have on the world will encourage them to become active global citizens.

The post Nine years later, my Model U.N. idea became a reality appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Michael Brooks passed away yesterday. A journalist, comedian, podcaster, and socialist thinker, he was one of the most important young voices on the left. His family has listed the cause as a sudden medical condition.

More than just a partisan, he combined his “dirtbag left” aesthetic with segments on world history, Marxist philosophy, postcolonial thought, and more. Michael’s humor, kindness, and charismatic demeanor were disarming enough to introduce many people to important, globe-trotting ideas.

Michael was an uncompromising advocate for democracy and other socialist ideals across the world. This led him to a strong focus on the legally shaky imprisonment of President Lula of Brazil, which allowed for the triumph of the unhinged quasi-fascist Jair Bolsonero. Michael’s coverage of Brazil was more in-depth than most major outlets. While The Economist praised Bolsonaro as a dangerous populist, but one with good ideas on fiscal policy, Michael was uncompromising in his support for Brazilian democracy. Eventually, he was able to interview Lula after his release from prison.

He understood the allure of online right-wing thinkers like Jordan Peterson, Dave Rubin, and Sam Harris to young white men. It was the recognition of the power of this cadre of “Intellectual Dark Web” denizens that led him to produce a short book, Against The Web: A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right. In it, he argued against Peterson’s advocacy of a return to tradition and Rubin’s shallow libertarianism. They focused too much on insular internet arguments and eschewed real-life catastrophes like climate change, autocracy, and inequality. These issues, Michael wrote, were very real and could only be tackled by an international working-class movement for a humane socialist society.

It was this cosmopolitanism, this drawing from sources across the human experience, that made Michael so special. From Brazil to online discourse, from lectures on Cameroonian philosopher Achilla Mbembe to commenting on the latest NBA game, few modern thinkers had his breadth. “he was more intellectually curious than most socialists I’ve met,” said Bhaskar Sunkara in a tribute piece in Jacobin. “Michael was fascinated by the world and by the movements people built to change it.”

He combined this substantial knowledge base with a warmth and understanding of human flaws. Human beings contained multitudes, and therefore deserved forgiveness and understanding.  What was needed, he said, was a mixture of “Machiavelli and spirituality” to tackle the problems of modernity. “He was hungry to cultivate a milieu of people who were both politically committed and loved life,” said Sunkara.

A few weeks ago, Michael joked that he had finished off his bucket list of famous people to interview: Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, Slavoj Zizek, President Lula, and more. I’m glad he got to meet his heroes before he passed. Now that he’s gone, I wish I had gotten the chance to meet one of mine.

The post RIP Michael Brooks appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In real life, I’m about to turn 70, or someone who looks a lot like me in the mirror in the morning is about to turn 70. It’s 2020, and I was born in 1950, which would tend to insinuate by basic mathematical calculation that I’m now almost (let’s not get carried away!) 70. My birthday is still a ways away in June.

But just a minute. Me, 70?  That can’t be right. I don’t feel like 70. I don’t think like 70. At least I don’t think that I think like a 70-year-old thinks. And who knows how a 70-year-old thinks anyway? For one, many of us in the past never got to this point in life; lifespans were much shorter. And for two, many of the rest of us who did and have gotten to be 70 and beyond are too busy with aches and pains, doctor’s appointments, yoga, seeking public office, looking for partners in their 20’s and 30’s, getting drunk in the afternoon or Oy vey celebrating a thousand other ways of denying to even think about noting.

That being said, I have to admit that people now ask for my opinion a lot more than they used to. And at times people give me to believe by the way they listen to my responses that my observations of life might actually have some weight. The weight of air, truth be told: Little do these people know how little I know. You’ve lived so much and seen so much, people now say. But just for the record, being 70 or thereabouts doesn’t make anything anyone of us says or does right, deep, attractive or even reasonably well-thought-out just because. Good Lord, Trump is 73. And in the interests of political fairness, Biden is 77, Warren – just like me – is 70 this year, and Sanders is 78.

I didn’t die in my 20’s, or in my 30’s. Or in my 40’s or even in my 50’s though I angsted about dying all through those years plenty – is angst even a verb in English? And, not even as a small aside, I have been known to have suicidal thoughts. Now, many of my friends and family members from those times are gone, internal collateral damage to my obstinate refusal to make a decision to end my life long ago.

Get over it, just get on with your life, I hear you saying. Every single one of us is getting older day in day out. It’s called being alive! (That’s you again.) My New York therapist used to put it to me in as many words during our sessions. You’ll be dead, buried and gone forever, she would say. Whatever this is, this is better, her words.

I get it. I got it even when I wasn’t even close to being 70.

I celebrated my 50^th birthday in a swell hotel in Paris. Swell is arch, of course. But the hotel was swell not because of its meager 2-person ancient elevator, nor for its exorbitant room rates, and not even for its oh so chic and tastefully re-imagined rooms, but because the croissants, butter and jam in the hotel dining room in the morning were why croissants were ever invented. It wasn’t what I had planned on that visit to Paris, but it’s what I remember – I enjoyed the perfect croissant in France on my 50^th birthday.

And for my 60^th birthday, I was in/at/on Machu Picchu –choose your preposition – in Peru. To be honest, I was flailing in the shade of Inca precision rock constructions at a great height fighting for breath due to my asthma for much of my visit. But I was there. And if I’m being totally honest, my favorite part of my visit to Cuzco and Machu Picchu was the one night I spent at the railroad hotel in Ollantaytambo, an overlooked calming way station on the mythical route between present day Peru and its distant past. The esthetic sparseness of my room and its soaring mountain vistas impressed and calmed me. Not to mention that it was there that I first learned how to set my iPad alarm clock. It worked. I made my early morning train –- it was literally outside the hotel door — to get to as it turned out a lack of breath high in the Peruvian Andes.

I remember both decade birthdays for odd unplanned details. My decades have always been mathematically easy. I was 10 in 1960, 20 in 1970 and so on.

Bigger plans tend to go by the wayside. Intentions go by the wayside. Twice in my life, I thought I was going to move to Barcelona. It never happened. I also thought I was going to live in Mexico City. That hasn’t happened either. Unanticipated turns of events, on the other hand, have come about. I lived in an 1850’s cottage down a dirt road in upstate New York for years. And then, I spent years in Sarasota, Florida. Florida is never a place that I would have pictured myself in when younger. And did I ever think I was going to live in South America? No. And yet here I am, 10 years on, a resident of Bogotá, Colombia.

I did spend many of the middle years of my life in New York City, and I celebrated many birthdays there.

I arrived in New York in 1979. I was 29. I hate you, someone said to me at a party just this past weekend in Bogotá – not for how easy it is for me to remember how old I am in any specific year, but because You lived in New York in the 70’s and 80’s!  There it is again, You’ve lived through so much.

Just to be clear, I never went to Studio 54. I never hung out with Andy, or Bianca, or Liza. I never went to the Anvil or any of the other sex clubs. I was just a regular Joe eking out a living at minimum wage in an extraordinary city at an extraordinary moment in time. I loved every moment of those years, every daily sweaty running for the subway, every bounding up staircases at Grand Central and every getting to my morning midtown classroom to teach just on time. I loved every getting home late at night, having earned just that little bit of money that made it possible for me to continue living in New York City.

I loved being young in New York in the 1980’s. Now, people believe that just to have been there, to have walked on those streets where a legal decision allowed booksellers along 2^nd in the 50’s blocks to sell hardcover bestsellers at discounted prices, where pasta was still being freshly made at a popular restaurant window that I passed every day on 43^rd,, where there was still an Automat on 42^nd is the equivalent of having lived through Nirvana. Who knows?

I do remember that my older brother – we were peas of the same pod, literally – when he was visiting from Ireland sat me down in front of the Citicorp Building at 53^rd and 3^rd when I was 32 or 33. I was on a lunch break from teaching classes. Life goes fast, he told me. Embrace this. Live, were his exact words. Don’t fuck around, are the words that I remember, though I don’t think that those are the words that he said. Don’t fuck this up are more specifically the words that I remember now.

Did I or didn’t I fuck it up? I don’t know. My brother, one of my few judges, is long gone. Now, it’s just me.

And where am I going to celebrate being 70? That I don’t know either. But 80 is next on the horizon. And just for the record, and according to what I hear, 80 is the new 60.

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