Keith Ellison vs. Tom Perez

On Saturday, February 25, the continuing drama of leftists vs. Democrats played out in the election for new chairperson of the Democratic National Commmittee, where the frontrunners were Keith Ellison, congressman of Minnesota's 5th district, which includes Minneapolis, and former Secretary of Labor under Obama, Tom Perez. The battle became sort of a proxy fight between Hillary and Bernie supporters with Bernie supporters backing Ellison and Hillary supporters backing Hillary, although the divide was not that clear-cut as many more establishment Democrats, including Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, former minority leader Harry Reid, and Minnesota senator Al Franken, supported Ellison from early on.

Ellison announced his candidacy less than a week after the November election. He had a lot of momentum, but, apparently, many of President Obama's closest advisers took issue with the prospects of Ellison's candidacy and actively sought an alternative:

Mr. Obama’s advisers, some of whom discussed the party leadership race at a White House meeting last week, have talked about whether Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez and former Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan would be willing to run for the post. Mr. Perez met with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. last week and had lunch Tuesday in the White House Mess with Valerie Jarrett, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, while also visiting with David Simas, Mr. Obama’s political director.

The Intercept and Matt Bruenig over at Medium both document how, essentially, a smear campaign was mounted to take down Ellison and get Perez elected to DNC chair.

The election played out like a mini re-hash of the Clinton/Sanders primary. When Perez won the election on the 2nd ballot, Ellison activists were furious.

You could take the bright angle, articulated by Karl Sandstrom in this Vox news article:

“You see these signs out here? Never has there been a DNC race like this. We’ve never had this much energy, this many volunteers, this much debate, this much chanting, this much stuff,” said Sandstrom, an attorney for Democratic state parties attending his 10th chair election. “The DNC chair is normally a relatively obscure figure.”

Former South Carolina party chairman Jaime Harrison voted for Perez, stating:

“I love Keith (Ellison) like a brother. Over the last year I’ve come to love Tom like a brother. But it comes down to who has a better Southern strategy. Who’s got a red state strategy for the Democratic Party? Tom has it.”

My Facebook feed lit up with posts expressing much less optimistic readings of the outcome. The Democratic Party is certainly tossing away a degree of enthusiasm among potential activists, and thus tossing away their potential contributions. It is probably losing votes, too. The article quoted immediately above, from The Root, takes an optimistic tack based on Perez himself and Perez's gesture of creating a role of Deputy Chair and giving the role to Ellison.  I knew a few dedicated leftist activists who generally eschew party politics as a whole, but who were inspired by Bernie Sanders' campaign. It was a rare window to bring those activists at least momentarily into the ballot box for Democrats, and the party blew it. I don't think Ellison's election to party chair would've brought them back, though it's possible given the people I know are his constituents. But there may be other, younger activists for whom this loss, coupled with Bernie's defeat, who will see this as confirmation that the party doesn't want them and they will act accordingly going forward.

Personally, I think there has to be a political alternative to Drumpf in 2020, and the Republican party in every election-year, and the Democrats are it for the next two to four years, there is no other choice. It is possible I could be wrong, but I just find the idea that a whole new party can be built and foisted upon the electorate in 2-4 years a joke, so the political opposition is the Democrats or no one, so the party has to be infiltrated and made as leftist as possible.

A lot of questions linger. How will Perez and Ellison function as party chair and deputy chair? Will Ellison's role be meaningful or window-dressing? What kind of strategy will Perez implement to rebuild the party? How dispirited is the leftist/Sanders wing of the party? Will there be a serious movement to build a new party?

I've heard it said among some anti-party-politics activists that the Democratic Party is where social movements go to die. The party "co-opts" certain causes to empower itself. I would be curious to hear examples of this. I've heard the civil rights movement touted as one such example. But did the party "co-opt" the movement, or did the movement make such a strong case that it had a base of support that it was wise for the party to adopt its concerns as issues it would fight for, resulting in legislation like the 1964 Civil Rights Act? Is that kind of thing "co-opting" for selfish gain, or is it a serious positive outcome of dedicated activism with material benefits to a sector of people?

I remember partaking in demonstrations at the Wisconsin state capitol in Madison, protesting anti-union measures being foisted upon public workers by Republican governor Scott Walker. The capitol building was occupied for weeks, as I recall, and the demonstrations grew to tens of thousands of people, at some times possibly hundreds of thousands. It was a strong, disruptive, sustained protest. After a few weeks, Walker's anti-union measures passed, and demonstrators followed the lead of major unions and the Democratic Party and shut down the protests and occupations. They moved their efforts to the ballot box and an attempt to recall Governor Walker. The recall effort lost. A good friend of mine took this as an instance where powerful unions and a powerful political party, the Democrats, didn't support the cause, they tried to co-opt it to their benefit. The movement may have seen more success if the massive demonstrations and capitol occupation had continued or escalated. Instead, the "fight" went exclusively to the ballot box and we lost, that was it. Maybe there was no victory to be had, but a major philosophy of activism is to raise the "cost of doing business" for your opponent. If Republicans in power had to encounter the sustained occupations and protests every day they showed up for work as a result of their attempt to peddle the anti-union measure... they are humans with finite amounts of stress tolerance and energy, soooo... maybe they give up? I don't know.

Depression and Dread Triggered by the News

"I read the news today, oh boy..."

-John Lennon

I read a news article last night which was so depressing I do not really care to share it at the moment because I don't care to trigger the same reaction in anyone who might one day read this. 

Then again, I am not sure how to proceed in writing about it, and, then again, as of right now this whole blog is meant to function mostly as a diary anyway. So perhaps I will, but, I guess: trigger warning for existential dread.

Yesterday exciting news swept the internets courtesy of NASA. Earth-like planets have been discovered a "mere" 39 light-years away. Bill Nye posted on Facebook about it and hailed "the joy of discovery." Then one of my preferred news sites took the most depressing angle possible: Why the discovery of Earth-like planets could spell doom for humanity. The gist: it seems increasingly likely that there may be "tens of thousands" or more intelligent civilizations in our galaxy. That seems exciting, what would be so depressing about it? Well, if it is so, why haven't we made contact with any of them? Here is the depressing possibility: the reason we haven't made contact is because life fails to evolve to a point where such contact is possible. No matter how advanced civilizations can become, they never make it to a point of such advanced space communication and travel. It raises the possibility that, in getting close to such a point, civilizations instead collapse. In the context of the state of civilization today, given the real risk to the human species faced by various threats, chiefly climate change and nuclear war, it may be that we are at the later stages of human civilization, and we don't have long to go.

A lot of people with knowledge about climate change worry that such a threat is real. If you want to argue that human civilization, and even the entire species, is at real risk this century, you don't have to look hard for evidence to support it. 

How does one think about such topics and go on with life? I have to leave for work in 30 minutes. These are the times. Drink your morning coffee, read the news, contemplate human extinction. 

In some ways it is nothing new. Malthus thought we'd all be dead by now, the world would be incapable of holding a billion people or so. One of my U.S. History professors talked about living through the Cold War and how you just carried on with a belief that your own life would end, as would humanity, in a nuclear blast. For about 25 years we were given a small reprieve from such dread, but any reasonable assessment of the state of the world today has to bring it back. 

In some ways it is something new, climate change is a wholly new problem and humanity seems to be falling behind in the race to contain it. I monitor news on the issue daily and it is a one-step-up, two-steps-back kind of affair. For every story that sounds like we may have taken a promising turn for the better, two stories crop up suggesting we are in deep trouble. In short, we seem to be at least 20 years behind where we want to be in transitioning to a sustainable civilization. 

The challenge always is to remain aware of what is happening without feeling defeated and giving up. It is a major challenge, but, checking out and not participating in trying to build the better world is a small contribution to hastening the worst possible outcomes. We are our only hope and we have to be the people we've been waiting for.

Appealing to Drumpf Supporters

“I help my own family first, and by extension, the nation and the people. Then I can start helping people from other parts of the world, but not right now: Right now I have to help my own people of Sweden. Swedes are too naive and always pity others, but you can’t help the entire world right now.” 

-Robin Hammarström, 26, of Sweden.

The easy way of dealing with people who support Drumpf, and similar people the world over, is to ignore them, mock them. The harsh truth is that they are winning. Prior to the 2016 U.S. election, my sister rather giddily shared the demographic information that was supposed to be Hillary's key to winning. The emerging majority in America is non-white. The white people who aren't happy about it, we will just drag them along kicking and screaming. There is some valid mentality here. Progress always marches with reactionary opponents. But once it arrives, people largely let it in and move on. In 2004, people around the U.S. flocked to the ballot box in opposition to gay marriage. In 2017, gay marriage is the law of the land. Ten years ago... hell, probably five years ago, it felt unthinkable that it would be legal throughout the United States. The belief is that people are slowly going to realize that living in a world where gay people can legally marry is not the end of the world, life will go on just fine. The belief prior to the election seemed to be that we can approach the increasing non-white population the same way. They will vote overwhelmingly for Democrats and the progressive march forward would carry on, leaving the angry whites increasingly crying on the margins until they join the 21st century or die out.

Well, the results are in, and the angry whites aren't content to go quietly into that good night. The Republican party now dominates U.S. politics and things do not look any better elsewhere in the world. Years of ignoring them, mocking them on The Daily Show and other TV shows, and, now, sucker-punching and "no-platforming" them has lead them to all the levers of power. It might be time to try a different tactic:

"The right response is to ask ourselves, why are we failing to organize these people?" 

-Noam Chomsky

Chomsky's point is that a lot of working class people have legitimate grievances, but they are being given the wrong answers about why those grievances exist. It is our fault for failing to hoist a movement that offers them better answers.

Sadly, exactly how to build such a movement is a difficult question. I think the Bernie Sanders campaign offered some glimpse that a "socialist" (or "new deal") platform can resonate deeply with a lot of people. I took part in an attempt to unionize my workplace a couple years ago and was surprised to find how many people who favored unionization would otherwise espouse right-wing, tea-party-esque political views. It is sad that a union campaign wasn't enough to reach them on a political level, but it at least showed that a populist, working-class-oriented organization (which should be left-wing) could resonate with right-wing, working-class people.

In general, just finding ways to talk to people is important. I take this from my own personal experience- I've had productive conversations with many people who have opposing political views. Admittedly, I do not believe I've ever actually changed anyone's minds, but I've repeatedly heard people tell me I make good points, or I've made a particular point and gotten them to say, "I agree with that," I once had a long conversation at an Iraq War protest with a counter-protester (someone who supported the war so much that he was motivated to show up at the protest to mock the protesters), and we actually had a friendly conversation and he told me I was a smart guy who would do just fine. I debated the existence of God once on the air with a Christian radio talk-show host. It was at the the Minnesota State Fair in 2004, outdoors, and at the end of our discussion, we shook hands and received a round of applause from listeners who had gathered throughout the discussion, most of them wearing Bush/Cheney stickers.

I feel self-aggrandizing in discussing these things, but my point is that productive discussion is very much possible, and people do change.

The best way to win people to your cause is to give them a warm place to come to, derision, punching, ignoring, unfriending, and otherwise trying to shut people down doesn't do that. I understand there are particular times and contexts in which pacifist action is not in one's self-interest. Chomsky himself, who advocates listening to most tea-partiers, wrote that "[i]t is very difficult to retain a faith in the “essential humanity” of the SS trooper or the commissar or the racist blinded with hate and fear." What he was saying, though, was that in an extreme condition where one is so blinded by hate that they pose an immediate, present threat to your physical well-being, perhaps your life, you should not remain a pacifist in that moment. It is nearly certain that Chomsky would not oppose the victims of Dylan Roof's massacre if they started shooting back, for example. But that is an extreme circumstance where the physical threat is immediate.

The left in 2017 has been cheering its success in punching Richard Spencer in January and "no-platforming" Milo Yiannopoulos in Berkley. It should be noted, though, that Spencer's profile has in no way diminished since receiving his sucker-punch, nor has his movement, and Milo was profiled on Tucker Carlson's TV show and Bill Maher's, and in publications like Bloomberg news, after being "no-platformed" in Berkley. Meanwhile, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and, more recently, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and SNL, and other shows have been popular mainstays of comedy mocking the right-wing for well over a decade now, and here we are with the right-wing firmly in power in the United States and the world.

Our team needs to grow, and we need people from other side to succeed. In summarizing the message he received from talking with 100 Drumpf supporters, Sam Altman wrote:

“You all can defeat Trump next time, but not if you keep mocking us, refusing to listen to us, and cutting us out. It’s Republicans, not Democrats, who will take Trump down.”

Drumpf Diary 2/17/17 - The 2nd Head Rolls

Labor Secretary nominee Andrew Puzder has withdrawn his nomination under the weight of heavy public scrutiny. While in my circles the talk has been on the sexist ads run approvingly by Puzder's fast food restaurants, his record of domestic violence, and his opposition to increasing the minimum wage, the Washington Post report on his resignation claims that it was ultimately his support for undocumented immigration, unacceptable to some senate Republicans, that forced him to buckle.

The new nominee is Alexander Acosta. I've never heard of him.

In the debate about whether to approve or oppose Drumpf cabinet nominees, one question had been whether, in defeating one nominee, we would only get a worse nominee. Here is one situation where we sorta get our answer. We are just being introduced to Acosta, I am sure we will learn more about him, my guess is that no definite answer will arise. The Heavy.com article about Acosta, linked above, states that he actually has a good record of defending Muslim American civil rights. He also served on the National Labor Relations Board. His record of service on that board is not really popular knowledge. It seems like an at-least marginally better background than being CEO of Hardee's and Carl's Jr.

It seems like at least a small victory that a public record of domestic violence became a prominent liability. It's kind of sad that someone with such a record can rise to places of prominence in the first place, but, it's something. It seems noted that he has denied wrongdoing and his ex-wife has rescinded her claim that violence occurred. As Shaun King notes, though, such backpedaling among victims is sadly common. It doesn't mean nothing happened. King further notes that the Drumpf team is riddled with men plagued by such accusations.

2/16/17 - Democrats & Snowden, Manning, Wikileaks, Greenwald, and Sanders

Without seeking it, more fodder for the Question of the Democrats has come to my attention.

1.) Yesterday I listened to the latest Pod Save the World podcast, hosted by Tommy Vietor, his guest for the entire 1-hour episode was Ben Rhodes. Vietor and Rhodes worked together in the Obama administration. A clear line of distinction between "Democrats" and "leftists" was highlighted in their discussions of Wikileaks, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden. They hold largely unsympathetic views of all three, though all were sympathetic to Obama's commuting of Chelsea Manning's prison sentence.

Chelsea manning was an Army intelligence analyst who leaked a trove of information to Wikileaks, intending to make the American public aware of terrible things its military was doing in its name. The main thing I recall from the leak was a recording of a raid where the Army killed multiple civilians, including children.

Snowden leaked information about extensive NSA spying on Americans.

Snowden, Manning, and, to a slightly lesser extend Wikileaks, have been largely heralded as heroes among leftists. Snowden, notably, is hailed a champion whistleblower by the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization now prominently regarded as part of "the resistance" to Drumpf. Both have been hailed as champions by Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Pentagon Papers, whom Rhodes and Vietor seemed to regard as a "good whistleblower." Rhodes and Vietor, being more mainstream Democrats and Obama White House insiders, regard Manning, Snowden, and Wikileaks with various levels of suspicion and contempt. Interestingly, Rhodes still acknowledges that Snowden's revelations led to good reforms. He still thinks Snowden went about the leaks the wrong way and showed that he was not committed to openness or democratic values by hiding in Russia, compared to Ellsberg who "faced the music."

Rhodes claims Wikileaks has been "outed" as a tool of Russian propaganda. Again, these are prominent Democratic insiders.

Glenn Greenwald, one of the journalist to whom Snowden made his revelations, became aware of the podcast and made some quick comments on Twitter, stating that there was misinformation in it which Greenwald would be happy to have a conversation about. I am eagerly hoping Vietor has Greenwald on the podcast for a lengthy discussion as I think it would illuminate some thinking behind this divide on the left.

---

2.) The Hill posted a report stating that Senate Democratic Minority leader Chuck Schumer held a meeting between Bernie Sanders and some Senate Democrats to deal with issues raised since 13 Democrats voted against an amendment put forth by Sanders and MN Senator Amy Klobuchar that would support importing prescription drugs from Canada. I explored the issue a little bit in an entry about Cory Booker. The details of the meeting don't seem particularly consequential. It just seems noteworthy that Schumer is trying to balance many interests, notably "keeping the base happy" as demonstrated by addressing the concerns of Sanders, and simultaneously making sure the Democrats don't jeopardize their standing in areas where they might be electorally at risk:

Democrats are running for reelection in 10 states that [Drumpf] carried in last year’s election — five of them by double digits.

Schumer wants to give lawmakers in those states flexibility to vote their conscience without upsetting the party’s liberal base, which wants to see Democrats in Washington fight Trump over just about everything.

The assumption that underlies that statement, of course, is that the Sanders way would put them at risk in Drumpf territory. That would be an interesting assumption to explore. Here in Minnesota, U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan won election as a Democrat in a district that voted for Drumpf. Sanders campaigned for Nolan barely a month before the election. 

Drumpf Diary 2/15/17 - The Question of the Democrats, continued

1.) The Question of the Democrats is something I will likely return to regularly here. Today it popped up first in the form of a very good Vox article about little Timmy (seriously) and how new rules implemented by Obamacare helped make insurance affordable for him. Due to a genetic condition, he had to receive repeated medical care which cost over $1 million. Thanks to Obamacare, insurance companies no longer drop people from coverage after their healthcare costs have reached this threshold. Timmy's parents were able to keep Timmy insured and Timmy's care remained affordable. The message of the article is there are thousands of people like Timmy for whom Obamacare may well have been life-saving, certainly life-altering for the better. Timmy, his parents, and those like him can be considered people "living on the margins," an important concept. It may seem like most people don't see much difference in their lives based on the actions of governmental policies, thus it is easy for people to claim that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans. But for people on the margins, there is a big difference. Timmy's parents might have had to bankrupt themselves paying for his healthcare. Who knows. For them, it made a big difference that Obama was in office versus John McCain.

It's also noteworthy that the part of the Obamacare bill that made it illegal for insurance companies to cap coverage at $1 million in healthcare expenses was in there because one woman, a private citizen, aggressively lobbied her senator to put that wording in the legislation. She called, showed up at events, formed a relationship with him, and he came to care about the issue personally. It seems noteworthy that the senator is a Democrat (Byron Dorgan). Would a Republican senator have listened and gotten the language in the Affordable Care Act? Seems difficult to assume given the strong Republican opposition to the bill.

I am not necessarily advocating that we must back Democrats, and fall back on them vigorously as our "opposition."  I am not necessarily advocating the Democrat/compromise position, as I defined it in my original entry on the question. I am just exploring something I see as supporting that position. I feel like it should be grappled with when advocating abandonment of the party. I don't feel that advocates of abandoning the Democrats have a sufficient answer for what to do for marginalized people if you are going to put them at risk by not supporting Democrats against a worse option.

2.) Politico reports that the electorate would currently support "a generic Democrat" over Drumpf in 2020, about 43-33. Sadly, though, one specific Democrat would not beat Drumpf: the poll states that Elizabeth Warren trails him 42-36 in current polling. My sister informed me of this and noted, "This country hates women in power." That and/or, as the Politico story claims, "Democrats could be in trouble- and (Drumpf) could triumph- if they continue their lurch to the left."

3.) Jacobin transcribes an hour-long interview on The Katie Halper Show with writer Doug Henwood (the link also includes embedded audio of the interview) where he discusses how he thinks the Democrats should move forward. He suggests moving away from "elite funding," and campaign based on grassroots funding. He thinks the party is stuck in that it is a "business party" which has to pretend to be a left-wing, populist party to get elected, but it can't actually deliver on those promises on a grand scale because of its necessary ties to big business, whose interests contradict those of working people. He thinks Bernie showed the way forward with his campaign: grassroots funding, and a targeted, simple populist message.

Drumpf Diary 2/14/17 - The First Head Rolls

1.) Less than one month into the era of Drumpf, the first head rolls. National Security Advisor Michael Flynn has resigned. Anonymous officials familiar with intelligence investigations say Flynn discussed sanctions on Russia with the Russian ambassador before Drumpf took office. Because Flynn was a civilian at the time, this would have been in violation of a little-known rule called the Logan Act which forbids civilians from conducting diplomacy in situations related to national security, or something like that. Flynn then apparently lied to then-Vice President-elect Mike Pence, claiming he hadn't discussed the sanctions with the ambassador. Top-level officials, including acting Attorney General Sally Yates, had investigated the whole affair before and after Drumpf took office. It is a rather convoluted thing, and it led to Flynn's resignation late last night.

The fallout is multi-faceted. Drumpf and Co. appear to be in complete disarray, this comes amid a number of setbacks and public relations fiascos which have marked Drumpf's first month in office. Even congressional Republicans have stated that they want to investigate the matter. Dan Rather has told his 1 million+ Facebook followers that he thinks this looks like a potential Watergate level scandal. Others have made similar observations.

Glenn Greenwald railed in defense of whistle-blowers throughout the Obama Administration. He points out that all this information about Flynn appears to be public due to leaks similar to those made by Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, yet there is no such call to charge the leakers/whistle-blowers. This angle touches a little bit on my previous entry about the question of the Democrats. In the case of Snowden and Manning, the leaks were made to inform the American public about serious wrongdoing by the NSA and the U.S. military. Manning served several torturous years imprisoned for her leaks, including a long time in solitary confinement. Snowden is exiled in (ironically) Russia. Greenwald:

Given the extreme secrecy powers that have arisen under the war on terror, one of the very few ways that the public has left for learning about what its government officials do is illegal leaking. As Trevor Timm notes, numerous leaks have already achieved great good in the three short weeks that Trump has been president. 

Leaks are illegal and hated by those in power (and their followers) precisely because political officials want to hide evidence of their own wrongdoing, and want to be able to lie to the public with impunity and without detection. That’s the same reason the rest of us should celebrate such illegal leaks and protect those who undertake them, often at great risk to their own interests, so that we can be informed about the real actions of those who wield the greatest power.

1a.) The Trevor Timm piece noted above by Greenwald is noteworthy on its own. It states that leaks to the press have been essential in stopping several Drumpf actions, including possibly an act of war against Iran.

1b.) Drumpf apparently expects Russia to return Crimea to Ukraine.


2.) North Korea tested a ballistic missile. Drumpf's response, according to a Reuters report, was rather subdued and measured, especially by Drumpf's standards.

The Question of the Democrats

I am trying to figure out how to regard the Democratic Party. That is a tough question in itself because it is not a uniform entity. I may regard Chuck Schumer different from how I regard Elizabeth Warren. But among left-wing opposition to Drumpf there is a vast chasm over what the Democratic Party is and what role they should play in opposing Drumpf. I know people who share fairly similar values... they favor environmental protections, strong social safety nets, equal rights for women and racial minorities, that kind of stuff, but they have dramatically different regards for the Democratic Party. Some view the party as fighting the good fight, a collection of politicians who have an array of different responsibilities, powers, and who are forced the juggle competing interests and do the best they can given institutional limitations. Others see them as just another version of the "bad guys," a slightly "kinder, gentler" imperial force, although some aren't even that forgiving, some call them just as bad... maybe even worse cause they put a phony face on equally vicious policies.

The question manifests in so many different ways. I discussed it in a post about Cory Booker. It arose in discussions of how to treat Drumpf's cabinet nominees, where many people complained that the Democrats were not being oppositional enough, while others pointed out that the opposition raised was rather unusual for recent history. Cabinet nominees generally receive little more than a rubber stamp. The question rages in election years, especially presidential election years. There is still an argument over whether Ralph Nader cost Al Gore an election victory in 2000, and a similar resentment is brewing over 2016 and Hillary Clinton's loss. Both losses are blamed on people who voted for third party candidates or who stayed home, failing to protect us from a victory for the "worse" candidate (George W. Bush in 2000 and Drumpf in 2016).

There is a belief among left-wing critics that not enough changes under Democratic governance, or they compromise or are too weak or don't care about left-wing values, they are often criticized as "Republican Lite," I know at least a few people who go so far as to say there is zero difference between Democrats and Republicans, "two sides of the same coin," the argument goes.

Defenders of the Democratic Party will quickly point to what they see as positive changes from Democratic policy, such as the Affordabale Care Act (ACA/Obamacare), protections for the rights of LGBTQ people, Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, positive actions towards combatting climate change, etc.

I think it is a much more challenging debate than many people recognize, and at times I feel capable of switching consciousness from one side to the other. Right now as I think about the war in Yemen, I see that a recent disastrous U.S. Navy Seal raid which killed about 20+ civilians (including 9 children) there was approved by Drumpf after Obama refused to order it due to risks. It seems easy to put the blood on Drumpf's hands given that contrast. Yet it was the Obama administration which has sold millions, possibly billions, of dollars in arms to Saudi Arabia, perpetuating the war there which is now killing, displacing, or putting at risk of famine and major health crisis millions of Yemenis.

I can be a Democratic Party sympathizer when I think about electoral strategy. I believe we still need to vote for them because they do make a difference. It may be marginal, but people's lives hang on those margins.

But I feel like leftists who oppose voting for Democrats raise important points. Consider that Obama deported almost 3 million people during his presidency. Maybe a GOP administration would've deported more people, but for those 3 million deported, either administration is unacceptable. The Democrat sympathizers don't have a sufficient answer for what to do for those 3 million people, how do we make systemic change to help them. I argue with my sister a lot and she is a rabid defender of the Democrats, and her argument amounts to "change happens slowly, there is no other way, we have to accept what we can get." Well, that leaves those 3 million deported with nowhere to go. It leaves millions of Yemenis dead, sick, or starving. It leaves those who still couldn't afford healthcare under Obamacare in the lurch. It is easy for those of us in a privileged position to be content with incremental progress when we are not sick, Yemeni, or living undocumented in America.

"The system" leaves those marginalized people behind and thus it needs to be brought down and a new system built. If the tens of millions of people who vote Democrat would get on board with more dramatic change, it could happen.

Or could it? I am trying to imagine the Democratic counter-argument. Well, yeah, that would be nice, but the left-wing movement hasn't reached those tens of millions of Democratic voters. They're not all living with the awareness we on the far left are, so we have to keep doing the hard work of building our movement and, in the meantime, recognize where we are at and act accordingly (strategically) and vote Democrat when it is the only way to prevent worse outcomes for people who would be negatively impacted by the Republicans being in power instead.

These are banal thoughts on profound questions/problems. It is a question I will try to explore in various ways as I proceed with this diary and life under Drumpf.

Drumpf Diary 2/9/17 - A Monstrous Catastrophe

1.) The Bureau of Investigative Journalism released an article detailing the Drumpf-approved raid in Yemen which turned into a debacle, killing nine young children among others.  Drumpf's press secretary Sean Spicer has declared the operation "successful... by all standards," while former U.S. ambassador to Yemen Stephen Seche has said it "turned out to be as bad as anyone can imagine." The youngest victim was 3 months-old.

“It is true they were targeting al Qaeda but why did they have to kill children and women and elderly people?” said Zabnallah Saif al Ameri, who lost nine members of his extended family, five of whom were children. “If such slaughter happened in their country, there would be a lot of shouting about human rights. When our children are killed, they are quiet.”

The article is really worth reading in whole. It lists the names and ages of the 9 child victims. It is horrific to contemplate, but it is being done in our name. "No one thought that marines would descend on our homes to kill us, kill our children and kill our women."

The article offers so many disturbing details. As I read it I feel overcome. It's horrid. I think about whether or not to share it to Facebook. I want everyone to read it. I am not sure the purpose of sharing. Part of me wants to observe that this was a raid that was initially presented to Obama and he did not approve it because he thought it was too risky. Drumpf, rather famously now, approved it "over dinner." It's speculated that he may have approved it specifically to differentiate himself and his own approach to Obama's. In that respect, the blood is on Drumpf's hands and those of his supporters. I know I saw a Vox article semi-excusing Drumpf, though, and placing the blame at the hands of military planners. Both seem like plausible finger-pointing. At the same time it all feels so small and petty. The deaths of all these people, especially the children, feel reduced if we try to point fingers and blame. I don't know. The report suggests that some of the adults killed were affiliated with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. One of the dead is 8-year-old Nawar Anwar Al-Awlaki, a daughter of a killed American who had been a radical Islamic preacher. She had been staying with her uncle. Perhaps the uncle was a "legitimate" target?? I don't know. It all seems so pathetic. Al Qaeda, no Al Qaeda (it seems worth noting that several survivors interviewed for the report maintain that none of the villagers were Al Qaeda-affiliated).

It is a monstrous catastrophe. 9 children are dead. A pregnant woman is dead.

The Pentagon attempted to justify it in a way that would be cartoonish if it weren't so fucking monstrously inhumane:

...the Pentagon released a video showing a man building bombs which it said had been discovered in the raid. Within hours it was removed from the Pentagon’s website’s after people pointed out the same video had been published online in 2007.

Also:

The White House, however, continues to insist that the raid was “highly successful.” 

“It achieved the purpose it was going to get – save the loss of life that we suffered and the injuries that occurred,” Spicer said in a press briefing on February 7. “The goal of the raid was intelligence-gathering. And that’s what we received, and that’s what we got.”

2.) In the broader picture, Yemen is amidst a crushing food crisis. "Almost 3.3 million people, including 2.1 million children, are suffering from acute malnutrition."

3.) Jeff Sessions is confirmed as U.S. Attorney General, by a 52-47 vote in the Senate. The vote was marred by silencing of Senator Elizabeth Warren by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell as she was reading a 1986 letter written by Corretta Scott King opposing Sessions's appointment as a federal judge. The silencing of Warren became a powerful story of its own, further elevating Warren's iconic status.

From the New York Times:

Mr. Sessions’s path to confirmation hit another snag that riled Democrats and energized opponents of his nomination: Mr. Trump’s dramatic firing of the acting leader of the Justice Department. 

Last week, Mr. Trump abruptly dismissed Sally Q. Yates, the acting attorney general, setting off a fierce backlash from Democrats against Mr. Sessions’s nomination to fill her job permanently. Ms. Yates, a holdover from the Obama administration, had refused to defend Mr. Trump’s controversial order barring travel by some foreigners, which is now tied up in litigation in federal courts. Democrats seized on her firing to say that Mr. Sessions is too close to the president to be independent or stand up to him.

VICE details 5 things Attorney General Jeff Sessions could do immediately upon his assumption of office.  It suggests he could pursue rollbacks of progress in marijuana legalization, LGBTQ rights, immigration, police brutality, and he could launch investigations into the voter-fraud which Drumpf claims occurred in the 2016 election, which could lead to further rollbacks of minority voting rights.

Another VICE article details a case where Sessions, as Alabama Attorney General, tried to prosecute three civil rights activists for voter fraud. The activists were acquitted and NAACP lawyer Deval Patrick (later Massachusetts governor) stated that he felt Sessions did not have the acumen to serve as a federal judge.

Drumpf Diary 2/8/17 - Betsy DeVos, Syria, Punching Nazis

1.) A good episode of the Zero Squared podcast (I'd never heard of it before) wherein Freddie DeBoer and Spiked Online's Brendan O'Neill discuss whether we should "punch Nazis" (they both say No). That is the topic but the speakers both go into more detail about the present moment and the left's response to it. I agree with about 90% of what I heard. O'Neill seems very knowledgeable about leftist history and DeBoer is very thoughtful about the left and what we do next.

2.) Betsy DeVos was narrowly confirmed as Secretary of Education. The Senate vote was split 50-50, with Vice President Mike Pence casting the tie-breaking vote in her favor.

Vice News tells about how Detroit schools were gutted by people with a mindset like DeVos.

The gutting of Detroit’s public schools is the result of an experiment started 23 years ago, when education reformers including Betsy DeVos, now Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Education Department, got Michigan to bet big on charters and school choice.

Freddie DeBoer writes on Facebook:

Median charter schools and private school voucher programs don't meaningfully outperform traditional public schools. High-performing charters are generally not remotely scalable. Charter schools writ large are rife with mechanisms that screen out the hardest-to-educate students, even when they advertise as open to all. Schools like the Harlem Children's Zone schools are notorious for sky-high student attrition rates. Systems like the Success Academies rely on a constant churn of teachers coming into and out of the system in a regular and predictable burnout cycle; this in turn requires a steady influx of educated labor willing to work in poor conditions, a situation that cannot possibly be ported from New York City to, say, the Mississippi Delta. According to charter advocates hundreds of thousands of teachers across the country would have to be fired, but we already face a teacher shortage and there is no bullpen of teachers ready to step in. Attacks on tenure make the job of public teacher less attractive; claims that this will be mitigated with increased teacher salaries depend on utterly fanciful notions that we'll dramatically raise property taxes across the country. Charter and private schools have direct financial incentive to commit fraud to raise standards. I could go on.

3.) Amnesty International has released a report stating that as many as 13,000 people have been hanged in the Syrian government's Saydnaya prison over the course of the civil war, dating back to 2011 up until December, 2015, and they believe there is no reason to believe the practice has stopped. "The horrors depicted in this report reveal a hidden, monstrous campaign, authorized at the highest levels of the Syrian government, aimed at crushing any form of dissent within the Syrian population." The executions take place after sham trials lasting 1 or 2 minutes.

The Amnesty report prompted a strong reaction from United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who, "was horrified about what was in the report," according to U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric.  

"We have repeatedly raised serious concerns about the grave violations of international human rights and international humanitarian law in Syria, including in detention centers and government-run prisons," Dujarric told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York. "What is important is that there needs to be accountability for all the victims in this conflict."

...

The chilling accounts in Tuesday's report came from interviews with 31 former detainees and over 50 other officials and experts, including former guards and judges.

Jacobin has an engaging interview between a Syrian who participated in the 2011 demonstrations against Assad and who is now studying in Sussex, and an American activist on activism in support of Syria in the age of Drumpf.

Drumpf Diary 2/4/2017 - Stop and Look Around Once in a While

"Life moves pretty fast," to paraphrase Ferris Bueller, in Drumpf's America. At least right now. Or maybe I am just paying closer attention to world affairs than I normally do. But I do not think so.

1.) Drumpf has imposed new economic sanctions on Iran. The sanctions are in response to recent ballistic missile tests conducted by Iran and implemented by the Treasury Department against more than two dozen individuals and organizations "involved in procuring ballistic missile technology for Iran. They are now prohibited from doing business in the United States or with American citizens. The overall impact is likely to be minimal on Iran's economy..." Reading the AP article, it sounds like the action is much more in continuity with Obama administration policy than Drumpf rhetoric seems to imply. The BBC, however, suggests the rhetoric signals a more aggressive anti-Iran stance by an administration filled with people obsessed with Iran. The substance of this particular action might be consistent with Obama, but the charged posture suggests more aggressive actions are coming.

Iranian officials are responding dismissively, claiming all their actions are self-defense against "wolves" preying at their doorstep. They suggested they would respond in kind with sanctions against America.

2.) A U.S. District Judge in Seattle has temporarily blocked Drumpf's infamous travel ban.  It appears that Washington and my home state of Minnesota led the lawsuit against Drumpf. The judge's decision is effective immediately. It came to light today that somewhere between 60,000 and 100,000 visas have been revoked due to the travel ban.

3.) Drumpf is changing a federal counterterrorism effort to focus exclusively on Islamic terrorism, taking focus off of white supremacist terrorist groups. The move is being openly celebrated by white supremacists.

The proposed revamp, reported by Reuters on Wednesday, would rename the multi-agency "Countering Violent Extremism" (CVE) task force to "Countering Islamic Extremism" or "Countering Radical Islamic Extremism," and eliminate initiatives aimed at other violent hate groups in the United States.

...

The Anti-Defamation League also criticized the plan, citing internal research that found 74 percent of deaths caused by domestic extremists between 2007 and 2016 were caused by "right-wing extremists such as white supremacists, sovereign citizens and militia adherents."

Interestingly, the Reuters report notes that Drumpf's travel ban has undermined cooperation with the Countering Violent Extremism effort.

Drumpf Diary - 2/3/2017 - Broker Fees, Guns, Russia/Ukraine, Iran/Yemen

1.) Drumpf is moving to kill what's known as a "fiduciary rule" implemented by President Obama. Actually, he is moving to prevent it from being implemented. A friend writes on Facebook:

Brokers can sell you products that charge you higher fees that they pocket without telling you. Through the magic of compound interest this can greatly erode your retirement savings. A new rule was supposed to go into effect April 10 holding them to a fiduciary standard. The GOP thinks you really want the old hidden-fees system.

2.) There is renewed fighting in the Ukraine between its government and Russian-backed rebels. 

After two years of relative calm, Ukraine's war with Russian-backed rebels took a deadly and destructive turn this week, pushing one town in the country's eastern region to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe. 

Intense shelling has left Avdiivka, a community of 20,000 people located just north of Donetsk, without electricity, heat or water during a particularly frigid cold spell that's seen temperatures drop to -22 C at night. 

 But it's not the cold residents dread the most; it's the threat of lethal Grad rockets, a type of unguided heavy artillery developed by the Soviet Union.

It's speculated that Russia is feeling free to be more aggressive since Drumpf has signaled a desire for better ties between Russia and the U.S.

3.) The U.S. House of Representatives voted to overturn an Obama-era rule blocking the sale of guns to the severely mentally ill. The GOP argues that it discriminates against the disabled. It sounds like the law stated that anyone who has been declared unfit to manage their financial affairs should also be unfit to own a gun. Kinda sounds like an example of the right-wing effectively using left-wing-sounding language ("it discriminates against the disabled!") to pass legislation. The story doesn't clarify whether there is any expert opinion on the amount of crimes this would prevent. It sounds like about 75,000 people would've been rendered legally unfit to own a firearm.

4.) Drumpf is doing a little bit of saber-rattling with Iran. When it comes to Iran, there may be no such thing as "a little bit" of saber-rattling. A press conference with Michael Flynn, his first as Secretary of Defense, did not offer too many specifics about how the U.S. will respond to Iranian missile tests which Flynn claims violate a U.N. resolution restricting their activity. He criticized Iran's support for Houthi rebels in Yemen, claiming it is state sponsorship of terrorism, and he also heavily criticized the Obama administration for being too weak on Iran. It sounds like this may include escalation against Houthis in Yemen:

...the Pentagon is considering stepped-up patrols and perhaps even airstrikes, aimed at preventing Iranian weapons from getting to the Houthis. In addition, Saudi officials are pushing for more support for their air campaign in Yemen, an administration official said. But officials said on Wednesday that there had been no change in the military’s posture.  

While the Obama administration targeted Houthis and conducted airstrikes against forces aligned with Al Qaeda in Yemen, current and former officials say Mr. Obama was wary of deepening American support for the Saudi air campaign because of concerns about the accuracy of targeting and the large number of civilian casualties.  

“Obama said all the time, ‘Aim before you shoot,’” said Derek Chollet, who served in the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department during the Obama administration. “Anytime there was one of these heated discussions, and people said, ‘We’ve got to do something,’ he said, ‘O.K., what does the intel say, and where will this take us?’”  

[Drumpf], however, said it would continue to criticize and draw distinctions with its predecessor.

Opinion: Have No Sacred Cows

"...when I was about 18 and my dad and I couldn't communicate about anything at all... we could still talk about baseball. Now that was real."

-Phil, City Slickers

I love baseball. I love baseball beyond reason. Sitting down in a beautiful Major League ballpark with a brat and a soda on a warm sunny day, or beautiful summer evening... taking in the hum of the crowd, the flow and action of the game, the sounds... alone or with a loved one, it is one of the closest feelings to complete inner tranquility I can experience. I consider myself close to my brother... yet sports, especially baseball, are often the only things we ever talk about. I forget where he works, but he keeps me up to date on any significant goings-on with the Minnesota Twins.

I am trying to illustrate the depth of emotion that lay, probably to a mostly-unconscious degree, in my psyche as I evaluated the politically tense push in the mid-aughts (2006 or '07) to build a partially-taxpayer-funded new ballpark for the Minnesota Twins. At that time I was a minimally-informed twenty-something who essentially fell into political arguments along party lines in favor of the Democratic position. In the ballpark debate, however, it was almost like an entirely other consciousness took over.

Normally, any political article I read, I had a default sympathy with whatever was uttered by a politician with a (D) by their name, and default antipathy towards those with an (R). It was wholeheartedly different with the ballpark. Whenever I read an article about it, anyone who spoke in favor of it, whether (R) or (D), I nodded my head as I read their point. Anyone who spoke in opposition, didn't at all matter the letter between the parentheses, I felt reflexive antipathy. The ballpark was going to be good for the economy, I believed it and anyone who tried to lay out any kind of argument in opposition simply didn't understand that.

I cheered when the ballpark bill was approved. I couldn't have been much more thrilled. The Twins had been trying to get it for probably more than a decade, and it was starting to seem like it was never going to happen and we were probably going to lose the team.

This all happened ten years ago and I do not wish to re-hash the debate over this particular ballpark. The main point I want to make is that there are extremely good arguments in opposition to building taxpayer-funded stadiums (just look up Andrew Zimbalist if you don't think so). I essentially refused to hear them. I am ashamed to say that it wasn't until after the stadium was approved that I began to open my mind, especially when it came time to argue over a new stadium for the Minnesota Vikings, a team I care much less for.

Why was I so close-minded on the Twins stadium? As my mind started opening up and I started examining my motivations- the truth was simply that, emotionally, **I** wanted the stadium, and no logical argument could change that. Even if I started to intellectually accept that a Twins stadium was  a bad idea... deep down I just wanted one personally.

I couldn't bring myself to acknowledge this in the stadium debate. This desire was not really operating within me on a very conscious level. The truth was that not getting the stadium, especially if it risked losing The Minnesota Twins altogether, was emotionally akin to being told that a beloved family dog had to be euthanized for the good of the neighborhood. Even if for some reason you accept that it should be done, you can't emotionally bring yourself to be happy about it.

I think there was no way possible that I could ever cease yearning for a new Twins stadium. No intellectual argument could change the emotional meaning it would have for me and I was incapable of being honest enough with myself to recognize that. Instead I tried to intellectually rationalize my desire for the ballpark as if it was somehow the right thing to do.

I strongly suspect this kind of motivation is operating at the core of many charged political debates. I suspect the gun-rights issue is like this for many people. For a large swath of the American population, the gun is a cultural centerpiece, especially for people who use them for sport like hunting. Comedian Jim Jeffries shot to fame based largely on a viral comedic bit he did in opposition to widespread gun ownership. In it he attempts to debunk essentially all defenses of gun ownership, and he says there is really one reason and one reason only to defend gun ownership: "fuck off, I like guns."

Today, Freddie DeBoer, a left-wing academic, is denouncing black bloc, an anarchist protest movement, or specifically a protest tactic, on Facebook, specifically targeting his criticism towards a black bloc rioter who hit a woman with a metal pole. While a lot of Freddie's readers seem sympathetic to what he has to say, there are actually people commenting in some kind of strained defense of the action. Or, if not defense of the action, accusation that Freddie is mischaracterizing the black bloc movement/tactic, or falsely using this isolated incident to discredit the whole movement.

I am going into intellectually questionable territory here and speculating that anyone who would defend a man hitting a woman with a metal pole is engaged in some kind of desperate mental/emotional gymnastics. I am guessing at least 9 out of 10 people who would argue back against Freddie, rather than join him in soundly denouncing this incident and the protest movement, have in some way emotionally invested in the black bloc tactic and now that they are feeling it challenged, feel inclined to rationalize it. They don't actually feel comfortable with the metal pole incident, they just feel there are deeper concerns which are going unaddressed... one such person talking angrily in response to Freddie claims that Freddie doesn't know "the reality on the ground," there are fascists who pose an immediate physical threat to a vulnerable population, and violent tactics are necessary as a form of self-defense. If we denounce the entire black bloc movement, we denounce the only tactic handy to immediately defend this vulnerable population. Perhaps this one incident is objectionable but we can't throw the whole movement under the bus.

The defense is a desperate rabbit-hole I don't really want to go down. The point is, a man hit a woman with a metal pole and supposedly left-wing people are putting themselves in a position where they are not roundly, soundly, and loudly denouncing it.

The whole Freddie DeBoer thing may not be the best example of what I am trying to talk about. But it is a phenomenon I think is present almost anywhere you go in the political spectrum and on almost any argument. We all have intellectual limits, we don't have an answer for everything, and to a degree we start from an emotional position and we rationalize from there. This is something we all need to take precious caution to guard against. I saw it in the contest to unionize my fellow flight-attendants in 2015. Some people who defended unionization nodded approvingly at any argument which rationalized it, however intellectually thin it might be upon inspection. Similarly, many who opposed unionization seemed to look through desperately rose-colored lenses at our employer, who treats us so good and fair and can do no wrong.

Wherever you are on the political spectrum or whatever side you take on any contentious issue, there should be inviolable principles and you should be ready to denounce people on your side at any point. Violence against a woman should be one of them. Violence against anyone, unless an overwhelming self-defense justification can be mounted (they have already physically attacked you, or they pulled out a gun and were threatening to use it, something like that), really should be one of them.

Just today Facebook is telling me that 1 Million are "talking about" Yemen, because a botched raid ordered by Drumpf is being splashed across the headlines. It may indeed be the case that there was some special kind of incompetence on Drumpf's part that led to this raid to fail to achieve its mission. But I can't help but instinctively think with some despair, "gosh, we care about Yemen now? We've been bombing them for at least two years under Obama, civilians have undoubtedly been killed by us, I have no recollection of 1 Million people talking about it on Facebook before today.