MLK Day Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, January 18, 2021
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69 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Headline of the day? Man found living in Chicago airport for three months ‘due to fear of Covid’
And this is one of the great tasks of leadership for us, as individuals and citizens this year. But even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction – purpose and dignity – that afflicts us all. Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things.
Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product – if we judge the United States of America by that – that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
– Robert F Kennedy, March 18, 1968.
The number of people turned in by their exes continues to grow, and now includes the woman who stole a laptop from Pelosi’s office and allegedly tried to sell it to Russia.
Trump joke of the day:
Q: what do Democrats call the smell of a dead fish left out for days?
A: rotten fish.
Q: what do Republicans call it?
A: Chanel numero cinque.
@Jen:
It continues to astonish me that people thought they could get away with this. Did they think that because Trump told them to do it that it was all right to do it? Worthy, even? That he’d rescue them?
Remember when Trump encouraged the crowd at one of his 2016 rallies to beat up anyone who heckled him, and promised that he’d take care of their legal fees? Maybe he should cover the expenses of all those busted for this stunt.
(Insert snarky comment about MLK day and wendnesdays nonviolent protest here)
Wow…
The coup, in real time, in video, courtesy of the insurectionists themselves.
https://projects.propublica.org/parler-capitol-videos/
Unbelievable.
If anyone tries to say it’s Antifa. Or it didn’t happen, this below is the raw definitive record.
It is depressing that many, many people can look at a buffoon like Trump, someone so obviously a weak and phony con man, and be taken in. It’s like some bizzarroworld My Fair Lady where we take an obviously imbecilic charlatan but put labels on him. “Massive Manly Strength!”, “Business Genius!”, “Patriot!” and half of us laugh, thinking its just a joke until we realize with horror that the other half reads the labels and accepts them as reality.
I guess if you can put an old sock on your arm, put a couple of googly eyes on it and use it to imprint some ducklings that it is their mother, it shouldn’t surprise us that this cardboard cutout of a man can appear to so many as something admirable. But it is depressing, nonetheless.
@MarkedMan:
I think it likely the explanation is that Trump is their ideal of strength, patriotism, and genius, among other misconceptions.
I’ve often said the GOP uses the phrase “freedom of religion” to mean “Christian supremacy.” I think “patriotism” means “white supremacy (with a few tokens to make it look like something else if you don’t look at it closely).” By that usage, Trump is a patriot, god help them.
Lacking the courage of his convictions…
Funny how the appearance of US Marshals or the FBI causes a change in tune.
@Kathy:
But that’s the thing. He is so obviously NOT strong. He rolls over on his back and lifts his limbs in the air as soon as a Putin or some other dictator challenges him. Who are his targets? The little people, or if successful or famous, minorities. Business genius? He inherited the equivalent of more than a billion dollars and managed to lose it all in a decade with some of the most stupid business deals out there. And it was known at the time! He was a total joke in the NY business press. By the nineties no legitimate bank or developer or investor would give him a dime. When the Trump building was going up in Chicago my nephew, who worked for a firm there that supplies systems to skyscrapers all over the world, asked one of the senior people if they were going after the business. The answer was basically, “If it’s just his name at the top we might bid, but if he actually has anything to do with it we wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole. Everything he touches turns to shit.”
I guess there are two parts to the charade. The first is on Trump, pretending that he is the opposite of what he is, and the fact that people who don’t know better get taken in. But the second part is 100% on the Trumpers. Once they start learning about what really goes on with their golden boy, they actively push the truth away, they double, triple, quadruple down. They turn on news sources, friends and family that dare to disparage their pinup fantasy in any way.
I remember reading something years ago about an author who had used a sugar trail to get ants walking around in a circle on the rim of a bowl. As long as she replenished the sugar solution, they would walk endlessly. She finally gave up after hours of this, and wondered whether they would have marched until they died. Every once in a while I get a glimmer that we humans are in the same boat, that we can’t even recognize we are marching on the rim of a bowl.
Giuliani has decided he won’t be defending Trump on the impeachment charges because he (Giuliani) was a witness (he gave a speech) to the insurrection.
He arrived at this decision after a weekend chat with Trump.
@CSK:
I think that translates as ” If he’s not gonna pretend to pay me, I won’t even gonna pretend to work.”
@Kathy:
Bingo.
@MarkedMan:
If I believed in a deity, I would thank her once a day and twice on Saturdays for my inability to understand such people.
I don’t have answers as to why. I do know the human capacity for self-delusion knows few, if any, bounds. You know how there are perennially bad teams in any sports league. Teams that year after year end up near the bottom, who from time to time score a barely above .500 record and consider that a major triumph.
I’m sure if you polled fans of such teams at the start of a season, a sizable minority would tell you this year they’ll win the championship.Sometimes they may have some justification (such as signing a major star player). Most times, there’s none, just wishful thinking. But they really believe this year they’ll win it all.
Why? No clue.
Turning away from politics a bit, after “Q Squared,” I listened to “I, Q” (a play on “I, Robot”, or maybe “I, Claudius”), written by Peter David and John de Lancie, read by the latter (mostly). It wasn’t terrible, but I kept hoping it would just hurry up and end. Largely it’s a vehicle for Q to display his sardonic wit against a background of the End of the Universe.
Far better were two short plays called Q vs Spock. Performed in front of a live audience by de Lancie and Leonard Nimoy. The first was far better. The gist is that Spock tricks Q into doing a couple of things, but there’s witty repartee and riddles along the way. The second would have been better if I hadn’t listened to the first before, but it’s good enough, with Spock completely out of character (for a reason). Each is one hour long.
With that, I’m temporarily done with Q and Trek, as least as far as reading is concerned (I resubscribe to netflix next month to take in season 3 of Discovery). Yesterday I began a short book called “Pandora’s Lab,” about seven inventions that have caused great harm to humanity. It began with opioids and opiates.
Congratulations to the Chiefs, Buccaneers, Packers, and Bills on winning their divisions and heading to the championships. Maybe next year it will be the Giants and Cowboys.
The latest scam making the rounds is a scheme that promises people their “stimulus” money deposited immediately. You just have to give them your bank account numbers. And people have fallen for it.
“Buccaneers”: is that insulting to people of pirate ancestry? Or relatives of Jean Lafitte?
@MarkedMan: This is how radicalization techniques work. You couldn’t convince people who left middle class livings with a future that ISIS was not the start of Allah’s physical caliphate on earth. This caliphate would not be stopped and would subjugate the apostate Shiite countries and then dominate the Christian West. The thought the outcome was inevitable.
Anyone with even a passing modicum of common sense would understand that soldiers with pickup trucks, no Airforce, and mostly AK-47s and RPGs are not a force capable of achieving those goal against the even the weakest of State Militaries.
Id even have bet on the Saudis against ISIS.
But here they were, normal people from normal families with 1-way tickets to Turkey trying to find Coyotes to smuggle them into Syria so they could get in on the ground floor of this new Kingdom.
We cannot underestimate how deeply persuasion and influence techniques can penetrate vulnerable people. I remember watching ISIS recruitment and propaganda videos thinking how comical they were. Pure Bullshit. These guys were getting killed at better than 4 to 1 ratio and yet their glorious victories were right there on YouTube…complete with images of fully stocked grocery stores in Syria.
Anyone is susceptible to the right techniques although the penetration depends on one’s emotional health. These people have been, in a word, hypnotized. They will only see what they are told to see. Just like the people that snuck into Syria, with bombed out buildings instead of stocked supermarkets and widows galore, somehow saw victory over their enemies as inevitable.
We are on a major collision course with free speech and marketplaces of ideas. When information warfare pervades it sows malcontent and threatens stability causing an untenable situation.
Oh, HBD Dr King!
“Buccaneers”: is that insulting to people of pirate ancestry? Or relatives of Jean Lafitte?
Clearly anyone can understand that buccaneer is not a race of people.
Well, almost anyone.
@Jim Brown 32: Pardon my denseness, but what does “HBD” stand for?
This year, no. But in some past years?
@MarkedMan:
Happy birthday.
There seems to be a question of whether Trump should receive presidential daily briefings after he leaves office this Wednesday.
My answer is: No. Under no circumstances. Never.
The rationale for the ex-prez continuing to receive pdbs is that he might be able to advise the current prez. But who in his or her right mind would ask Trump for advice about anything?
But the most compelling reason to deny Trump the pdb is that God knows what he’d do with the information. Sell it to the highest bidder is my guess.
@MarkedMan:
My impression from listening to Trump supporters over the past few years is that they fall on different points of a spectrum in how aware they are of Trump’s all-too-obvious flaws. There are, of course, plenty of supporters who take his grandiose claims, every single one of them, at absolute face value. Record inauguration crowd? You betcha! But there are a lot of others who recognize at some level that he’s a fairly ridiculous figure–and then they go on to rationalize it away. I’d classify these supporters into roughly three groups.
First, there are those who claim he’s doing a sort of playing-dumb act and is in fact several steps ahead of his critics. This is the centerpiece of Scott Adams’ apologia ever since Trump appeared on the national stage.
Then there are those supporters who are (or at least claim to be) a little more cognizant of his fundamental incompetence, but who think of him as a much-needed disruptive force to the status quo.
Finally, there are run-of-the-mill Republicans who simply like the more-or-less conventional GOP policies he’s put into place. A lot of these people didn’t vote for him in the 2016 primary and would have been more comfortable with a relatively more traditional GOP candidate like Marco Rubio or John Kasich. But they think of Trump as more or less “acceptable” because they like the results.
These categories blend into one another, and I think every single one of these people is deluding him/herself to some degree. But it becomes a bit easier to understand how such a cartoonish charlatan could attract so many people. He’s the classic con artist who lets people know he’s a con artist–and then they follow him anyway because they think they are savvy enough to use him to their advantage. To that end, his obvious ridiculousness becomes an asset, because people start to think he can’t really be as ridiculous as he seems–there must be some trick up his sleeve, or some explanation for why those who dismiss him are simply too rigid and narrow in their thinking.
In any case, it’s something that’s going to be studied for generations to come. It’s one of the most awesome examples ever of the power of self-deception. People aren’t so much fooled by Trump’s act as that they’ve willfully fooled themselves.
@Kylopod:
Don’t forget the people who purport to believe that Trump is the greatest president we’ve ever had, in addition to being a devout Christian, a devoted father, and a faithful husband. They worship a simulacrum they created.
@CSK:
My understanding is that it is more of a courtesy/tradition that ex-President’s get access to the PDB, so Biden’s admin could easily block Trump from receiving the PDB. Also, other than his reading of the PDB to Putin over the phone, I do not know what else Trump would do with the darn thing…he is notorious for bragging that he never reads the PDB. Again, other than calling Putin and discussing what is on the PDB or emailing Putin the PDB I am not sure what else Trump would do with the document.
I would love it if someone put together a fake PDB to send to Trump and then the intelligence agencies could wait and see how long it takes Trump to try and send this info to Putin. Of course, Putin would realize that the info Trump is sending him is bogus within seconds of reading such a doc what with his past KGB experience, but Trump would still have no clue he was forwarding fake news until someone alerted him of this fact.
@inhumans99:
In fiction there’s a device used often, in which a classified document or briefing is sent or given with small alterations to different people. If then counterintelligence picks the enemy up using this info, they often can tell who leaked it by which version appears to have been transmitted to them.
I don’t know if this happens in real life. But there are real examples of purposefully leaking some non-relevan information to see how the enemy uses it. For instance, prior to the Battle of Midway in WWII, the US Navy leaked about a made-up fresh water shortage on Midway island. Japanese communications intercepted shortly after, referred to water shortages at a place identified by a code name, which the USN had suspected stood for Midway. This gave them confirmation of where the attack was going to happen.
So, trump could be given some harmless or false bits of intel, with special terms to serve as flags. Then if the FBI or NSA picks up Russian comms using such terms, they can arrest his orange ass for espionage.
@inhumans99:
Yeah, the fact that Trump never read the pdbs while in office is some relief. But who knows what Kushner would do with them.
I very much like the idea of sending him made-up pbds. @Kathy: Your idea is good, too.
LGM quotes NYT reporting FOX has paid a large settlement to the family of Seth Rich. FOX pushed a story that Rich leaked DNC emails and was murdered to cover it up. They caved shortly before Dobbs and Hannity were to be deposed under oath.
Another reminder that FOX is a GOP propaganda outfit, not a news organization. And FOX, with the rest of them, are the cause of our political disfunction. I don’t know what to do about that under the 1A, but we should at least dis them when we can.
@Sleeping Dog:
Well, the lack of courage is a given, shared by most bullies. But part of the recanting may have to do with the fact that lying to a federal investigator is, IIRC, a federal crime, frequently added to the laundry list presented by the US attorney on the indictment.
@CSK:
Once he’s no longer POTUS, surely he no longer has a security clearance, right? He would never ever qualify for one under the usual criteria. Financially precarious, history of unstable public behavior, ties to know anti-American organizations and foreign governments, extreme blackmail potential… About the only way to make him a worse security risk would be for him to be a heroin addict on top of the rest of it.
@gVOR08: The curious thing about that settlement, to me anyway, was the fact that the family was prohibited from discussing the settlement until after the election had passed. What a weird restriction to have in place, for a “news” organization.
Gallup just came out with the final approval rating of Trump’s presidency: 34/62. That’s almost the same as Dubya’s final rating (34/61). Carter and Truman had about the same approval (34% and 32% respectively) but slightly lower disapproval (55% and 56% respectively). The only president who finished with worse approval was Nixon, just before his resignation (24%).
white dudes explaining to MLK’s son what his words ACTUALLY meant.
Holy moly.
@CSK: @Kylopod: While I recognize there is a range, there are no shortage of Trumpers who believe the Kayfabe is real. I’ve heard people say things like, “All the abuse he gets and all he does is try to do what’s right. The poor man doesn’t deserve that.”
@Tyrell:
I don’t know. I suppose it would depend on how recognizable such people are and how much ridicule caricatures (think of Chief Wahoo) of buccaneers
arecreate.How ’bout it, Tyrell? Do you recognize the grandchildren of pirates as easily as you recognize, say,
the children ofNative Americans?So Barr, the worst AG in recent memory, told Trump his theories of a stolen election were bulls*it.
@DrDaveT:
I’m pretty sure Trump never had a security clearance in a formal sense.
@MarkedMan:
The people who say Trump always tries to do right (gag me) are those who worship him as an exemplary human being.
@Teve: To be fair, I would really have benefitted from someone explaining to me what my father’s words meant.
For instance, every year for MLK day we would go out and get chocolate milk shakes. Who does that?
Is it just a dumb joke? It is racist? Is any excuse to have a chocolate milk shake a good excuse? I have no idea! Someone please explain it to me!
@Jen:
If the settlement was announced prior to the election, it would have exposed the lie that Faux News was propagating about the election and trump, in a manner that not even the rubes could have ignored. What disappoints me is that the family settled before Dobbs, Hannity and Carlson testified under oath, That would have driven a wooden stake through Murdochs heart.
This seems like a joke about inflation, that it takes $57,000 to buy a $20 note from 2004.
I’ve a passing interest in paper notes, but I’m not a collector (thank the deity). I know errors are highly prized, because quality control mostly doesn’t allow misprints to circulate. To the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, a sheet of $20 notes isn’t worth face value, but raw material and labor. Defective sheets can be shredded or pulped at need.
@Teve: Whoooosh… Right over their heads.
@Kathy:
That was good. So are the preceding pieces. Thanks.
@CSK:
POTUS is, by virtue of the office, an original classification authority. That’s pretty formal.
I suspect that the intel community was deliberately avoiding letting Trump see a lot of intel that they would have routinely put in front of a real POTUS. Thank God for the Deep State.
@DrDaveT:
\Yes, but I was referring to an actual clearance. But no matter. Under no circumstances should Trump be permitted to see any intelligence relating to domestic or foreign affairs. As I said: No one wants his advice, and the danger of allowing him access to sensitive material is far, far too great. He can’t be trusted with it. Period.
Done and done.
@Kathy: @CSK: Yeah, but fuck Barr.
@CSK:
I think we are in violent agreement. On the one hand, Trump has never had a security clearance of any level conferred on him. On the other hand, as POTUS he was entitled (in theory) to see any and all classified material at every level of classification, had he chosen to do so (and known how to ask for it). I was pointing out that this privilege expires with his term of office, and that it’s exceptionally unlikely that he would be granted an ordinary clearance at any level — something that was already obvious before he was elected.
@CSK:
We could argue he rarely, if ever, paid attention to the daily intel brief when he was in charge of the executive branch, so why would he want it now? But we all know what toddlers are like. the minute you don’t let baby have something, he’ll scream, and cry, and kick, and carry on until you give in.
Maybe he should get a daily pacifier.
@Kathy: I spent several years with the Bureau of Engraving and Printing as a customer and can honestly say they impressed me to no end. One of the more incredible things I saw was a head of security who could give first and last name to the engraver who etched the plate for any random $20 bill pulled out of my pocket. I thought he was pulling my leg but later realized there were a fair number of people there that could do that.
@Kathy: We’ll call it the PDP.
@DrDaveT:
I violently agree that we are in violent agreement. 🙂 And thanks for the link. Very interesting.
@Kathy:
If he learns that his predecessors got pdbs, he’ll want them too. It hardly matters if he reads them.
Trump will be departing Washington at around 8 a.m. on Inauguration Day to take advantage of a final Air Force One flight to Florida. He is anticipating a gala military send-off at Andrews AFB. I truly hope no one shows up for it.
@MarkedMan:
The production of coins and bank notes is a laborious, intricate, and fascinating process.
Tidbits: One location for Mexico’s main coin and note plant is literally a couple of blocks from my office. I often drive past the rear entrance, where armored trucks often come and go, I’ve asked, they don’t give tours to the public. I once did visit offices of the stamp-printing division (on business), but they were only administrative offices and had no physical connection to any of the printing plants.
Modern printers and scanners have hardwired protections against scanning, printing, or copying anything that might be a bank note, in order to prevent counterfeiting. That’s a bummer, as I’ve tried, without success, to do high-resolution scans of notes to study them in great detail on a computer monitor.
@CSK: shit, can you imagine him calling up Biden in 2 months and saying I want the PDB for Syria right now? Biden would double over in laughter.
@Kathy:..Modern printers and scanners have hardwired protections against scanning, printing, or copying anything that might be a bank note, in order to prevent counterfeiting.
When color copiers first came out (early ’80s ?..don’t remember) for commercial use there was a rash of dollar bills being reproduced that would fool the $ bill changers at the laundromats and the one or two car washes here in town. All they had to copy was the obverse side. Got so bad that the owners of these establishments would make change at a temporary cash register on site till the change machines were modified to detect the fraud.
@Teve:
Trump never heard of Syria till Ivanka told him to bomb the crap out of it. I’m sure that by now he’s forgotten it exists.
@Mister Bluster:
I think more like late 90s or early 2000s, at least the laser color printers.
I’d heard people were fooled by copied notes, but had not heard about vending machines accepting those bills.
Man this 1776 Commission debacle is brain-dead even by Republican standards.
@Teve: Never fear, it will be on the Texas approved curriculum within the year (and all of the states that use Texas approved materials).
@CSK: The PDB is a pretty milquetoast of an intelligence briefing I assure you. It can be viewed online by most people in the National Security apparatus who have access to classified computer networks. Its more of a high level snapshot product so really sensitive intelligence is generally not in the PDB. Frankly, sometime cable news is better and more informative.
If POTUS requires an update or deep dive on a intel sensitive matter–those intel/decision briefs are held at higher levels with a tighter circle of need to know players.
Putin runs one of the best intel capabilities in the world. The PDB–or anything else they put in Trumps coloring book so he’d pay attention–would be useless to him.
@Jim Brown 32:
Knowledge of which information is being presented in what priority order can be almost as valuable as knowing the information.
But, if that many people have access to the PDB, I expect that information to get to Putin anyway. (And a decent case can be made that transparency is good, as it reduces diplomatic surprises, which can have bad consequences)
Giuliani is being disbarred in NY?
No confirmation yet
@Jim Brown 32:
That’s a relief.
@Teve: @Teve:
The NY State Bar Assn. started investigating him on Jan. 11.
If Tucker Carlson could just fuck right off, that would be great.
@CSK: What if they gave a funeral and nobody came?
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