Author: A.T.

And So It Begins. How Does It End?

Ed Luce begins his piece in The Financial Review:

It is time to study Caligula.  That most notorious of Roman emperors killed what was left of the republic and centralised authority in himself. Donald Trump does not need to make his horse a senator; it will be enough to keep appointing charlatans to America’s great offices of state.

Rome was not destroyed by outsiders. Its demolition was the work of barbarians from within.

The question of whether Trump consciously wants to destroy the US federal government is irrelevant. You measure a leader by his actions not by his heart. To judge from what Trump has done within a fortnight of winning the presidency, his path is destruction.

David Remnick ends his piece in The New Yorker:

One of the perils of life under authoritarian rule is that the leader seeks to drain people of their strength. A defeatism takes hold. There is an urge to pull back from civic life.

An American retreat from liberal democracy—a precious yet vulnerable inheritance—would be a calamity. Indifference is a form of surrender. . .  Vladimir Putin welcomes Trump’s return not only because it makes his life immeasurably easier in his determination to subjugate a free and sovereign Ukraine but because it validates his assertion that American democracy is a sham . . . All that matters is power and self-interest . . . Putin reminds us that liberal democracy is not a permanence; it can turn out to be an episode.

One of the great spirits of modern times, the Czech playwright and dissident Václav Havel, wrote in “Summer Meditations,” “There is only one thing I will not concede: that it might be meaningless to strive in a good cause.” During the long Soviet domination of his country, Havel fought valiantly for liberal democracy, inspiring in others acts of resilience and protest. He was imprisoned for that. Then came a time when things changed, when Havel was elected President and, in a Kafka tale turned on its head, inhabited the Castle, in Prague. Together with a people challenged by years of autocracy, he helped lead his country out of a long, dark time. Our time is now dark, but that, too, can change. It happened elsewhere. It can happen here.

Do something.

 

Why Didn’t We Buy Private Prison Stocks?!

The Brennan Center for Justice reviews Trump’s Mass Deportation Plans.  Hence the rise in prison stocks.

It really seems as though, having won just 49.5% or so of the popular vote compared to Kamala’s 48.5% or so — “a landslide,” in his view — Trump is preparing to govern like a dictator:

> His hand-picked Supreme Court is largely in his pocket — see Stench and Antidemocratic — as is Congress.  So, with his iron grip on the Executive, all three branches of government.

He aims to . . .

. . . by-pass the Senate in confirming Cabinet secretaries because his nominees would not pass FBI background checks (ironically, neither would he; he is deemed a national security threat by the intelligence community);

. . . use the Justice Department to wreak vengeance on his enemies;

. . . fire generals not loyal to him;  

. . . stifle the press — “the enemy of the people.”

He prefers dictators to democratically elected leaders.

For years, while married to Ivana, he kept this book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside.

It’s true that he got about 3% more votes in 2024 than he did in 2020 . . . but could that be because some people forgot what they thought of him in 2020?  (He left office with an approval rating around 34%.)  Or because some of them didn’t believe he was serious about doing the things he said he’d do?  Or because they didn’t know what tariffs are or that they would be the ones ultimately paying them?

The tragedy in this whole landslide business is that the largest block of eligible voters — about 90 million — voted for neither Trump nor Harris.  They stayed home.

Fred was one of them.  He writes:

Don’t you find it odd that the party that is worried about democracy is the one that lied to the American people for a year about their candidate’s cognitive decline so that nobody could run against him, and then appointed by fiat an ill-prepared candidate who had never received a vote in a primary?  Is this the democracy you are proud of?  By the way, I just turned 64 and have never seen worse tickets than Harris-Waltz and Trump-Vance and they happened to be the same election.  I didn’t think anyone could top McGovern-Eagleton (Shriver) but I lived long enough to be proven wrong.  I was too embarrassed to even leave my house on Election Day.

I replied:

Thanks, Fred. I don’t know for sure — I hope to find out — but my strong suspicion is that neither Joe nor the people around him believed, a year out, that he was in mental decline that would prevent his Administration from continuing to do a good job.

My guess – again, just my guess – is that insiders were as shocked and dismayed by the debate as the rest of us.  That they — and surely “the party” as a whole — had believed up until that point he had the judgment and experience, and respect of world leaders, required to continue to do the job well.

So I don’t think “the party” lied to the country for a year.

As to the rest:

Once Nancy Pelosi and others did persuade the President to step aside, everyone felt an overriding imperative to do whatever gave us the best chance to win.  Taking a month or two to hold a primary might have been the best course but would have meant time and money fighting each other instead of Trump.

Having first thought an “open convention” would be galvanizing, I remember being persuaded that, no, uniting behind the V.P. made more sense.  Reasonable people could disagree and did.

(If just a few of the 90 million who stayed home had instead chosen what in their minds — like yours — would have been “the lesser of two evils,” so she had won by a hair instead of losing by a hair, I think a lot of people would have agreed that not holding a primary was smart.)

That said, she was not “appointed by fiat” — she and others worked the phones in order to amass a majority of the delegates, persuading them that this was the best course.

Finally, I think Vice President Harris is a lot better than you think she is and might well have surprised you on the upside, had she won.  But that’s just my opinion and I respect yours.

BONUSES:

1. The largely wacky — but disturbing — view from Russia: What Is Trump to Putin? A Harbinger of America’s Collapse.

2. Robert Reich: How to Hope in a Near Hopeless Time.

Do something.

 

Your Republican House at Work

But first . . .

Two small bright spots:

> Klamath River: Salmon return to lay eggs in historic habitat after dam removal.

> It’s a nice story: Our twelfth Treedom Farm has now been planted (alongside 58 others).  My thanks to those of you who helped!  To help fund the next dozen, click here.

Two big dark spots:

> Stench: The Making of the Thomas Court and the Unmaking of America.

> Tom K.:   “Another must-read about the Court: Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections.”

And now . . .

One big travesty:

James Comer hails from Kentucky, one of the country’s biggest “taker” states, meaning it receives much more from the federal Treasury than it pays in in taxes.  Most red states do — the states that decry federal spending.

He’s chaired the House Oversight Committee since 2023.

Per Wikipedia:

[As chair], Comer has declined or stopped investigations into former President Donald Trump, while starting an investigation on President Joe Biden and his family. . . .

After Joe Biden ended his 2024 presidential re-election campaign, Comer began an investigation into the new Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, and also began an investigation into the new Democratic vice-presidential nominee, Governor Tim Walz.

A couple of months ago he chaired a hearing entitled “A Legacy of Incompetence: Consequences of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Policy Failures.” . . . issuing this “hearing wrap-up” entitled “Biden-Harris Administration’s Disastrous Record Hurting Americans.”

In part:

Chairman James Comer: “Three and a half years ago, when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took office, they promised to ‘Build Back Better.’ The fawning media told us that ‘the adults are back in the room.’ But three and a half years later, the economy is suffering, the border is broken, and crises continue to erupt worldwide. Everything Joe Biden and Kamala Harris has touched has failed.”

Your tax dollars are going to pay his salary, so it’s worth asking just what quality of work he is producing.

The economy: after three and a half years the unemployment rate is down from 6.3% to 4.1%.  The S&P 500 is up 60%.  Wages are outpacing inflation.  The Economist calls our economy “the envy of the world.”  Crushing as the COVID supply-chain-ignited inflation has been for so many, it has been largely tamed without the recession everyone predicted.

The border is only broken now because Trump killed the bi-partisan bill that would have fixed it.  It’s. That. Simple.

Worldwide crises do erupt, but ChatGPT tells me that slightly fewer U.S. service members died in Biden’s first two years than in Trump’s last two.  Our country’s Atlantic and Pacific alliances are far stronger now than they were when Biden took office.

Everything they’ve touched has failed?  Really?  How about the CHIPs Act?  Or the record number of Americans covered by health insurance?  Or the bipartisan bill Trump was never able to achieve (and that Comer voted against) that has launched 66,000 infrastructure projects — including at least 325 in Kentucky?

Comer worked so hard to find something to impeach Biden for — and failed.  It was easy to find things to impeach Trump for — twice.  And the second time, a wide bi-partisan majority of Senators (though not the needed two-thirds) voted to convict.

Does anyone doubt that, had the vote been by secret ballot, the vote would have been overwhelming?

Do something?

 

What To Do?

Many who find Matt Gaetz unqualified to lead the Justice Department . . . or are troubled by Pete Hegseth’s tattoos .. . . or by Tulsi Gabbard’s connection to a cult leader* . . . or by the worm in Bobby’s brain** . . .

. . . are looking for something to do.

And here it is:  Indivisible: A Practical Guide to Democracy on the Brink.

Meanwhile, not to depress you further, but because everyone needs to know this stuff, I again bring to your attention Stench: The Making of the Thomas Court and the Unmaking of America.  It’s even worse than you thought.

* Or by her aunt’s assessment: “Once again I find my niece’s apparent penchant for parroting extremist toadies such as Tucker Carlson and vile strongmen such as Vladimir Putin, to be problematic and deeply troubling,” she said. “​It gives me no pleasure to ​note that Tulsi’s single governing principle seems to be expedience, which is in effect no principle at all.”

** In fairness, not as unusual as it sounds, though the bear and the whale are kind of unique.

 

She’s Canceling Christmas

It looks as though once all the votes are in Trump will (again) have won fewer than Biden won in 202o.  So “landslide” may not be exactly the best word to describe Trump’s narrow 2024 popular vote win.

“Tragic,” I think history will show, would be a better one.

But a win it undeniably was.  Deeply troubling to our allies; celebrated in the Kremlin.

Instead of incarcerating a designated national security threat, we’re soon inaugurating one.

Think about that.

Instead of censuring or expelling a reviled member of Congress, we may soon swear him in as Attorney General.

I think not, because of the secret ballot that allowed Republican senators to cross Trump and select John Thune as their leader.  I think Thune will resist Trump’s request to circumvent public hearings on his picks for Attorney General, Secretary of Defense, and others.

We’ll see.

(Had Trump’s second impeachment trial also been a secret ballot, the vote for conviction — instead of the wide but insufficient 57-43 — would have been overwhelming and the Senate might have voted to forbid his running again.  But without a secret ballot, they lacked the courage.)

In the meantime, as we work to understand how to do better in 2026, there’s the story of Texas Latinos who’ve flipped.  A quick, jarring read.

And Ruy Teixeira’s, Where Have All the Democrats Gone? (summarized here).

BONUS

My Husband And His Family Voted For Trump — So I’m Canceling Thanksgiving And Christmas.

 

Take Heart

PART I – Why We Lost

I’ve previously linked to the David Brooks and Bret Stephens columns that I think explain much of it — must reads, if you missed them.

To those let me add:

Why Does No One Understand the Real Reason Trump Won?

It wasn’t the economy. It wasn’t inflation, or anything else. It was how people perceive those things, which points to one overpowering answer:

. . . the right-wing media. Today, the right-wing media—Fox News (and the entire News Corp.), Newsmax, One America News Network, the Sinclair network of radio and TV stations and newspapers, iHeart Media (formerly Clear Channel), the Bott Radio Network (Christian radio), Elon Musk’s X, the huge podcasts like Joe Rogan’s, and much more—sets the news agenda in this country. And they fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win.

. . . billionaires on the right have invested far more heavily in media in the last two decades than their counterparts on the left . . .

This is the year in which it became obvious that the right-wing media has more power than the mainstream media. It’s not just that it’s bigger. It’s that it speaks with one voice, and that voice says Democrats and liberals are treasonous elitists who hate you, and Republicans and conservatives love God and country and are your last line of defense against your son coming home from school your daughter.

And that is why Donald Trump won . . .

Liberals must wake up and understand this and do something about it before it’s too late, which it almost is.

Worth reading in full.

(And, of course, the right-wing media has this huge advantage: they don’t care if something’s true.  If it’s eye-catching — Haitians eating pets — they run with it.  It’s the National Enquirer brand of “journalism” — Supreme Court Justice Scalia Murdered By A Hooker! — that grabs eyeballs and has helped Trump every step of the way.)

Of interest, too, if you have time:

Our Mistake Was to Think We Live in a Better Country Than We Do

. . . The principal problems that got us to this bleakest moment in American history are intertwined. They are the crisis of masculinity, the failure of the mainstream news media and the rise of Silicon Valley, and in a way they are all the same problem. . . .

PART II – Now What?

Start with The Borowitz Report:

If history’s any guide, some nasty surprises await Donald Trump.

And Joyce Vance:

Whatever the next days and weeks hold, the most important thing is not to let Donald Trump take away your sense of power as an American. Do not, as Tim Snyder says, obey in advance. We did not quit during Trump’s first four years in office and we are not going to quit now. We will pick our priorities and marshal our resources to do what must be done. Make sure you take the time now to nurture yourself for what is ahead. There will be a role for each of us.

And Jamie Raskin’s email to supporters [abridged]:

My Dear Friends:

The last few days have been a blur of grief, disbelief and denial, regret, despair, resignation, estrangement and loss, heartbreak, and maybe, just maybe, the first stirrings of acceptance and renewed resolve.

If you want to start to feel better, think about this:

We’ve expressed our disappointment civilly and our hopes for the future honestly.

We’re not telling sinister judicially-debunked lies about who won the election to divide America. We’re not concocting disinformation and propaganda about imaginary election fraud in the states.

We’re not committing fraud by trying to get state election officials to fabricate thousands of nonexistent votes to change the results. Nor are we preparing counterfeit electoral college slates.

We’re not summoning mobs and violent extremist groups to attack police officers and destroy the peaceful transfer of power.

We’re not out inciting mob violence against Capitol police officers, Montgomery County and D.C. police officers, federal law enforcement officers, Members of Congress, the Vice-President or anyone else in order to overthrow the election and block the peaceful transfer of power.

We are modeling true democratic citizenship without jettisoning our principles and values.

As Democrats we undoubtedly made strategic and tactical mistakes in this campaign. We need a rigorous analysis of what worked and what did not work against the dreadfully effective tactics of our homegrown authoritarians and oligarchs.

But our values have never been a mistake. We have defended constitutional democracy against right-wing coups and violent insurrection. We have defended the freedom and health care of women against theocrats. We have fought for children and opportunity against the defenders of inequality and the promoters of chaos who vow to destroy Head Start and the Department of Education.

We have championed the right to health care and cheaper prescription drug prices, Social Security and Medicare, the work of climate scientists. We have defended libraries against book-banners, the right to vote against vote suppressors and fair elections against the lords of gerrymandering. We have insisted upon a foreign policy based on democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

During my travels across Maryland and America this campaign season, I’ve met wonderful people hungry to address the real problems of our day—the mounting calamities of climate change, the omnipresent peril of gun violence and the deepening of inequalities between tens of millions of working people who live below the poverty level and the billionaire class increasingly usurping government power.

For as long as I am alive, I am going to honor and participate in this urgent fight for strong democracy, freedom and progress for all.  I will never back down to the bullies and the oligarchs, the autocrats and the theocrats, the extremists and Russian bots.

This is our country and I’m going to fight alongside you to defend it every day.

With total solidarity and immense gratitude,

Jamie

P.S.   “Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.” – E.B. White

As always, Heather Cox Richardson provides perspective.

BONUS

Trump Could Bring a More Peaceful Middle East

This is the opinion of foremost Mid-East expert Dennis Ross and others and . . . should it come to pass . . . wouldn’t that be a wonderful silver lining to an otherwise horrible election that has put into jeopardy the very democracy so many of our veterans, whom we honor today, fought and died to protect.

 

Why We Lost

David Brooks, I think, nails it:

Voters to Elites: Do You See Me Now?

Every Democrat should read this.

Bret Stephens nails it as well:

. . . The dismissiveness with which liberals treated these concerns was part of something else: dismissiveness toward the moral objections many Americans have to various progressive causes. Concerned about gender transitions for children or about biological males playing on girls’ sports teams? You’re a transphobe. Dismayed by tedious, mandatory and frequently counterproductive D.E.I. seminars that treat white skin as almost inherently problematic? You’re racist. Irritated by new terminology that is supposed to be more inclusive but feels as if it’s borrowing a page from “1984”? That’s doubleplusungood.

The Democratic Party at its best stands for fairness and freedom. But the politics of today’s left is heavy on social engineering according to group identity. It also, increasingly, stands for the forcible imposition of bizarre cultural norms on hundreds of millions of Americans who want to live and let live but don’t like being told how to speak or what to think. Too many liberals forgot this, which explains how a figure like Trump, with his boisterous and transgressive disdain for liberal pieties, could be re-elected to the presidency.

BONUSES

Trump has already remade America in his own image.  “His overwhelming, toxic influence makes him one of the most successful presidents of the last century.  And the country may never fully recover.”

And if you have time this Veterans Day weekend . . .

. . . don’t miss Sam Harris and Mark Cuban in discussion a few days before the election.  Cuban is a practical, honorable, highly successful celebrity billionaire (you may have seen him on Shark Tank or cheering for his Dallas Mavericks).  If only it had been he who’d come down that escalator nine years ago.

 

I Have A Few Things To Say

First, my heartfelt thanks:

> To two of you who gave millions of dollars to this effort (you know who you are).

> To those whose crucial $25 or $250 or $2,500 helped create an even larger flood of money.

> To so many of you who wrote post cards, sent texts, called friends, and knocked on doors.

> To all of you who voted “the right way,” as I see it.

> To Joe Biden for a competent, dignified, scandal-free administration that gave jobs to almost everyone who wanted one . . . who against all predictions managed to tame terrible COVID-caused inflation without a recession . . . who began the revitalization of America’s infrastructure — including rural broadband — that so many prior presidents had tried and failed to do . . . who walked a picket line and brought manufacturing jobs back to America . . . who brought health insurance to more people than ever and capped the cost of prescription drugs for seniors at $2,000 a year starting just weeks from now . . . who made a historic investment in confronting the climate crisis while, of short-term necessity, allowing for the production of more oil and gas than any country in the history of the world . . . who strengthened our Atlantic and Pacific alliances while standing up to Russia’s journalist-murdering dictator (now aided by North Korea’s murderous dictator).  And for passing the torch.

> To Kamala Harris and her team for running a near perfect campaign, heart and soul.

Second, my hope that he will not, in fact, be a dictator on day one — or any other day.  Heck, with the Senate, possibly the House, and the Supreme Court in his pocket, it will be close enough to unchecked dictatorship even without his having to flout the law.

My hope that he will not impose broad tariffs that will spike inflation and interest rates . . . that he will not cut taxes on the rich and corporations that will spike the deficit and inflation and start a trade war . . . that he will sign the bipartisan border bill he killed, or something close to it, but not pull millions of productive tax-paying workers off the job and into deportation camps, which, apart from the human suffering, would cause economic disruption and inflation.

Trump left office the first time with a historically low 34% approval rating.  His economic record was . . . mixed.  For the sake of the country, let’s hope he leaves office this time with a much higher approval rating, surprising on the upside.

Or that, at the very least, he actually leaves.  

Third, my thanks, as always, for your feedback, two examples of which I offer here.

> Tim L. writes:

I am reminded today of a quote that I have used for over 20 years on Day 1 when I teach science classes, written by the so-prescient Carl Sagan in 1995, and truer today than ever before:

<< Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technical powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

— Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World (1995) >>

(Less eloquent was a graphic one of you sent showing a map of the United States labeled, simply, “Dumbfuckistan.”)

Tim concluded: “May the great Flying Spaghetti Monster help us all.”

I had never heard of the Flying Spaghetti Monster; but clicking that link, I descended into an enjoyable rabbit hole.  It turns out, Pastafarianism is a real thing.  Tim is a member.  He’s even attended a wedding.  It began two decades ago with this letter.

> Lew T. writes:

I knew the Democrats were in deep trouble a few weeks ago. My highly educated son said “Dad I’m voting for Kamala but frankly I’m voting against my best interests. It won’t bother me if Trump wins because it will be financially better for me.”

The Democrats have become the giveaway, redistribution, preachy, culturally overbearing, high-tax and anti-national-defense party.

The catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan and the huge budget deficits have defined the Democrats for better or worse. And the immigration fiasco which Biden finally shut down after it was too late clearly cost the Democrats the election.

So, at age eighty, I’m registering as an independent. I won’t use the word “we” any more when I talk about the Democrats. I won’t donate any more unless the party changes dramatically. What a mess!

“What a mess, for sure,” I responded. 

But pushed back some:

The huge budget deficits began with Reagan and have been made much worse (as a percentage of GDP) under Bush 43 and Trump than under Clinton, Obama, and Biden.  And Goldman Sachs notes that the deficits — and inflation — will be worse under Trump’s announced policies than they would have been under Harris’s.

The Afghanistan pull-out was Trump’s deal with the Taliban.  Biden delayed it 4 months but (wrongly, with hindsight) honored it.  Tragic that we lost those 13 soldiers and what’s happened to Afghanistan since.  But this was Trump’s deal; and had we not honored it, the war would have reignited, costing us yet more money and lives, as it had been costing us for 20 years.

Immigration took forever to get through Congress – but once it did, the problem would finally have been fixed — if Trump hadn’t killed it.  Hard for me to blame Democrats for that.  I just wish we had been able to drive home more forcefully what a horrible, selfish, anti-American thing Trump did by killing it.

Much else above with which I’d quibble.  We’re the “high tax” party only if you make more than $400,000 a year (and really only if you make a heck of a lot more than that).  Most Americans favor giveaways and redistribution — Social Security, for example . . . the progressive income tax, for another . . . unemployment insurance and Medicare.  And ironically, red states get more federal aid than they contribute in taxes; blue states, less.

But I think it’s the preach, culturally overbearing piece where your criticism is spot on.  For sure, in recent years, our extreme left has sometimes gone too far.  Either on substance (e.g., if anyone literally wanted to defund the police, as almost no elected Democrat ever did) or, just as politically damaging, in allowing that perception to take hold.

Another example is pronouns.  Maybe just because I’m old, but at least for the next decade or two, if only for practical political purposes, I’d have liked to see our side say: “Hey!  Not everybody identifies as a he or she!  So whenever we see someone add ‘preferred pronouns’ to their signature line, we like to respect their wishes.”

Instead, by making it the politically correct thing for everyone to specify their pronouns — not just the 2% who may wish to be called they/them/theirs (or the transitioning Chris or Pat who may rightly feel we need guidance on what to call them) — we seem crazy.  Or preachy.  Or culturally overbearing.  Or, at the very least, out of touch with average Americans in the heartland.

I so wish Joe and/or Kamala had had one or more Sister Souljah moments as regards woke, because our leadership and almost all our electeds (and voters) are NOT extreme left.

“If by woke you mean trying to treat everyone fairly and respecting the feelings of others, I’m all in — and I think most Americans are, too.   But if by woke you mean extreme positions that make everybody walk on eggshells . . . that stifle free speech and cancel people . . . that disparage friends and neighbors simply because their values are more traditional than yours . . . well, that gets into very sticky territory most Democrats don’t endorse.”

Etc.

It would be a longer speech than that, but you get the gist.  It’s a speech we should have made long ago . . . often and in various ways . . . and still should.

I concluded by telling Lew I think his registering as an Independent is fine!  In a perfect world, everyone would come to every election with an open mind, untethered to party.  The Founders, you will recall, hoped there would BE no parties!

But they also hoped there would be no demagogues.

Thanks, all, for your readership.

I still have the happy gene.

Every day is a gift.

Together — and with the help of lots of good people who, for various reasons, voted “the wrong way” — we’ll get through this.

I hope.