The MBA Presidency

Fareed Zakaria has an op-ed about Trump as a failed manager. He makes the somewhat contested claim that Trump does a good job with the "bully pulpit" aspect of the job, noting that Trump gets his "message" across, even if that message is hateful and incoherent. Trump has failed to manage the crisis in the way other heads of government have.  (Zakaria makes the point that American presidents are actually Constitutionally weak offices, which largely gets ignored in our analysis and popular understanding of how government works.  But it's important to note that a functional Congress is essential to governing well and we have only had a functioning Congress for four years since 2006.)

The two aspects that Zakaria glides over is the essential role of the Republican "governing" philosophy in this catastrophe and the link to Trump's repeated failures as a businessman. As I've argued repeatedly, the GOP is essentially uninterested in the process of governing. This is why they are unable to pass a Covid Relief bill in the Senate. The hard work of trade-offs and compromises is simply incompatible with the way they operate.

Trump's failures as a businessman are well catalogued.  Trump is a guy who went bankrupt in America trying to sell Americans steaks, football and gambling.  He's a salesman whose only real product is the family name that he brands incessantly without actually doing any of the real managerial work that is required to build buildings. 

It's worth noting that George W. Bush was also an MBA graduate, and he, too, was an inept manager. He invaded two countries and then mismanaged both of them into failed state status. He let an American city drown. He exploded the national debt. He allowed the worst terrorist attack in our history to occur on his watch. He allowed his VP to establish a torture regime in violation of our laws and national values. He let a massive housing bubble build during his presidency that wrecked the global economy. Yes, he's not the open sewer of a human being that Trump is, but he was an awful, awful president.

There has been a strain in American politics going back to at least the 1920s of electing titans of industry to "run the country like a business."  What a wretched fucking idea that turned out to be.

If You Thought 2020 Was Bad....

Jon Chait dives into why Trump has called for delaying the election and why he can't. He notes Trump's long standing authoritarian impulse - nurtured from the gilded cradle of the stupid little rich boy. As of this moment, Trump will lose. I don't know how much the GOP will stick their neck out to save him.

My worry is not that Trump somehow rigs the election or manages to stop the election from happening. Rather, he will stir up an absolute tsunami of conspiracy theories that will trigger a wave of domestic terrorism.

After Ruby Ridge and Waco, the federal authorities have largely taken a hands-off approach to armed rightist protesters. That's why they feel fine snatching protesters off the streets of Portland and shooting less than lethal projectiles into the Wall of Moms. That's why they did not respond to armed militias threatening violence in Michigan the same way.

Frankly, I wonder if we do need a little violence to bleed this out. I wonder if we don't need to arrest and imprison more right wing terrorists.  Fuck comity. We are going to see assassination attempts on Joe Biden's life. We are going to see federal buildings bombed (or attempted to be bombed). It's coming from the mouth-breathing Deplorables whether we want it to or not.

Magnitude Of Our Failure

Josh Marshall lays out the relative scale of outbreaks and concern over Covid in other countries. As he notes, Germany is responding aggressively to an outbreak of 639 cases. But if you break it down into percentage of the population, Germany's outbreak is less than three times New York's. Florida's is 43 times worse.

People would've died from Covid if someone other than Trump was President. People would've died in Anthony Fauci was president, simply because Americans are profoundly stupid and stubborn about science and government actions.

But it absolutely did not have to be this bad.

Chait Pens An Epitaph

This paragraph from Jon Chait's latest is the perfect summary of Trump's presidency:

The Trump administration’s catastrophic response to the coronavirus, like many of the administration’s crimes and blunders, combined a broader Republican ideological failure with Donald Trump’s idiosyncratic pathologies. The broader ideological failure is the right’s paranoid rejection of science and empiricism, which has been building up for decades. The unique Trumpian contribution — one that almost no other Republican president would share — is an almost sociopathic indifference to the well-being of Americans who didn’t vote for him.

It accurately captures how Trump combines the very worst of Republican politics (though perhaps underplaying their contempt for all government action, not just science) and the very worst of Trump's wretched lack of humanity.

The Kitchen Sink

The Post makes a solid argument for ending the rampaging pandemic that is burning through parts of the country: throw everything at it for two months. We had a faculty meeting last night and our school doctor - who is not be nature an optimist about things like this - was quite optimistic that we could have a safe re-opening of school...if everything complied with the three requirements: masks, distancing and hand washing. 

That's it.  That's the whole shebang. That's what it would take to get life back to normal like the rest of the developed world.  We would still have outbreaks - like South Korea and Germany are having. But they could be managed if they were small and sporadic.  We are clearly getting better at treating the disease, but the best cure is prevention and we know how to prevent it.

The problem - of course - is the rampant anti-intellectualism that defines the modern GOP. Rather than work with, elevate and support medical professionals, they are feeding the fever swamps of Covid-denial and conspiracy theories. Trump's entire self-interest would be to create a national masking policy. If he wants to get re-elected, he should've committed to that months ago. 

He won't. He can't.   And millions of dain bramaged Foxbots will follow his every word.

Trump is a broken, hollow shell of a man without the brains God gave a Labrador Retriever. That makes him the perfect avatar for tens of millions of Americans.

The Vaccine

The Good News is that it looks like we will have at least one vaccine by the end of January, if not sooner. Two uncertainties remain:

Who gets the vaccine first?

How effective will it really be?

The answer to the first question is, of course, me.  I should get the vaccine first.  OK, OK, medical personnel and first responders should go first, but honestly, teachers over 50 should be pretty high on the list. If you're going to jam me in there with a bunch of teenagers who won't mask, I would like some protection please.

We know everyone won't take the vaccine which will limit its effectiveness. Even an "effective" vaccine might not wipe out Covid the way polio or smallpox was wiped out.  Honestly at this point, just give me better odds of not getting too sick, and I'll be thrilled.

The secondary stressor of this pandemic is the extraordinary uncertainty that clouds everything.  It seems natural that the vaccine would fall into that uncertainty window, too.

The Other Side Of Portland

This is a provocative piece from the head of the Portland chapter of the NAACP. He makes a point that I had tried to make back in early June about the ability of white people to co-opt the BLM movement. While I disagree with his criticism of the "Wall of Moms", I do agree that for many of the protesters in Portland who have been targeting various building for vandalism are probably not doing so out of a profound respect for the sanctity of black lives.  They are doing it because they want to overthrow the government...in some way.

A few hundred cosplay anarchists in Portland kept some of the protest energy alive, but ultimately the protests became the end unto themselves. Plutocracy, capitalism, Trump, Covid, liberal democracy, police brutality...it was all roughly the same to a certain cadre of protesters.

This gibes neatly with the piece by John McWhorter excoriating the White Fragility phenomenon. I have to confess that while I have heard DiAngelo speak, I have not read her book. It's unfair to base my criticism on the depiction of her work by others. However, she certainly does seem to be offering a sort of "Calvinism without the Grace of God." We are all irredeemable sinners...and that's it.  That's the tweet.  There's not even the hand of an angry God. Salvation from the sin of racism is effectively closed to you if you're white.

The performative self-flagellation of DiAngelo and the white anarchists creating spectacle without a program are not centering the needs of the Black Lives Matter movement. The burbling subcutaneous rage of the Trump years and the continuing unrest from the 2008 economic collapse have combined with the catastrophic response to Covid-19 to create anger that is basically co-opting George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Ahmad Arbery's deaths to channel their own sense of anger and outrage.

The George Floyd Moment has created some real - of largely symbolic - change. Mississippi changed its flag; military bases look like they will be re-named, the Confederacy is, at long last, finally being defeated. Last night the entire rosters of the Nationals and Yankees took a knee during the national anthem.

We haven't addressed the substantive concerns of BLM though. Police reform, criminal justice reform, the debate over reparation...these aren't going anywhere with Trump as President and McConnell as Majority Leader. States and cities are making some progress, but police unions are working to subvert them as we speak.

The explosion of rage in late May and early June has wrought some real changes, but the work now is the unpleasant, painstaking and largely unsatisfying work of legislating, compromising and seeing well-intentioned reforms falter.

How will Naked Athena help there?

Good Read

This is a good piece in the WaPo about what this moment might mean in the history of our country.

One reason that America has remained a global power for so long has been its culture of improvement. We are endlessly striving to make the country better. Even conservatives wanted to improve the country, even if it was just the military or the business climate.

Up until Trump.

Biden's basic job will be repairing institutions that have been tattered from years of abuse.

Grifting Operators Party

The GOP is a criminal enterprise.  Every day is a new revelation about Trump, but this rot extends to the GOP in other places as well.

The Letter

A year ago...oops, sorry, it was two weeks ago... a letter appeared under the Harper's masthead about assaults on free speech. It was a fairly anodyne, generalized statement in defense of the free exchange of ideas.

It unleashed a shitstorm.

Zack Beauchamp has a nice summary of the debate here, and this WaPo piece covers similar ground, but gives a bit more context. (Full disclosure: a friend of mine, David Greenberg, is a signatory.) The basic contours of the debate Beauchamp lays out nicely.

Abstract appeals to “free speech” and “liberal values” obscure the fact that what’s being debated is not anyone’s right to speech, but rather their right to air that speech in specific platforms like the New York Times without fear of social backlash. Yet virtually everyone agrees that certain speakers — neo-Nazis, for example — do not deserve a column in the paper of record.

This is a fairly "Inside Baseball" dispute that is more over HOW and WHERE voices are heard rather than WHOSE voices are heard. The criticism was largely from - honestly - less prestigious writers and intellectuals who can't believe that people like JK Rowling, Malcolm Gladwell or Margaret Atwood are really worried about "free-speech" or simply "consequence-free speech."  The inclusion of Rowling is telling, because of the backlash she's received for her retrograde views on transgender issues. For the critics, the letter was simply whining by elites who don't like the fact that people on Twitter can call them out for lazy or hurtful arguments.

While that might have informed some signatories, there have been some data points about disproportionate backlash against a few people. The most prominent case in favor of the Harper's letter is the David Shor case. Shor tweeted a peer reviewed study from 1968 that linked civil unrest to GOP victories. This enraged some BIPOC members of Civis, where he worked. He was fired.  Civis will not say if he was fired for that Tweet, but if he was, that is a real case of "cancel culture."

The problem is that after that case there isn't a great deal of evidence for "cancel culture." Banning Milo Yaniwhatshisface from a campus isn't "cancel culture," it's refusing to let someone speak who embraces neo-Nazi and racist views. I think that's fine. I think criticism of prominent writers is great.

I've tried in my Twitter-life to engage people in a respectful way. (Two examples: I had a discussion about race and the Revolution with a Bancroft Prize winning historian that started as tense but became illuminating. The other day I tweeted something that was wrong, the author corrected me and I thanked them, and they "liked" the thanks.) The default of social media is antagonism and venom. It's SO hard to maintain a climate of open inquiry.

The Vox piece interviews Regina Rini, a philosopher who has a book coming out on microaggressions. Her next book is tentatively titled Democracy and Social Media Are Incompatible.  That's a shitty title, but the idea seems to be accurate.

I don't think we need to ban challenging ideas, but we need to account for how social media is warping our public discourse. That strikes me as a good place to start.

An Accurate Reckoning

The Sierra Club is coming to terms with John Muir's racism. I didn't not know about it, but it also comes as absolutely no surprise. Pretty much all you have to say is "White person who lived in America from 1877-1940" and I'm pretty sure you can find something appalling in their written record. This is the problem with "presentism." It establishes a standard that it is impossible for past figure to uphold.

If someone were to trash 19th century doctors for not using antibiotics, I think we would all scratch our heads and wonder what the hell this person was talking about. A 19th century doctor would have zero idea what antibiotics are. Much the same thing can be said for racism among white people until the Second World War.

Yes, there were some White people who held mildly racially progressive views by today's standards. John Dewey and Jane Addams and a few others. But even they would not be "anti-racist" by today's definition.

Racism was simply the unexamined status of America in the long period between Reconstruction and the Second World War. (I'm guessing the Holocaust and the Cold War combined to create a reckoning in America about the distance between our creed and our actions.) Basically, when looking at the past and past figures, you have to identify what racism is.  Is it a personal choice? An individual way of looking at people? Or is it a system of norms and values passed down through culture? Is racism an individual sin or the sin of the culture?  If it is the latter, then the racism of a Muir or a Wilson or a Roosevelt or a Ford is hardly to be a surprise.

When we have a "reckoning" about these past figures, we need to understand that what we are judging is less the individuals than the society that created them. Excoriating Muir or Wilson or Teddy Roosevelt or Henry Ford neither advances our understanding of how systemic racism works nor accurately leads to an understanding of that time period.  Much better to begin with an understanding of HOW racist America was during the Jim Crow era (and not just to Blacks), and then show how it could warp just about everyone. (Muir was a bit of a crank and didn't like most people, so I'm not sure about how relevant that is in this case.)

Edward Abbey - a natural heir to Muir - was asked about what "the problem" was with Native Americans. Why were they so poor, so prone to alcohol abuse? His response was that the "problem" with Native Americans was that they were just the same as everyone else. In other words, strip someone of their land, religion and culture, relegate them to reservations and impoverish them and anyone would wind up in rough straights. Similar things can be said about the "problem" with racist Americans during the Jim Crow Era. If all you are raised on is white supremacy, how - exactly - do you not become a white supremacist? One reason the Civil Rights Movement was successful was because the very means of protesting gave tangible lie to white supremacy.

If we want to understand racism, we shouldn't just point our fingers at past figures, cluck our tongues and shake our heads in disgust. We should understand how powerful racism can be when it penetrates all aspects of a society. We should not excuse Muir, Wilson, Roosevelt or Ford, but rather we should use them to demonstrate why the entire system was designed to produce people who felt this way. Otherwise, all we are doing is making ourselves feel better about our own rejection of retrograde beliefs without really examining the systems in place today.

Money

Trump has spent almost a billion dollars since 2017 to get re-elected.  He has an average Job Approval rating of -13.8 (42.1% approve, 55.9% disapprove) and RCP has the polling average for the horserace at Biden 49.3% and Trump 40.7%, whereas 538 has the average at Biden 50.4% and Trump at 41.6%.

In other words, Trump has spent close to a billion dollars to be in the worst polling position of any incumbent president.

I would guess much of that money has been spent on his rallies and padding accounts at Trump properties. Trump has routinely used campaign funds in illegal ways, such as his inauguration slush fund. We shouldn't be surprised that he would funnel money to himself.  Similarly, Trump is surrounded by people who are as morally compromised as he is. There is little doubt that they are lining their pockets, too.  Witness Brad Parscale's demotion after the Lincoln Project drew attention to how he has enriched himself at the Trump campaign's expense.

Let's refresh the facts: Donald Trump was given millions of dollars by his father (much of it illegally). He managed to lose money in America on gambling, football and steaks. He created a reality TV personality that was entirely fictional. He has never been a good businessman and is likely up to his eyes in foreign debt obligations. He managed to win in 2016 by running an inside straight with foreign interference and benefitting from misogyny. Seven high ranking members of that campaign have been found guilty in a court of law. He has alienated a majority of Americans.

As things stand now, he will lose decisively in November. 

Money can't buy everything.

American Impotence

Jon Chait has a lengthy piece on the war between the GOP and evidence-based policy making. It catalogs (again) the ways in which the GOP has become a handmaiden of anti-science, anti-reason politics. It also note that America was ranked as being the best country in the world to withstand a pandemic (on paper) to having the worst response in reality (because of Trump).  Here's an interesting quote:

One German expert told the Washington Post that Germany had used American studies to design an effective response, which the U.S. somehow couldn’t implement. American “scientists appeared to have reached an adequate assessment of the situation early on, but this didn’t translate into a political action plan,” observed another.

There were always going to be American deaths because of Covid, because Trump is not unique among Americans in his disdain for science. If Hillary Clinton had carried Michigan and Pennsylvania, we'd still be having mask protests and Covid parties.  Remember, the Tea Party freaked out because Obama wanted to give people health care. But it wouldn't be this bad.

It didn't have to be this bad.

How About Some Good News?

Looks like the Oxford vaccine trial showed that the vaccine was safe and that it created both antibodies and a T-cell response.

The Bizarro World Of Trump Counterfactuals

I read something on Twitter that was simultaneously true and ridiculous.

Imagine if Trump - back in March - had led an aggressive, science-based response to Covid-19. Imagine that the horrific days of the NYC-centered outbreak had still happened, but Trump had led a successful campaign to stop it there, implemented a massive bailout program for business and launched an airtight national shut down for two months that effectively suppressed the virus.  Under those circumstances, you could see a plausible re-election strategy for Trump. He rose to the greatest challenge of his presidency and some waverers would return to the fold. His negatives are still high so it would be a close election, but one he could plausibly win.

If Trump has a "positive" character trait, it is likely consistency. Trump doesn't waver, he doubles down. Trump is - above all - Trump. Imagining a Trump who listened to science, put off short term gain for long term rewards and asked of himself and his country to sacrifice for the common good is to imagine a Trump that isn't Trump. Now, I could imagine a Trump imitator in the GOP who will almost inevitably come later - Tom Cotton or Tucker Carlson come to mind - who weds the sociopathic appeals to white grievance with a base level of competency. Trump's not that person.

His incapacity for change is what endears him to his crowd of sycophants and acolytes in Cult 45. His insistence on attacking and doubling down is what makes him a "fighter" in the eyes of his cult members. Expecting something different is folly.

Biden looks to be ahead by anywhere from 10-15 points. He has substantial leads in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and is within the margin of error in Georgia, Iowa, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas. Taking just the substantial leads (and the Clinton states) and he has 318 electoral votes.  Add the margin of error states and it's 414 electoral votes.

That would be different if Trump wasn't Trump is a pretty weak argument.

Rest In Power

One of my first votes was for John Lewis as Congressman for the Atlanta House district. I had voted in the '84 debacle for Mondale, but that was absentee, and when I voted for Lewis, I remember doing so at the Bobby Jones Public Golf Course down the hill from my home at the time. I just recently finished Kevin Kruse's book on the desegregation battles in Atlanta - White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism. In it, Kruse examines the myths and realities of the "City to Busy to Hate" that handled integration "peacefully."  He also explains how white responses to integration helped create the "rights based" white grievance that fuels modern Conservatism.

Anyway, John Lewis appears in the book as one of the "Angry Young Men" who pushed integration too fast for the elderly Black leadership in Atlanta., who had joined with business leaders and politicians to create an orderly, negotiated desegregation. Lewis and others would have none of that and pushed harder and faster than the "Hartsfield Coalition" could stomach.  That history occurred to me as I read this Twitter thread about John Lewis being talked off the rhetorical cliffs that he had staked out before his speech during the March on Washington in 1963.  The speech was too fiery, too radical for A. Philip Randolph and Martin Luther King, Jr., so they worked with him to tone it down. As the author of the thread notes, Lewis accepted the criticism and even leaned into the new phrasings designed to make his message more palatable.

Meanwhile, on Twitter today, there are the usual crowd of "Rose Twitter" sociopaths subtly and not-so-subtly taking shots at Lewis for being a "sell-out." Try and imagine what sort of dysfunctional grip on how politics works to call John Lewis a "sell-out," before thinking about what it means in moral terms.  Lewis was not the great orator of the movement, nor was he the consummate strategist. He was the moral North Star of civil rights since at least the Selma March in 1965, if not the speech that was redacted in '63.

Lewis must've learned that day in 1963 that there were limits to direct action. Direct action, nonviolent noncompliance must be wedded with the hard work of coalition building, the writing of laws and the inevitable compromises that come out of that slow progress. Rather than reject the prudence of the elders that sought to restrain his anger, he found a way to marry his purpose and righteousness with theirs.

He then spent the rest of his life working within and without the system to make real change happen. Along with CT Vivian - who also died yesterday - a generation of leaders are passing. It's sad that he could not live to see Trumpism repudiated at the polls, but it would be sadder still of a generation of young activists failed to learn the hard lessons that John Lewis put into action. Yes, get into "good trouble," but also build good institutions. Lewis spanned the gap between youthful anger and sager politics.  The Edmund Pettis Bridge was not the only one he crossed.

Genuinely Chilling

The Department of Homeland Security has sent some entity of Federal law enforcement into Portland. No one knows who these guys are, as like the earlier incursion into DC, they are not wearing any identifying badges or insignia. Most likely these are Bureau of Prison and ICE agents who are snatching people off the street without charges or probably cause.

Trump, needless to say, is getting as close as he can get to an erection over this trampling of civil liberties. Legal scholars have basically agreed that this constitutes kidnapping, as you need probable cause to arrest and detain someone, and you need to identify yourself as law enforcement. This feels like the Breonna Taylor tragedy, when police used a no-knock warrant, didn't identify themselves, Taylor's boyfriend opened fire and she wound up dead. I can see a scenario where right wing militia kidnap a protestor, beat her nearly to death and then the next unmarked Federal agent tries to snatch someone off the street and then get shot himself. At which point, we have a little civil war in Portland on our hand.  It's not clear to me that the Trumpists would not welcome that level of violence to augment their talking point about left wing violence.

I don't know where we are headed. Each day seems to bring some new horror. This newest escalation of Secret Police-style goonery is likely a test case for the rest of the country.

The New Trump Book

Apparently, Mary Trump's book isn't really full of anything a neutral observer couldn't figure out, except it gives a clinical diagnosis from a first person observer.

It's perhaps more interesting as to what it catalogues in terms of WHERE Trump's pathology comes from.  As this piece lays out, the enduring 'mystery" of Trump is how a most "unmanly" man appeals to a certain type of performative toxic masculinity, in the same way the least religious person has such a strong hold over evangelicals.

So, again, Trump's floor of support (which we look to be approaching) is essentially those people who define themselves as much as by what they are opposed to as what they are for. These are the people Brent Terhune skewers so mercilessly, some can't even tell it's satire. (Seriously, go watch some of those videos.)

Trump's pathology is not simply his. There are millions more so irrevocably damaged by having their parochial worldview shattered by women bosses and gay men in their church choirs that they have decided to support America's worst person as president to the detriment of the rest of us.

Peter Navarro, Anthony Fauci And Public Service

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro penned an attack op-ed against Dr. Anthony Fauci. The attack was full of the usual Trumpian falsehoods (mainly about the Chinese travel ban, which was weakly enforced and irrelevant since the virus that hit the NYC area came from Europe).

It strikes me though about the current administration's attacks on Fauci and other public servants that there are two main motivators for the attacks. The first is obviously that all Trump knows how to do is attack. He can't defend his record, so he lies about it. He then pivots to attack, attack, attack. The virus does not care about your campaign goals, so when public servants come out with facts, the Trumpists think it's an attack. They respond the only way they know how by flinging poo around their gilded cages.

The second thing is that they simply have no idea what a public servant is.

The idea of public service is an old one, but it was largely confined to elites in the old Anglo-American hierarchy. The purpose of Eton (and its American imitators) was to educate the sons of elite for public service.  Being "of means" meant that they could be trusted not to steal the government blind (though some did anyway). For most of the 19th century, the Jacksonian Spoils System staffed the government with incompetents whose goal was to enrich themselves and re-elect their patron so they could continue to enrich themselves.

At some point, the idea of public service entered middle class society, probably around the New Deal/Second World War. The premise was that if you paid well-educated people a decent salary with good benefits to do expert work, the government could do things like manage Social Security, split the atom and build the Interstate system. In most countries, governmental positions are respected, but in America that was never really a thing, especially among the anti-statists of the Right.

Which brings is back to Dr. Fauci. He's in his late 70s, he's worked his whole life in public health and now he's getting shit on in the press by a trade adviser who's wrong about trade, much less public health. He has not gotten it entirely right - there was some confusion about masks in March - but he's a human being dealing with a novel disease. He's not working to get himself rich; he's doing public service.

That last idea is simply foreign to the Trumpists and the bulk of the GOP. They are so wedded to some absolutist vision of self-interest that they can't imagine someone working on behalf of the public good. They are so conniving in their vision of what government should do for them, they can't grok the idea that someone would work on behalf of other people. It reflects back to the central tenet of Trumpistan: Every accusation is a confession.

George Will and others correctly note that we are in a moment of precipitous national decline, because of Trump and the GOP.  One of our two parties has rejected the idea of competent governance, and the country is paying for it.

Who's At Fault, Who's To Blame, What To Do

Josh Marshall is running a series of emails from California readers who are angry at various people and entities for the spike in cases in California and the renewed shutdown of various areas of the economy.  He began with "ME" who makes the usual case against selfish dickheads in the GOP who have turned this into another partisan football. Reader SK puts more onus on America's cultural hubris. I'm not sure that they are really too far apart. 

Two groups of people are flounting good public health measures: the Deranged and the Deluded. 

The Deranged are the Fox News/OANN consuming conspiracists that equate wearing a mask in Costco with Stalinism. These are Cult 45 members who are insisting that Covid is "just the flu" and therefore liberals are trying to destroy Trump's presidency by manufacturing a crisis where none exists. 

The Deluded are those who simply think "It won't happen to me, and if it does, it won't be that bad." Of course, the odds are that it WON'T be that bad. It seems clear that 80% of infections are mild or asymptomatic. But that one-in-five ratio is worse than playing Russian Roulette.

I've seen increasing social media pushback against opening schools in the fall. The basic argument is that "Teachers should not be putting their lives at risk to cover up Trump's failures to contain the pandemic."  OK, in an ideal world that's true, and I certainly would not be thinking about opening schools in the South right now. I feel pretty good about our plan, but I know it comes with some risks. I also am desperate to avoid prolonged online teaching, both for myself and my sons. 

I worry that just as the Right took masking as a political football, the Center-Left will turn returning to school as a political football. There are profoundly important reasons to get students back into school that simply do not apply to re-opening bars, restaurants and movie theaters. I don't want the people who are legitimately angry about the clusterfuck that has been the Trump maladministration's response to Covid-19 to somehow turn this decisions into an absolutest position. We need to open schools, but we need a plan. My guess is that states that have done better so far will do better with planning school reopenings. 

However, I do still worry about the Deluded, when it comes to schools. And by the Deluded, I mean the students. We know that teenagers have an over-inflated sense of their immortality. We know that they will not be diligent with their masking. We know that classrooms could become super-spreader events, even with good (but not perfect) masking.

I saw a post by an epidemiologist that outlined the three variables in a pandemic: Prevalence, Infectivity and Contact Rate. 

Working backwards, Contact Rate must be addressed by rigorous testing and the quick removal of those who are positive and the isolation of those they came into contact with until they can be tested. I just don't know how much we - as a school - will be able to test people. We need to limit the number of contact points between those who are infected and everyone else. Tricky, but not impossible.

Infectivity can be greatly reduced by masking, washing hands and social distancing. We are looking at reducing class sizes, which is great, but it looks like we will be inside. (I was hoping we might set up tents in some areas.) How well will students comply with reducing infectivity by following these procedures.  That's the wild card. Masks aren't perfect, but if we can get near-universal masking, we should be able to reduce infectivity enough for contact tracing to reduce Contact Rate.

Finally, our hope is that through testing and sanitary practices, we can reduce the prevalence of the virus. If the virus is simply not present, then we are safe. Most of the places where our students come from (in the Northeast) are doing a good job with this. We often talk about the "Taft Bubble," but hopefully we can create that in a positive way to create a pool of students, teachers and staff in which the virus is simply absent.  

The lack of a national policy is a disaster. The lack of universal masking is a tragedy.  If we masked everywhere in public for the next 2-3 months, I bet we could get the virus under control. (We are too big a country to eradicate it like New Zealand.) I think on a small scale states, cities and even my school can achieve this, but how will we contend with the Deranged and the Deluded?

Failing The Ayatollah Test

Even Khamenei gets it.

The Global Intersection Of Race And Class

In this interesting piece on the descendents of Confederates who fled to Brazil, there is a passage worth highlighting:

The Confederate flag? Everywhere. On flagpoles and knickknacks. Emblazoned on the dance floor. Clutched by men clad in Confederate battle gray. Decorating the grounds of the cemetery that holds the remains of veterans of the rebel army — the immigrants known here as the confederados.

In a country that has long been more preoccupied with class divisions than racism, the Confederate symbols, stripped of their American context, never registered much notice. But now, as the racial reckoning in the United States following the killing of George Floyd inspires a similar reexamination of values in Brazil, that has begun to change.

Let's leave aside the entire WTF story of a bunch of people celebrating the Confederacy in Brazil and look at the bolded part. Brazil - like the US - is a multiracial society with a legacy of slavery. Slavery ended quite late (1888) but without a civil war. The legacy of slavery in Brazil is not something I'm frankly familiar with and don't want to speak of something I don't understand, but I would be very, very surprised if there was not a high correlation between race and class in Brazil.

Nevertheless, there is a strong tendency in other parts of the world to look past race and see only class. There was this kerfuffle with Trevor Noah and the French government over whether the World Cup winning soccer team was "French" or "Franco-African."  While France and other countries have a long history of dealing with class issues, they really don't want to have conversations about race.  Meanwhile, the US doesn't like to talk about class, but we have been talking about race off and on since the 1830s, and certainly since the 1950s. 

During the primary season, the Sandernistas were so focused on class that they insisted on negating the experience of race. This - in part - explains why Biden crushed it among Black voters.  Sanders - but more so his white supporters - didn't want to talk about race unless it was really about class. This fits broadly into the global Socialist focus on class, with its roots in Marxist academic and political theory.  

Europe was so overwhelmingly white for so long, that European society was never riven along racial lines (except within the broader context of their empires, but that's a different story). The only slightly different ethnic groups present in substantial numbers - the Jews and the Roma - were routinely persecuted. Europe wasn't free from bigotry, it was simply free of large numbers of racial minorities.  As Arab and North African refugees begin to migrate into Europe, Europeans are coming face to face with neo-Nazi and other forms of race-based white nationalist politics, just as America has for centuries.

As we examine race in America, though, it is important to note that intersection between race and class. Racial subjugation of black and brown Americans has been economic as well as social. The legacy of lost and stolen wealth creates a wealth gap between white and black Americans that is real and persistent.

As America looks at ways to repair (or perhaps better stated as 'truly create') our sense of national unity, we need to understand that race intersects profoundly with class.  As the rest of the world becomes more diverse, they will have to contend with issues of race through more than the lens of simple class politics.

Worst President Ever

Max Boot does a good job laying out why Trump is the worst president ever, by cataloguing his misdeeds...since April.  If you just took the maladministration and corruption from 2020, he would likely rank as the very worst president ever.  But let's look at the competition.

The only president whose personal corruption comes close to Trump's is Nixon. His personal involvement in the Watergate crimes (and quite a few others, including prolonging the Vietnam war by scuttling 1968 peace talks).  Nixon's primary crimes were about power not personal wealth.  Trump's pardon of Roger Stone, interference in the Michael Flynn prosecution and firing of Inspector Generals qualifies as a Nixonian level of corruption.  We can, of course, throw in his impeachment for the Ukraine affair.  So, in 2020 alone, he's worse than Nixon.

The only presidents less competent at the basic task of doing his job are Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. Those two non-entities were elected president because they were "doughfaces," Northern Democrats who were OK with slavery and its expansion. As the nation began to burn with the fires that led to the Civil War, they mostly made things worse or simply proved unequal to the job -wedded to an extreme states rights ideology. However, my belief is that there was little Buchanan could do by the time he was president. Seward was right, it was an irrepressible conflict.  Trump, however, has overseen the return of an extreme states rights...well, it's not an ideology so much as a default. The federal government has simply stopped governing in the face of a pandemic that has killed at least 137,000 Americans and will likely blow past 200,000 before August gets here.

Even Herbert Hoover made some small efforts to arrest the Great Depression.  They were meager and unequal to the task, but he at least tried to move outside his comfort zone with things like the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the beginning of some aid to states. Trump's entire plan for the economy is to "re-open" and kill more Americans...which will cause the economy to shudder back to a halt.

(I'm leaving George W. Bush off this list as being too recent to properly evaluate. Bush shared Trump's lack of basic curiosity about the way the world actually works, but he was not a fundamentally horrible human being, just a slob who ceded his presidency to actual horrible human beings.)

Finally, there is my pick for worst pre-Trump President: Andrew Johnson. Like Johnson, Trump has ripped open racial wounds, embraced white supremacy and hampered the efforts to make America a more just nation.  Johnson was intemperate, egotistical and ill-educated like Trump, but unlike Trump, Johnson was not personally corrupt, and Johnson ultimately bowed to Congressional pressure.

As someone said, Trump is not only the worst president ever, he's the worst American ever.

As of now, the only Republican to condemn Trump's brazenly corrupt pardon of Stone is Mitt Romney.  There is only one principled Republican left in Congress.  The fish rots from the head, but it rots all the way down.

The Next Trump

Trumpism is defined by its relentless appeal to white grievance, but luckily for the country, it appears as if Trump's malignant narcissism and profound lack of intelligence has limited his appeal to about 40% or less of the voting population. I would guess his floor is around 35%, and we might see it in polling before the election.  He will then do better than that, because some reluctant or shy Trump voters will "come home" on election day.  But 40% feels right for support for the GOP and Trumpism - which have largely become identical.

Trump is a uniquely clownish oaf. However, the roadmap to victory that he created within the GOP will be there after he's gone (to prison, hopefully). The next GOP politician to use that roadmap could be subtler and more intelligent than Trump. If it's another TV blowhard like Tucker Carlson...I'm not worried.  Carlson has ample tape of him defending and expanding on Trumpism.  He's not subtle in his racism, and the fact that he's a TV personality makes it easier to tar with the Trump 2.0 brush.

Tom Cotton has the smarts and the complete lack of scruples to become the next Trump. Luckily, he has the charisma of wet socks.

To me, the most worrisome figure is Dan Crenshaw.  Crenshaw is handsome, bright and subtler than Carlson or Cotton. I don't know how much he embraces Trumpism or if he simply complicit in his silence. My worry is that he's cynical enough to grab the roadmap Trump used and not aware enough of how that roadmap becomes its own destiny. Decrying "political correctness" is an easy enough rhetorical nod.  Amping up the volume enough to reach the WWC GOP base means a constant series of escalations.

My sons play something called "the Penis Game," where you go back and forth saying the word "penis" a little bit louder than the person before you. Republican grievance politics has become the new "Penis Game" where you have to say the racism and the fascism a little louder than the person before you. I have no idea what is in Dan Crenshaw's heart. Maybe he's a closet Mitt Romney waiting for his opportunity to reject Trump and Trumpism.  He is equating Black Lives Matter with antifa activities, so I'm hardly optimistic.

There has to be a Republican who can lead the party out of its racist, authoritarian dead-end. Otherwise the party will and should die. Crenshaw just seems like he will re-package the same hateful politics with a smoother delivery.

SCOTUS Wriggles Off The Hook

The Supreme Court had the opportunity to return America to the rule of law today and they only went half way down that road. The first decision allowing the Manhattan DA to subpoena Trump's financial records is good and proper. The second decision is basically a punt of the issue back to lower courts. The seven judge majority basically agrees that Trump should not be exempt from scrutiny but then allows for a delay that will drag out past the election.

Trump's adamant refusal to disclose his financial records has been an issue since the 2016 campaign. There are three reasons why he has failed to do so.  First, and least likely, is Trump's combative nature means that he fights everything tooth and nail.  Seems sketchy.  Second, Trump is really fairly poor and doesn't want that exposed.  Third and most likely, combines the second rationale with evidence of various criminal activity including money laundering and other forms of fraud.  We know Trump's previous business endeavors and charities have been found guilty of fraud, so there is little reason to suspect that his business dealings are any different.

These decisions are broadly "good" because they end any attempt and presidential "infallibility," but they are bad, because we will not know exactly how big a crook Trump is before the election.

I Wonder

Are Tucker Carlson's attacks on Senator Duckworth because the GOP is afraid she might be the Veep pick or because they want to goad Biden into picking her for some reason? My guess is that they are afraid that Biden will pick her.  I'm ambivalent about Duckworth, mainly because I know very little about her other than her very impressive biography. Still, that biography alone might be enough.

An Important Read

The dominant police culture is broken.

Witness To Sociopathy

Mary Trump's book is going to be the latest iteration of the Trump Tell All. Ms Trump, who is a clinical psychologist and a witness to how warped the dynamics of the Trump family are, will fill in more details into a picture that we already know.  Much like John Bolton's book or any of the ones to follow, this book will simply flesh out a little bit more of the basic contours of Trump that should have been evident to any sentient observer.

Trump is not a smart or curious man who engages with ideas.

Trump has a narcissistic personality disorder and is a sociopath who cannot see value in others except as they bring value to him.

Trump is more defined by what he hates than what he loves.

This was all in the open in 2016, but it was largely banned from polite discourse. Now, we can see if we have eyes to see. Many Americans don't. All of these tell-all books will not move the needle much at all. Trump looks to be headed for getting somewhere between 35-43% of the vote and hopefully a historic defeat. No book will penetrate the protective ignorance of that 35-43% of the people.

However, this book and others like it are the first draft of the historical record.  I suppose in that sense they have some importance.

Good Summary

This summary of the politics of race by Dan Balz is fairly authoritative.

Buried towards the end is my real worry.  Young people are cynical about electoral politics.  Balz mentions the problems of young black voters who see black elected officials in their communities unable to address their concerns.

There is a natural tension between activists and politicians.  I worry that activists are unimpressed by structural constraints on politicians.  It's those constraints that have withheld Trump.  They are frustrating but necessary.

There Are (Almost) No Good Republicans

Vote this one out, Iowa.

The creation of Cult 45 means that Republicans can't break with Trump, even as he drags down their credibility with anyone who is not already in Cult 45. Because the GOP tends to defer to their party's leader, they are marching lockstep into the maw of historical (and hopefully electoral) judgment.

Here's another good example of Kool Aid drinking.

Herd Immunity

Early in the virus, a few countries like Britain and Sweden seemed to embrace the idea of establishing her immunity by protecting the vulnerable, but letting everyone else get the disease. This did not work, because people were needlessly dying.

Anyway, it sure seems like we have backed into a herd immunity strategy. Because so many people can be asymptomatic, even though the confirmed number of infected Americans is almost 3,000,000, some projections suggest we could be closer to 15,000,000 Americans who have been infected. The question is whether we have acquired enough therapeutic options to prevent deaths from reaching 500,000 by New Year's.

This Is How To Write A Headline

At Mount Rushmore, Trump Exploits Social Divisions, Warns of Left Wing "Cultural Revolution" In Dark Speech Ahead of Independence Day.

I've seen clips of the mumbled, sweaty performance of lines someone else (Stephen Miller? Tucker Carlson?) wrote for him. Trump's speech - indeed his entire campaign message - is a litany of threats, warnings and grievances. I suppose this helped him "win" in 2016, but he's the incumbent president. He spoke of "great carnage" in his inauguration speech, but it was his responsibility to fix that.  Yet, we have tape of him saying "I don't take any responsibility."

America is seething with racial injustice. He's making it worse.

America is staggering through a pandemic. He's making it worse.

America's standing in the world is collapsing. He's making it worse.

"I'm willing to kill Americans in order to get re-elected" is pretty much his campaign message.

Josh Marshall is right.  None of this had to happen.

Thanks, Republicans.

This Is Actually Helpful

What are infectious disease specialists doing with regards to personal habits?

Big In The Land Of Masked People

Feels good to not worry so much.