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October 03, 2023

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I dunno how to play this game. Hell, I don't even understand this game. But I kinda wish the House Democrats all voted "Present" just to see where the chips would fall.

I kinda wish the House Democrats all voted "Present" just to see where the chips would fall.

What would have happened is that McCarthy would have kept his job. After all, he got an overwhelming majority of his party's members. There might have been a few more defections, but nowhere near enough to remove him.

But it's not hard to see why the Democrats have no use for him. They have tried to work with him. But that's hopeless when dealing with a man whose word is, demonstrably, worthless.

Marjorie Taylor Greene says she's backing Trump for speaker

The guy has his peculiar crooked genius, but to even pretend to imagine that he could play that role . . . The really scary thing is that MTG may actually mean it, rather than just be trolling.

I give up.

There might have been a few more defections, but nowhere near enough to remove him.

Well, yeah, but that's kinda my curiosity. It's pretty obvious even to a simpleton like me that the Dems have no use for him. But who's gonna fill the void? I mean, as the saying goes, "The feckless narcissist you know...". Ok, I'm paraphrasing or something, but why would the Dems even put their fingerprints on this? And a forced vote gives away at least some inkling to allegiances. Maybe? I woulda stayed on the sidelines & let the GOP fight it out in their own trenches.

I kinda wish the House Democrats all voted "Present"

An FB friend observed that McCarthy couldn't keep his promises to the Dems, which he thought was reason enough to vote him out. And given that the Dems voted in a block, I think they have just dumped the whole mess in the Republican's lap.

Troy Nehls(sp?) R-TX has apparently stated he’s going to file whatever paperwork is necessary to nominate TFG. Can’t confirm, but nobody surprised. I really want to see that vote. Except for all of the reasons that it terrifies me.

Hi Janie!

why would the Dems even put their fingerprints on this?

For reference, today McCarthy got exactly the same number of votes from Democrats as he got when he was elected Speaker back in January. So, hard to see any Democratic fingerprints here.

And given that the Dems voted in a block, I think they have just dumped the whole mess in the Republican's lap.
Yes, but I feel like it would've been cleaner if they washed their hands of it. And to my other point, who's next? Scalise? Rove-protegé McHenry? TFG? Jordan?

For reference, today McCarthy got exactly the same number of votes from Democrats as he got when he was elected Speaker back in January. So, hard to see any Democratic fingerprints here.

Yeah, but that was a vote to elect a Speaker, not to vacate. When it comes to a new Speaker vote, I assume House Democrats will nominate Jeffries and vote accordingly.

I don't know the ins and outs, but if the dems hadn't voted/voted present, I assume that McCarthy would stay in. And, since he didn't keep his promises, there is really no reason to do that. But any more details about how that works, I'd love to hear.

Ok, I don't want to belabor it - although that ship may have sailed - but this is my point:

McCarthy sucks, can't be trusted, and is a paper tiger (with apologies to tigers), but at least you know who you're dealing with. The House, under GOP leadership (for some value of "leadership") is not just dysfunctional - it's non-functional. So we limp to 2024 and hope for a change in leadership. I don't see how a McCarthy-led majority gets anything done, and given the factional and fractional state of the House GOP, how a replacement fares any better.

So the D caucus should just stay out of it and let them eat their own. The House can't agree to pay the bills. There's nothing to suggest any meaningful legislation will come from the status quo.

I look at the polls, the "debates", and TFG being elected as Speaker does not seem implausible to me. This is where we are.

Passed on without comment

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2023/10/its-time-for-some-game-theory

I don't know the ins and outs, but if the dems hadn't voted/voted present, I assume that McCarthy would stay in. And, since he didn't keep his promises, there is really no reason to do that.

You've got it exactly right. For the Motion to Vacate to pass, it needs a majority of "those present and voting".

So not voting or voting "present" effectively would have been a vote to keep McCarthy. And, as you say, his word is worthless, so he's useless.

I look at the polls, the "debates", and TFG being elected as Speaker does not seem implausible to me. This is where we are.

In January, in a couple of the rounds of voting, someone (don't know if it was always the same someone) did put TFG's name into the mix. He got 1 (one) vote each time. Which perhaps reduces the plausibility that he would win now.

Besides, he's got a track record as a loser.

McCarthy sucks, can't be trusted, and is a paper tiger (with apologies to tigers), but at least you know who you're dealing with.

If the next guy is no better, one of the Ds can always make their own Motion to Vacate. The bomb-throwers might well vote for that next time as well.

There's a scene in Live Free or Die Hard where Matt Farrell realizes the real chaos and pain that shutting everything down will cause. He talks about thinking that a fire sale might be cool, but suddenly grasps the actual impact on human lives.

Supporters of Gaetz and his band of 8 merry men, (and the Democrats who cravenly let their hurt feelings upend the workings of government) may have that same epiphany. Perhaps soon.

McCarthy put country above his power in the House. Whatever else you might think of him, that was an admirable act of conscience. His removal almost ensures a less honorable replacement.

It is not a win for the country.

McCarthy is a scoundrel who deserves precisely no credit for agreeing to a partial solution to a crisis of his own making.

Regarding Marty's comment: MURC'S LAW LIVES!

It's a sad commentary on the Republican Party when a Republican represents that one can readily find in it a less honourable replacement for Lying Kevin McCarthy.

Meanwhile, since there's no chance of the far right agreeing on anything beyond feeding the rich, the only imaginable semi-stable choice for House Speaker would be a Republican supported by more Ds than there are Rs who oppose him. That is, a bi-partisan appointment from the majority party, heralding a glimmer of sanity in US politics.

Imaginable, that is, if one has a sufficiently vivid imagination.

the Democrats who cravenly let their hurt feelings upend the workings of government.

That makes no sense whatsoever. Because, let's face it, it was Gaetz et al who let their hurt feelings upend the workings of government. All year.

Did the Democrats have some kind of obligation, back in January, to pick a Republican to support for Speaker. Rather than have nothing happen until the Republicans could get themselves together? After all, unlike the current situation, absolutely nothing could happen in the House at that point. The question answers itself.

For that matter, consider that the House with McCarthy as Speaker has shown zero signs of being able to get a budget bill (never mind appropriations bills) passed. Does that impose an obligation on (some) Republicans to support a Democrat for Speaker? You know, put country over party and actually do the job that was supposed to happen over the Spring and Summer.

Whoever gets elected to the Speakership will have to operate under the same constraints to which McCarthy acceded in order to briefly warm his seat. McCarthy chose that route to the Speakership over one in which he would have to seek bipartisan support.

Whoever comes next (assuming that the GOP can get both hands on their own wandering butt cheeks) it's not likely to change anything unless that person commits heresy and reaches across the aisle to counterbalance the chaos goblins on their right flank.

For that matter, consider that the House with McCarthy as Speaker has shown zero signs of being able to get a budget bill (never mind appropriations bills) passed. Does that impose an obligation on (some) Republicans to support a Democrat for Speaker? You know, put country over party and actually do the job that was supposed to happen over the Spring and Summer.

Zing. Thanks, wj.

I consider it a duty to occasionally remind those here, especially the more liberal/progressive among us, that one can be a conservative without being a radical reactionary or a RWNJ. A misperception which is, alas, all to easy to take away from watching the national political scene.

one can be a conservative without being a radical reactionary or a RWNJ

Yes, of course. In many ways I'm a conservative. But can one be a conservative and a Republican voter? Or even a conservative and a (UK) Conservative Party voter?

But can one be a conservative and a Republican voter?

These days, very, very rarely. And then only in the occasional local election. The rot is pretty pervasive.

I'd like to believe that, when TIFG passes from the scene, things will start slowly moving towards sanity. If only because I've not seeing similarly gifted demagogues out there. But sadly I won't be surprised if another one surfaces.

"That makes no sense whatsoever. Because, let's face it, it was Gaetz et al who let their hurt feelings upend the workings of government. All year."

Absolutely true, yet every Democrat voted WITH him to perpetuate his stranglehold on Republican leadership. They rejected the one person who ultimately stood up to Gaetz. I think it was a bad choice.

"I think it was a bad choice."

Moderate Rethuglicans are free any 'effing time to vote with Dems to make Hakeem Jeffries Speaker of the House.

I repeat: Any time.

But those petulant f*cks hate our country.

Then there's this from the Temporary Guy:

"Nancy Pelosi says the interim House speaker asked her to vacate her Capitol office"

https://www.npr.org/2023/10/04/1203566052/pelosi-office-patrick-mchenry-speaker

NPR viewed the text of an email, which was reportedly sent to Pelosi's staff at 6:11 pm on Tuesday, asking the team to remove their belongings by Wednesday.

"The Speaker pro tempore is going to re-assign H-132 for speaker office use. Please vacate the space tomorrow, the room will be re-keyed," the email reads.

(...)

Concerning her own office, Pelosi says she'll be unable to move her belongings from the space because she is not currently in Washington, D.C. The California Democrat, who was absent from Tuesday's vote, said she's back in her home state to pay tribute to Diane Feinstein, the long-serving California senator who died last week.

Feinstein is scheduled to lie in state at San Francisco City Hall on Wednesday ahead of funeral services Thursday.

Pelosi said the office space ultimately "doesn't matter" to her, but "it seems to be important to them."

"Now that the new Republican Leadership has settled this important matter, let's hope they get to work on what's truly important for the American people," she wrote in her statement.

In today's GOP, obnoxiousness is a virtue.

yet every Democrat voted WITH him to perpetuate his stranglehold on Republican leadership. They rejected the one person who ultimately stood up to Gaetz. I think it was a bad choice.

Call me simplistic, but it seems to me that Gaetz should be dealt with as a separate issue.

He has burned his bridges with the other Republicans in the House, to the point that they are at least considering booting him out altogether due to his ethics lapses. That is where I would prefer to see the standing up to him to happen. It would have the added benefit of making clear that opposing him was not just a matter of making a judgement on a lesser evil. YMMV

In today's GOP, obnoxiousness is a virtue.

A virtue, or a Minimum Job Requirement?

Duncan Black, bobbyp's mouthpiece.

Marty - McCarthy could well have brought a bill to the floor of the House that abided by the framework that had been agreed upon in the last shutdown talks. It would have passed even without the support of the Freedom Caucus.

McCarthy could have brought the more recent, bipartisan Senate bill to the floor of the house for a vote and averted the shutdown in that way, too.

He chose instead to try to put a Republican House bill together behind closed doors.

Voting on the Senate bill would have triggered a vote to vacate, but would have served the needs of the country. His choice to forego a bipartisan solution that was already there and would pass in order to try to force through a GOP House bill on the threat of a shutdown demonstrates what McCarthy's priorities were.

Saving his Speakership does nothing to actually save the shutdown situation or take it off the table for the next time. He'd already sided with Gaetz against the Dems when he had the chance to avoid the situation entirely. He put himself back in that cage.

What he got was less than what he had promised during the last showdown and also a vote to vacate.

Why bail out someone who tried to screw you over? It's not like the next Speaker will have way more power to screw over the Dems. If McCarthy had that power, he would already have used it. He already tried.

McCarthy held fast to a losing strategy even after being shown the path to a draw, and chose to stick to his strategy in order to try to save his position. That was his calculation. He tried that gambit. It failed.

He deserved to lose.

The rest is all just spin and PR.

From Digby, a Dem insider's take.

Nothing mysterious here.

In today's GOP, obnoxiousness is a virtue.

Verily, they are princes among men. By their deeds shall ye know them.

The take that Digby links is a pretty clear exposition; I recommend reading the whole thing.

The take home is that if McCarthy could have dealt with the Democrats, but kept on trying to play them at the same time.

https://twitter.com/Fritschner/status/1709574816326439283
...People say "he couldn't make a deal it would compromise his power" and they're just wrong, that was a solvable problem. He could've publicly or privately given us a sense the CR was good faith and we were going to get through the omnibus, stave off a shutdown, and help Ukraine...

https://twitter.com/Fritschner/status/1709574816326439283
...This came down to trust, and that's the word I saw and heard from House Democrats more than any other word. We did not trust Kevin McCarthy and he gave us no reason to. He could have done so (and I suspect saved his gavel) through fairly simple actions. He chose not to do that...

Someday even Marty will get tired of blaming the Democrats for not saving Republicans from MAGAt sabotage. But there will never come a day when the Martys of the world will blame Republicans for anything.

--TP

While I agree that Marty seems to be moving from the assumption that only Dems have agency, I don't want to encourage a pile-on here, cause I appreciate Marty coming back and I don't want to run him off.

I don't blame Marty for it at all; it is the default assumption of reporting in much of the 'liberal media', too.

The idea that Ds should have bailed out McCarthy is a codicil of the larger logic of DC punditry in which R bad behavior/destruction is assumed, a baseline like weather, and Ds managing the consequences of that behavior is a given. It’s part of DC being hardwired for the GOP.
https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1709568786389443026

It's also fair to ask to what extent, in a democracy, you have an obligation to try cooperate with those you regard as politically destructive, who nonetheless hold their positions as a result of popular vote, when not doing so also has negative consequences.

It's not an easy question to answer, if you're a pragmatist. Though one answer is that being absolutely clear about the process - as for instance the staffer quoted by Digby - is greatly to be encouraged.

Often the Democrats are not particularly good at explaining how they got where they did. Doing so can only benefit them, IMO.

I appreciate Marty coming back and I don't want to run him off.

Seconded.

I dud start be agreeing to the Republicans bad behavior. I did find it interesting that the Democrats needed to watch film of McCarthy to remind themselves that he was a Republican. I suppose they could also have watched film of various Democrats saying it was all his fault. The fact that he created a compromise was the headline.

https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/democrats-watched-tape-of-mccarthy-bashing-them-ahead-of-motion-to-vacate-vote-rep-connolly-says-194346565848

I never comment here expecting anything except unanimous rebuke at varying levels of virulence. All is good.

Sorry about the double post. I missed saying that I didn't see the Democrats having any responsibility to bail out McCarthy. I saw a vote present, or for McCarthy, as a rebuke of Gaetz which seems to be almost universally agreed upon. Without a leader they can't remove him, and I suspect that as his primary motivation for the chaos.

I suspect that if the Republicans really wanted to remove Gaetz because he's awful and icky, that they could have done it at any time since 2021 when his pederastic Venmo tendencies were first revealed. A bit of that sort of thing might have gone a ways towards preventing the 15-round embarrassment that was the last Speaker election.

A vote to expel would probably have received the exact same result on the D side that the motion to vacate did. At that point all they would need to remove Gaetz is the same number of people that voted against McCarthy. Does anyone here believe otherwise?

The sticking point for his removal has never been the Democrats.

Interesting article in today's NYT about the part played by Steve Bannon in the McCarthy ousting shenanigans (sorry about long link, it's one of my shared articles):

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/04/us/politics/bannon-republicans-gaetz-mace.html?unlocked_article_code=-OoFtotxJFCqPoHjrOs9BUc4Bw1loGL_tI41M6qoabawb5kD2blzudhwYILg6hTrZKygfF3BgOQy_LeFvLxxslRT1AzJMDvvCJbX6BNuYPRj_ofdH09-aFdYiDlJvLTvHUiCOaIAS6UHmOg1KP190v29GvFiT20Qswk9mW_ubE0pk0hXz1atG4dGMqh8FdN5wNb7F1syz4uKfUSH4Jpzt4ewJiFAk6pnAQvSDFa2MxpJLB8Nyy5_g312DY7CbdB98GWt0c5VuWNzwicl_sOEiFuGr8kXZXKnEFevHEsOHSpThlzFUUXjElxzrOrCplnOBwYfoK88alkwlIK3sEQXGN4woDffbZfliGT8&smid=url-share

...the Democrats needed to watch film of McCarthy to remind themselves that he was a Republican.

On Saturday the House voted through McCarthy's short-term funding bill, with almost unanimous D support but nearly half the Rs voting against.

On Sunday, McCarthy went on Face the Nation and claimed the Ds had tried to block the bill.

On Tuesday, the Ds declined to vote for McCarthy as speaker.

How feckless those Ds are.

And while I'm on a roll with the sharing articles, this from today's WaPo echoes much of what has been said on ObWi, with more:

https://wapo.st/3PLxSPY

An extract:

But Democrats were right not to save McCarthy. With the forces unleashed by former president Donald Trump and the MAGA movement damaging the House GOP caucus, Democrats absolutely shouldn’t have stepped in, because so doing would help Republicans erase their own culpability for nourishing those forces for so long.

Republicans believe Democrats should have joined most of them to vote against the motion to vacate the speakership that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) brought against McCarthy, which would have enabled him to survive despite eight GOP insurgents voting to remove him. As Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman reports, Republicans intend to “exact revenge for a long while.” McCarthy himself was reportedly behind the retaliation against Pelosi.

All of that is absurd, but it’s also revealing. In a sense, what Republicans really wanted from Democrats is help in solving a problem that’s grown intractable for them: At critical moments such as these, there’s nothing holding the House GOP majority together.

Gaetz and his insurgents ousted McCarthy mainly because he agreed to pass, along with many Democrats, temporary funding keeping the government open through mid-November. McCarthy’s enemies wanted him to shut down the government to force President Biden and Senate Democrats to accept savage spending cuts. They see joining Democrats to keep the government open as abject capitulation.

What’s become clear now is there is no Republican majority in the House united behind any governing approach. The Gaetz faction is committed to a project that most House Republicans ultimately are not: eschewing consensus governing entirely wherever possible and making no concessions to Democrats whatsoever.

In this, the Gaetz crew has been urged on by Trump, who wants Republicans to shut down the government to defund ongoing prosecutions of him, a Total War posture that would make any compromise on spending bills impossible. “The MAGA dysfunction caucus within the GOP just mirrors Donald Trump’s political style and program,” Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) told me.

But that’s not quite where McCarthy and most House Republicans are. Their game is to indulge Trump and the MAGA movement some of the time, but not all the time. They are willing to run bad-faith investigations designed to smear the Trump prosecutions, to launch an impeachment inquiry into Biden without any serious basis and to use hearings to hype fears that MAGA voters are widely persecuted by law enforcement.

But they’re not willing to damage their own political prospects (or infuriate big donors) with a protracted government shutdown, as the Gaetz crew wants. McCarthy will greenlight corrupt congressional hearings to help Trump, but he won’t follow the logic of Trumpian politics all the way to Armageddon. Yet there’s no GOP majority behind refraining from Armageddon, either.

On Sunday, McCarthy went on Face the Nation and claimed the Ds had tried to block the bill.

More accurately, McCarthy denounced the Democrats for trying to block the bill.

WRT the NYT article about Bannon; it's clear that when Bannon and Gaetz talk about catering to the base, their strategy is not to win a majority in Congress and use that to achieve policy goals. They want to seize power and remake the government in the image of the base.

We already got a taste of what that is supposed to look like on Jan. 6.

They have no policy goals because they have no faith in, nor use for, Congress.

" Yet there’s no GOP majority behind refraining from Armageddon, either."

The vote on the funding shows this to be demonstrably false.

The vote on the funding shows this to be demonstrably false.

Say, rather, that there was an inadequate majority. No one has mentioned yet that McCarthy brought the Saturday CR to the floor under special order rules so it required a two-thirds super-majority to pass. If the Dems all voted against it, it would have failed. If the Dems had all voted "present" and the Republican votes stayed the same, it would have failed. I don't know if McCarthy knew that in advance, he and majority whip Emmer seem to be terrible at counting their own conference's votes.

From the context, it's clear that by "GOP majority" Sargent means a majority of the entire House consisting entirely of GOP members. I.e., what is needed to select a Speaker and pass legislation without Democratic assistance.

Truly, a sui generis unifier:

Donald Trump has said he will accept the speakership of the House of Representatives for up to 90 days in an effort to unite the fractured Republican Party.

Speaking to Fox News on Thursday night, the former president, 77, said that he was willing to step in and serve as the “unifier” of his party, days after his supporters in the House voted to remove Kevin McCarthy, another Republican, prompting a crisis that threatens to leave lasting divisions.

“I have been asked to speak as a unifier because I have so many friends in Congress,” Trump said. “If they don’t get the vote, they have asked me if I would consider taking the speakership until they get somebody longer term, because I am running for president.”

“I would only do it for the party,” he said, stressing that his focus was on his presidential campaign.

Since this is a semi-open thread, and this is semi-related....

I have been reading Moscow Rules by Keir Giles. He writes about various features of Russian culture and language. For example, everything is zero-sum: if I am to win, you must lose and vis versa. Anything bad that happens is the result of an outside conspiracy. Bribing someone (even just to do the job they are paid to do) is just an expected part of life. The law is simply whatever the person with more power says it is, and the "justice" system exists solely for the convenience of those in power. Apparent altruism is just a deep ploy to gain advantage. People are essentially the property of anyone with more power, to use as he wishes. Which explains the Russian army's indifference to casualties. On either side.

One of the bits of Russian culture that he talks about is truth and lying. He says that the Russian language distinguishes between “what is officially said” (pravda) and “what is actually true” (istina). A longstanding part of the culture involves saying things which the speaker knows are untrue (in the istina sense), the audience knows are untrue, and the speaker knows the audience knows. It is strictly an exercise in dominance — to force the audience to, at least publicly, accept lies as truth.

It just seems so very . . . Trumpian.

I'd say that правда refers to a moral truth - what is right or just, whereas истина refers to a factual truth - what is provable. And that linguistic relativity is usually wrong.

Perun introduced me to the word враньё.

Pro Bono, do you know whether his description is accurate? Sounds a lot like what who is talking about.

"wj" not "who"

I don't know whether the books only looks at the recent history but from my limited knowledge of Russian literature this kind of worldview seems to have been the default in Russia for many centuries.

враньё implies that the speaker knows what he says is untrue, but not that he's trying to deceive anyone.

I should add that I know nothing about usage in Putin's Russia.

As I had it explained to me long ago, "pravda" means essentially "the official word." That is, what the government or other authority say is how things are.

wj, there was an old saying in the USSR playing off the names of the two periodicals Pravda (the Party publication) and Izvestia (the "news"): translates as "in the Truth (Pravda) there is no news, in the news (Izvestia) there is no truth."

That is, what the government or other authority say is how things are.

And perhaps they originally sold that by saying it was, as Pro Bono put it, "a moral truth - what is right or just". And that now, everybody uses it as (and now I paraphrase Pro Bono) obviously untrue, and therefore not intended actually to deceive. You have to develop very subtle behaviours under authoritarian regimes (of various sorts).

I don't have any experience with Russian, but I do have a lot of experience with lexical research. The best examination of this that I've found on a general info board points to Vladimir Dal's analysis.

(Dal wrote this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explanatory_Dictionary_of_the_Living_Great_Russian_Language)

My gloss on the discussions I read is that "istina" applies to the sorts of things that are objectively verifiable/falsifiable, where "pravda" refers to things that cannot be objectively falsified because they are contingent, or contextual, or consensual.

Sort of a truth vs. conviction thing.

Like most words like these, they can also be used/read cynically, sarcastically, ironically, etc.. I feel like Russians trend towards cynicism in most things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explanatory_Dictionary_of_the_Living_Great_Russian_Language

You have to develop very subtle behaviours under authoritarian regimes (of various sorts).

One other point that Giles makes is that words do not necessarily have the same meaning when (nominally) translated. At least, they have overtones you might not expect.

The example he gives is that, in Russian culture, to be "respected" means to be "feared". If I don't fear you, then I don't respect you. Period.

But consider: I can definitely say that I respect Canada and Canadians. But I certainly don't fear them. To a Russian, that simply does not compute.

Well now...

I spent the last week introducing my students to science fiction and trying to convince them not to use AI for their writing for the class. (Should also be interesting since half of the stories we are reading are actually about AI).

I had one student whose comments on a story seemed like they might have been generated by AI - one of the comments made up a name for the story's narrator, who the author never names. Turns out, so the student claims, that they didn't use AI, but rather looked for an online summary of the story to work from because they were unsure about a lot of details. I suspect the summary that the student found had itself been generate by AI for a Grade Saver style website hungry for clicks.

And hey, lookee here...it seems that AI's ability to imagine things is quite constrained by our own representational prejudices:

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/10/06/1201840678/ai-was-asked-to-create-images-of-black-african-docs-treating-white-kids-howd-it-

Problematic.

So much stuff to drop into our in-class discussions.

Looking forward to reading the Moscow Rules blog, but the talk of lying reminds me of a paper I started but didn't finish about tying together activities that have a component of 'lying' and the semantic nuances of Russian were going to be a way to open it because I read this paper

https://www.academia.edu/19144420/On_lying_in_Russian


Keir Giles. I thought I recognized that name.

https://www.politico.eu/article/fight-against-ussr-nazi-waffen-ss-trooper-yaroslav-hunka-world-war-ii-soviet-union-germany/

A different view

https://forward.com/news/562504/yaroslav-hunka-anthony-rota-canada-ukraine-nazis/

That aside, I doubt the ordinary Russian is that different from the rest of us humans. Quite a few of us live under governments that fight aggressive wars or commit human rights violations and lie about it.

I doubt the ordinary Russian is that different from the rest of us humans. Quite a few of us live under governments that fight aggressive wars or commit human rights violations and lie about it.

I think you underestimate how big a difference there can between different cultures. Not just in what kind of behavior people, not just members of the government but ordinary people, consider normal, reasonable, or appropriate. But in how they respond to changes in their situation as a result. The differences can be enormous.**

For instance, there is a difference between a government that feels it has to lie about hunan rights violations it committed because its citizens would object. Vs. a government which uses claims of human rights violations only to demonize the accusers to its own people. Because its people simply won't care about said violations and it knows this.

Or consider the kind of looting done by troops. Yes, there will be some who are simply grabbing stuff that they can't get at home. But in some cultures, looting any place you capture is the natural order of things and expected of everyone. Even if you are supposed to be there to liberate the natives from oppression. Whereas in other cultures there is at least an expectation that looting should not take place. Likewise rape of any women in the places you capture. Normal and expected or officially criminal and prosecuted as such.

** There's my degrees in Cultural Anthropology coming to the fore.

I think you overestimate the differences.

Consider the Libor fixing scandal. No one who mattered was supposed to believe the numbers reported.

Consider the looting and destruction of the Old Summer Palace.

I think you are demonizing the Russians. We had this same nonsense about the Muslims. Yes, there are cultural differences, but they tend to be exaggerated in wartime. The idea that to a Russianrespect has to mean fear, making a sweeping statement like that about all of them, strikes me as ludicrous. Replace “ Russian” with some other group.

And Western governments succeed in getting away with murder because people tend to make excuses for the political party or group or country they support. You basically need to wait years, decades and sometimes longer for complete honesty about some human rights violations in Western countries Ed.

And now that Hamas just launched a war of liberation as they call it, it will be interesting to see how the West talks about this.

The usual spellcheck typo there.

I have lost what little taste I have ever had for internet debates about touchy subjects, but it hasn’t gone unnoticed in certain circles how different the Western reaction and discussion is in Ukraine vs other places. Who has the right to resist violently, for example. Whose crimes get whitewashed, who gets glorified, who demonized, who is civilized, who isn’t. When a war is seen as starting. Which crimes need to be punished or even called as such.

In a way it is all boring and drearily predictable.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67036625

And there’s the answer. The British government says Israel has the right to defend itself. Needless to say, Palestinians never do. They should sit there living under apartheid and wait fir their betters to throne them a bone if Bonesaw requests one from Biden and Bibi.

Which is not to endorse Hamas. They are murderers. But when Palestinians tried mostly peaceful demos in Gaza in 2018, the Israelis killed hundreds and four NYT columnists applauded. Both Hamas and the IDF are murderers. Try and imagine four NYT columns applauding a similar Russian reaction and whether such columns would go virtually unnoticed.

Anyway my ranting is done for the day, I think when it comes to honesty on human rights, we have a very long way to go.

Donald and Pro Bono make good points, with which I agree up to a certain point.

But I know various people who were brought up in the old Soviet Union, and the necessity to cloak your thoughts and speak in code makes behaviour and language noticeably different from that in free western societies, where one did not risk being spirited into the gulag for badmouthing the ruling regimes. Also, I couldn't help wondering about the popularity of chess in the old Soviet Union; these behaviours with their subtle circumlocations and circumnavigations seemed to involve the need constantly to think and calculate many moves ahead, a skill not needed so much in "free" societies. Anecdata, I do realise, but very striking when you see it.

Obviously people in dictatorships or authoritarian societies cloak their rthoughts as a matter of self preservation. But it happens in supposed democracies too. It’s more social pressure and/ or unwillingness to see ugly things about one’s own group, however one identifies.

Here is an easy example. Until very recently, how many white Americans knew about the massacres in Tulsa and Wilmington? If you were white, why couldn’t you talk about it? Why didn’t everyone know? I gather the Texas Rangers also murdered hundreds or more Mexican Americans in the early 20th century.

Israel lied about the Nakba for decades. This is a lie in a scale you would normally expect under a communist dictatorship— hundreds of thousands forcibly expelled in a process that involved a still unknown number of massacres and replaced with the claim they all left voluntarily. Israel is a small place— this didn’t happen in some remote area where only a few knew. And yes, both sides committed massacres in 48 and since. The point is that people in a great many societies have this capacity for deception, and self deception and dishonesty on certain subjects. I don’t think it necessarily carries over into every area of their lives. My family moved to Memphis right after Jim Crow ended and I grew up around this. Otherwise perfectly normal and even nice white people acted like there was a switch in ther heads when the subject of race came up.

Right now the Russians have again become our enemies, so there are going to be people who portray them as the Other. Apparently all of them. Happens every time.

Although I agree with Donald on the general bias, the specific topic of Russian culture has also been addressed by Russian authors long ago. Reading classic Russian authors like Gogol I find those patterns clearly displayed (and remarked upon), so it's not (just) Westerners that ascribed those characteristics to Russians from the outside but it was seen as a (bad) part of national character.
And my father who had long and direct experience with Russians here in Germany on a personal basis (i.e. not with officials) said he observed this too to a certain degree. This was inside a private/non-profit association, so fear was not a factor but the general pattern fitted and the way he told it, it directly reminded me of what those Russian authors described.

The whole question of the traits of different cultures and how much we should take them into account is one that comes up with Asia in general and Japan in particular. I don't have any answers, but every trait has some functional value within the culture, so, after ascertaining that the trait is actually there (rather than being something that is actually in the viewer's culture that they hate and ascribing it to the other), considering who it works in relation to the whole.

From today's Observer, by (a different) Michael Cohen:

More than 11 years ago, before Donald Trump emerged from the primordial ooze of the far-right fever swamp, before the aborted January 6 insurrection and before the latest spasm of Republican extremism felled House speaker Kevin McCarthy, two renowned political scientists, Thomas Mann, and Norman Ornstein, put their finger on the essence of increasingly dysfunctional US politics: the Republican party. Mann and Ornstein argued that the Grand Old Party (GOP) had become an “insurgent outlier” that was “ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition”.

Eleven years later, the enfant terrible of American politics has somehow got unimaginably worse. The GOP today is less a political party and more an inchoate mass of cultural grievances, conspiracy theories and lowest common denominator political slogans. Trump, for all his toxicity, is a symptom of the GOP’s decades-long descent into madness. Legislating is not seen as a tool for bettering the plight of the American people but rather an opportunity to troll Democrats and play to the perceived slights of the party’s rank-and-file supporters.

But Republican indifference to governing is, perhaps, the least of the party’s pathologies. In slavishly supporting Trump and his Maga – Make America Great Again – supporters, they have empowered a political movement that is increasingly testing the limits of the US democratic experiment.

McCarthy’s political trajectory tells the sorry tale. After January 6, McCarthy, who, along with his political colleagues, was forced to hide from the marauding insurrectionists, turned against the man responsible for the day’s violence. Privately, he told fellow Republicans: “I’ve had it with this guy”. But within weeks, he travelled to the ex-president’s palatial digs in South Florida and, on bended knee, pledged loyalty to the GOP’s orange god. He tried to block a bipartisan congressional committee to investigate January 6 and allied himself with conspiracy theorists who continued to spread lies about the 2020 election. Earlier this year, he gave in to Republican extremists and announced an impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden, even though there is no evidence that the president has committed any impeachable offences.

McCarthy, like countless Republican supplicants over the past eight years, realised that his political aspirations were directly tied to his willingness to support Trump and the extremist forces within the party that have rallied around him. In a tale as old as time, he made a deal with the devil, only to be burned by the political forces he’d empowered. Trump’s hold over the Republican party is so complete that it borders on the pathological. Since March, he has been indicted four times and charged with 91 separate felonies. Yet his poll numbers among Republicans have dramatically improved. He enjoys a more than 45-point lead in the race for the party’s presidential nomination.

There simply is no future in the GOP for an elected official who refuses to prostrate themselves to Trump. Liz Cheney was the most vocal and impassioned Republican in speaking out against him after January 6. Her reward: McCarthy engineered her removal from the GOP House leadership. Then, in 2022, a Maga Republican challenged Cheney in a GOP primary and defeated her by nearly 40 points. Another Republican apostate, former presidential candidate and current Utah senator Mitt Romney, who twice voted to convict Trump in his impeachment trials, recently announced that he wouldn’t run for re-election.

In a series of interviews with the Atlantic’s McKay Coppins, he recounted how, “in public”, his fellow Republican senators “played their parts as Trump loyalists, often contorting themselves rhetorically to defend the president’s most indefensible behaviour. But in private, they ridiculed his ignorance, rolled their eyes at his antics and made incisive observations about his warped, toddler-like psyche.”

Like other principled Republicans, Romney is choosing to walk away, and it’s hard to blame him. His criticisms of Trump have led to death threats and he is now spending an estimated $5,000 a day on private security. But the result is that the GOP’s ranks are now increasingly filled by those with bottomless reservoirs of ambition and empty cupboards of integrity. So for those hoping that a principled and mature Republican party will somehow emerge from this mess, think again. The political incentives in the GOP run in a singular direction – to the far right. If there is any silver lining, it is this: for all the Republican voters who love Trump, there is a larger mobilised group of voters who loathes him.

Indeed, what is perhaps most striking about Trump is the static nature of his political support. In fact, if one compares his approval ratings from February 2020 – before the Covid pandemic ravaged the nation – to those in November 2020, when he ran for re-election, they were largely unchanged. Since leaving office, his approval numbers have also largely stayed the same. Americans have, by and large, made up their minds about Trump – and the verdict is: “We don’t like him.”

The last three US elections prove the point. In what was largely seen as a rebuke to Trump, in the 2018 midterms, Democrats picked up more than 40 seats and control of the House of Representatives. In 2020, he lost re-election by at least 7m votes to Biden(4m more than he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016). In the 2022 midterms, the Democrats dramatically overperformed, picking up a seat in the Senate and barely losing the House of Representatives. So far this year, in dozens of special elections, Democrats are overperforming by a whopping 11 points. Part of this is a byproduct of the supreme court’s decision on abortion rights, but it’s also a backlash to the extremism that Trump has engendered.

Of course, elections are tricky things and there is no guarantee that the unpopular Biden will emerge victorious next November. But take his current lousy polling with a grain of salt. It’s one thing to want a different Democratic nominee, as many Democrats do, but elections are about choices. That the likely option for voters in November 2024 will be Biden, or a deeply unstable opponent who could be a multiple convicted felon, has a way of narrowing one’s focus. But even if Trump loses, the problem of the Republican party will still be with us long after he’s left the political scene.

Trump’s hold over the Republican party is so complete that it borders on the pathological.

... borders on the pathological? Definitely got that wrong.

it's the CRaZyTOwN side of the border, wj.

I know, you live in hope of a newly sane GOP, as do many on the other side of the political divide.

But we may not see it in our lifetime, or at least in the the lifetime of the MAGAts. Which is why I encourage them to keep cleaning their guns without bothering with the libral-wimpy step of making sure they're unloaded first.

I know, you live in hope of a newly sane GOP, as do many on the other side of the political divide.

But we may not see it in our lifetime

Hope? Yes. But at this point, nothing like expectation.

The thing is, we need two sane, competent at governing, dedicated to democracy, parties. And I don't see a path from here to there. Sure, you can hope for a new party to arise, rather like the Republicans replaced the Whigs in the mid-19th century. But I don't see a realist way that happens either.

Jennifer Rubin shares the same hope and is clear eyed about the odds. gift link

Republican moderates who stay with the party even as the party is charging ever MAGA-wards are like the battered spouse that is afraid to leave for fear of a beating (and fear of what might happen to the children (fetuses) if they walk away).

It's hard to let go and it's hard to swallow how much suffering you have enabled by staying, out of fear of losing your community and your identity.

I sympathize, but I don't excuse it.

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