The shape of things to come

by liberal japonicus

Feel free to continue to chat about the debate, this post is about what may happen from this point.

I can't speak for others, but it's been like watching a great sports game where you watch the highlights again and again and then watching commentators talk about those highlights. Oh, and your team hasn't really had much success but you kept cheering for them, and finally, they put it all together.

Still, I wouldn't be a liberal without a fair dose of foreboding and impending doom. One thing that gets me is that the anti Trump demographic is getting, like the anti Tory coalition. Look, it's Dick Cheney! 'Rise up as one' is one of those sentiments that is more common on the left than on the right (a quick google has MLK, Mandela, Cesar Chavez, Malcolm X and Barack Obama saying it), but in this case, it is a bit like defining Trump as the North Pole, so that by definition, every one else is south.

In fact, the election strategy of Starmer seemed to be ultra cognizant of that fact, and the way it has unwound, after lots of articles about Labour's first week in power and the breath of fresh air and optimism, it seems things have bogged down again. And I worry that a similar strategy of collecting 'everyone who knows Donald Trump is an idiot' will be foregrounded and a 'what sort of things need to be done' is ignored.

One could relate this to the criticisms of Harris that she is insufficiently progressive, such as this Jacobin piece, but I think it is different. Asking why Harris didn't take time out from emasculating Trump by being clearer about particular policies seems, at least to me, as not understanding what the purpose of the debate was. It was not to present ordered policies to the American people, it was to make Trump behave exactly the way he did. I realize that this still means that Harris is an unknown quantity, and a lot of journalists are always on about how Harris is some mysterious cipher because she didn't go through a long primary beauty pageant answering questions like 'tell me why you think the United States is the greatest country ever', but the fact that she did what she needed to.

To be fair, the campaign hasn't said anything about Cheney, it came about when his daughter was being interviewed on CNN. But I'm curious what everyone else's take on it is.

Comments

[bobbyp]

Lawrence O'Donnell was on fire last night about the press and their treatment of VP Harris over the last three + years. Good stuff.

Liberals need to get an edge: "Enough of this shit!" should be a go-to cry.

There shall be a good deal of time to debate the extent of her true "leftiness" after she wins.

[bobbyp]

Look (to coin a phrase), lefties. If (1.) Trump wins we are an outcast, totally ignored, and possibly persecuted tiny minority. If (2.) Harris wins, we are a small part of a large, but wining, coalition, and shall have to live with it until we can convince more folks to see things our way. Lefty influence (expropriate the expropriators!) would still be negligible, but it would be there.

Give it some thought, OK?

[GftNC]

Further to which, it seems to me that Bernie Sanders's suggestions, which I have also posted on the debate thread, are not (I would have thought - but I am not American) so out there that they would scare the horses? Surely at least 2 and 3? What do you all think?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/12/kamala-harris-debate-bernie-sanders

[GftNC]

I subscribed to Josh Marshall's weekly (unpaid) newsletter, partly because hilzoy rates him highly. This just came in to my inbox, for anyone who doesn't already receive it:
­
I wrote soon after Kamala Harris become the de facto Democratic nominee that I did not think that Donald Trump had the mental acuity, stamina or energy to fight for the presidency from behind. As long as he was a bit ahead but very durably a bit ahead his energy and focus didn’t seem to matter. Everything I’ve seen since then has confirmed me in this judgment. Tuesday’s debate did so perhaps more than anything. But what I’ve also been increasingly aware of is that Trump has two campaigns, and almost uniquely in modern presidential politics.

First, there’s Donald Trump, the guy we saw in the debate, the guy we see at the rallies and mostly on social media. (Guys like Dan Scavino tweet for him sometimes. But even then it’s more an impersonation of feral Trump.) That’s the Trump campaign. That was really the entirety of the campaign in 2016 because there just wasn’t any campaign infrastructure around, though a bit was built up in the last couple months of the campaign. That campaign is mostly about Trump’s anger and grievances and shows all the signs not only of his longstanding degeneracy but his cognitive and personal decline over the last decade. Let’s call that the Trump campaign. But then there’s an entirely distinct and relatively traditional campaign being run by Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles. That campaign wants to talk about inflation and the southern border. That campaign is running a vast and complex TV air war across all the swing states. Let’s call this the “Trump” campaign.

Obviously these operations are related. The folks running the “Trump” campaign want him to be President and they know what he’s like. His singular, final-battle-line focus on the southern border is what he shoved into the center of American politics back in 2015. They’re following innovation there. They’re just trying to do it with daily message focus. They’re part of that now decade long story of trying to take an idea of what Trump represents and make it efficient and successful. And that means keeping the focus on the things that will win Trump the election – specifically many people’s instinctive belief that their economic life was better before mid-2020 than it’s been since. And then secondarily, the desire to (depending on who you are) either bring some order to the southern border or close it to all immigrants and deport everyone else.

Those are the two big winners. You want to have them be the conversation every day. The big loser is abortion. You want that out of the news and when it has to be talked about you focus on letting each state make their own decision, an appeal to democratic choice which as a general matter has deep resonance and favor in American political culture.

You and I live in the national media conversation where Trump himself is the dominant story – his tirades, lies, his chaos. But in the swing states it’s different. That’s where the “Trump” campaign is at least trying to and may be able to hold sway. There it’s all about the 30 second ads and other kinds of paid messaging. (That’s one of the reasons I’m so interested in the mailers. Keep the reports coming in.) When I speak to people running things in the swing states, that’s their worry: that the “Trump” campaign may simply bury Harris in 30 second ads, knocking down her favorability and making her seem too risky a choice, regardless of what Trump himself might be doing on any given day.

Mind you, I’m not saying they think that is going to happen necessarily. And it’s not like Harris’s campaign and it’s allied super-pacs don’t have money of their own to run on 30 second ads. But that’s where they see the threat. It’s seemed to me for a while that there is something increasingly like an arranged marriage between these two campaigns. They can’t control each other. They’re both living their own lives. And that’s just how it is. You do your thing; I’ll do mine. No reason to break up. It would just upset the kids.

I was reminded of this when I received this morning’s Mike Allen Axios email. It has two extended discussions of this topic. First is why Trump got prepped on all the things to absolutely do and absolutely not do during the debate and proceeded to do totally the opposite. He knew where to hit her; he knew which bait not to take. He did all the opposite. Then comes an extended discussion of how and why Trump will absolutely, positively never change. We’ve seen these write-ups before from the same publications. It’s not the standard. But it’s also not new. What I took from this a degree of recognition in their sources that they’re going to have to win this on the airwaves in the swing states. And I think a hint of what neither the campaign nor the Axios reporters want to say out loud, which is that it’s not just that Trump will never change. It’s that he’s in decline. He’s not the 2016 guy or even the 2020 guy. We saw that Tuesday night. Harris was masterful in that appearance. But it wasn’t just her. He’s different.

I say this not to cue up any big punch line or revelation. I just think it’s the best way to understand the 2024 campaign and Trump’s side of it. There really are two campaigns, really operating pretty independently of each other, in key ways even trying to counteract each other, at least from the “Trump” campaign LaCivita/Wiles side. And like any marriage of convenience I guess you could say it continues because in a disjointed and distant way it works, or might work. Trump keeps the hardcore degenerates on side through his stage show, albeit in a diminished form, and the swing state air war pulling together the occasional and lightly-politicked swing voters.

Of course they can’t truly remain separate. The swing states are not hermetically sealed off from the rest of the country or the national political discourse which is driven by the politically engaged but increasingly splashed over into the rest of the population in the heat of a national campaign. Just how much these two campaigns interact, get in the way of each other or keep to their own assignments untroubled will likely play a big role in the outcome of the campaign.

[russell]

Bernie Sanders's suggestions

Thanks for sharing this GFTNC. Sanders' thoughts, and also the "Trump" campaign stuff from the TPM piece, resonate with stuff I've been thinking about.

I'll make a long-ish comment here, if you'll all bear with me. My thoughts about all of it aren't really fully formed, which unfortunately means I'm probably gonna ramble to try to sort it out.

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I went to visit her family in Ohio. We were there especially to see two of her aunts, who are in their 90's now and are in failing health.

My wife's folks are actually originally from Butler PA (yes, that Butler PA), but in her parents' and grandparents' generations, some moved to Akron OH to find work.

Their family history is kind of a capsule - a microcosm - of the history of the industrial midwest. Butler is near Pittsburgh, and lots of folks worked in steel. One uncle who stayed in Butler worked for the Pullman company doing skilled work building prototypes for machine parts. The folks who moved to Akron mostly worked in the rubber industry, employed by Goodyear. During WWII, my wife's mother and grandmother worked on military aircraft, basically Rosie the Riveter jobs.

Listening to the stories about those people and those times gave me a glimpse of what has been lost, or at least greatly reduced, in those communities over the last 50 years or so. Industrial manufacturing - factory work - wasn't glamorous, and the companies definitely had a paternalistic relationship with the folks who worked there, but it was steady, reliable work, and paid well enough for a single income to maintain a household.

One aunt, whose husband worked for Goodyear, is still, at age 98, living on her husband's pension, including health insurance.

There is still a pretty robust manufacturing sector in the upper midwest, but the kind of basic financial security that used to come with a factory job is much less common. The big employer in the area now is Little Tykes, which is a fine place to work apparently, but doesn't have the scale of a place like (for example) Goodyear in its heyday.

It was a culture where if you got in with a good company and did your job, you would basically be taken care of. That's much less the case now.

The idea that Trump's supporters are motivated by "economic anxiety" has become kind of a joke - no few of them, maybe most of them, are not living in financial distress - but there is a palpable sense of loss in these communities that we ignore at some peril. Looking out for the interests of folks like my wife's relations - middle class working people - used to be the Democrats' strong point, but that focus has been somewhat lost for a generation or two.

IMO Biden's greatest strength was recapturing that focus, and I'm hoping Harris carries that forward. The policies she's presented so far seem to point in that direction.

But the sense that "things used to be better", and that some valuable things have been lost, is real. And is not just nostalgia.

Trump does a good job of playing on the negative emotions around all of that. Neither he or the (R)'s are going to do anything to help it, but they have the rhetoric of resentment down pat.

The sense of loss is real. It's there. It deserves constructive attention. That was, for a couple of generations, a significant focus for the (D)'s. I hope they carry Biden's efforts forward. It could be transformational for the country.

Thanks for letting me ramble on about this. I'm curious to know all y'all's thoughts.

[CaseyL]

russell - Those are great insights.

I was aware, more and more every day, that Trump-the-individual was the carny act; the thing tolerated because it keeps his cultists energized and ready to vote. I've known for quite a while there's a big instrumentality behind him, the ones who are there for Project 2025 and who intend to carry it out. They'd be the real government, the ones carrying out the policies, with Trump as the mountebank to keep the marks happy and loyal and ready to carry out whatever terrorist acts are necessary.

As I said, many a time: Trump is the spearpoint. He is not the spear. He's a means, not an end.

The other thing - the loss of those well-paid, good benefits, pension jobs, the ones you didn't need a degree to have, or even be well educated to have - that's real, and it's horrible for the people who lost those things.

But (and this is another thing I keep saying) it's not the Democrats' fault those things are no longer around. In fact, to be very generous, it's not even all the GOP's fault. The loss of those industries and those jobs isn't really anyone's fault, unless you want to blame history.

The fact is, the US was able to have that huge an economy and that generous an industry because, after WWII, the US was the only industrialized country still standing.

Everything in Europe, in Asia, and in Russia had been bombed to bits. It took Europe and Asia a generation to rebuilt its industrial capacity, and another generation to catch up. Unfortunately for us, catch up they did.

it isn't only that US-owned companies outsourced everything to countries where the labor and materials are cheaper and the laws regulating industry more lax. That part is true, yes, but the biggest change was that the US had real competition for the first time. And didn't win, because we were so sure of our superiority we didn't feel any need to innovate anything or change the way we did anything.

(I remember the cars of the 70s-80s. Japan was pitting out small, energy efficient, inexpensive automobiles while the US was still building land yachts. US automakers absolutely refused to see what Toyota and then-Datsun could see: there was a huge market for cars that weren't overpowered, under-engineered pieces of crap.)

Which is to say, that relationship between employer and employee, those kinds of sinecures, simply aren't going to come back. Trump can promise until the cows come home but he can't deliver. The economy is global, and trying to sequester ourselves away from it is... not going to result in greater prosperity for the working class.

[nous]

Thanks, CaseyL, for making the point about the postwar economy that I was going to make. Went to Wiki and looked at a few good articles there about the postwar recovery and decided that it was all too much work to recreate here. TLDR, yes, it took a while to rebuild the rest of the world.

I still vividly remember reading Studs Terkel's The Good War: An Oral History of World War II as part of my dissertation reading, and the oral histories from the home front were largely about how great it was to have lots of work and enough to eat and a taste of economic power for the first time in people's lives following the Great Depression. Far different from all of the oral histories from Europe or the Pacific. There was a lot of privilege in that moment that passed into expectations as generations got farther from the Great Depression experience.

To CaseyL's point about this being global, I was reminded of this recent Guardian piece about a study just published in The Lancet:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/sep/12/consumerism-and-the-climate-crisis-threaten-equitable-future-for-humanity-report-says

I'll just quote the concluding paragraphs of the piece here:

The authors said the current global situation of worsening inequality and rising nationalist politics may not seem conducive to achieving the just and safe plan laid out, but governments can change and so can public opinion – particularly at a time of intensifying climate stress.

“That is why this science is important to remind everyone that you should take justice seriously, because otherwise it will hit back in terms of social instability, migration and conflict. If you are a patriot who wants to reduce migration flows, then you had better take global justice seriously,” Rockström said. “Justice is an integral part of safety – and safety is an integral part of justice.”

We have to ease inequality if we hope to have any chance at security as this climate thing comes to a boiling point.

[russell]

Thank you for your reply here Casey. I pretty much agree with everything you say.

The "glory days" when you could get in with a good company, keep your nose clean, do your 30 years and retire with a defined benefit pension are absolutely not coming back. And I agree that it's not anyone's fault in particular, to a large extent it's just the way the history played out.

That culture fostered a really robust middle class, with all of the social institutions that come along with that. Which was good for a lot of people. Not everyone, but a lot.

And the loss of it is evident, palpably, in places like Akron. Like it was, palpably, in areas like New England a generation or two earlier, when the manufacturing base moved to parts of the country where labor was cheaper.

I don't think we are gonna be able to rely on private industry to fill that gap. For one thing, as you note, the economy has become much more globalized. For another, our understanding of the purpose of corporations has changed - explicitly. The idea that corporations have obligations to anyone other than their investors is gone.

We can't go back, so we need to go forward. I'm hoping the (D)'s can articulate an effective strategy for doing that.

The policies Harris outlined during the debate will help. Biden's support for labor has helped and will continue to help.

As a nation we need to find ways to lift people up. That's Harris' rally cry. First, I hope she wins, and then I hope she finds effective ways to make that real.

[CaseyL]

russell and nous - Thank you for the kind words!

This year, and (gods have mercy) every election year in the Western world, for the next however long, are going to be a constant grinding battle between people who want to build a viable future and people who want to re-create the past. All the bad parts of the past, mind you, because there's no way to re-create the good parts, such as they were.

I honestly don't know how that will work out. France and the UK beat back their fascist movements... for now. Germany and the Netherlands are playing footsie with theirs. NZ replaced an incredibly progressive national government with a reactionary one. Australia zigszags so dramatically between RW and LW governments it's crazy making.

I just don't know. My faith in humanity (never all that high to start with, tbh) has taken quite a beating over the past 10 years.

[wj]

I realize that this still means that Harris is an unknown quantity,

Actually, I think the debate addressed that. Not in the sense that lots more people know what policies she would favor, although there was a bit of that. But the critical part was that, from the moment she invaded Trump's personal space to introduce herself and shake hands, she dominated the stage.

Like it or not, the vast majority of voters are not political junkies like those here. They mostly don't care about policies, until and unless those policies hit them personally and hard. Sometimes not even then. What they were looking to see is which candidate feels like a leader. And that was pretty clear. Spoiler alert: it wasn't the guy saying he had a "concept for a plan" for the ACA replacement that he's been touting for 8 years now. Not the guy who was unable to stop himself from taking the bait, every time Harris tapped one of his buttons.

So, I'd say that, for those viewers, Harris is no longer an unknown quantity. The debate told them what they cared to know.

[wj]

To be fair, the campaign hasn't said anything about Cheney, it came about when his daughter was being interviewed on CNN. But I'm curious what everyone else's take on it is.

My take is that the Harris campaign is dealing with it exactly right. They aren't embracing Cheney. But they are letting the never-Trumpers hype him.

It's about the voters who are "reflexive Republican voters." They vote Republican because they always have. Or maybe because they have some kind of longstanding antipathy for Democrats. Not because they have any use for Trump per se. Cheney, and the other prominent Republicans endorsing Harris, are about giving them permission, in their own minds, to vote for a Democrat -- maybe just this once, but still, do it.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

While it's common to decry candidates that "don't have all the policies I want", I think the average voter is actually correct in not paying that much attention to policy details.

To the extent that the policy in question isn't "clearly catastrophic", that is.

Because even the best plans do not survive unscathed, and unexpected stuff happens. So it's better to pay attention to a candidates personality, which is much less likely to change; plans can always be rewritten.

Are they truthful? Willing to change their mind when contrary data arrives? Willing to put in the (hard!) work needed for the job? Intelligent and creative?

All the stuff you'd want in a job interview for a high-stakes job that could easily involve currently-unknown tasks.

Trump fails.

[hairshirthedonist]

I don't know that I ever thought about it in those terms, Snarki. Not that I haven't considered personality, temperament, and such important in a candidate. I've just been prone to lamenting people failing to pay enough attention to policy.

Anything can go a bit too far, of course. "I'd rather have a beer with Bush than Gore" frex.

Still, point taken. Thanks!

[hairshirthedonist]

I had another comment, written last night in response to russell's self-described ramble, that disappeared/never showed up. (I felt licensed to ramble as well.)

This seems to be a thing when commenting at home. I was rushed because the missus was making travel arrangements and needed my attention, so it wouldn't surprise me if it were another episode of user error on my part.

[hairshirthedonist]

Meanwhile:

"Two Springfield public schools evacuated, one closed due to threats"

https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/local/2024/09/13/two-springfield-schools-evacuated-one-closed-after-police-warning/75204532007/

That nitwit remorselessly unleashes terrorism on people with his idiotic, baseless vitriol. I'm sure it can't be his fault because he can't control the people threatening the town, despite it being a direct result of his bullsh*t.

People threaten violence in Springfield, OH, over Haitian immigrants eating pets all the time, right? That's not oddly specific to what he said on Tuesday night, is it?

[liberal japonicus]

hairshirt, your comment wasn't in the spam, unfortunately.

[nous]

Okay, so this is an hour long video, which may be TLDW for some of you, but it's legit the best discussion of the Sokal Affair that I have run across (which is to say that I agree with the majority of the points and critiques that Dr. Fatima makes in her analysis).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESEFUaEA7kk

She's pointing out that Sokol's own accounting of the Affair shows a deep lack of critical awareness of what he was actually doing and what he actually achieved with his project, and looking at it from the perspective of Science and Technology Studies (STS).

Well worth the watch, and I'm especially interested in your opinions of the video if you are someone whose take on the Sokal Affair was strongly on Sokal's side.

Hopefully we can do this without a bunch of people skipping the video entirely and then putting up their own take on the Sokal Affair, leaving me or others to recreate the whole damn vid in our own comments. That s#!t is tiring. (Still wouldn't be as bad as on my fb page, where the first response was an old dude grumping on Dr. Fatima's nose ring. ◔_◔)

[CaseyL]

Today's possible attempt to shoot Trump is...there is no other way to put this... absolute comedy gold.

According to reports, the alleged would-be shooter is named Ryan Routh. He is/was, of course, on Twitter. His tweets are being shared on social media.

In 2020, he tweeted Trump to say he had voted for him in 2016, but was greatly disappointed, and asked Trump if he was retarded.

In 2023, he offered to import 50,000 Afghan soldiers into Taiwan to "win this war." (Not sure what war he was referring to.)

And this year, in January, he begged Nikki Haley to join forces with Vivek Ramaswamy to be the GOP Presidential ticket.

In April, he asked Elon Musk, via tweet, to sell him a rocket launcher to take out Putin.

If the tweeter Ryan Routh is the same person as would-be shooter Ryan Routh, I... I just don't know what to think. Is he crazy? Is he sincere? Is he sincerely crazy?

[Cheez Whiz]

Ryan Routh is just the latest iteration of Lee Oswald. A hero searching for a cause, any cause will do, as long as it lets him lead. You'd think with all the guns, marksmanship would be a bigger thing.

[Cheez Whiz]

The collapse of the white manufacturing worker culture is an old story by this point. They were the Silent Majority, the Reagan Democrats, the Real America courted by Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich. What Trump did that was new was by bypassing the filtering process that politicians have to go through to mount a credible run for the presidency, he was able to speak directly and clearly to the voters about all the resentment and anger the Republican party has been fueling for decades. No euphamisms, no code, none of the hedging politicians feel in their bones. And that Silent Reagan audience loved him for it. Finally, the higher truth they've known forever was acknowledged by an authority figure, the Republican candidate for President. "Truth" doesn't enter into this relationship, they want validation. You don't argure someone out of a position they embraced because of the way it makes them feel.

[wj]

You'd think with all the guns, marksmanship would be a bigger thing.

Actually, I wouldn't. Marksmanship takes work. A lot of work. The folks who own bunches of guns seem to be pretty allergic to work. They live in a fantasy hero world, where they are heroes by nature. Work? Work is for those who are not heroes.

Now there are certainly gun owners who have guns for hunting, or for sport shooting. And they do the work necessary to develop marksmanship. But they also don't tend to be the people who go out to assassinate someone. Or go out to shoot up a crowd.

[Hartmut]

Crowds and large magazines compensate for poor marksmanship.

No military I know of uses 100 shot magazines for their infantry rifles let alone pistols (for very good reasons)* but those impractical gadgets are a fetish of the type of gun nut that's paranoid about TEH GUVARMEANT taking away his (rarely her) guns and gets apoplectic when any magazine limits are even hinted at. And that's also a type that could be persuaded to make use of them 'before it's too late'.

*Many countries even disable the full auto option for the standard service rifle completely.

[CharlesWT]

"Most of the mass-produced weapons of the 20th century, even those now marketed for personal defense, were originally designed for militaries and hunters. The FGC-9, by contrast, was created with the explicit goal of arming as many everyday people as possible.

FGC is an abbreviation that represents what its creators think of gun control. Nine is for the 9-millimeter bullet it fires.

The use of the FGC-9 by insurgents opposed to the military junta in Myanmar is part of its creators’ stated plan, a realization of the hope that guns could be used to stand up to the state."
He’s Known as ‘Ivan the Troll.’ His 3D-Printed Guns Have Gone Viral.: From his Illinois home, he champions guns for all. The Times confirmed his real name and linked the firearm he helped design to terrorists, drug dealers and freedom fighters in at least 15 countries.
(Archive Link)

"Illegal home-built guns are bringing libertarianism to the world. That's what the good people at The New York Times say. DIY firearms are also helping rebels fight oppressive regimes and, as is inevitable when weapons make their way into the hands of regular people, fueling European officials' fears of crime and terrorism. This is a result of recent technological developments that severely cramp governments' ability to enforce restrictions—including when it comes to the FGC-9, a partially 3D-printed firearm."
DIY Guns Bring Libertarianism to the World, Says The New York Times: Innovation and defiance hobble government efforts at control.

[wonkie]

What Cheez Whiz said. Plus a word not in the post: racism. ANd more broadly: othering.

The woman who started the whole Haitians eating cats thing made her racism clear. She said she voted for Trump (and later made the "joke" on FB) because of an experience she had when updating her drivers' license. She had to sit in a waiting room surrounded by Haitians! It "didn't look like America."

Oh the trauma of having to exist in a nation with people who look different!

The resentment and anger the Republican party has been fueling for decades is nothing more than the resentment and anger that other people matter. The Reagan Dems left the party because the Democrats represented African American voters. The RDs assumed that meant they'd no longer be represented by the Dems. Or they couldn't stand the thought of being in the same party with black people. At any rate their thought process was, "Democrats think AA's matter so I'm taking my marbles and going to play with the kids on the next block over."

That's the resentment and anger. It's isn't economic. It isn't about those poor hillbillies who "feel left out and left behind." They feel left out because their brains can't handle the possibility that a party might represent them and other people too.

And instinctive negative reaction to other humans based on skin color or religion or sexual orientation is bigotry.

[CaseyL]

"They feel left out because their brains can't handle the possibility that a party might represent them and other people too."

You put it very well, wonkie. There is a degree of real "economic anxiety," but the root CAUSE of the economic anxiety is an adamant refusal to allow non-white/non-male/non-Christians an equal role in jobs, schools and town culture.

Good employers, and good people for that matter, don't want to live or do business in towns ruled by ignorant bigots, so they leave, and take their jobs with them.

[nous]

Do not underestimate the strength of the anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment on the right in its push for radicalization. My radicalized family members have always been racially paternalistic in the collective but lacking any racial animus for individuals. They are deeply patriarchal and anti-feminist, but consider themselves to be champions of the "real" women that feminists oppress with their misguided and diabolical notions of choice. The one clear place, though, that their bigotry comes to the fore is with LGBTQ+ issues. Having a gay governor does to them what having a black president did to the racists during the Obama years.

And between abortion and LGBTQ+ issues, they are sufficiently worked up to let all the other alt-right awfulness go.

It's been heartbreaking, watching that degradation happen in slow motion over the last 30 years.

[novakant]

nous, if it's not too personal, may I ask you how you are dealing with these members of your family?

I have some old friends who turned rightward, in a predictable grumpy old man reactionary manner, and I have no idea how to keep the friendship alive, since I now apparently personify everything that they despise (and I'm a milquetoast social dem, no radical).

[nous]

novakant - our parents have passed and we live in different states and have different social circles that function as found family. We really share few interests in common, so there is not much in the way of small talk to be had. All that is left for discussion is the political minefield.

Social niceties and periodic assertions that we care and wish each other well. Not much else.

The distance weighs easier.

[nous]

Although...I just got into a discussion with one of them about the whole Gangs In Aurora thing that the Mandarin Manbaby has been fearmongering over in his rallies.

Yes, Tren de Aragua is a problem. Yes, violent crime is up there. No, violent crime is not nearly as bad as it was there in the 90s when all the gangs were domestic.

So, yeah, some careful, polite, tightly circumscribed two-steps still happen in the minefield of politics on social media.

[novakant]

Thanks nous. Distance, different countries in my case, definitely makes things easier. That said, me and my friends had a lot in common and the rift saddens me.

[Cheez Whiz]

The politicall rift is hard to navigate. My approach with my family is to entertain myself by asking questions and watching them twist into knots to deal with the cognitive dissonance. If I put any chips in their armour of ignorance so much the better, but that's not a goal. You have to always remember they didn't reason their way down that rabbit hole, you're not gonna reason them out.

[CharlesWT]

I didn't know anyone in the world still used papers. Apparently, it can be unhealthy to get paged by the IDF.

[GftNC]

Apparently they only moved to pagers recently (last few months) because of fear the Israelis were finding it too easy to hack all their phone stuff.

I am torn between being very fearful of what these kinds of provocation could presage, and being incredibly impressed by the ingenuity and efficiency (obviously leaving aside any question of right and wrong, moral v immoral etc). And that was before I heard, just today in the discussion, the details about the satellite controlled robot machine gun that fired at and killed Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the alleged mastermind of Iran's nuclear weapons program. Holy shit.

[CharlesWT]

"BEIRUT—Pagers carried by thousands of Hezbollah operatives exploded at about the same time Tuesday afternoon in what appeared to be an unprecedented attack that authorities said injured almost 2,800 and killed nine across Lebanon.

Many of the affected pagers were from a new shipment that the group received in recent days, people familiar with the matter said. A Hezbollah official said many fighters had such devices, speculating that malware might have caused the devices to explode. The official said some people felt the pagers heat up and disposed of them before they burst.

Hezbollah said a number of pagers carried by its members exploded simultaneously at 3:30 p.m. local time. It couldn’t immediately be determined what caused the blasts, which were spread out across the country in several areas where Hezbollah has a heavy presence."
Hezbollah Pagers Explode in Apparent Attack Across Lebanon: Nine people were killed and almost 2,800 injured, country’s health minister says

[Donald]

Perhaps others will find brilliant innovative ways to commit terrorist attacks. Brad Sherman was practically giddy about this on his Twitter account. The always odious Matthew Miller, working for his even more odious boss was urging restraint on Israel’s enemies. How quaint.

Good thing the Republicans are fascists, because this whole lesser evil thing needs a greater evil to make it convincing,

[CaseyL]

Like I've been saying, refusing to vote for the "lesser evil" simply means that the Greater Evil wins.

That's what accelerationists want, to be sure. They have a very stupid faith that when The Revolution ("inevitably") comes, their side will win. History keeps proving them wrong, but they do keep at it, don't they?

Like Bullwinkle with the hat trick "This time, for sure!"

[GftNC]

Perhaps others will find brilliant innovative ways to commit terrorist attacks.

I'm certain they will.

Good thing the Republicans are fascists, because this whole lesser evil thing needs a greater evil to make it convincing

I'm struggling to think of a nation with any power that hasn't done/isn't doing some kind of evil, and this also applies to the political parties or tyrants who run those nations. It's almost as if there's some connection between the necessity to wield power, and evil...(not meant as snark, merely a sad comment on what they call realpolitik).

[GftNC]

Obsidian Wings just needed (for the first time ever) to determine I'm not a robot!

[novakant]

It's cruel, likely a war crime or at least state terrorism and strategically unwise, to put it mildly.

Biden was on to something, awkward as it was, when he suggested early on that Israel should learn lessons from the US after 9/11.

But I fear the Israeli leadership - and a large percentage of its population - have succumbed to the type of nihilism currently displayed in Russia.

[Hartmut]

Obsidian Wings just needed (for the first time ever) to determine I'm not a robot!

That has become a (semi)regular thing here. Sometimes it will do the confirmation itself, sometimes I have to click myself. No "click all images containing X" yet though.

---

I assume the pager bombs were a deliberate attempt to provoke Hisbollah into a major attack in order to prevent the situation from cooling down. I hear about plans to Gaza-ize the West Bank too when Gaza itself cannot be sold as a legitimate target for major attacks anymore.
As long as the campaign is going, the boss will be able to stay out of jail (something he has in common with His Orangeness).

[wj]

I assume the pager bombs were a deliberate attempt to provoke Hisbollah into a major attack in order to prevent the situation from cooling down.

I think it's equally likely that the Israeli government has already decided to attack. And do not, in their minds, need any further justification. This, then, was an attempt to take out chunks of the chain of command. A rather slapdash, i.e. not targeted, one. But Bibi's government has not shown any particular eptness thus far in this war.

[Pro Bono]

I was surprised also to find this site caring about whether I'm a robot. Robots are workers too you know.

[CharlesWT]

A rather slapdash, i.e. not targeted, one.

Or the most successful example of targeting enemy combatants embedded in a civilian population with the least amount of civilian casualties. While lethal in only a few cases, it had to have a large psychological and operational impact. And it was followed today with several hundred two-way radios exploding.

[wj]

I was thinking more of targeting junior officers and NCO types. Vs. just random members

[Donald]

They in fact terrorized the population and of the small number dead, last I read two were children and several were medical workers. Assuming the Israelis are not utter morons, they intended the terror as a beneficial side effect, sort of the Dahiya doctrine administered in a new way.

The strike was meant in large part to humiliate Hezbollah, as the assassination in Iran was meant to humiliate Iran. The destruction of Gaza also sends a message. Israel will kill anyone it wants to kill and the Biden Administration will continue to give them weapons and constantly proclaim Israel’s right to defend itself. By the way, does anyone else have that right? No, that’s silly. Matthew Miller recently said that violent settlers should be held accountable in court. Miller says things like that and expects people to take him seriously. The rest of the Middle East should exercise restraint like civilized Westerners.

[Donald]

For those keeping score, last I read there were 12 dead. Two children and four were medical workers. So 50 percent civilian. Nobody could say whether some might have been driving cars when the explosions went off. If Hezbollah pulled off the same stunt every Western government and all the press would condemn it as a savage act of terrorism.

And now we apparently have blessed this mode of warfare.

I know that for some folk it seems hard to see Westerners as terrorists, but get over it, because the West in general has no high ground to stand on when it comes to terrorism and never did.

[Michael Cain]

I was surprised also to find this site caring about whether I'm a robot.

I've tried all of the usual things that trigger that sort of security, and can't get it to challenge me.

[JanieM]

@Michael -- this has happened to me 2 or 3 times -- it's very random and IIRC mentions Cloudflare. I have ignored it as a bug of some sort....

If it happens again I'll take a screenshot for you.

[nous]

I get that security screen mostly when I refresh the page a couple times in short order (like when I have a comment that has taken too long to compose, and has timed out).

I appreciate that the robots recognize me as another exploited worker. "The Revolution Will Not Be Served With Fries."
(https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-revolution-will-not-be-served-with-fries/)

[GftNC]

Janie, if Nebraska does what this article suggests they might re the split vote, can the Maine legislature reconvene to counter it?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/19/nebraska-electoral-system-trump-win-election

[JanieM]

GftNC: It looks like not, from the headline to this article. But I've been under the weather and haven't actually read it, or much of anything else either.

In case the paywall keeps you from reading the article, the headline is "Why Maine couldn't fight Nebraska Republicans' late Electoral College play."

Assuming it's a timing thing. It always was stupid to be doing it this way when (almost) everyone else wasn't.

[JanieM]

Oh, fnck it, here's the whole thing:

National Republicans are making a late push for Nebraska to switch to a winner-take-all presidential election to help Donald Trump in November, something that Maine has essentially run out of time to counteract.

Democratic-led Maine and Republican-led Nebraska are the only two states in the country to split Electoral College votes by congressional district along with giving the statewide winner two at-large electors. Maine has two congressional districts, while Nebraska has three districts.

The news: Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen, a Republican, hosted 24 state senators and Nebraska’s top elections official on Wednesday to gauge support for a winner-take-all system before holding any special session that he reportedly prefers to call no later than next week.

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, skipped votes on Capitol Hill to go to Nebraska and urge senators in the 49-seat unicameral Legislature to support the change. Pillen said he needs 33 senators to firmly commit to backing winner-take-all before calling a special session. At least one state senator said Pillen does not yet have that number.

The big picture: In April, Pillen and Trump came out in support of changing Nebraska’s system to winner-take-all after conservative activist Charlie Kirk urged Nebraskans to “stop pointlessly giving strength to their political enemies.”

President Joe Biden, whom Vice President Kamala Harris has replaced atop the Democratic ticket, earned one vote in Nebraska by carrying the Omaha-area 2nd Congressional District in 2020, while Trump won all five of the state’s electors in 2016.

A Republican presidential candidate has not won Maine since 1988, though Trump won 2nd District in 2016 and 2020. Maine lawmakers in parties said in April they like the current system that splits votes by district, though Democrats back a national popular vote effort.

But Maine House Majority Leader Mo Terry, D-Gorham, said that same month the Legislature would be “compelled” to consider a special session if Nebraska changed its system.

What’s next: Nebraska has some time to consider this move, while Maine effectively has no ability to fight it. After the election, each state’s electors must convene on the first Tuesday after the second Wednesday in December, which is Dec. 17 of this year.

Wednesday marked 90 days until Dec. 17. Any Maine legislation adopting a winner-take-all system would need that much time to take effect, since legislative Republicans would deny Democrats the two-thirds majorities needed in both chambers to pass a bill immediately.

What they’re saying: Maine Democrats never really rallied around Terry’s call in April to react to any Nebraska move. Terry said then that she and her colleagues hoped Nebraska Republicans would not “make this desperate and ill-fated attempt to sway the 2024 election.”

“Maine has the gold standard of presidential election processes in the United States,” House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham, R-Winter Harbor, said Thursday, signaling his party’s position. “We should be trying to convince other states to use a more representative process like ours, not change to winner-take-all like other states.”

[GftNC]

Thanks Janie, and I hope whatever's caused your under-the-weatherness is over soon.

Goddamnit. I should be used to these naked, opportunistic and unashamed shenanigans by now, but somehow I'm not. And not even a real attempt to hide their motivation. Faugh. They are truly despicable, and totally perfect for the disgusting creature heading their ticket.