Doom Report (Week -9)

This week, the saga of Trump’s cabinet is both better and worse.  Matt Gaetz at least is gone, and he was certainly the worst of the bunch.  But, then, Gaetz is the very epitome of shifting the Overton Window.  If you don’t know that is (and aren’t willing to click that perfectly good link I just dropped on you, though you really shoud), I’ll give you a quick precis:  The Overton Window is the set of what’s acceptable to voters.  But it’s constantly shifting over time, usually in small increments.  For instance, gay marriage wasn’t even remotely acceptable in the 50s—you couldn’t even bring it up in conversation.  Now it’s legal (at least temporarily).  Same for smoking pot, although that was still considered verboten as late as the 80s, and isn’t legal everywhere even today.  Those are things that took decades for the window to shift.  But, if you’re clever (and have some sort of authority behind you, like being an intellectual thinktank, or a president-elect), you can shift the Overton Window much more quickly.  All you need to do is, put forward an idea that is so ridiculous, so outlandish, so ... well, to use the official Overton term, unthinkable ... that suddenly the ideas that seemed radical before are now not so crazy.

So Matt Gaetz was a bridge too far.  To the point where everyone was stunned by it—even the Republicans.  Susan Collins, who you may remember from her comment that Trump had “learned” his lesson after the first impeachment (her exact quote was that he would be “much more cautious in the future”), said she was “shocked” by the Gaetz nomination.  (Apparently there’s much money to be made on betting whether Collins will see things coming, like, say, the changing of the seasons.)  Lisa Murkowski and John Thune (the latter set to be the new Sentate Majority Leader now that Mitch McConnell is finally being put out to pasture) also expressed doubts.  And now Gaetz is stepping down.  See, the system works, right?

But, the thing is, that was all a distraction from the other insane picks.  Which keep on coming: Linda McMahon (yes, the wrestling executive) to head the Department of Education, and Dr. Oz, the TV quack huckster, to run Medicare and Medicaid.  And let’s not forget the previous insane picks: Pete Hegseth, the Fox “News” host, is in no way qualified to run the two trillion dollar Defense Department, and is also apprently a sexual predator.  Then again, as many have pointed out, that’s apparently a unifying theme for his cabinet: Hegseth, RFK Jr, Musk ... even McMahon has been sued for enabling sexual abuse.  But I suppose that makes sense for the adjudicated rapist who’s hiring them.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are falling over themselves to blame each other for why Kamala lost.  Many, for instance, are saying that her campaign was “too woke.” Which is completely moronic, because the Kamala campaign flew so far to the center that they were actively pissing off the proper liberals: from trans folk to people opposed to the Palestinian genocide.  Palling around with the Cheneys, for fuck’s sake, is about as far from “woke” as you can get.  But still people want to believe it’s someone else’s fault.  Awfully convenient for the white supremacists that the Dems now apparently want to blame the same “others” that the Republicans do.

As to what is the real reason why Kamala lost, I’ve heard a lot of theories in the past weeks.  But probably the best one came from the author of Bone of the Bone: Essays on America by a Daughter of the Working Class, in a recent Jon Stewart interview:

So yeah, people are hurting.  And if you’re looking at them in the face and saying, “actually, you’re not” ... whether that’s a move to kind of defend your own administration that, of course, the Democratic candidate was part of—and that’s very difficult to thread that needle, the task she was handed to propose how we’ll change, but also still be riding with the last administration.  ...  But most people are hurting. And here’s the thing, because I know that a lot of liberals and Democrats and progressives alike might be saying: ... the Democrats have the better policies. They address all of those needs better, even if imperfectly.  In the end, ain’t the Republicans worse?  And while I happen to agree with that, here’s the trick: the Republicans, meanwhile, are the ones validating the pain.  And politics is an emotional business before it’s a rational one.  And that’s why they win.

— Sarah Smarsh, The Weekly Show, 11/14/24

Partially I like this because it lines up with my own theories that I talked about nearly a year ago, and partially because it’s the more insightful version of what James Carville pegged as the reason.  Carville is a bit of an asshole, but he ain’t stupid, and his assessment was that it all came down to when Kamala was asked (in her interview on The View) what she would do differently from Biden, “and she froze.” Or at least that’s how Carville put it; I would instead say that she waffled and ducked the question, but the end result is the same.  And while trying to boil down an entire failed campaign to one moment is overly simplistic as well as reductive, it is emblematic of the point that she was trying to toe the party line that everything was going great with the economy while ignoring the real concerns of real people.  And, even more incisive to me personally, it’s exactly what my friend said to me in the conversation I reported on a couple of weeks ago.  It’s a trenchant observation.

Of course, let’s not discount the sexism!  Here’s one of Stewart’s producers on another episode:

It can also be true that there’s some sexism and racism ...  Every election, the person who has spent the most money has won, except in two cases: the women.  Just saying.

— Lauren Walker, The Weekly Show, 11/21/24

Again, haven’t fact-checked this, but it certainly wouldn’t surprise me.  I’m not entirely sure what it says about says about us that we’re finally willing to elect a member of a religious minority that’s around 25% of the population, and a member of a racial minority that’s around 15% of the population, but not a member of the gender that’s not a minority at all.  But not anything good, I don’t think.

Will things get worse before they get better?  No one can say for sure, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that’s where the smart money is.  I guess we’ll have to stay tuned to find out.

Doom Report (Week -10)

This week, I’m watching the news and wondering where all those people my friend was talking about last week are ... you know, the ones that are supposed to stop the idiot we just elected from doing bad things if he goes too far.  And yet, our future president has suggested we put a climate denier in charge of the EPA, a Russian asset as head of national intelligence, a pedophile as the Attorney General, a person who believes in neither vaccination nor pasteurization to run the CDC and the FDA, and a Fox “News” host who thinks that women shouldn’t serve in combat to head up the Department of Defense.  Theoretically, all those people have to be approved by the Senate, but he’s already asked the new Sentate majority leader to keep the Senate in “recess” until he appoints whoever he wants to wherever he wants, and it’s not clear whether that request will be rejected or not.  And, even if it is, it’s not clear whether the new Republican-led Senate will just do whatever he wants anyway.  And that’s not even considering that he wants to put a guy with billions in government contracts in charge of the budget by inventing a new government department (which, technically, the president can’t do, but, again: if Congress is just going to give him whatever he wants, that’s not much of an obstacle).

I continue to hope I’m wrong.  I mean, the guy’s not even president yet, so all of this dreck may not come to pass.  And, as I mentioned last week, I’m far more interested in you being able to tell me “I told you so” than the other way around.  But, the fact that the guy’s not even president yet and is still able to cause this much chaos does not bode well for our chances, I fear.

Election Reflections

I was talking to a friend today, and I think he might have voted for Trump.

He wouldn’t come out and say it, and I wouldn’t ask—was too scared to, I suppose—but it seemed pretty clear from all the Trump-defending along with all the dismissing all my worries about the future.  My friend is not (so far as I know) racist or sexist, and I know him pretty well, so I feel pretty certain about that one.  I’m a bit less sure that he’s not homophobic or xenophobic, but I’m pretty confident that I would have picked up on that somewhere in the past 40+ years.  He’s absolutely not uneducated: he in fact holds an advanced degree and works in a pretty prestigious technical field.

So what gives?  Well, we needed a change, and that was the only choice.  Kamala’s refusal to say what she would do differently from Biden was foolish, in my estimation, and it apparently cost her more than I realized.  The last few years have been pretty awful, financially, and she really didn’t do a very good job articulating what she would do differently.  Of course, Trump didn’t do a very good job articulating anything, but he did have the undeniable advantage of being “the other guy.” And, to be fair, pretty much everyone in charge got kicked out this year: Tommy Vietor (of the Pod Save America guys) said that this is the first year where the leadership of every developed nation in the world was rejected at the same time, regardless of whether they were left, right, or center.  I didn’t fact check him, but certainly the ones I know about (ours, the UK’s, France’s, India’s) conform with that assessment.  This is fairly typical really: when you’re getting hit in the pocketbook, throw the bums out.  I certainly sympathize with that perspective.

But, here’s my issue: I sort of hoped that we, as a country, wouldn’t say “well, we need a change, so let’s elect the rapist.” Isn’t that going too far?  As I tried to articulate to my friend, if the choice were between whoever’s currently in charge and, say, Charlie Manson, or Jeffrey Dahmer, we wouldn’t elect the serial killer ... right?  Trump is definitely not Charles Manson, obviously, but my point is this: there is a line.  I have to continue to believe that.  I was just hoping that the racist, Hitler-loving, convicted felon rapist wouldn’t be on the near side of that line.

In our conversation, there were many defenses of Trump floated about.  Here they are, as best as I can articulate them, and here are my counterpoints:

• All this calling him fascist is over the top rhetoric. Except ... is it really?  The guy quoted Hitler—multiple times, even—and said that he wished his generals were more like Hitler’s.  Sounds kinda fascist to me.  Pointing out that he sure does know a lot about Hitler for someone who’s supposedly not a fascist doesn’t seem over the top to me.  (My friend seemed a bit exasperated about the Hitler quote thing.  “What did he actually say that quoted Hitler?” he asked, clearly expecting that it was a rhetorical question.  Too easy: immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country, and we have to fight the enemy within.  The subject was quickly changed.)

• He was President before, and he didn’t do any of that really terrible stuff you’re worried about. True.  Because, last time, a combination of incompetence and being restrained by sane people meant that he had difficulty accomplishing any of the really crazy stuff.  But are we forgetting that he actually tried to do those things?  If the arsonist can’t burn your house down because he can’t figure out to work the flamethrower, that’s good, but you still don’t let him keep the thing, right?

• He doesn’t really mean all that crazy shit he says. For instance, last time he said he would build a wall and make Mexico pay for it.  Obviously we all knew that he was never going to do that.  Okay, probably a fair assessment, but why do want to pick someone who goes around saying they’ll do things that they really won’t do?  If the only way you can justify choosing a person is by ignoring everything they say, you might be working too hard at it.

• He’s not actually running on the Project 2025 plan, so that part doesn’t matter. Wait, so we’re not supposed to believe him when he says he wants to eliminate the EPA, or to erase transgender people, but we are supposed to believe him when he says that the plan, written by people who used to work for him and commissioned by an organzation that he’s openly commended in the past, has nothing to do with him?  Sounds a bit inconsistent.  (A few hours after posting this, I watched Adam Conover’s interview with Jamelle Bouie, who put it like this: ”... he’s a blank slate to people.  The fact that he is—like, he doesn’t make any sense a lot of the times, he’s constantly bullshitting, he’s constantly lying, he’s just saying things off the cuff—I think that what that says to people is that you can’t take anything he says seriously.  And that allows people to then pick and choose what they want to believe about him.” This was such an accurate description of my conversation that it gave me the shivers.)

• Okay, but if actually tried to do any of those crazy things you just mentioned, people would stop him.  There are checks and balances. What fucking people? Elon Musk? RFK Jr? Herschel Walker? Steve Bannon? LAURA FUCKING LOOMER?  Last time, there were sane people around him (at least a few).  This time, every single one of those absolute lunatics that I just listed are specifically named by Trump’s transition team.  And, checks and balances? really?  Will it be the Republican Senate that will keep him in line? or the Republican House?  Or perhaps it will be the overtly Republican Supreme Court, who has already told him that he can do whatever he likes and never be held criminally liable.  Sure, that’s a recipe for success.

• We have too many government agencies as it is.  Getting rid of some of them would actually be a good thing. That’s one of those things that sounds good in the abstract, but sort of falls apart when you start looking into it.  If we get rid of the EPA, no one stops greedy corporations from just dumping their pollution everywhere.  If we eliminate the Department of Education, no one stops all the public school funding from being diverted to private charters that only serve the wealthy.  If we cut the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, many elderly or low-income people could literally freeze to death in the winters.  If we nuke the Strategic Climate Fund (and the rest of the Global Climate Change Initiative), then the crisis caused by climate change gets significantly worse, which may end up killing a lot more.  All those are things Trump’s team has actually proposed eliminating, by the way.

• If he screws up too badly, then he’ll lose all his support and we’ll vote him out (or, techincally speaking, vote out the Republicans) in 4 years. Well, I sincerely hope that we’ll at least partially vote out the Republicans in two years.  But how much damage can be done in that amount of time?  “It’s not like we’re going to have two years of people just going ‘woohoo!’ and dumping pollution everywhere for two years.” Um ... are you sure?  I honestly can’t see any reason why we wouldn’t.  Not to mention the two years of rounding up “illegal” immigrants, the two years of cruel laws surrounding abortions and transgender rights, the two years of brutal prices caused by tariffs and reversing the decision to disallow junk fees and allowing unchecked corporate mergers.  Yeah, maybe it won’t be as bad as all that ... but why are we risking it?

Here’s a simple example.  Our biggest household expense, outside the mortgage payment, is our grocery bill.  It’s more than double what it was four years ago, and I’m actually feeding two fewer mouths at this point.  But it still keeps going up.  And I’m not even counting what we spend on vitamins or toothpaste or paper towels or laundry soap.  Just food.  And I’m not including eating out either—that’s a whole different budget.  Just the food that we get from the grocery store, and it’s easily more than double what we pay in electricty and natural gas combined.  And I think many people have the same experience, and it’s almost certainly a big part of the reason that Trump won.  But here’s the thing: Trump is not going to make the price of groceries go down.  The biggest contributing factor to that is coporate price gouging.  Biden’s FTC chair, Lina Khan, has been fighting to keep Kroger from merging with Albertson’s for two years now, but she’s out the minute that Trump takes office.  In a year, Trader Joe’s will likely be the only grocery store not owned by the same megacorp, outside more expensive “health food” stores.  And do we really think the guy who promised the oil and gas industry record profits if they helped elect him is going to tell any big corporations that they can’t keep making shit-tons of money off our misery?  Yeah, I’m not holding my breath for that one.

So I’m fully expecting my bills to go up, not down, just on that single issue.  And the rest of his economic policies are just as bad:  Tariffs will make prices go up.  Deporting immigrants will reduce the workforce and force companies to pay more for labor, which will make prices go up.  And all those relaxed regulations and hanging unions out to dry will certainly make the billionaires much richer, but if you think the corporations are going to pass their savings onto you, the consumer, you haven’t learned anything from the last 50 years of financial evidence.  If you increase corporate profits, they spend it on stock buybacks and CEO bonuses and you get nothing in return.

If you voted for Trump, perhaps you’re feeling pretty good right now.  I encourage to hold on to that feeling for as long as possible.  I suspect that, in a year or two, you won’t be feeling all that good about it.  And, look: I hope I’m wrong about that.  I would be very pleased for you to be able to tell me “I told you so.” But past history doesn’t lead me to believe there’s much chance of that.  And, even above and beyond the financial impact, what about the human cost?  If, as I suspect, Trump’s plan to deport about twce as many people as there are illegal immigrants results in more horrific images of children in cages, will that be okay?  I mean, they’ll likely be brown children, so maybe it won’t matter to you.  But I hope you don’t actually think that way.  If I’m right that Trump tries to implement a significant chunk of Project 2025 and that results in minorities and, especially, LGBTQ people, being put at risk of prejudice, violence, and loss of healthcare, will that be okay?  I mean, maybe your church told you all those people are going to hell anyway (despite the fact that Jesus not only told you to love your neighbor, but to even love your enemies), so maybe that won’t matter to you either.  But I hope you don’t really believe that in your inner heart.  If Trump attempts to use the Comstock Act to make abortion care so difficult that it may as well be a federal ban, will that be okay?  If Clarence Thomas makes good on his threat to overturn the right to same sex marriage, will that be okay?  Maybe you think that none of that affects you.  But I’ve got children who could be impacted by nearly all of those things, so I don’t have that luxury.

Again, I want to be wrong about this.  But I can’t help but wonder why you thought voting for a racist was okay if you’re not racist.  Why you thought voting for a big fan of Hitler was okay if you don’t believe in fascism.  Why you thought voting for the man who’s bragged about single-handedly getting rid of Roe v Wade was okay if you believe in equal rights for women.  I understand the pocketbook argument, I really do.  And maybe your finances will be better off in a year or so, though I’ve outlined the reasons why I don’t actually believe they will be.  But, either way, you still voted for the racist, Hitler-loving, convicted felon rapist, and that makes me wonder if it’ll be worth it in the end.

Time: see what's become of me

Well, another trip around the sun and I’m about to turn another year older.  This year my birthday falls exactly on Election Day here in the U.S. ... lucky me.  Honestly, I would have preferred to have a bit more peace and calm on my birthday, but we takes what we gets.  Perhaps I’ll be fortunate enough to get a birthday gift for all of America.  I suppose we’ll know by next week.