This 1998 quote by the philosopher Richard Rorty, in his book Achieving Our Country, is being widely circulated on the Internet. It seems prophetic.
[M]embers of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported.
Richard Rorty
Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers—themselves desperately afraid of being downsized—are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.
At that point, something will crack. The non-suburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for—someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots.
A scenario like that of Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here may then be played out. For once a strongman takes office, nobody can predict what will happen. In 1932, most of the predictions made about what would happen if Hindenburg named Hitler chancellor were wildly overoptimistic.
One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. [snip]
All the sadism which the academic Left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.
I was unable to find a copy of the book in my local library system nor a low-cost copy on the Internet. Some articles about the Rorty quote also mention this—
After my imagined strongman takes power, he will quickly make his peace with the international super-rich.
I have been concerned for years about the rigging of election results, including—but not limited to—voting machine tampering. That is why I am in favor of an audit and/or recount in the current Presidential election.
I do not think there is any realistic possibility of changing the announced election results. This would require the discovery of discrepancies in all three recount states—Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania—large enough to change the result, and all this before the Electoral College meets on Dec. 19.
What I hope will come out of the audit / recount will be an improved process for national elections—at a minimum, a paper record and a routine audit to verify the paper record.
I didn’t vote for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. I am not pleased that Trump is President, but I am opposed to going to extraordinary lengths to keep him from taking office, such as trying to persuade members of the Electoral College pledged to Trump to violate their pledges. I am more concerned with the integrity of the process than which of two candidates won.
On the other hand, I do not care at all whether the recount process undermines “confidence” in Trump’s supposed mandate. Confidence is to be earned, not granted automatically.
∞∞∞
It would be unfortunate if the audit / recount process diverted attention from all the other ways in which the election process is and has been rigged.
Greg Palast
An investigative reporter named Greg Palast has been reporting on vote rigging for years. One method is the infamous CrossCheck system, whereby somebody who has approximately the same name as somebody in another state is assumed to be the same person, and the name is removed.
We the people don’t know if voting machines were tampered with. We do know about CrossCheck.
As Palast notes, the names that are checked are almost always common last names of African-Americans or Hispanics. Here’s how he said CrossCheck affected the current election:
It’s too late to give back the voting rights that were stolen in this year’s election. The best that can be hoped for is to fix things for the future.
It’s too bad that the Obama administration did not see fit to investigate this. I don’t hope for anything from Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump’s choice for attorney-general. Ending this corrupt and illegal system will depend on citizen activists working on the state level.
This post consists mainly of links to articles about efforts to recount the 2016 U.S. presidential vote. I never expected the recount to change the election result. What I hope is that the recount will make American citizens aware of how easily the voting process could have been tampered with, and of the need for reform..
They link to other charts besides the one above showing the discrepancy between the exit polls and official vote.
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2016 Presidential Election Table by Theodore de Macedo Soares for TDMS|Research. This shows the discrepancy between exit polls and official votes in 28 states.
In 13 states, Trump’s margin of victory was greater than the margin of error in the exit poll; in four states—North Carolina, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida—the exit poll favored Clinton and the official vote favored Trump. In only one state, New York, Clinton’s margin of victory was greater than the margin for error in the exit poll.
Fidel Castro died yesterday at the age of 90. He ruled Cuba from 1959 to 2006 and was widely admired as a brave patriot and revolutionary who defied the power of the United States.
He was indeed a patriot and a brave man, but I never believed in him or what he stood for.
Fidel Castro in 1964 (Magnum Photos)
Human beings cannot flourish under any system based on giving absolute power for life to a single person or small group of people can work. Human life is too varied and complex to be subject to the will of a tiny elite of self-selected masterminds.
A number of people asked me at different times whether giving people bread was more important than freedom of the press or voting in contested elections. I answered that I didn’t see the connection between giving people bread and denying them the right to ask for bread.
They asked me whether a nation has a right to change its political and economic system. I answered that they do, and they have a right to change their minds if the first change doesn’t work out.
The Communist dictatorship was established supposedly to safeguard the ideals of socialism. That was the purpose of all the suppression and regimentation.
Now the government of Cuba, like the governments of China and Vietnam before it, is renouncing socialism and opening itself to the capitalist world market, but the dictatorship remains.
Jill Stein of the Green Party raised enough money to meet the deadline for filing for a recount of the Presidential vote in Wisconsin.
She has until Monday to do the same in Pennsylvania and until Wednesday for Michigan. I’ll update this post after the filing deadlines.
In order to change the apparent result of the election, the recount would have to show that Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump, got a majority of the votes in all three states.
That’s not likely. But a recount even in just one state would help to reassure me that the vote count was honest—or confirm my suspicion that it may not have been.
I think that’s Stein’s motivation as well. She is not a supporter of Clinton and neither am I, but all American citizens have an interest in an honest vote count.
If you leave your car unlocked with the key in the ignition, sooner or later somebody will steal it.
If you entrust your nation’s elections to voting machines that can be tampered with, sooner or later somebody will tamper with them.
If your car is still on the parking lot when you come back, that is not a reason to leave your car unlocked and the keys in the ignition.
I think there’s enough circumstantial evidence to justify an audit of the 2016 Presidential election results in certain battleground states.
But if it turns out that there’s no proof that voting machines were tampered with in this election, that is not a reason to have voting machines that can be tampered with.
The story of the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving feast is more complicated, less sweetly sentimental and much more interesting than many might think.
I got an e-mail the other day asking me to sign a petition to members of the Electoral College pledged to Donald Trump to switch their votes to Hillary Clinton.
This is theoretically possible. “Faithless” electors have violated their pledges in previous elections.
But trying to overturn Trump’s election in the Electoral College would set a terrible precedent. It is a bad and dangerous thing even to attempt.
If I were a Trump voter in a red state, I would be furious at the idea of my vote being set aside by somebody I probably hadn’t even heard of.
It would mean that, in the future, voting would not necessarily decide the Presidential election. The vote would be followed by an attempt to persuade, threaten or bribe the Electors into going against the wishes of the voters.
Democracy is possible only when the results of elections are regarded as legitimate, and a peaceful transfer for power is taken for granted.
When elections are not regarded as legitimate, the basis of power is armed force. And in general the Trump supporters are better armed and better trained in the use of weapons than the Clinton supporters.
Donald Trump got more votes than predicted by exit polls. Was the problem the exit polls? Or was it hacked electronic voting machines?
We’ve known for a long time that electronic voting machines can be easily hacked.
We know that in 12 states, Trump’s excess votes exceeded the margin of error. There were four states—North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida—in which the Clinton won the exit poll and Trump won the vote count. If Trump had not carried those four states, he would have lost.
Is this proof that Trump supporters stole the election? No, but it is circumstantial evidence that needs to be investigated and explained. It should not be let drop.
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan will try again to privatize Medicare.
President-elect Donald Trump said during the campaign that he will protect Medicare as it is.
Speaker Paul Ryan
But Ryan doesn’t seem to expect a fight with Trump. Why not? Does he have reason to believe that Trump didn’t mean what he said? Reporters need to press Trump to declare where he stands.
Grass-roots advocates should not stand by idly and assume the Democrats in Congress will defend Medicare. They should be letting their congressional representatives and Senators know that tampering with Medicare is unacceptable.
I give Ryan and the Tea Party Republicans credit. They never give up pushing for their goals. They take ideas that seem radical and make them mainstream.
And they strike when the iron is hot! They never hesitate to use whatever power they have to advance their agenda.
Liberals and progressives can learn from their example. Instead of just passively trying to preserve Medicare and also Obamacare as they are, they should be demanding a Medicare-for-all system to replace Obamacare.
In my opinion, Donald Trump got as many votes as he did because he is an outsider.
Why are outsiders popular? American voters don’t like economic decline or stalemate wars.
The earning power of Americans has been in decline for the past 30 to 40 years, while wealth has become ever-more concentrated in the pockets of 1/10th of 1 percent of the population.
Over the same period of time, the United States has become more and more involved in inconclusive foreign wars.
Americans have turned again and again to outsiders who promise to change the system—Jimmy Carter in 1976, Ronald Reagan in 1980, Bill Clinton in 1992 and Barack Obama in 2008. Donald Trump was the outsider in 2016.
The hunger for outsiders will cease when a President leads the nation on a path to prosperity and peace. Or when the country has declined to such a state that elections cease to be held or cease to matter.
The defeat of the odious Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement shows that the people can win against entrenched corporate and political power. The way the TPP was defeated shows how the people can win against entrenched power.
A couple of years ago, the passage of the odious Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement seemed inevitable.
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Republican leaders in Congress, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and most big newspapers and broadcasters were in favor of it. The public knew little about it because it was literally classified as secret. Congress passed fast-track authority, so that it could be pushed through without time for discussion.
If you don’t know what the TPP is or why a lot of people think it is odious, don’t feel bad. If you depend for your information on the largest-circulation daily newspapers or the largest broadcasting networks, you have no way of knowing.
It is in theory a free-trade agreement among the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Japan and seven other countries. It is actually a corporate wish list in the form of international law, giving corporations new privileges in the form of patent and copyright protection and new powers to challenge environmental, health and labor laws and regulations.
A few weeks ago, Democrats and liberals ridiculed Donald Trump for saying he might not accept the results of the Presidential election, and hinting of protests and riots if it was rigged against him.
Now some Democrats and liberals are protestingtheresults of the election and askingmembers of the Electoral College pledged to Donald Trump to go back on their word.
Clinical psychologists in New York City and elsewhere are flooded with calls from people who need help coping with their fear of Donald Trump. Little Hispanic and Muslimchildren are terrified that Trump supporters are going to come after them.
Donald Trump giving victory speech (AP)
They literally believe that the election of Donald Trump is equivalent to the election of Adolf Hitler.
I don’t want to make light of these fears. I think people really are afraid.
Trump’s election was a bad thing. A lot of people are going to be hurt because of the Trump administration (for that matter, many would have suffered under a Hillary Clinton administration).
American democracy survived Dick Cheney, Richard Nixon and Joe McCarthy. I am confident it will survive Donald Trump. I highly recommend watching the 12-minute Ian Welsh video above and reading the links below for perspective.
Trying to negate the Electoral College vote is a terrible idea. The effort is bound to fail, and will discredit future demands by liberals and Democrats to respect the rule of law. Even if it succeeded, it would set a bad precedent of setting aside election results by fair means or foul.
The Electoral College has existed for more than 200 years. It is what it is because of a compromise that was necessary to create a United States in the first place. Progressive and liberal presidents have been elected in the past through the Electoral College system and have just as much chance of being elected in the future.
During the past few years, I’ve read a number of definitions of fascism, which have been mostly lists of personality traits or philosophical assumptions or political tendencies.
The problem with these lists is that while they are traits, assumptions and tendencies often found in fascists, they also are commonly found among people who definitely aren’t fascists.
A blogger named Ian Welsh challenged his readers to produce benchmarks that would be definite evidence that fascism has arrived or was about to arrive.
That’s tough! During the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, we had the executive claiming the authority to (1) arrest enemies of the state without legal process, (2) torture enemies of the state, (3) order the assassination of enemies of the state without legal process, (4) put the entire population under secret surveillance and (5) start wars without approval of the legislative body.
All these things are characteristic of fascist regimes. All would be powers that a fascist dictator would try to claim.
But I can’t really see the Bush and Obama administrations as fascist in the same way that, say, Chile under Pinochet was fascist.
Racism, misogyny, religious intolerance and extreme nationalism are characteristic of fascist governments, but not all racists, misogynists, religious bigots or nationalists are fascists.
For what it’s worth, here is my list of defining characteristics of fascism:
Deification of a leader.
A requirement to pay lip service to a ruling ideology.
Arrests of opponents of the government on trumped-up charges or no charges at all.
Fear of making criticisms of the government.
Arbitrary power and lack of due process of law.
Lynchings and pogroms.
Death squads.
Concentration camps.
The problem with making such a list is that the mere absence of death squads and concentration camps can be taken as evidence that the United States or any other country is a free country.
The shakeups and struggles in President-elect Trump’s transition team are a foretaste of what his administration is likely to be.
Look for four years of struggles for influence among courtiers chosen on the basis of personal loyalty, not competence, all competing for the approval of a strong-willed ruler who is ignorant, but susceptible to flattery.
During the Presidential campaign of 1988, the Reverend Jesse Jackson was asked, “How you are going to get the support of the white steelworker?” He replied: “By making him aware he has more in common with the black steel workers by being a worker, than with the boss by being white.”
Hillary Clinton was not beaten by an upsurge in votes for Donald Trump. She was beaten because she lost votes, not because Trump gained votes.
I don’t believe the American public is satisfied with either the Democrats or the Republicans. That’s why we’ve been alternating Democrats and Republicans in power for the past 30 or 40 years.
We keep giving one party, then the other, an opportunity to prove its leaders can achieve peace and prosperity and, again and again, they fail the test.
As these charts indicate, Hillary Clinton’s loss in the Presidential election was caused by voters turning away from her, not the popularity of Donald Trump. The charts below show that in every demographic category except “people of color,” the “other / no vote” voters outnumbered Democrats or Republicans. And even support by “people of color” for Democrats dropped sharply.
Republicans, who already control the majority of state governments, gained complete control last Tuesday in Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky and New Hampshire.
My friend Hal Bauer recommended this video. It depicts the reality of global warming—a good basic explanation for someone who hasn’t studied the subject, but with new information to some (including me) who think we are well-informed.
It runs for more than 90 minutes, which is a bit long to watch on a small screen. But it’s broken up into brief episodes, showing the actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s world travel to educate himself about the subject.
The video ends with the USA and China, the world’s two largest industrial economies and the two largest producers of greenhouse gasses, agreeing in principle do set limits. This was before the election of Donald Trump, who has said global warming is a hoax promoted by China to undermine the U.S. economy.
Our country, in her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right, and always successful, right or wrong. ==The toast of Stephen Decatur (authentic version)
Our country, may she always be in the right! But right or wrong, our country! ==The toast of Stephen Decatur (commonly quoted version)
My country, right or wrong! If right, to be kept right. If wrong, to be set right ` ==Carl Schurz
“My country, right or wrong” is a thing no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, “My mother, drunk or sober.” ==G.K. Chesterton
Stephen Decatur
Until I looked it up, I thought the toast of Stephen Decatur was, “Our country, may it always be in the right, but right or wrong—our country!”
I could raise a glass to that toast. My country, right or wrong, is still my country. This doesn’t mean I have to go along when my country is in the wrong. It does mean that whatever America’s crimes and follies, I am part of it, and it is part of me.
But “always successful” in war and diplomacy? That is impossible, either for an individual or a nation, and, furthermore, some kinds of success are not good, either for a nation or for an individual.
Love of country should be like love of family. Too many people think love of country is like love of God.
Nate Terani is a Muslim, the grandson of Iranian immigrants and a U.S. Navy veteran. He also is a member of a new organization called Veterans Challenge Islamophobia.
He grew up in central New Jersey, but, in 1985, the eight-year-old Terani was taken on a visit with his family to his ancestral homeland. While there, he was enrolled in a special bilingual school for children who had grown up in Western countries.
One day soldiers, in green and black uniforms, broke into the classroom, dragged the children into a courtyard and ordered them to watch the flags of their home countries being set on fire.
Nate Terani in his Navy days
The children were ordered at gunpoint to trample on the burning flags and shout, “Death to America.”
Instead Terani snatched a burning American flag off the ground and darted through the legs of the watching crowd before the soldiers could catch him.
His experience reinforced his love of country and gave him a new understanding of the evil of religious hatred.
In 1996, at age 19, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He must have been an outstanding recruit. He reported that he was the first Muslim-American member of the Navy Presidential Honor Guard.
In 1998, he became special assistant to the Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy, and, in 1999, he was recruited to serve in the Defense Intelligence Agency. He transferred to the Navy Reserve in 2000 and completed his military service in 2006.
Political scientist Thomas Ferguson is always worth reading and listening to. In this interview with Paul Jay of the Real News Network, he said the Democratic formula of “Wall Street plus identity politics” is dead.
That formula is to take Wall Street money and then champion the interests of women and minorities in ways that don’t threaten Wall Street’s profits.
The problem from the standpoint of the Democrats is that so many people—including women and minorities—are more worried about keeping their jobs, earning a decent wage and paying their bills than they are about Donald Trump’s offensive way of speaking.
But it’s hard to do anything about jobs, wages and debt and stay in the good graces of big donors.
He said Donald Trump could be a popular and successful President if he follows through on certain of his campaign promises, particularly the one to begin a major public works—that is, infrastructure—program.
Is there a chance he would do that? Too soon to say, Ferguson said.
The votes are still being counted, but it now seems almost certain that more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than voted for Donald Trump.
The same thing happened in the 2000 election. Al Gore received more votes nationwide than George W. Bush. Two out of the last three Republican victories were with a minority of the votes!
Until and unless the Electoral College is abolished, this is likely to happen again, and always in favor of the Republicans.
The reason is that Americans do not vote directly for President, but for members of the Electoral College, who then choose a President, and that the Electoral College is tilted in favor of small states—most of them rural states with Republican majorities.
Each state gets a number of electoral votes equal to its representation in the House of Representatives, which is apportioned according to population, plus its representation in the Senate, which is two per state.
Democrats are concentrated in cities and in large states with large cities. Republicans are more spread out across the country, and are more over-represented in the Senate and in the Electoral College (and also in the House of Representatives, due to gerrymandering).
Adam Curtis is a documentary filmmaker for the BBC who uses archival footage to remind viewers of forgotten facts and to make connections that others wouldn’t see.
This documentary does not quite add up to a connected whole, but within it is a fascinating history of the evolution of suicide bombing, starting with the attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1982, the Iran-Iraq war, Palestinian terrorism, the 9-11 attacks and Islamic State (ISIS) terrorism.
Along with it is a history of American and British deception and self-deception in their policies toward Syria and Libya.
Suicide bombing, according to Curtis, as a military tactic by Syria’s ruler Hafiz al-Assad to offset American military power in his region. Now it is used by ISIS to sow sectarian strife in Iraq and Syria, and bring down Assad’s son, Bashir al-Assad.
He documents how Muammar Qaddafi was set up by American policy-makers as a scapegoat for the crimes of Hafiz al-Assad because he was a more vulnerable foe.
This film is not the whole story of recent Middle Eastern history. Curtis appears to think that the American and British governments seriously intended to bring democracy to the Middle East, for example. But he brings out many fascinating facts, some forgotten and some new (at least to me).
I recommend viewing just those parts of the documentary dealing with Syria, suicide bombing and the Middle East, and fast-forwarding through the rest, which consists of disconnected material about Curtis’s long-term concerns about technological manipulation, technological utopianism and the decline of the democratic process.
But trying to overturn Trump’s election in the Electoral College would set a terrible precedent. It is a bad and dangerous thing even to attempt.
In my opinion, Donald Trump got as many votes as he did because he is an outsider.
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Republican leaders in Congress, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and most big newspapers and broadcasters were in favor of it. The public knew little about it because it was literally classified as secret. Congress passed fast-track authority, so that it could be pushed through without time for discussion.
That’s tough! During the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, we had the executive claiming the authority to (1) arrest enemies of the state without legal process, (2) torture enemies of the state, (3) order the assassination of enemies of the state without legal process, (4) put the entire population under secret surveillance and (5) start wars without approval of the legislative body.
The reason is that Americans do not vote directly for President, but for members of the Electoral College, who then choose a President, and that the Electoral College is tilted in favor of small states—most of them rural states with Republican majorities.
Phil Ebersole's Blog 