Witnessing An American Tragedy

As a history major, I know that at various points in the past, huge events occurred and frequently the citizens of the nation or nations impacted failed to realize the cataclysmic nature of what they were witnessing.  Sadly, I believe we may have just witnessed the beginning of the end of the American Republic.  A con-man is headed to the White House and Congress is controlled by, in many cases, by frantic ideologues who care nothing about the nation or its citizens.  Instead, it is only about enhancing their own power at any cost, regardless of the destruction done to the country.  A piece in the New Yorker looks at the tragedy that has hit the nation.  My biggest fear is what will this nation be as my grandchildren grow up.  I am very fearful that their future will not be positive.  Here are article highlights:

The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism. Trump’s shocking victory, his ascension to the Presidency, is a sickening event in the history of the United States and liberal democracy. . . .  It is impossible to react to this moment with anything less than revulsion and profound anxiety.

There are, inevitably, miseries to come: an increasingly reactionary Supreme Court; an emboldened right-wing Congress; a President whose disdain for women and minorities, civil liberties and scientific fact, to say nothing of simple decency, has been repeatedly demonstrated. Trump is vulgarity unbounded, a knowledge-free national leader who will not only set markets tumbling but will strike fear into the hearts of the vulnerable, the weak, and, above all, the many varieties of Other whom he has so deeply insulted.

All along, Trump seemed like a twisted caricature of every rotten reflex of the radical right. That he has prevailed, that he has won this election, is a crushing blow to the spirit; it is an event that will likely cast the country into a period of economic, political, and social uncertainty that we cannot yet imagine. That the electorate has, in its plurality, decided to live in Trump’s world of vanity, hate, arrogance, untruth, and recklessness, his disdain for democratic norms, is a fact that will lead, inevitably, to all manner of national decline and suffering.

Trump began his campaign declaring Mexican immigrants to be “rapists”; he closed it with an anti-Semitic ad evoking “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”; his own behavior made a mockery of the dignity of women and women’s bodies. And, when criticized for any of it, he batted it all away as “political correctness.” Surely such a cruel and retrograde figure could succeed among some voters, but how could he win? Surely, Breitbart News, a site of vile conspiracies, could not become for millions a source of news and mainstream opinion.

The commentators, in their attempt to normalize this tragedy, will also find ways to discount the bumbling and destructive behavior of the F.B.I., the malign interference of Russian intelligence, the free pass—the hours of uninterrupted, unmediated coverage of his rallies—provided to Trump by cable television, particularly in the early months of his campaign. We will be asked to count on the stability of American institutions, the tendency of even the most radical politicians to rein themselves in when admitted to office. Liberals will be admonished as smug, disconnected from suffering, as if so many Democratic voters were unacquainted with poverty, struggle, and misfortune. There is no reason to believe this palaver. There is no reason to believe that Trump and his band of associates—Chris Christie, Rudolph Giuliani, Mike Pence, and, yes, Paul Ryan—are in any mood to govern as Republicans within the traditional boundaries of decency. Trump was not elected on a platform of decency, fairness, moderation, compromise, and the rule of law; he was elected, in the main, on a platform of resentment. Fascism is not our future—it cannot be; we cannot allow it to be so—but this is surely the way fascism can begin.

And yet, somehow, no matter how long and committed her [Clinton's] earnest public service, she was less trusted than Trump, a flim-flam man who cheated his customers, investors, and contractors; a hollow man whose countless statements and behavior reflect a human being of dismal qualities—greedy, mendacious, and bigoted. His level of egotism is rarely exhibited outside of a clinical environment.

It is all a dismal picture. Late last night, as the results were coming in from the last states, a friend called me full of sadness, full of anxiety about conflict, about war. Why not leave the country? But despair is no answer. To combat authoritarianism, to call out lies, to struggle honorably and fiercely in the name of American ideals—that is what is left to do. That is all there is to do.

Talking about staying and fighting is well and good, but if I had the financial resources, I move myself and my children and grandchildren and shake the dust from my shoes.  Those who supported Trump deserve misery and misfortune.  Sadly, many others will suffer as a result of their bigotry, self-centered natures, and general misogyny. 

A Wake Up Call - Is America a Failed State?

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman touches on one of my feelings this sad morning: we have found out that a majority of Americans hold supposed American values in contempt and hold many of their fellow citizens in contempt, if not open hatred.  The husband says I need to stay calm, but I feel that we have begun the journey down a path that parallel's that of Germany in the early 1930's. The full horrors to come are still unclear and off in the distance.  It is definitely time to reconsider who is one's friend and who is either an enemy or a facilitator for hate and bigotry.  Here are column highlights:

What we do know is that people like me, and probably like most readers of The New York Times, truly didn’t understand the country we live in. We thought that our fellow citizens would not, in the end, vote for a candidate so manifestly unqualified for high office, so temperamentally unsound, so scary yet ludicrous.

We thought that the nation, while far from having transcended racial prejudice and misogyny, had become vastly more open and tolerant over time.

We thought that the great majority of Americans valued democratic norms and the rule of law.

It turns out that we were wrong. There turn out to be a huge number of people — white people, living mainly in rural areas — who don’t share at all our idea of what America is about. For them, it is about blood and soil, about traditional patriarchy and racial hierarchy. And there were many other people who might not share those anti-democratic values, but who nonetheless were willing to vote for anyone bearing the Republican label.

I don’t know how we go forward from here. Is America a failed state and society? It looks truly possible.  . . . this has been a night of terrible revelations, and I don’t think it’s self-indulgent to feel quite a lot of despair.

I feel that the America that I thought I knew died yesterday.  Today has a funeral-like feel.  I think I will dress all in black today and mourn the death of American decency.  No longer can we pretend that a majority of Americans are kind and decent people.  Yesterday's election results proved that.  So much for the myth of American exceptionalism.

Wednesday Morning Male Beauty

Some much need distraction on an otherwise depressing day

Trump Wins - The Nightmare Begins, Markets Plunge

Like many waking up this morning, I am stunned and sickened, both by the man who is headed towards the White House and the amount of hate and bigotry that exists in the country.  I worry about what this nightmare will mean for my children and grandchildren.  It will certainly impact my husband's and my plains on how and where to our retirement years.  Our marriage may now be at risk and there is a significant risk, assuming Trump sticks to his promise to Christofascists, that a federal license to discriminate law will soon be enacted.  The hopes for federal employment protections has certainly turned to ash.  The one positive, if one can call it that, is that we certainly know who our friends are and how many fewer they number than we had believed was the case.  As the Washington Post reports, the financial markets are plunging, wiping out the savings of many and ushering in likely long term global instability.  Here are excerpts:

Global financial markets convulsed Tuesday night as Donald Trump was projected to claim victory in the race for the White House after a polarizing campaign that investors had largely bet against.

On Wall Street, all three major stock indices were down 4 percent or more late Tuesday evening in pre-market trading, with futures for the Dow Jones industrial average sliding more than 700 points at one point before paring those losses in the minutes before the results were clear. Futures trading was temporarily halted for the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index amid a 5 percent loss.

The Mexican peso -- which has fallen as the Republican nominee rose in the polls during his campaign -- nosedived to an eight-year low, according to Bloomberg. The panic stretched all the way to Asia, where Japan’s Nikkei index plunged more than 900 points, or 5.4 percent, early Wednesday morning. In a flight to safety, gold charged higher. U.S. Treasuries and the yen also surged.

The sell-off recalled the volatility following Britain's decision this summer to leave the European Union. Investors had largely dismissed the possibility of a so-called "Brexit" but then quickly reversed course as the votes were counted. That dynamic appeared to be playing out again, with Craig Erlam, senior market analyst for foreign exchange firm Oanda, calling Tuesday's rout simply "a bloodbath."

Among Trump's chief campaign promises has been to pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement and slap double-digit tariffs on goods from Mexico and China, moves that experts fear could spark a trade war. He also has proposed massive tax cuts for both individuals and corporations that could cost as much as $6 trillion, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. Though Trump’s message of isolationism has resonated with voters who feel left behind by globalization, many experts have warned his proposals could wreck havoc on the U.S. recovery.

Moody’s Analytics forecast Trump’s policies could lower employment by 3.5 million jobs and raise the unemployment rate to 7 percent by the end of his term. The firm also predicted the nation would enter a recession in 2018.

Meanwhile, the board of South Korea’s stock exchange called an emergency meeting Wednesday morning to discuss the sharp fall in the financial markets.

The exception to the anti-Trump sentiment in Europe came from far-right leaders and other anti-immigration populists.

 Neo-Nazis and white supremacist are the only ones celebrating.  That is very telling.

Election Reaction - Fear and Depression

With bad election results flowing in, I am feeling depressed and, candidly, downright fearful - if not terror.  I can't stand to stay up and watch the results if they are pro-Trump and feel as if I am witnessing American democracy slipping beneath the surface of the sea like  the Titanic or some other lost liner of old.  

The depression part comes from the realization that there are so many truly hate-filled horrible people in America.  Perhaps I should not be surprised.  After all, this is the country that committed genocide against Native Americans, allowed segregation for generations, overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy, and won its Caribbean possessions and Pacific possessions by conquest.   It also comes from supposed "friends" who are backing Trump.  This evening I unfriended a supposed Facebook "friend" who is celebrating over how well Trump is doing. Meanwhile this Fox News junkie doesn't realize that a Trump win means an anti-LGBT Supreme Court and right to discriminate laws for Christofascists. This is very, very scary. I feel like I am in 1930's Germany.

If Trump wins and the GOP controls Congress, our marriage could well be invalidated by a reversal of the 2015 same sex marriage ruling. A falsely named "religious freedom act" will be passed at the federal level and I will be a target for completely legal discrimination and bigotry. Thankfully, I can qualify to receive Social Security now if need be, but the husband has another 2 years. After that, we may have to move overseas. A very, very sad situation. Thank you to all of my Republican "friends."

In short, if Trump wins, my new task will be to begin researching where the husband and I can move to find an existence in a less hate-filled and bigoted country.  I am so afraid that America has opted to take the path of those who rejected Weimar Germany.  

Early Virginia Election Returns: Backward Areas Going for Trump

Many jurisdictions are not yet reporting, but among those that have reported there is a clear trend: backward, economic basket case, and racist (and anti-transgender in the case of Gloucester County) areas are going for Donald Trump.  In contrast, so far, every city and urban area - other than Lynchburg, Waynesboro and Chesapeake - with more educated and more racially diverse voters  are going for Clinton.  Hopefully, the so-called urban crescent will blow away the rural, KKK loving regions of the state. The irony, of course, is that the areas that are supporting Trump are economic basket cases largely because they are so bigoted and reactionary that most progressive businesses avoid them like the plague.   It is 2016, yet the Trump supporting regions of Virginia long for the 1950's and would probably support overturning not just the 2015 Obergefell  ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court, but also Loving v. Virginia.   I sincerely hope that Hillary Clinton is victorious tonight and that these Trump supporting regions will have only accomplished making themselves even more attractive to progressive businesses.  Hate and bigotry and the celebratory embrace of ignorance need to carry a sever economic price. 

I will give updates as more results are turned in and posted by the Virginia Board of Elections.

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 2

Five Thirty Eight Election Eve Update: Clinton Gains

I will take nothing for granted until I see the election called for Hillary Clinton tonight.  That said, Nate Silver's Five Thirty Eight blog's - which has suffered criticism - last update late yesterday had some positive news for Clinton Supporters.  Here are the highlights:

First things first: Hillary Clinton has a 70 percent chance of winning the election, according to both the FiveThirtyEight polls-only and polls-plusmodels. That’s up from a 65 percent chance on Sunday night, so Clinton has had a good run in the polls in the final days of the campaign. Clinton’s projected margin of victory in the popular vote has increased to 3.5 percent from 2.9 percent.
 We’ll continue to collect polls through early Tuesday morning, at which point we’ll update the model for the last time . . .

As a lot of you noticed, Nevada, North Carolina and Florida flipped from red to blue over the course of Monday. We don’t think that’s a particularly meaningful metric, because the forecasts are probabilistic — Clinton’s chances of winning Florida increased to 54 percent from 48 percent, for instance, which is nontrivial but not an especially large change. Still, we know it’s something a lot of readers follow. It’s unlikely that any further states will flip to Clinton in our final forecast, as she’s too far behind in Ohio, the next-closest state.¹ It’s possible that Florida and North Carolina could flip back to Trump by tomorrow morning, though probably not Nevada, where Clinton’s lead is a bit larger.

Still, the polls clearly agree that Clinton is the favorite, and perhaps has a slight wind at her back for Election Day.

Trump's Base: "Low Information Voters"

Today is election day and hopefully before the day is out, Donald Trump will have gone down to a decisive defeat that even a self-absorbed narcissist cannot deny.   Where his supporters will go after today is less clear.  They loathe the so-called GOP establishment and, truth be told, the feeling is mutual.  Trump has unleashed all the hate and bigotry that the post 2012 presidential election post mortem found detrimental to the future of the Republican Party.  A piece in the Washington Post by researchers at the University of Alabama suggests that the key to Trump's rise  is "low information voters."  Those who have limited knowledge of how our government works and who are motivated by emotion rather than logic and facts, something that explains in party why Trump has been so attractive a figure for evangelical Christians who meet both of these standards. Here are article highlights: 

Our research finds that Trump has attracted a disproportionate (and unprecedented) number of “low-information voters” to his campaign. Furthermore, these voters are more likely to respond to emotional appeals — whether about the economy, immigration, Muslims, racial relations, sexism, and even hostility to the first African American U.S. president, Barack Obama. They are the ideal constituency for a candidate like Trump.

We define low-information voters as those who do not know certain basic facts about government and lack what psychologists call a “need for cognition.” Those with a high need for cognition have a positive attitude toward tasks that require reasoning and effortful thinking and are, therefore, more likely to invest the time and resources to do so when evaluating complex issues. Those with a low need for cognition, on the other hand, find little reward in the collection and evaluation of new information when it comes to problem solving and the consideration of competing issue positions. They are more likely to rely on cognitive shortcuts, such as “experts” or other opinion leaders, for cues.

Drawing on data from the 2016 American National Election Studies Pilot Studies, we measured the need for cognition based on whether respondents agreed or disagreed that “Thinking is not my idea of fun” and “I would rather do something that requires little thought than something that is sure to challenge my thinking abilities.” We measured knowledge of government based on a question asking how long senators’ terms were and a question on which of four policy areas the government spends the least (the answer was foreign aid; the other options were Medicare, national defense and Social Security). We focused our analysis on whites because nonwhites were not supporting Trump in sufficient numbers.  

For example, we found that people who did not know either of these questions about government evaluated Trump 20 points more favorably than Clinton, compared with those who knew both of those questions. This was not true in 2012: Knowledge of politics had little relationship with people’s views of Mitt Romney and Obama.

Similarly, people who expressed less “need for cognition” evaluated Trump 12 points more favorably than Clinton . . . . We also found that the effect of political knowledge and need for cognition may affect support for Trump via association with concern about the economy and attitudes toward Muslims, African Americans and immigrants. This suggests that voters who know less about politics may be attracted to Trump for these reasons, which also helps explain why they continue to support him in the face of his many mistruths. If they are willing to believe that Obama is a Muslim and that Muslims are inherently violent, for example, why wouldn’t they believe that the election is “rigged”?

“[L]ow-information voters” are not the entirety of Trump’s base of support. They are, however, a sizable bloc. . . . a core part of his base is made up of low-information voters who appear more susceptible to Trump’s appeals based on race and religion and less prepared to challenge his misstatements and untruths.

It's nice to have research data to back up what many of us felt we already knew about Trump's base.

Why We Should All Fear the Right Wing Rot Inside the FBI

If nothing else, FBI Director James Comey's effort to throw the presidential election to Donald Trump has revealed the rot and corruption within the FBI which has seemingly been taken over by rogue alt-right agents.  This development ought to worry anyone who believes in objective law enforcement and fact based criminal investigations - things that are the antithesis of what today's Republican Party stands for.  Indeed, the North Carolina GOP has bragged about who it has disenfranchised many African-American voters this election cycle.   A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the rot and right wing agenda within the FBI.  Here are excerpts:

When a black church burned in Greenville, Mississippi, leaving charred walls and roof and the words “vote Trump” scrawled on the side of the building, local authorities called in the FBI. Its offices in Jackson, the state capitol, and Washington D.C. were put on the case.
 The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been doing that kind of work for decades. It was the FBI, under pressure from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, that sent scores of agents to Philadelphia, Mississippi in June of 1964 to investigate the disappearance of three civil rights workers: Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, who had themselves been investigating the firebombing of a black church that was to serve as a “freedom school,” in preparation for registering black Mississippians to vote. When the three men were found dead—lynched and discarded in an earthen dam—it was FBI agents who made the discovery, acting on an informant’s tip.
 Americans have, at various times, leaned on the FBI for a measure of justice that local and state police couldn’t be counted on to deliver . . . The events of the past two weeks have made it all but impossible to have much faith in the FBI now. The agency has, through the actions of a minority cell of unknown size, been severely tainted, potentially dragging down the reputations of even the finest agents in its ranks.
 After all, how can we trust the nation’s foremost federal law enforcement agency now that it has become clear that a faction of its agents used a conspiracy theory-hawking political book to launch a partisan probe into a presidential candidate?
 That unprecedented prospect: that federal law enforcement could take it upon themselves to try and swing a national election using allegations gleaned from a partisan hatchet job financially linked to the target’s political opponent, is Third World stuff. It makes the already creepy chants of “lock her up!” at Trump rallies reminiscent of a spiraling coup d’etat in a banana republic, because clearly, some in the FBI want to make those chants come true. And it makes Rudy Giuliani’s assertion, two days before Comey’s vague oppo dump, that the campaign had “a couple of things up our sleeve to turn [the race] around,” an ominous tell indeed.
 Most Americans presume that members of law enforcement tend to be ideologically conservative. But many Americans have watched in alarm as police officers across the country pose with the Republican candidate, even donning red “Make America Great Again” baseball caps with their police uniforms. . . . These officers clearly don’t mind if those they police know that they concur with Trump’s divisive, racially abusive message . . .
 FBI agents are, presumably, drawn from much the same pool as law enforcement generally: mostly white, mostly male, mostly right of center. If the agency is indeed, “Trumpland,” as The Guardian’s Spencer Ackerman reports, God help Hillary Clinton. But God help the rest of us well.
 We have entered an unprecedented new age when federal law enforcement demonstrates a willingness to go beyond each agent exercising his or her individual right to vote to massing its investigative powers against an individual for political purposes. That the FBI could become a tool in the arsenal of one party’s presidential candidate, perhaps even coordinating with that candidate through their mutual allies, is the most frightening development in a truly unnerving presidential cycle. It should be unnerving to their fellow FBI agents as well, and to anyone who cares about the agency’s reputation.
 Based on the reports from multiple journalists, including Wayne Barrett, some of Giuliani’s friends in the FBI hate her still. But should they be able to use the badges the public pins on them to try and prevent her from winning a presidential election?
 Whatever the cause, it’s clear that there is a cancer festering inside the nation’s pre-eminent law enforcement agency, and it runs through New York.

The possibility that the director of the FBI is essentially at the mercy of a right-wing faction of his own agents, whose source of investigative material is an offshoot of Breitbart.com, which has direct connections to the Republican candidate, bodes ill for what the agency might do with its power, under either potential president. Would the Breitbart wing of the FBI continue to hunt the new Democratic commander in chief based on the thin gruel ladled out by fever swamp websites? Or would it become the investigative sword wielded by the Republican president against his political enemies, Democrat and Republican, any of whom could face investigation if they displeased him and his fans? Either way, the result would not be democracy. It would be authoritarian tyranny of a downright Putinesque kind.
 Something is rotten inside the FBI. Americans have good reason to be afraid, and angry.

There needs to be a thorough investigation by new, independent investigators and people need to be fired and, ideally, lose their retirement benefits as well - starting with the firing of James Comey.  The FBI must remain non-partisan and those who has worked to make it otherwise have to go.