Monday, August 19, 2024

Speaking of Which

I started this in a timely manner, but had various distractions during the week, and skipped Saturday altogether as I decided to cook dinner for some guests. So I only made it about half way through my usual rounds on Sunday before I ran out. Picked it up Monday morning, and should get something out in the evening, hopefully not real late. That will push Music Week back another day, which will probably bring my slow week back over the 30 mark.

As I'm wrapping up, the Democratic National Convention has started. Nothing on it below. That's definitely one for next week. There is also a report of a ceasefire deal, which would be nice timing for the Convention, but may not yet be real: Netanyahu agrees to mediators' cease-fire proposal, Blinken says. More on that (if there is anything more) next week. I didn't quite get to everything I usually hit, but I figure I have quite enough for now. I may add some things on Tuesday while I work on Music Week. I've already held back two Jonathan Chait pieces, which may turn out to be especially irritating.

I added a fair amount of material on Tuesday, while working on the much more manageable Music Week. Hard to say when one of these things is done, except by opening its successor, which will happen shortly after posting Music Week.

This is just an aside, but as long as I've been doing this, my first stop for news has been Vox. However, a few months ago, they redesigned their website to make it much harder to find new articles -- the chronological roll has been replaced by clusters of pieces that are dominated by what I suppose they consider "human interest" stories. Today's (rarely with author names, never with dates/times):

Of those stories, I only clicked on the last, and that only because I had no idea who Blake Lively was. (Actor, It Ends With Us, "the second biggest movie in America," something else I had no inkling of. At the end of which was a pitch for money, informing me that I had read 80 articles in the last month.) Further down the page, more articles I skipped:

I can't say that I have zero interest in these pieces, but they don't look very promising for my purposes. (To be fair, I often click on their culture and tech pieces, without writing anything about them.) The bottom of the home page still has a listing of "more news," which is chronological and labeled and I'm still finding quite a lot down there. So I may not be complaining about their irrelevance so much as I'm disturbed by their apparent belief that the other stuff is what really matters. In addition to the pieces I've actually cited below, the roll includes a bunch of articles that are interesting but don't immediately fit in what I'm doing below (this is a judgment call being made late Sunday, as I'm rushing to wrap up, so don't want to open up any more cans of worms than I have to). So I thought I might just mention them here:

Back in what we might call my "middle years" (roughly 30-50, or 1980-2000) I focused much less on politics, and more on general social, cultural, scientific, and business issues like these. They remain interesting subjects, but seem to be getting pushed aside in favor of more conventionally political matters.

Top story threads:

Israel:

  • Mondoweiss:

  • Ghada Ageel: [08-15] Gaza's other death toll: "Israel has caused countless preventable deaths which are yet to be reflected in the official Gaza death toll."

  • Yousef Aljamal: The daily battles to survive the Gaza genocide: "Tents out of aid parachutes, waiting days for a tin of beans, re-digging graves to bury martyrs: here's what Palestinians have to overcome."

  • Haaretz: Don't buy the lie that Israeli settler violence is the exception. It's the rule.

  • Reem A Hamadaqa: [08-14] What it's like living in a tent in Gaza: "Gaza's landscape is dominated by tents that have become homes to the hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians. But building a tent and living in one with your entire family isn't easy."

  • Tareq S Hajjaj:

    • [08-11] The Fajr massacre: Every 70 kg bag of human remains is considered a martyr: "The bodies of Palestinians killed in the latest Israeli massacre in Gaza were destroyed so far beyond recognition that doctors have only been able to give grieving families an anonymous bag of human remains to bury." I don't like the word "martyr," but one does need some term to honor those who died, not as willing sacrifices to a great cause, but as victims of victims of atrocities committed by people who have no honor and decency.

    • [08-15] Fighting the Israeli army in Gaza: Inside the battle for Shuja'iyya: "In a testimony obtained by Mondoweiss, a resident of Shuja'iyya recounts his motivations for wanting to join Hamas's al-Qassam Brigades to fight against the Israeli army."

  • Samah Jabr: [08-15] Sadism as a tool of war in Gaza.

  • Rifat Kassis: [08-18] Why the Israeli 'peace camp' disappeared: "It is primarily in the hands of Israelis to reject their settler colonial occupation, their apartheid laws, and their current government and nationalist parties. The alternative means the loss of their humanity."

  • Joseph Massad: [08-12] Why raping Palestinians is legitimate Israeli military practice: "Sadism has long characterized Zionist colonists' treatment of Palestinians, rooted in orientalist views that Arab only 'understand force' -- including sexual violence." This led me to a couple older pieces:

  • Qassam Muaddi:

  • Jonathan Ofir: [08-12] Israeli media's coverage of the rape of Palestinian detainees shows support for sexual violence in service of genocide: "Israeli media coverage of the rape of Palestinian detainees demonstrates the widespread acceptance within Israeli society of sexual violence as a weapon of genocide."

  • Noa Pinto: The taps have run dry in Jerusalem's largest Palestinian neighborhood: "Long neglected by the Jerusalem Municipality, Kufr 'Aqab residents now receive only a few hours of water a week."

  • Richard Silverstein: [08-14] As Israel wages genocide, its economy is buckling. US aid is vital to Israel not just to keep resupplying them with bombs but to keep the economy operating given how expensive their war is. (The same thing can also be said for Ukraine. In both cases, the US should have enough leverage to shut down the wars, if only the powers in Washington decide to do so.)

    Four hundred thousand Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers have served extended tours of duty in Gaza, the West Bank, and northern Israel. They have left families and jobs and, in many cases, lost their businesses. In addition, almost 250,000 Israelis have become refugees due to fighting with Hezbollah. This has had a massive impact on the Israeli economy. Economic growth and GDP have plummeted.

    Forty-six thousand businesses have failed since October 7. That number will increase to sixty thousand by the end of 2024. This has a ripple effect throughout the economy. Bankruptcies hit the bottom line of the lenders who extended credit to the failed businesses. Vendors and suppliers also take a hit, while the lives of many small business owners have been reduced to shambles. They have sunk into debt and often are forced to rely on handouts from friends, family, and charities:

    Many of those [IDF] fighters are close to a breaking point. Exhausted and in some cases demoralized, they are struggling to balance family and work with military service, while the economic toll from their absences mounts.

    The Israeli Population Authority reported that in the past year, 575,000 more Israelis left the country than returned to it. The immigration rate has halved since October 7.

    Activity in the construction sector, reliant on over two hundred thousand Palestinian workers who are now barred from entering Israel, has declined by 25 percent. This has led to the collapse of building contractors and developers.

    The Palestinian economy has been decimated and driven residents into penury. The desperation they face will lead inevitably to bitter resentment and future violence. Tourism, once a powerhouse of the economy, has dried up. The agriculture sector (20 percent decline) is based mainly in the north and the south, regions hard-hit by hostilities. Trade has plummeted drastically at Israel's southern port, Eilat, due to Houthi interruption of maritime traffic in the Red Sea. . . .

    The Bank of Israel announced that the 2024 growth rate would be -2 percent, unprecedented in an Israeli economy used to sustained growth. Fitch has just downgraded the country's credit rating, describing the economic outlook as "negative." The Bank of Israel has raised the interest rate to 4.5 percent. . . .

    Israel's buckling economy will increase social unrest. Massive increases in funding for the ultra-Orthodox and settlements will sow sectarian division between secular (40 percent of the population) and religious Israelis. Wars in Gaza and Lebanon will destabilize the region and increase the likelihood of future wars, which will require massive increases in military spending. The current economic strain will increase hostility, already at a fever pitch, toward Netanyahu and his government and lead to their likely downfall in 2026 elections.

  • Aaron Sobczak: [08-14] Israelis using Gaza civilians as human shields: "IDF soldiers give gruesome first hand accounts to Haaretz newspaper."

  • Jonah Valdez: Video of sexual abuse at Israeli prison is just latest evidence Sde Teiman is a torture site.

  • Kelley Beaucar Vlahos: [08-12] Nearly 2% of Gazans killed in last 10 months: "Harris laments bombing of shelters yet her administration just released $3.5B in more weapons to Israel."

America's Israel (and Israel's America):

Israel vs. world opinion:

  • Abdullah Al-Arian: [08-14] Why Arab regimes' betrayal of Palestine may come back to haunt them. Maybe, but the phrase "learned helplessness" -- which I've seen in various contexts of late -- comes to mind. They tried declaring their solidarity with Palestinians, and even went to war against Israel -- most notably in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973, plus numerous skirmishes, with Iraq's Scud missile attacks in 1990 a "last hurrah" -- to no avail. They tried negotiating peace, which Israel only allowed on terms injurious to Palestinians. The Palestinians themselves passed through both phases, multiple times, getting screwed both ways. The "Abraham Accords" promised normalcy through commerce but just made Israel more arrogant, leaving Hamas so desperate they resorted to what was effectively a suicide bombing. No doubt most people in the Arab (and other Muslim) countries feel more solidarity than their leaders, which could make it a potent issue when and if the outs -- which is nearly everybody -- rise up against the ins, for whom this is but one of many discrediting issues.

    Israel doesn't care. What's the worst case scenario for them? Say, Saudi Arabia is overthrown by a novel Islamo-Fascist party -- the term has never been more than an idle slander before, but if you start from the Nazi notion of a Third Reich (this one would seek to revive the Abassid and Ottoman Empires, which can provide plenty of Islamic trappings to pave the way to war) -- which then moves on to form alliances with Egypt, Iran, and/or Turkey (each susceptible in their own ways to such thinking), Israel could simply respond by obliterating them all with nuclear weapons -- and could depend on the US as backup. Some Israelis may even relish the challenge, as cover for finishing off the Palestinians, and extending their settlements onto the East Bank.

    Needless to say, no actual Arab political leader is thinking even remotely along these lines. Even ISIS isn't ambitious enough to challenge Israel. The only way this situation can be resolved -- the only way Palestinians can finally catch a break -- is if/when Israel decides to change course. To paraphrase Golda Meir, "Peace will come when the Israelis will love their children more than they hate Palestinians." That's not happening soon, and there's not a damn thing Arabs, including Palestinians, can do about it. (Well, the BDS work is good; the UN, the ICJ; the protests in the US and Europe directed at curtailing support Israel still depends on for its warmaking. Threats and acts of violence against Israelis and/or their supporters abroad are more likely to do harm than good.) Related here:

  • Alain Alameddine/Nira Iny: [08-17] Germany was never denazified. That's why it's siding with Israel today. "The Allies failed to denazify Europe by failing to dismantle the political foundations their own nations shared with the Nazi regime. Europeans need not repeat that mistake." I don't buy this argument on any level. There was an explicit denazification program in the late 1940s. It was narrow and shallow, and abandoned shortly, as it turned out that the most anti-communist Germans the West needed after partition had Nazi backgrounds, and by then simple disavowal seemed like a satisfactory compromise.

    The real change of heart occurred in the 1960s, when a new generation came of age, and was eager to break with the past. That's when acknowledgment of the Holocaust started to appear in German literature, e.g., the plays of Rolf Hochhuth and Peter Weiss. That also happened after Israel tried Eichmann, and started lobbying Germany for reparations -- not just money, but recognition that Israel alone represented the survivors of the Holocaust. That was a good deal for Israel. What Germans got out of it is less tangible, but they could afford some charity to feel and look better, and having no Jewish population of their own, they could easily equate Jews with Israelis.

    That Israel would eventually manifest symptoms of Nazism was unforeseen, and may still be bewildering. As far as I can tell, no western state that supports Israel does so because they're in favor of the genocide. Most go to great lengths to deny that Israel is doing any such thing, and to insist that Israel is only defending itself, as is assumed to be their right. Where Germany is exceptional is in how dogmatically they equate antisemitism, which they are well trained to eschew, with any criticism of Israel. But that has more to do with the fact that they were once ruled by Nazis than that they still feel the urges that once drove them to genocide.

  • Omer Bartov: [08-14] As a former IDF soldier and historian of genocide, I was deeply disturbed by my recent visit to Israel: "This summer, one of my lectures was protested by far-right students. Their rhetoric brought to mind some of the darkest moments of 20th-century history -- and overlapped with mainstream Israeli views to a shocking degree." Following is a long quote, but virtually all of it is needed to get a sense of how ordinary Israelis are considering events. This is preceded by a long section on Bartov's own experiences in the IDF and in studying Nazi Germany and how soldiers are trained to commit war crimes. That has much bearing on how IDF soldiers are fighting this war, but their popular support (or at least forbearance) is something different. Although Israel prides itself on being a democracy -- at least for some of the people, some of the time -- there has long been a divide between the political/military class, who are trained to lead and fight, and the elect citizenry, who are terrorized and ingrained with propaganda, so they will follow and fight (as ordered).

    Today, across vast swaths of the Israeli public, including those who oppose the government, two sentiments reign supreme.

    The first is a combination of rage and fear, a desire to re-establish security at any cost and a complete distrust of political solutions, negotiations and reconciliation. The military theorist Carl von Clausewitz noted that war was the extension of politics by other means, and warned that without a defined political objective it would lead to limitless destruction. The sentiment that now prevails in Israel similarly threatens to make war into its own end. In this view, politics is an obstacle to achieving goals rather than a means to limit destruction. This is a view that can only ultimately lead to self-annihilation.

    The second reigning sentiment -- or rather lack of sentiment -- is the flipside of the first. It is the utter inability of Israeli society today to feel any empathy for the population of Gaza. The majority, it seems, do not even want to know what is happening in Gaza, and this desire is reflected in TV coverage. Israeli television news these days usually begins with reports on the funerals of soldiers, invariably described as heroes, fallen in the fighting in Gaza, followed by estimates of how many Hamas fighters were "liquidated." References to Palestinian civilian deaths are rare and normally presented as part of enemy propaganda or as a cause for unwelcome international pressure. In the face of so much death, this deafening silence now seems like its own form of vengefulness.

    Of course, the Israeli public long ago became inured to the brutal occupation that has characterised the country for 57 out of the 76 years of its existence. But the scale of what is being perpetrated in Gaza right now by the IDF is as unprecedented as the complete indifference of most Israelis to what is being done in their name. In 1982, hundreds of thousands of Israelis protested against the massacre of the Palestinian population in the refugee camps Sabra and Shatila in western Beirut by Maronite Christian militias, facilitated by the IDF. Today, this kind of response is inconceivable. The way people's eyes glaze over whenever one mentions the suffering of Palestinian civilians, and the deaths of thousands of children and women and elderly people, is deeply unsettling.

    In theory, the political/military class serves at the sufferance of the voters, but for all intents and purposes, the voters only exist to ratify their leaders, who have been carefully selected through decades of conflict and combat. As Americans, we should know what that feels like, although we feel it less intensely: our businesses are booming, our wars are more distant and less intrusive, our homeland more secure, our history unclouded by Holocaust paranoia. Still, our information is manipulated, our options are selected and limited, and our attention diverted, so how responsible are we for our leaders, let alone for what they do once elected?

    By the way, I also ran across this article Bartov wrote early on: [2023-11-10] What I believe as a historian of genocide. His article starts: "Israeli military operations have created an untenable humanitarian crisis, which will only worsen over time." He then asks whether those military operations constitute genocide, and tries his best to answer "not yet."

  • Marco Carnelos: [08-19] European leaders are stoking the flames of a Middle East inferno: "Their wilful blindness to Israel's atrocities in Gaza, and their refusal to hold Netanyahu to account, could sharply escalate the conflict." The author has been following European leaders, to little avail:

  • Juan Cole: [08-16] Saudi Crown Prince fears assassination if he recognizes Israel without getting a Palestinian state. Draws on:

  • Hamid Dabashi: [08-18] Thanks to Gaza, European philosophy has been exposed as ethically bankrupt: "From Heidegger's Nazism to Habermas's Zionism, the suffering of the 'Other' is of little consequence." Just noted, not something I'm interested in digging into at the moment, but I will note that back in the 1970s, my interest in the Frankfurt School hit a brick wall when I attempted to read one of his major works (probably Knowledge and Human Interests) and failed to retain anything useful from it (not even rejection). While I know a bit more, and care a bit less, about Heidegger, that's a pretty narrow slice of European philosophy to attempt to generalize from. As for Habermas's cheerleading for Israel against Hamas, I noted that his principle statement -- a joint letter -- was from relatively early in the genocide (Nov. 13), so I wondered if he had since thought better. A quick search didn't reveal anything, but I will note this:

  • Chip Gibbons/Nathan Fuller: [08-16] More than 100 journalists come together with their fellow journalists in Palestine and against US complicity in their killing.

  • Miles Howe: [08-17] Revocation of the JNF's charitable status indicates massive shift in how Canada views the Israeli occupation: "The revocation of the Jewish National Fund's and Ne'eman Foundation's charitable status suggests a massive shift is underway in how Canada views the illicit funding of West Bank settlements following the ICJ's opinion on the Israeli occupation."

  • Sarah Jones: [08-19] Gaza is the defining moral issue of our time: Agreed that "what's happening in Gaza today is a moral outrage and an ongoing genocide, and our reaction to it will shape who we are as a nation." I'd add that that's been the case since around Oct. 10, around the time when Israel repulsed the last Hamas fighters and re-sealed the breached walls around Gaza. A unilateral Israeli ceasefire at that point would have ended the war, leaving Gaza badly damaged, but few would have faulted Israel for that. Continuing the bombing for a week or two more before a ceasefire would have made the point that Israelis are vindictive bastards, which should have been unnecessary, but given how much worse it could be, we would have sighed in relief. There's no excuse for what they've done ever since then, and even if they can't see that, there's no reason for the US, Europe, and everyone else to make excuses, let alone aid and abet, their genocide.

    On the other hand, one thing I had to come to grips with after Oct. 7 was that moral judgments are a luxury that presume a degree of free choice. I don't have time to go back through those issues -- you can check my old columns from Oct. 2023 on, which hold up pretty well (though may have been a bit too generous toward Israel). One thing I do want to emphasize here is that I think moral judgments are unnecessary and sometimes dangerous luxuries in politics. For most of us, moral judgments give us essential perspective on the world. But politicians have to operate in a different world, one where being "right" signifies very little, and what you can do is often quite constrained. I can comfortably say that Netanyahu is immoral for wanting to prosecute his war, and that Biden is immoral for not restraining him, but I understand that what Harris can actually do is very limited, and may not be helped by saying the right things (as Jones wants her to do -- that is the point of the article). I think that we should judge Biden harshly for what he has said, done, and not done, but I'm not yet prepared to say the same about Harris. Moreover, while I would like for her to take what I consider proper positions, I understand that as VP under Biden, and as the Democratic nominee for president, she is operating under constraints where saying the right things may not contribute to the right actions, and may even complicate them.

  • Ahmed Khan: [08-16] I left Biden's campaign over Gaza. Here's how Harris can earn my trust again.

  • Joseph Massad: [03-20] In the West, Israel never initiates violence, it only 'retaliates': "In the western narrative, it is the Palestinians who initiated violence by daring to resist racist and colonial Zionist violence, which is why their resistance can never be called 'retaliation.'" He notes that their choice of language is not new or peculiar to Israel: "The New York Times referred to the white Rhodesians' killing of 1,600 Africans in Zambian refugee camps in 1978 as 'retaliatory raids.'"

  • Craig Mokhiber: [08-12] The ICJ finds that BDS is not merely a right, but an obligation: "The ICJ's authoritative ruling on the Israeli occupation makes clear that boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against Israeli occupation, colonization, and apartheid are not only a moral imperative but also a legal obligation."

  • Jeff Wright: [08-11] In significant reversal, Church of England head says Israeli occupation must end following ICJ opinion: "'The [recent] Advisory Opinion by the International Court of Justice,' Archbishop Justin Welby writes, 'makes definitively clear that Israel's presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is unlawful and needs to end as rapidly as possible.'"

Election notes:

Trump:

  • Charles M Blow: [08-14] Another 'nasty' woman strikes fear in Trump: "But when Trump talks about women who in any way challenge his power, his rhetoric drips with sexism. In recent days, he has referred to Harris as 'incompetent,' 'nasty' and 'not smart.'"

  • Jamelle Bouie:

    • [08-13] What the Republican Party might look like if Trump loses.

    • [08-16] Trump has opened the pathway to reform: Not really, unless he thinks Trump is going to lose so badly that Democrats will be able to implement his major reforms -- he starts with "end the electoral college and move to a national popular vote," removing all the vote suppression and gerrymanders that have allowed Republicans to claim elections, and ending the filibuster, which allows a minority party to frustrate change. Oh yes, also "reform of the entire federal judiciary." Only when denied such cheats will Republicans be forced to become good citizens, and compete for real majority rule -- in which case, would they still be conservatives? And in any case, why credit Trump with "opening the pathway to reform" when all he did was to reduce the old elitism and crony corruption ad absurdum?

      Bouie is usually a pretty smart guy, so I really don't get what he's driving at here. He writes, "The United States will always have a conservative party," but why? Do we really need a party that is dedicated to plutocracy? To keeping most people poor, in debt, and powerless? To promoting racism and violence? To a police state that protects fraud and rackets? There will always be a place for what's called "conservative" personal values, but why should such values be incompatible with conscientious and respectful government, fair business, law and order, a sense of public interest, a generous safety net, and broad-based equality? Republicans have to cheat, because what they want is fundamentally unacceptable to a majority of the people. Democrats don't have to cheat. They just have to get out and run to honestly represent the people in their districts.

      If half of the Republicans in the Senate were to lose next time out, the Senate would not be suddenly flooded with socialists like Bernie Sanders and liberals like Elizabeth Warren. They'd wind up with a lot more people like John Tester and Joe Manchin, who would be nearly as conservative on personal principles as the Republicans they replaced, but at least believe in honest, functional government, like Democrats do, and may be a bit more tolerant of diversity, because they'll see more people as allies and less as threats to their delicately perched minoritarian rule.

      And if Democrats did succeed in representing everyone (without or even with the 1%), which is clearly the goal, what the hell do we need Republicans for anyway? They can go the way of the Know Nothings and the Mugwumps, for all I care.

      Oh, one more thing: anyone who wants to talk about reforming democratic institutions without starting at money should be hooted out of the room. The number one threat to democracy is money. And we know this because we've already seen it at work. And even though the Democratic Party still gives lip service to democracy, they've been afflicted as badly as the Republicans. The only difference is that the Republicans brag about the power of money in their party, while Democrats just whisper about it -- a hypocrisy that paradoxically makes them look even more corrupt, and makes ordinary people all the more upset at them.

  • Philip Bump:

  • Jonathan Chait:

  • Kevin T Dugan: [08-12] Traders are having a hard time staying bullish on Trump media.

  • Tom Engelhardt: [08-15] Why voting for Donald Trump is a suicidal act. His main thing has always been the folly of empire, but lately he keeps circling back to climate change, with increasingly dire consequences.

  • Michelle Goldberg: [08-16] Trump is no longer even pretending to champion the working class.

  • Margaret Hartmann:

  • Ellen Ioanes: [08-12] What we know about Trump's claim that Iran hacked his campaign.

  • Jeet Heer: [08-16] Donald Trump is already planting the seeds of the next insurrection: "Insecure and contemplating defeat, the former president returns to a familiar script." This, of course, speaks to his character and nature. No doubt he will whine and lie, threaten and cajole. He may animate some of his usual surrogates, assuming they're not yet in jail. But he's not going to have anywhere near the credibility and resources he had as sitting president. He might organize a rally, but they're not getting anywhere close to the Capitol. He might try the fake elector slate again, but with indictments still hanging over their heads in Arizona and Georgia, it's less likely to happen. And the immunity the Supreme Court seems to have granted him in 2020 won't be applicable this time. At some point, even his hand-picked Justices are going to throw him under the bus. And the military is not going to rise up like some Praetorian Guard declaring him Caesar. Of course, if the election hangs by a thread, it's going to be loudly contested through the courts, where he plausibly has chances slightly above 50-50. But if he loses by a clear margin (like 3%, with 30+ electoral votes) there's nothing much he can do about it. The question then will be whether he wants to martyr himself, or settle and plea bargain. No matter his distasteful he considers the latter, I doubt he has the constitution for the former.

  • Ed Kilgore: [08-15] Trump xenophobia reaches its apex in racist campaign post: "A post from Trump's campaign embraces the 'great replacement theory,' with Kamala Harris as the evil engineer of American carnage."

  • Whizy Kim: [08-13] Why Musk and Trump are on the same side: "The richest man in the world and the former president's glitchy, cringeworthy interview, explained."

  • Leon Krauze: [08-12] What deporting 15 million people would look like. Even here, Trump's mass deportation fantasy still looks like idle talk. When I hear things like this, I try to imagine what it would actually require. As near as I can figure, this is how it would have to work (in order to work, which is supposedly the goal, but not the most likely result):

    1. Due process would have to be short-circuited (to some extent it already is, but we're talking much more extremely). Normally, the courts would object, but Trump judges may not.
    2. You'd need a national identity system, so you can efficiently sort out people, to determine whether they stay or go. To enforce compliance, you may have to arrest massive numbers of people, just to get them into the system. Enforcement is likely to involve a lot of profiling.
    3. You'd need a massive expansion of enforcement and detention resources. How massive depends on effectively the first two points are implemented, but even if they're very efficient, you'll still need a lot.
    4. You'll need to greatly expand monitoring and surveillance, especially of businesses.
    5. You might consider expanding your network by offering bounties, which would provide incentives for all sorts of abuse, and probably produce some uncomfortable blowback.
    6. After all, the more you criminalize what many people accept as normal behavior, the less respect people have for law and justice, so you're likely to see a much broader increase in crime.
    7. One should also note that a government that is willing to do all these things to punish immigrants isn't likely to treat its own citizens much better. Immigrants aren't the only people Republicans despise and disrespect.

    While there are people who would applaud such a proposal, their numbers are small, and their influence is limited. Republicans talk a big game, but they're not very good at actually doing things -- nor, really, about thinking practically. The Iran nuclear deal is a fair example: the only way to insure compliance to negotiate a deal that would allow for inspections, but would also give Iran some incentive to comply, with little risk to their own security. No other way was possible, but Republicans (following Netanyahu's lead, as usual) preferred threats and projection of force. You know what happened after Trump ended the deal.

    Republicans would rather yell about something than deal with it. That's why Trump killed a border security bill that Republicans had threatened to shut down the government to demand, one that Biden was willing (and perhaps even eager) to accede to. He wants to run on the issue, and he wants to build monuments to his vanity like his border wall, and he has no qualms about inflicting cruelty on the immigrants, but he isn't serious about fixing the problem. His threats may be less transparently phony than Romney's solution of "self-deportion," but they're still just threats -- accented, true enough, with performative cruelty, because the Republican base eats that up. But does the base want identity cards and bounty hunters? And are the donors willing to sacrifice all that cheap labor? The notion that deposed union workers from the coal mines and factories are going to going to flock to Texas and California to pick lettuce and strawberries, or to west Kansas to slaughter beef, is fantasy. You're talking about deporting 5% of the people who live and work in the country. You think Washington's lobbyists are going to pay for that?

  • Chris Lehmann:

    • [08-13] The true source of Trump's delusions: the gospel of positive thinking: "Trump's obsession with crowd sizes is part of his lifelong quest to prevent reality from blocking his fath to success." Sure, there's something to this, but the seed planted by Norman Vincent Peale was relatively benign for most people, but with Trump was planted in the soil of class privilege and monstrous ego. Also, note that Trump knew Peale personally (much as he knew Roy Cohn), which helped to make his revelation seem like personal destiny. (The Bushes had a similar relationship to Billy Graham, who most of us only knew via TV.)

    • [08-14] The press has the Trump campaign e-mails. Why haven't we seen them? "The media went berserk over Hillary Clinton's leaked e-mails in 2016. But when Trump campaign messages leaked this year, standards changed."

  • Ruth Marcus: [08-14] Trump's no Nixon. He doesn't deserve a pardon. My first reaction was Nixon didn't deserve a pardon either, and then when I started weighing them against one another, I still believe that Nixon was much worse. Granted, his margin was largely on things (war crimes) he never would have been prosecuted for in the first place. The actual (or for Nixon potential) prosecutions are comparable in that they were not just crimes against democracy but against the Democratic Party, made even worse by the cover ups. And there, at least, Trump far exceeded Nixon, who at least had the decency to retreat into political irrelevancy -- and thereby proving that even the worst criminals can be rendered harmless by removing them from the conditions that made their crimes possible. That may be a useful guideline for dealing with Trump: take away his political ambitions, his soap boxes, nearly all of his money, and it may not matter whether he spends his remaining days in prison. On the other hand, if he doesn't, he will always be an example of the American justice system's favoritism. That he has gotten away with so much for so long means that those who fear for the integrity of the system have already lost.

  • Meridith McGraw/Adam Wren/Natalie Allison/Adam Cancryn: [06-22] Trump keeps flip-flopping his policy positions after meeting with rich people.

  • Edith Olmsted: [08-19] Trump's rare attempt to stay on message ends in disaster: "Donald Trump gave a low-energy speech that elicited few cheers from the audience."

  • Charles P Pierce:

  • Jessica Piper: [08-20] GOP megadonor drops another $50M into pro-Trump super PAC: "Timothy Mellon has now given $115 million this cycle to the group." Mellon has also given $25 million to a super PAC for Robert F Kennedy Jr., who now seems likely to drop out.

  • Nia Prater: [08-12] What we know about the Trump-campaign hack.

  • Brian Schwartz: [08-16] GOP megadonor Miriam Adelson plans to do whatever it takes to help Trump win with $100 million PAC: "The Adelsons donated nearly $90 million to a pro-Trump PAC in 2020. Miriam Adelson could be Trump's biggest financial booster by Election Day."

  • Dylan Scott: [08-14] Trump's campaign against public health is back on: "The former president says he'll block funding for US schools that require vaccines."

  • Matt Stieb: [08-12] Trump-Musk meeting begins with X meltdown.

  • Rodney Tiffen: [08-11] How Rupert Murdoch helped create a monster -- the era of Trumpism -- and then lost control of it.

  • Michael Tomasky: [08-16] Donald Trump has no idea what has hit him, and it's a joy to watch: "He's had yet another horrible week. The old tricks aren't working. Kamala Harris does not fear him. And it's showing in the numbers."

  • Li Zhou: [08-09] Trump's ever-shifting position on abortion, explained (as best as possible).

  • No More Mr Nice Blog: [] The other W word:

    I am all in on the One Weird Trick Democrats have found -- calling Republicans "weird." It works because the GOP ticket is, let's face it, a couple of fucking weirdos, but it goes way beyond them to encompass the party as a whole: their weird conspiracy theories, their weird obsession with children's genitalia, their weird and creepy compulsion to control women.

    But I'm wondering if there might also be gold in another, more Trump-specific line of attack. Because the thing is, Trump is just really, really whiny.

    Trump complains a lot. Like, all the fucking time. He complains morning, noon, and into the wee hours of the night. He complains about being held accountable for his numerous crimes, and he complains about anyone mentioning his convictions. He complains about the polls. He complains about the fact that things change in a campaign, then he turns around and complains about his own campaign's inability to force him to adjust to change. He complains about the microphone, his teleprompters, sound system, and imaginary supporters being denied entry at his rallies. And yesterday he complained about "audio issues" on the X call that, he claims, were responsible for his lisp. There's a case to be made that Trump is the whiniest whiner in the whole whiny history of whinerdom.

Vance:

And other Republicans:

Harris:

  • Perry Bacon Jr.: [08-13] It's not just vibes. Harris is polling really well. "Her better-than-expected numbers are creating optimism, but Trump can still win."

  • Robert L Borosage: [08-13] It's not about Harris "moving to the center": Responding to a spate of recent articles urging Harris to "move to the center" or reprimanding her for not doing so conspicuously enough. I wrote enough about Jonathan Chait last week, but Borosage adds this:

    New York magazine's Jonathan Chait, the relentless Javert on the hunt for any progressive stirring, argues that to make up for Walz, Harris needs to adopt positions "that will upset progressive activists" and "understand that the likelihood a given action or statement will create complaints on the left is a reason to do something, rather than a reason not to."

    Chait doesn't deign to reveal how Harris should rile her base. Instead, he invokes Trump as a model, arguing that the Donald's "softening" of the abortion plank at the Republican convention "was a smart move to reduce the party's exposure to unpopular positions" and didn't cause a fracturing of the party, despite grousing from anti-abortion zealots.

    Really? It takes a fervid imagination to believe that Trump's cynical repositioning on abortion makes a whit of difference to voters concerned about the reversal of Roe v. Wade. The only thing Trump gained was the admiration of pundits like Chait who consider such political posturing to be sophisticated.

    But when Trump waffles, his people know he's dissembling and don't care: they trust him to stay true, at least to their core emotional bonds. But who trusts a Democrat? They say one thing, do another, always looking for compromises to reconcile everyone and satisfy no one. The perception that HRC was crooked destroyed her. On the other hand, you could understanding that Trump was far more crooked, and take that as a badge of character. What Harris and Walz need to do is to show some character and commitment, and the worst way to do that is to reassure donors and pundits they're no threat.

    The real challenge for Harris is not how she insults the left but how she makes herself into a credible champion of the economic concerns of working people. . . . Harris can't and shouldn't compete with those moved by Christian nationalism or racial division, but she can and should seek to cut away at his support by making a more compelling argument on what produced the economic distress and growing despair among working people, the obscene inequality that eviscerated the middle class -- and what can be done about it. . . .

    Her stump speech highlights her commitment to "an economy that works for working people" with a practical agenda -- paid family and medical leave, affordable childcare, taking on Big Pharma to lower drug prices, making healthcare more affordable. Walz reinforces that message because he's actually passed such measures in Minnesota. And much of this agenda was passed by the Democratic House in Biden's first two years, only to be blocked in the Senate by Republican opposition. As to "moving to the center," these are all incredibly popular programs, supported by the vast majority of Americans. . . .

    For this to bite, Harris must become more populist, not less. She must be clear that she will raise taxes on the rich to pay for affordable childcare, that she will take on Big Pharma to lower drug prices, break up corporate monopolies to lower prices, take on Big Oil and invest in renewable energy, addressing the accelerating climate catastrophe and capturing what already are the growth industries of the next decades. Again, the contrast with Donald Trump's promising oil executives that he'll do their bidding if they'll ante up $1 billion for his campaign is telling.

    As best I recall, all Democrats move left as elections approach, then move back center after they win, as they face entrenched lobby powers. I have little doubt that Harris will follow this usual arc. But the answers to most pressing problems are to the left. If they want to be taken seriously, they need to look in that direction. Otherwise, if they follow centrist scolds like Chait, they're as much as admitting they're hopeless. Borosage also cites:

  • Gabriel Debenedetti: [08-16] Kamala is a (border) cop: "How the Harris campaign plans to deal with the most common Republican line of attack."

  • EJ Dionne Jr.: [08-11] Harris is beating Trump by transcending him: "The vice president and her running mate are achieving a radical shift in messaging."

  • Kevin T Duan: [08-17] Kamala Harris wants to build 3 million houses. Is that enough?

  • Abdallah Fayyad: [08-13] Trump and Harris agree on "no tax on tips." They're both wrong. "The policy looks less like a pro-worker tax credit and more like a big business tax cut." I accept that this was "Trump's idea" -- sure, he got it from Republican policy wonks, as did Ted Cruz, who has introduced legislation to that effect (see links below) -- but it's more interesting that Harris "stole the idea," rather than making any attempt to refute it. On its own, it isn't a very good policy idea, but by the time it turns into legislation, it will be a small part of something much worse (if Trump does it) or maybe not so bad (if Harris does it). It does make it much more possible to happen, because now it's a "bipartisan" idea, and who can object to that? Democrats like to present themselves as open to bipartisan ideas, even if they wind up rejecting most of what Republicans offer as such. (Actually, the only things Republicans offer as "bipartisan" are wedge issues designed to alienate Democratic voters from their donor-oriented leaders. NAFTA was a good example.) It also shows that the Harris campaign is flexible and quick to change direction when they see an opportunity. That's, well, not something Democrats are renowned for.

    My own reservations are largely because I really hate tipping and the whole gratuity-driven sector of the economy (which is part of the reason I've been so reluctant to put my cup out, despite all the poorly-compensated work I do for public consumption). I worry that exempting tips from taxation will just encourage more companies not just to offload their labor costs but to monetize their tip-making opportunities. I worry that exempting tips from taxation will result in more "gig workers," poorly regulated and often unprotected. On the other hand, I know that tips have never been properly accounted for, and that more stringent enforcement is likely to be onerous and unlikely to be cost-effective. A more honest economy would have less, not more, tipping. Fayyad also makes points about the nature and quality of working for tips, which I can well imagine is even worse than stated.

    A big part of the subtext is that Trump and the Republicans don't just want rich people to have to pay lower tax rates, they want to make it easier for them to cheat and pay even less (or nothing at all).

  • Nick Hanauer: [08-16] A very good sign: Kamala Harris is going right at corporate greed: "Greedy CEOs have milked the average American household for $12,000 since the pandemic. As a businessman, I can explain how they're doing it."

  • Ginny Hogan: [08-14] Can Harris and Walz meme their way to the White House? "The online jokes are not just about having fun. They represent a new found political energy within the Democratic Party."

  • Paul Krugman:

    • [08-15] Is it morning in Kamala Harris's America? That was supposed to be Reagan's winning formula, back in 1980, in a contest between optimism and "malaise." Clinton in 1992 and Obama in 2008 promised change, but couldn't (or wouldn't) deliver. Harris at least has the look of change, especially in contrast to Biden and Trump.

    • [08-12] Trump calls Harris a 'communist.' That shows how worried he is. Or how dumb he is? Or how old he is, given that he learned the charge from Roy Cohn, who was Joe McCarthy's lawyer (and McCarthy was a has-been when he died in 1957, when Trump was 10).

  • Josh Marshall: [08-12] Team Happy vs Team Mad: "Team Mad" hardly need any explanation: they're mad not just as hell but as hatters, but I haven't heard of any presidential-level politician described as "happy" since Al Smith. (Maybe Hubert Humphrey, but I was around in 1968 and I don't remember him as being very happy that year.) But evidently this was already a thing with Harris in 2020:

    As Marshall notes: "Happy isn't the only or most important part of a political campaign. Especially when there's quite a lot not to be happy about." On the other hand, when you're suddenly reprieved from impending doom, it's natural to feel down right euphoric. That will wear off soon enough, but not quite so quickly with a candidate who can smile and laugh as with one that can only snarl and scowl (and whine).

  • Farah Stockman: [08-12] Harris should take divisions over Gaza seriously.

  • Hunter Walker: [08-15] Bernie Sanders makes the progressive case for Kamala Harris.

Walz:

Biden:

  • Joshua A Cohen: [08-16] When will the Biden dead-enders admit they were wrong? "Hey, can we circle back to when many supposedly intelligent people were making one of the most obviously ridiculous political arguments of all time?" I don't doubt that there are past debates worth circling back to in order to see who was right and who was wrong -- the war resolutions in 2001 (Afghanistan) and 2002 (Iraq) are still instructive, and even the Lincoln-Douglas debates (1858) are worth remembering -- but this one was just a flash in the pan. But at this point, are there still any "dead-enders" left to extirpate? Why be sore winners? It's a nasty habit, like desecrating the corpses of the slain. But in this case it's also a silly one. The "dead-enders" weren't even that -- unlike, e.g., those few Hillary Clinton supporters who carried their grudges well into Obama's winning campaign. They were simply trying their stiff-upper-lip best to be loyal to the presumptive nominee, a guy the rest of us would very probably have voted for in November, no matter how ill-advised we thought his candidacy. If any of them have since failed to support Harris, I haven't noticed. The only laments I have noticed came from Trump himself.

  • David Dayen: [08-16] The inflation reduction act at two: "Challenges remain, but there's been a lot of progress on restoring an industrial base, creating union jobs, and transforming our energy economy."

  • Harold Meyerson: [08-12] There are some damned good reasons why Joe Biden moved to the left: "Biden's economic progressivism has been both historic and (had he only been able to explain it) good politics." One thing this reminds me of is that Franklin Roosevelt was really good at explaining things. His bank holiday "fireside chat" was possibly the most brilliant thing any American president ever did. My other key thought here is that Democrats are expected not just to complain but to solve problems, and for most problems, the answers are to the left. That's one reason Republicans are so bad at governing: they keep looking right, running away from answers. There is also a long section here on Jonathan Chait, but you know about him already.

  • Nicole Narea: [08-13] Biden wants to free you from all those subscriptions you meant to cancel but didn't: "It's the latest way Biden is trying to combat pesky 'junk fees' driving up prices."

And other Democrats:

  • Colbert I King: A rerun of Chicago '68? Only if Harris lets it happen. The violence of 1968 was almost exclusively due to Mayor Daley and his police, so that part is unlikely to repeat. The wars, or at least the president's culpability, are very different, and so is the impact of those wars on the protesters. While Humphrey was the probable nominee, he still had to secure his nomination from a relatively open and contested convention, whereas Harris has this one sewn up. And while Israel/Gaza is divisive among the Democratic rank-and-file, I don't know of a single left-leaning Democrat who isn't supporting Harris. She needs to walk a fine line, both here and all the way to November. If she's really lucky, the ceasefire and prisoner exchange will kick in the day before the convention. If not, that's one more grudge to bear against Netanyahu.

  • Ezra Klein: [08-18] Trump turned the Democratic Party into a pitiless machine. This could be a bit more succinct, but it frames the 2024 election well enough: on one side, you have a party of pragmatists who want to get good things done and will compromise to make that happen, and on the other side you have a self-aggrandizing nihilist criminal and his personal cult of dysfunctional maniacs, plus hangers-on who think they can wheedle some quick bucks.

    There is a contradiction at the heart of the Republican Party that does not exist at the heart of the Democratic Party. Democrats are united in their belief that the government can, and should, act on behalf of the public. To be on the party's far left is to believe the government should do much more. To be among its moderates is to believe it should do somewhat more. But all of the people elected as Democrats, from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Senator Joe Manchin, are there for the same reason: to use the power of the government to pursue their vision of the good. The divides are real and often bitter. But there is always room for negotiation because there is a fundamental commonality of purpose.

    The modern Republican Party, by contrast, is built upon a loathing of the government. Some of its members want to see the government shrunk and hamstrung. . . . The Trumpist faction is more focused on purging government institutions of the disloyal. . . . Either way, to become part of the government as it exists now -- to be engaged in the day-to-day process of governing -- is to open yourself to suspicion and potentially mark yourself for a later purge. . . . For the Republicans, if government is trying to do something, they want to try and stop it. Just reflexively. It is something that's bred into the Republican Party that makes it hard to maintain an organization that is supposed to be functioning in government.

    Democrats have their own ideological tensions. But Trump's victory turned Democrats into a ruthlessly pragmatic party. It was that pragmatism that led them to ultimately nominate Joe Biden in 2020. It was that same pragmatism that led them to abandon him in 2024.

  • Timothy Noah: [08-01] How the Democrats finally took on Big Pharma: "Millions of jobs? Rising wages? Those are great, but the unsung economic achievement has come in making health care much more affordable. The victories, starting with insulin prices, are remarkable.

Legal matters and other crimes:

  • John Herrman: [08-19] How do you break up a company like Google?

  • Elie Honig: [08-16] Jack Smith can still hurt Donald Trump: "It's time to start thinking about the potential uses of an evidentiary hearing."

  • Ian Millhiser:

    • [08-12] The First Amendment is in grave danger if Trump wins: "Three Supreme Court justices want to drastically roll back the First amendment. Trump could make it five."

    • [08-15] What can be done about this Supreme Court's very worst decisions? "It is important to hang onto grudges against the Supreme Court." He mentions five cases in particular. Back when Barrett was being confirmed, there was a lot of talk about reforming the Supreme Court. I felt then that such talk was premature: you didn't have the power to actually do anything about it, and you wouldn't get the support until you could point to actual examples where the Supreme Court is subverting democracy through arbitrary rulings. These five cases are the sort examples that help build the case. Now, you still have to build a sufficient political power base to implement radical change. Roosevelt couldn't do it even after his 1936 landslide. On the other hand, he didn't have to. The phrase I recall from my brilliant 8th grade US history class was "the switch in time that saved nine." After 1936, the Supreme Court stopped blocking New Deal programs for the sheer hell of it. And Roosevelt lasted long enough that he eventually nominated most of the Court, and for the first (and it now seems, sadly, the last) time in history the Court became a progressive force in American law. It is still possible that the middle-third of the Court (Roberts, Kavanaugh, Barrett) could try to bend a bit with the winds to save their jobs. If not, they'll just keep adding weight to the already strong case for overriding them.

    • [08-19] Republicans ask the Supreme Court to disenfranchise thousands of swing state voters.

  • Nicole Narea: [08-12] Violent crime is plummeting. Why? "Donald Trump says crime is out of control. The facts say otherwise."

  • Jeffrey St Clair: [08-16] Scam science and the death penalty: the case of Robert Roberson.

Climate and environment:

Economic matters:

Ukraine War and Russia:

America's empire and the world:

Other stories:

  • Chico Harlan/Michael Kranish/Isaac Stanley-Becker: [08-17] Jared Kushner wants to turn a wild stretch of Albania into a luxury resort: In terms of graft, Trump was just a distraction. This is the guy who really reaped dividends from his time in the White House.

    The former senior White House adviser [and Trump son-in-law] has accepted billions from the sovereign investment funds of countries that he dealt with as a government official, and is now investing in countries his father-in-law would deal with if reelected. Kushner makes an estimated $40 million in management fees, regardless of what happens to the investment, and stands to make much more if the deals are profitable, according to a recent letter from Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon.

  • Daniel Judt: [08-13] To build working-class power, we need a workers' education movement: "A century ago, labor colleges transformed American unions. It's time to bring them back."

  • Max Moran/Henry Burke: [08-13] What we talk about when we talk about the revolving door: "Bringing tech and finance executives into government because they are 'the country's smartest and hardest-working people' is faintly ridiculous." Response to a Matthew Yglesias piece (link below) I saw because it was hugely ridiculous and meant to write about but didn't get around to. Maybe some day.

  • Gary Shteyngart: [04-04] Crying myself to sleep on the biggest cruise ship ever: "Seven agonizing night aboard the Icon of the Sea." Bottom banner says, "This article was a gift from an Atlantic subscriber." I thought I'd pass it along, leaving the full URL intact on the off chance that it might work for you. (I usually strip the extraneous "GET" attributes, a habit I initially got into to get rid of Facebook callbacks.) Long article, only lightly sampled, as I have zero interest in ever embarking on a cruise ship, no experiences to compare with, and a kneejerk reaction that people who do have too much money and are too self-indulgent -- even though I wouldn't oppose either trait on principle. Still, like indulging in arty porn, I have occasionally thought about reading David Foster Wallace's cruise ship voyage account in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. Looks like you can still find a PDF of the original article here: Shipping Out: On the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise.

Obituaries

  • Corey Robin: [08-15] Farewell to a working-class hero: "Pat Carta was part of a generation of workers and organizers whose immense knowledge about overcoming fear to build class consciousness and worker power will never be found in a book."

Books

Chatter

  • Tony Karon [08-19] [Responding to Bhaskar Sunkara: "I never want to hear the word 'vibes' again"] You're retiring from paying attention to US presidential politics? As Neal Postman warned all those years ago, a political system in which TV ads are the basic idiom is about nothing but "vibes"

I don't go looking for memes, but sometimes they find me:

  • link: Elon Musk is doing an incredible job of educating the public about how capitalists end up aligning with fascists to maintain their wealth and limit the power of the working classes.

  • link: In 2017 this guy paid $750 in taxes. In 2017, taxpayers paid $45 Million for this guy to go golfing.

  • link: Universal health care is such a complex beast that only 32 of the world's 33 developed nations have been able to make it work.

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Current count: 255 links, 14286 words (18776 total)

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