Category Archives: Politics

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Mark it down in your diary that in the first month of 2019 we all saw with our own eyes that the two leading democratic governments in the world — the United States and the United Kingdom — were in the thrall of an unprecedented seizure, unable to act, sliding toward irrevocable division, chaos and ruin. A third democracy — France — was spiraling through the smoke of widespread violence and nascent rebellion toward a very hard landing indeed. And there were many others, such as Venezuela, disintegrating before our eyes.

The government of the United States has been hamstrung by a partial shutdown that has lasted longer than any other such political gambit in history. (The Donald is fond of saying he is doing something “for the first time in history,” but for him all history begins with him — for him, this is the year 72 A.D., or “after Donald.”) But really, never in the history of our republic has the government been crippled for so long, never so many people deprived of their livelihood, over a policy dispute that is supposed to be settled by voting. Continue reading →

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Have you seen this man? If so, please call your local employment agency at once.

Bloomberg News has its collective hair on fire over a crisis in American enterprise, and it’s not the staggering stock market or the idiotic trade war or the shuttered government. It’s a persistent and growing lack of labor for those American businesses that are still able to actually make and/or sell products. “The shortfall is being driven,” says Bloomberg, “by a shrinking supply of manual and low-pay service workers  as the labor force becomes more educated and less able to take on such jobs.” You see what education does for you.

What kind of jobs are we talking about? Construction, manufacturing, truck driving, food services, nursing and anything else that is “physically demanding.” One staffing executive — obviously an oligarch who knows how to address the lower classes with delicacy — calls it “an acute shortage of talent in the blue collar space.” Continue reading →

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The Clintonistas, the Putinites and others would like to think this is how the 2016 election played out. But no.

Fresh waves of hysteria have arisen about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election as a result of new reports on its dimensions prepared for the US Senate and released this week. “Reports show Russia mounted sweeping effort to sow divisions,” fulminated Politico. [Emphasis added.] Other headlines — too many to read, let alone link to — screamed about “millions” of posts on “every major social network,” an effort that “shows the sophistication of the disinformation campaign.” The cunning devils “focused intensely on African Americans as they sought to deliver a victory for Trump.”

The mainstream media should have used, and provided its readers with, brown paper bags for fighting off hyperventilation.

But here’s an interesting thing about all those news stories, and indeed about the reports they are discussing. The weasel words used to characterize the Russian efforts are all about intentions: it was a “sweeping” effort, it was intense, it “sought” victory for Trump. You may read all these stories, and both these reports, from stem to stern and you will not find any evidence presented that the Russians succeeded. Because there isn’t any. Continue reading →

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Reporticus Americanus: endangered species, seldom seen in the wild

It has become increasingly difficult –in fact, is now almost impossible — to think constructively about events that happen at a distance. It’s bad enough that almost every event has associated with it at least two competing sets of “alternate facts,” we’ve become used to that and can with patience and research sort through it all and triangulate the location of probable truth. But research requires the existence of at least some honest brokers of fact, reporters who will record that was raining that day without calculating whether the fact that it was raining benefits one tribe or the other tribe. Continue reading →

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One of the Sunday magazine shows the other week devoted a segment to a meeting of the Flat Earth Society. It featured interviews with earnest, articulate people professing their belief in the proposition that the earth is flat, and their scorn for all the so-called “evidence” to the contrary: the moon landing, the space station, the stunning images from orbiting satellites — all fake.

The scariest thing about this story was not the weirdness of the mass delusion of ordinary people — I looked very closely to see a glint of irony somewhere, to catch somebody winking, but no — the scariest thing was how normal it all seemed, like just another day at the Trump White House. Continue reading →

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[This post was published in March of 2015. It seemed timely to bring it back.]

“The domestic radical right has killed more people than radical Islam since 9/11 in the United States, without a doubt.” Those are  the words of Ryan Lenz, principal writer of a Southern Poverty Law Center study of violent “terrorist” attacks that occurred in the U.S. between 2009 and 2015. In a classic example of confusing ideologues with facts, the SPLC study found that while US security officials were focused exclusively on protecting against foreign organizations of Islamic extremists, Americans were steadily being picked off by home-grown, Christian lone wolves. Continue reading →

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He was a charming man, and I took to him immediately when I met him at a social function. Well into his eighties, he had the appearance and energy of a much younger man. And his stories, oh lordy the stories he could tell: about living in his native Germany under the Nazis, of scrounging for trinkets to sell to soldiers so his own family could eat; about the apprehension that permeated life in a repressed country that was losing a war; about coming to America speaking no English, and the struggle of adapting, learning a trade, starting a business and raising a family. I loved this guy. Then, for some reason, he felt it necessary to make an announcement. “I voted for Trump, you know.”  

I have a rule against engaging Trumpits in argument. It is, I have long since learned, a waste of time. But I loved this guy! So I couldn’t help asking him, “Why?”

“Because he tells it like it is,” he said, with a small smile. Continue reading →

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I have read Bob Woodward’s book on the Trump presidency, titled Fear: Trump in the White House, so you don’t have to. If you have paid reasonably close attention to the fake news — the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN and the like — for the past year and a half, you know pretty much everything that’s in the book, except for the cuss words.

If you’re remembering Woodward’s (and Bernstein’s) Nixon-killing book All the President’s Men, forget it. Here there are no mysterious characters such as Deep Throat, no life lessons such as “follow the money,” and above all, no satisfying conclusion. In fact, there is nothing at all satisfying about this book. On the contrary, it’s like reading an account of the Zombie Apocalypse in which the zombies have won and are governing the country, and you realize it’s not fiction. This is not your worst dream ever, from which you will shortly awaken, it is your new life. Continue reading →

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It remains to be seen what additional services Robert Mueller will do for his country, but he has performed a great one for me personally: what has come to light about Roger Stone and Paul Manafort, as a result of the Mueller investigation,  has explained a big chunk of my life that was previously obscure to me. I realize this is a revelation that is of interest to no one but myself, but it is a revelation to me, and I’m going to write about it. So there. My blog.

During the 1970s I was rising steadily in the ranks of operatives in the Republican Party. I had consulted for a number of congressional campaigns; had managed a campaign for U.S. Senate in Virginia (for a newcomer whose goal was not victory — we were running against Elizabeth Taylor’s husband, for crying out loud — but statewide credentials); I had been given (too much) credit for engineering an upset victory in a race for mayor of Akron, Ohio; had parachuted in to the Iowa precinct caucuses campaign with a team trying to resuscitate Howard Baker’s anemic presidential campaign; and had afterward been appointed manager of two states for him during what remained of his truncated campaign. Continue reading →