In his column Happy holidays, Donald Trump, E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post says the Unpresidented-Elect is confused about yet another thing—the “war on Christmas.”
Some things Donald Trump says enrage me, while others get under my skin. The pronouncement that does both is his regular claim that until he prevailed, Americans were not free to say “merry Christmas” to each other.
He was at it again last week in West Allis, Wis., during his Watch-Me-Divide-The-Country-Further Victory Tour. Trump declared: “So when I started 18 months ago, I told my first crowd in Wisconsin that we are going to come back here someday and we are going to say merry Christmas again. Merry Christmas. So, merry Christmas everyone.”
Here’s what bothers me: Long before Trump came along we were entirely free to say “merry Christmas” to each other. Our political leaders could say it, too.
The Editors of The Nation want President Obama to quickly—Declassify the Evidence of Russian Hacking!
... we find it troubling that these charges of Russian interference are serving to distract from the very real domestic challenges that threaten our democracy: growing voter suppression, the influence of corporate and dark-money PACs, gerrymandering, and an anachronistic Electoral College that, twice in the past 16 years, has undermined the preferences of American voters.
It is also troubling that the finger-pointing over the leaked e-mails has provided Clinton campaign operatives and surrogates with an excuse for deflecting criticism of the kind of campaign they ran. There’s a striking cognitive dissonance at work here: Liberals who have traditionally been wary of the national-security state and justifiably suspicious of its claims seem to have become its most vociferous supporters, at the very same time that former intelligence officials are urging caution.
A former chief of Russian analysis at the CIA, writing in The National Interest, noted that while some of the facts “indeed support the judgment that the Russian government was behind the operations, each is also consistent with alternative explanations.” Another former CIA counterterrorism official told Newsweek, “My main concern is that we will rush to judgment. The analysis needs to be cohesive and done the right way.” [...]
At his year-end press conference, President Obama told journalists, “I want the report [on the alleged hacking] out, so that everybody can review it.” We welcome this step and call on the president to declassify the evidence against Russia as quickly as possible. The current debate over possible foreign intervention in a US presidential election should be based on publicly disclosed evidence, not on competing and unverifiable anonymous leaks from the intelligence community.
Jonathan Capeheart at The Washington Post writes—What the lynching memorial will force us all to face:
In the acclaimed documentary “I Am Not Your Negro,” director Raoul Peck takes the words from an unfinished book by legendary author James Baldwin and gives them life in the voice of actor Samuel L. Jackson. And there is a jarring moment in this stunning 93-minute examination of race in the United States that has stayed with me since I saw it at a screening last month.
A rosy-cheeked, perfectly coiffed Doris Day frets in her kitchen with champagne glasses and a bottle of bubbly in the 1961 movie “Lover Come Back” while a sentimental song about love plays in the background. But as the lush music continues, the scene fades to a succession of harrowing black-and-white photos of lynched black men and a black woman. What made these gruesome murders all the more grotesque were the white onlookers posing for pictures under trees festooned with “strange fruit.” Those faces peer back at you as Jackson speaks Baldwin’s powerful words.
You cannot lynch me and keep me in ghettos without becoming something monstrous yourselves. And, furthermore, you give me a terrifying advantage. You never had to look at me. I had to look at you. I know more about you than you know about me. Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
That scene and particularly that last sentence rang in my ears as I learned that siblings Pat and Jon Stryker donated $10 million to the Memorial to Peace and Justice. Such a formal name for the institution slated to open in 2018 in Montgomery, Ala. But its informal name — the national lynching memorial — gets to the point of the effort by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), founded by Bryan Stevenson, who also is its executive director. We, as a nation, must face an ugly past that informs our present and dictates our future.
Jeet Heer at The New Republic thinks the man’s lies are a problem but, worse, that—Trump’s Tweets Are a Threat to Our National Security:
Trump will soon be president, and every tweet and other utterance will matter greatly. “The president’s words, as uttered in speeches and other official statements, literally shape American foreign policy,” Shamila N. Chaudhary, a senior fellow at New America, wrote at Politico. “In turn, State Department bureaucrats rely on the commander in chief to articulate clear, thoughtful and consistent views, based on facts and a knowledge of history. Only then can the entire weight of the large State Department bureaucracy follow seamlessly behind him—and carry out his goals.” In other words, the problem with Trump’s tweets isn’t just that they contain lies and speculation; it’s that a steady, sober foreign policy is made impossible by those tweets. If other nations take Trump’s tweets literally, as China did, there is a real possibility of military conflict.
Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci has told the press they should not “take him literally, take him symbolically.” But if other nations follow this advice, then the value of the president’s words will be diminished. This is the sort of confusion that could easily lead to conflict, as the international community is torn between whether to believe Trump’s words or the explanation from others, whether advisors like Scaramucci or State Department officials.
Megan Carpenter at the The New Republic writes—The Growing Movement for Marijuana Amnesty:
“The war on drugs has been a racially discriminatory disaster and legalization should be an opportunity to try to correct that and make amends for past wrongs,” explained Tom Angell, the chairman of Marijuana Majority, which is devoted to reforming the country’s marijuana laws. “But there’s still a lingering, outdated, and cruel attitude that people who broke the law should be punished as much as possible, even if it prevents them from fully participating in society.”
“With measures such as the provisions [in Massachusetts and California], we have a chance to set an example in the rest of society and to make amends,” he added.
California’s 2016 ballot initiative to legalize the production, distribution, and use of marijuana for recreational purposes set up a system providing for the reclassification and/or expungement of marijuana-related offenses. For those still serving sentences, there will also be opportunities for resentencing. It’s likely to have an impact on a significant number of Californians: The ACLU says that nearly 20,000 people were arrested for marijuana possession even after the state decriminalized possession in 2011. [...]
There are fees associated with expungement—as there are in most states—and the process requires legal assistance, which is why the Minority Cannabis Business Association, in partnership with the cannabis company Marley Natural, held its first-ever expungement clinic in Portland, which helped 30 clients.
Jeannette Ward, the vice chair of the MCBA, noted that, because of Oregon’s law allowing people with convictions for marijuana-related offenses to participate in the legal system, the clinic wasn’t about helping potential marijuana business owners. “We do it because the war on drugs targeted people of color,” she said, “and we want to take the profits from companies that are making money and try to rebalance the scales of the detrimental wars on drugs.”
Last week, President Obama took action under the 1953 Continental Outer Shelf Lands Act to permanently ban oil and gas drilling in most of the U.S. portion of the Arctic Ocean and a piece of the Atlantic. That law has two provisions, one of which is this: “The President of the United States may, from time to time, withdraw from disposition any of the unleased lands of the outer Continental Shelf.” Robinson Meyer at The Atlantic writes—Can Trump Reverse Obama's Arctic-Drilling Ban?
To most water-law experts, it seems like Congress has given any president the ability to permanently retire undersea lands from its continental-shelf portfolio.
This text has never been tested in court, and it has only been invoked by presidents a handful of times. In the late 1950s, several years after the law was adopted, President Eisenhower used this provision to permanently block drilling in a 75-square-mile area of seabed off the Florida Keys. Eisenhower’s order still stands—a testament to this authority—but it has also never been challenged in court. (An unnamed White House official cites this same precedent in an unusually skeptical New York Times article about the ban.) [...]
“I don’t think those designations by President Obama are going to be that easily undone,” said Robin Kundis Craig, a professor of law at the University of Utah and a leading expert in modern water law. “President Trump couldn’t just come in and unilaterally undo it, because it’s a delegated authority from Congress to deal with federal property.”
Craig compared the continental-shelf provision to a similar one in the Antiquities Act of 1906, which lets the president permanently set aside federally owned lands as a conservation-protected “federal monument.” Obama has used this law to preserve tens of thousands of acres of forest in Maine. He has also invoked it to significantly expand a marine monument off the coast of Hawaii—one originally created, using the same powers, by President George W. Bush.
The Editorial Board of The New York Times concludes the President Obama is wisely making moves dedicated to—Leaving the Arctic Alone:
President Obama’s decision to forbid oil and gas drilling in nearly all United States waters in the Arctic is in itself a spectacular environmental gift, offering protection to what he accurately described as a “sensitive and unique ecosystem that is unlike any other region on earth.”
It also adds one more chapter, though probably not the last, to the administration’s eight-year record of rebalancing the scale between the conservation of natural resources and their exploitation. And it sharpens an already glaring contrast between Mr. Obama and his successor, Donald Trump, who on the basis of his cabinet appointments alone seems hellbent on reviving the “drill, baby, drill” sensibilities of the George W. Bush administration.
The White House announcement was coordinated with similar steps announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada. Neither announcement affects state-owned waters along the coasts, but together they will shield nearly all of the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas north of Alaska from drilling.
Francine Prose at The Guardian writes—Truth is evaporating before our eyes:
It’s dismaying to see how accurately George Orwell’s 1943 essay on the Spanish civil war predicted the present moment. Orwell feared “that the concept of objective truth is fading out of the world … I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written. In the past people deliberately lied, or unconsciously colored what they wrote, or they struggled after the truth … but in each case they believed that ‘facts’ existed and were more or less discoverable.
“Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as ‘the truth’ exists … The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’ – well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five – well, two and two are five.”
If we look for the reasons why Orwell’s dire presentiments threaten to become our everyday reality, we might consider the idea that Trump and his cohorts are reaping the benefits of the gradual (and, I would suggest, intentional) undermining and dismantling of our increasingly overcrowded and understaffed public education system.
In school, we learn to distinguish truth from speculation, to value facts, to assess evidence, to evaluate information, to identify propaganda – to think. If what worried Orwell was widespread skepticism about our chances of writing history with any resemblance to the truth, how would he feel about a populace and a leadership that no longer values history at all, that has no respect for science, that believes the only subject worth pursuing is the how-to of uncontrolled capitalism?
Juan Cole at Informed Comment writes—Top 5 Reasons Senate Dems should block all Trump Supreme Court Nominees, Forever:
We don’t need a Trump-nominated Supreme Court justice. We desperately don’t need such a person. And there is no reason to have one. The Democrats in the Senate should just filibuster any nomination for the next four years. Now, you may say that a president deserves to have the nominee of his choice voted on. But those were the old rules before we saw how the Republican Party treated Barack Obama. They just told him no, no, no on everything. Everything. They even threatened the home mortgages of government employees by closing down the government. Twice. They vilified Obama, shouted disrespectfully at him from the floor of Congress, and then they refused even to let his Supreme Court nominee, a centrist, come up for a vote. They declared President Obama a lame duck when he had 11 months left in his presidency.
I declare Donald Trump a lame duck now. Four years out.
Jerry Saltz at New York Magazine writes—Considering the Ankara Assassination Photos As History Painting:
I've never seen anything like the photographs of the assassination of the Russian ambassador at an art gallery in Ankara, Turkey. A pathological act of bloodletting, terrorism, nationalism, a state of political siege. But in the stark white, pristine setting of an upscale art gallery showing contemporary art, with patrons, assassin, and victim all dressed in elegant black, the photographs themselves look strikingly surreal — uncanny, even — and, in some very painful ways, beautiful.
What makes these pictures so different from all of the other pictures of death that we see? The poses are almost classical, frozen, or rehearsed as if from theater, ballet, painting, or mannequin display. If I told you these were fake, you might believe me. As Kurt Andersen put it on Twitter, “the great photojournalism of 2016 is continuing to resemble stills from a scary, not-entirely-realistic movie” — and that strange familiarity we feel in looking at the images is one reason they are so uncomfortable to contemplate. Everything in the images is emotion articulated, caught, performed, and real. All of this triggers an unreal internal visual dance. It's a new surrealism of modern life, made all the more harrowing because it could not be more truly real.
David Horsey at the Los Angeles Times writes—Americans who voted against Trump are feeling unprecedented dread and despair:
I have never seen anything quite like the grief being felt by the majority of American voters who did not vote for Donald Trump.
Back in 1980, there was disappointment among Democrats when Ronald Reagan won. In 2000, after the long Florida recount and the intrusion of the Supreme Court into the decision, there were plenty of upset people who thought Al Gore, not George W. Bush, deserved to be president. But the losing voters in those elections were not despondent. They were not breaking out in tears weeks later. They were not waking up each morning with feelings of dread about what was to come.
This time it is different and, in my experience, unique. This is not simply a case of Hillary Clinton supporters being bad losers. For most of those who feel traumatized by what happened on Nov. 8, this is not about the candidate who won the popular vote, yet lost the election. It is about the candidate who was picked as president by the electoral college on Monday. People are mourning because the fate of their country will now be in the hands of an intellectually disinterested, reckless, mendacious narcissist.
It is not just Democrats. There are plenty of conservatives and Republicans among those feeling depressed.
Jill Abramson at The Guardian writes—The Clintons turned the Democratic party over to donors. Can it recover?
While the pundit class all said the Republican party was being torn apart by this election, it is the Democratic party that is in tatters. It has to be rebuilt from the ground up for the new, post-Clinton future. But the foundation for such a massive undertaking is shaky.
It isn’t just that Democrats are the minority party in Washington, it’s that they’ve lost state governments at all levels, from governorships to the state legislatures. While the Democrats have focused on gaining and holding the White House since 2008, the Koch brothers and their billionaire, rightwing allies have been showering money on local candidates, too, and the payoff has been huge.
One has only to look at the fracas in North Carolina, where the outgoing Republican governor and his Republican legislature are undermining the powers of the new governor, to see how effective the Koch network has been.
State governors, like Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, have always been where the parties go looking for new talent but with so few blue states, the pickings are slim for the Democrats. The only real bright spot for them are the mayors of big cities, where their party is in control. But even there, big-city problems are tarnishing potential younger stars like Rahm Emmanuel of Chicago and Bill de Blasio of New York.
But talent is not even the party’s biggest problem. It is the ideas that animate the party.