Before you get out your “Hey! Where is my Sunday morning chemistry infographic?” pitchfork (and boy, I’ve gotta say, you people have some highly specialized pitchforks) please be aware that Compoud Interest appears to be off the air this morning. Hopefully, it’s just a temporary thing, and we can return to delightful diagrams of the esters and ketones you found in your favorite snacks next weekend.
Dereck Black has unique insight into the white supremacist movement.
I was born into a prominent white nationalist family — David Duke is my godfather, and my dad started Stormfront, the first major white nationalist website — and I was once considered the bright future of the movement.
Black ran for and won a Republican committee position on a white nationalist platform when he was just 19. At the time, his victory was seen as a demonstration that an anti-immigrant, openly white supremacist position could also be a winning position. It was expected that he would take that same platform to a higher office. But then … he went to college.
Through many talks with devoted and diverse people there — people who chose to invite me into their dorms and conversations rather than ostracize me — I began to realize the damage I had done. Ever since, I have been trying to make up for it.
For a while after I left the white nationalist movement, I thought my upbringing made me exaggerate the likelihood of a larger political reaction to demographic change. Then Mr. Trump gave his Mexican “rapists” speech and I spent the rest of the election wondering how much my movement had set the stage for his. Now I see the anger I was raised with rocking the nation.
In some ways, Black’s column contains the key to breaking through to those involved in white nationalism, but it’s not a matter of delivering the right speech or coming up with a killer commercial—it’s being exposed on a personal level to diverse peoples and opinions.
No checks and balances can redeem what we’ve unleashed. The reality is that half of the voters chose white supremacy, though saying that makes me a hypocrite. I was a much more extreme partisan than a vast majority of Trump voters and I never would have recognized that label.
Trump voters might find the idea that they voted for white supremacy offensive, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Go read the whole column. There are signs of hope in there.
Then come on in. Let’s read some pundits ...
How can you tell when you’re getting old? When you catch your toe on a root while going down a stream bank you’ve descended a hundred times in the past, and your leg immediately goes into a massive muscle-tearing Charlie horse, and you fall down into a pile of limestone cobbles removing most of the skin from knee to ankle. Then you lay there for a bit, your leg quivering and bleeding, and contemplate just how much better the world would be if trees could just tuck in their roots, dammit. Take that as a sign. In any case, this is just a warning that there may well be painkiller-based punctuation, grammar, or thinking ahead.
Christiane Amanpour makes a speech to the Committee to Protect Journalists
I never in a million years thought I would be up here on stage appealing for the freedom and safety of American journalists at home.
But I was chilled when the first tweet after the election was about “professional protesters incited by the media”. ...
First the media is accused of inciting, then sympathizing, then associating – until they suddenly find themselves accused of being full-fledged terrorists and subversives. Then they end up in handcuffs, in cages, in kangaroo courts, in prison – and then who knows? …
So this above all is an appeal to protect journalism itself.
Recommit to robust fact-based reporting without fear or favor – on the issues.
Don’t stand for being labelled crooked or lying or failing.
Crooked or lying or failing are the only words Donald Trump attaches to a media source, unless that source is engaged in unflinching praise of Donald Trump.
… like many people watching where I was overseas, I admit I was shocked by the exceptionally high bar put before one candidate and the exceptionally low bar put before the other candidate.
… I learned long ago, covering the ethnic cleansing and genocide in Bosnia, never to equate victim with aggressor, never to create a false moral or factual equivalence, because then you are an accomplice to the most unspeakable crimes and consequences.
I believe in being truthful, not neutral. And I believe we must stop banalizing the truth.
It’s a good speech. After you’ve read it, scroll way down to the Russia story. That idea of “banalizing the truth” definitely applies. This is an important speech, and for more reasons than just protecting journalism.
David Treuer on why the protest at Standing Rock is more important than fighting a pipeline.
The Standing Rock Sioux sought an injunction on the basis of federal laws protecting the tribe’s interest in preserving sacred sites. The protest, called the Mni Wiconi, or “water is life,” demonstration, is primarily over the danger the pipeline poses to drinking water for everyone. ...
There is nothing new about such issues. However, what is novel is that the tribe and the outside protesters are working together. The Standing Rock reservation set up a protest camp and made a stand with the protesters. By September, more than 300 tribes — including my tribe, the Ojibwe — were physically represented at the protest camp, at the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri Rivers.
Facing off against an overwhelming force, both Indian and non-Indian protesters are providing an example that goes beyond the specifics of the situation with the Dakota Access Pipeline.
The Standing Rock protesters are making the argument that the pipeline threatens not just tribal land and resources but American land and resources. The protesters are making a stand on behalf of all Americans for better decisions for our energy future. This is their sacrifice and this is their new Thanksgiving gift.
Kate Aronoff worries that what’s happening at Standing Rock foreshadows other militant crackdowns on the First Amendment.
Horrific scenes have been coming out of North Dakota these last several days, where the battle is ongoing to stop the Dakota Access pipeline. On Sunday night, police turned tear gas and rubber bullets on hundreds of unarmed “water protectors”, as those taking on the pipeline prefer to be called. They deployed water cannons as well, in temperatures well below freezing. More than 160 people were injured, and many sent to the hospital. As a result of the standoff, a young woman could lose her arm.
For those with a passing knowledge of the kind of tactics faced by America’s civil rights movement, the above might sound like blast from our more brutal past. As Donald Trump prepares to enter the White House, it should also sound like our possible future.
Unfortunately, it’s already a moment from our brutal present. Even with Barack Obama in the White House, the local police and hired security forces at the protest site feel empowered to act as they please and to deny their actions even when caught on video. That’s before the man with as much as a $2 million gift of stock in the company behind this thing takes charge.
Every signal we have from the president-elect points to an administration defined by three core tenets: white supremacy, unprecedented corporate influence and an uptick in state violence. Aside from climate catastrophe, the result could be a disturbing and dystopian new normal, where episodes like the one unfolding in Standing Rock become all too common.
One such episode is already too common.
Steve Bruni and the misuse of the term “populist”
Trump styled himself as a populist during his flamboyantly provocative campaign, claiming to hear, understand and channel the working-class Americans so wrongly ignored by other leaders. Sure, he flew in a private jet at an economic altitude far above theirs and lived in ostentatious splendor. He was nonetheless the “blue-collar billionaire,” to quote the oxymoron that some of his surrogates took to using.
Just because Trump managed to get some working class people of one particular race to vote his way doesn’t make him a man of the people. In any case, now that The Man in the Trump Tower has settled back into his gilded office, his feelings about the little people are clear enough.
There’s a thickening clique of plutocrats around him, as Politico’s Ben White and Matthew Nussbaum noted late last week in an article with the headline “Trump’s Team of Gazillionaires.” They observed that his emerging administration is largely a rich man’s (and woman’s) club, including Betsy DeVos, his nominee for education secretary, whose family is worth an estimated $5.1 billion.
Trump is also considering high-level roles for the “oil mogul Harold Hamm ($15.3 billion), investor Wilbur Ross ($2.9 billion), private equity investor Mitt Romney ($250 million at last count), hedge fund magnate Steve Mnuchin (at least $46 million) and superlawyer Rudy Giuliani (estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars),” according to the Politico article. “And Trump’s likely choice for deputy commerce secretary, Todd Ricketts, comes from the billionaire family that owns the Chicago Cubs.”
So we’ll get public schools shaped by people who’ve never attended one, law and order from people who’ve lived their lives behind security gates, health care from people who have personal physicians, and transportation policy from people who have their own jets. We’ll also get a lot of extra drug testing, reduced wages, and cuts to unemployment—because these billionaires know it’s you working people who are taking more than you’re worth.
Steven Greenhouse and the break between union leadership and union members.
Why, after unions spent more than $100 million to defeat Donald J. Trump, did Mrs. Clinton win only narrowly among voters from union households, 51 percent to 43 percent, according to exit polls? In a further indication that union leaders were not on the same wavelength as the working-class whites who tipped the election to Mr. Trump, Mrs. Clinton lost among union households in Ohio, 49 percent to 44 percent. …
One official with the United Steelworkers said his Pittsburgh-based union had urged members to back Mrs. Clinton, but many preferred Mr. Trump, largely because of his tough talk on trade with Mexico and China. Many lapped up his promises to bring back manufacturing jobs, hinting at a return (an improbable one) to the 1950s and ’60s, when manufacturing boomed and unions were mighty. (Mr. Trump’s G.O.P. allies are spoiling, however, to further hobble labor unions, which are far weaker than in the ’60s.)
There’s a really simple answer there: Donald Trump lied. Trump made promises he can’t deliver, while Hillary Clinton doggedly explained, in detail, why the manufacturing job base of the past is not coming back. No one wanted the truth. No one even wanted to report on the truth. Every single article on how Democrats ignored working class whites is really asking for the same thing—lie to them.
Kathleen Parker on candidate Trump vs. president-elect Trump.
In this season of Thanksgiving, a quirky source of gratitude has emerged — Donald Trump’s many campaign lies.
What else can one call the promises that he now treats as alien concepts? Almost daily, he reverses himself on a campaign promise, confirming what this column predicted: He would never keep his vows. …
If Trump has never been burdened by the truth, he at least has been true to his core value, which is say or do whatever it takes to win. And for him, what worked were lies. Or at least untruths.
That Trump was lying constantly was never in issue. The entire base of Trump’s campaign on both immigration and economics was simply lies. His proposed solutions were more lies.
However, those listening to Trump giving “no wall, no special prosecutor, no torture” answers and breathing a sigh of relief are forgetting something … Trump lies. He always lies. He tells the audience of the moment exactly what they want to hear. Just wait until he gets past Inauguration Day and gets back on the rally circuit. Everyone of those old lies will come right back.
The New York Times on how Democrats should operate in the Senate.
Having had more than two weeks to ponder one of the most humiliating presidential defeats in its history, the Democratic Party is moving to apply its lessons to the legislative battles ahead, as well as to the daunting but essential task of rebuilding the party’s fortunes.
Much of the burden will fall on Democrats in the closely divided Senate, where arcane rules give the opposition party leverage to shape or block legislation passed by the rigidly conservative, Republican-dominated House. The challenge facing the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, is to determine when to say no and when to compromise on matters of broad economic benefit.
Here’s a hint … when in doubt, say no. We’re not talking about someone like Bush the senior, or even Bush the junior. This is Trump. Meaning that 99% of all legislative ideas are going to originate from Paul Ryan’s little Randian gulch in the House, or from one of Trump’s bizarro-world cabinet appointees (the environmental guy who hates the environment, the education gal who hates education, and all their looking glass pals). That other 1% of bills will come from Trump. They’ll mainly be concerned with bombing competing apartment buildings and hotel chains.
Mr. Schumer vows to block all efforts to kill Obamacare, or gut Dodd-Frank financial regulation. “We’re not going to undo it, period. And I have the votes.” And the Democrats are sure to resist ideas they abhor — a far-right Supreme Court nominee, or efforts to undermine environmental protections. Yet other issues in which both sides and the larger public have an interest, like infrastructure, could offer room for collaboration.
Can we stop it with the infrastructure love fest already? Trump’s proposed infrastructure plan is not a source of jobs, not a public good, and not infrastructure plan. It’s a tax give-away to corporations who take existing projects and slap a new label on them. It’s the 2/3 of the stimulus plan that failed to stimulate, made worse. But don’t worry, all of this is moot in any case, since the expected lifespan of the filibuster is now about equal to that of a tsetse fly.
Dana Milbank is ready to see Democrats under new management.
Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, will be 77 next year.
Steny Hoyer, her deputy, will be 78.
Jim Clyburn, the No. 3 Democratic leader, will be 77.
Their current ages, if combined, would date back to 1787, the year George Washington presided over the signing of the Constitution.
It is time for them to go.
My aching leg doesn’t think that age alone is that great an argument. (Though the history expressed in human lifespans bit is something I like quite a lot).
Democrats would benefit from some fresh blood to take on Donald Trump, the oldest president ever elected for the first time, and to revive enthusiasm among millennials, who didn’t turn out in the numbers Democrats needed.
That’s going to happen. But it’s probably going to wait at least another year.
The New York Times on the difficulty of getting a fair trial for a soldier the president-elect called a traitor.
In August 2015, Mr. Trump fired up a New Hampshire crowd by calling Sergeant Bergdahl “a dirty rotten traitor.” He proceeded to falsely claim that “six young beautiful people were killed trying to find him.” Then he dismissed arguments that the former hostage’s “psychological problems” may have led him to walk off a base in Afghanistan in 2009. “In the old days,” Mr. Trump said, pantomiming an execution by pretending to fire a rifle twice. “Bing bong.”
Considering that the president-elect has already tried Bergdahl in absentia, is there any point in having an actual trial? While President Heroic Heel-spur may not actually be able to shoot Bergdahl for wandering away from base (yet), his charges could carry a life sentence.
... how can he get a fair trial in the military justice system when the next commander in chief has proclaimed his guilt and accused him of treason?
The short answer is he can’t. Eugene Fidell, Mr. Bergdahl’s lawyer, says he intends to submit a motion the day Mr. Trump takes office, cataloging the roughly 40 times Mr. Trump made disparaging remarks about his client, and seeking to have the case dismissed.
Bowe Bergdahl was tortured and held prisoner for five years. That seems like enough. But of course, Trump likes soldiers who weren’t captured.
Eric Chenoweth on the story that never seems to get any respect.
In assessing Donald Trump’s presidential victory, Americans continue to look away from this election’s most alarming story: the successful effort by a hostile foreign power to manipulate public opinion before the vote.
U.S. intelligence agencies determined that the Russian government actively interfered in our elections. Russian state propaganda gave little doubt that this was done to support Republican nominee Trump, who repeatedly praised Vladimir Putin and excused the Russian president’s foreign aggression and domestic repression. Most significantly, U.S. intelligence agencies have affirmed that the Russian government directed the illegal hacking of private email accounts of the Democratic National Committee and prominent individuals. The emails were then released by WikiLeaks, which has benefited financially from a Russian state propaganda arm, used Russian operatives for security and made clear an intent to harm the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.
Just for the record—
1) Pointing out that one of the presidential candidates was in secret communication with the Russian government at a time when that government was working to affect the outcome of the election is not indulging in a conspiracy theory, it’s just stating the facts.
2) Just because a story concerns Russia does not make any discussion of that story either “the new McCarthyism” or “the new red scare.”
3) Saying that propaganda has happened in the past doesn’t mean we should ignore its effect in the present and the singularly effective campaign the Russians waged in 2016.
From the Russian perspective, the success of this operation can hardly be overstated. News stories on the DNC emails released in July served to disrupt the Democratic National Convention, instigate political infighting and suggest for some supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — without any real proof — that the Democratic primary had been “rigged” against their candidate. …
Russian (and former communist) propaganda has traditionally worked exactly this way: The more you “report” something negatively, the more the negative is true. Trump and supportive media outlets adopted the technique and reveled in information gained from the illegal Russian hacking (as well as many “fake news” stories that evidence suggests were generated by Russian intelligence operations) to make exaggerated claims (“Hillary wants to open borders to 600 million people!”) or to accuse Clinton of illegality, corruption and, ironically, treasonous behavior.
Pretending that this story is either outlandish or simply same-old same-old is not helping anything. Go read the rest.
Andrew Smith wonders if fake news > democracy.
The most interesting question about 2016 is not why the Brexit result and Trump happened, but whether historians will regard both as incidental; whether this will go down as the year democracy revealed itself unworkable in the age of the internet – in which reality, already engaged in a life-or-death struggle with inverted commas, finally gave way to “alt-reality”.
Yes, there has been propaganda. But not like this. Not in this volume, and not with this ease of insertion into the national conversation. To quote someone who knew his propaganda “Quantity has a quality all its own.”
In the past week, however, the collective postmortem – on the left and right of politics – has focused on a concern with far greater long-term impact: the accidental or deliberate propagation of misinformation via social media. Many millions of people saw and believed fake reports that the pope had endorsed Trump; Democrats had paid and bussed anti-Trump protesters; Hillary Clinton was under criminal investigation for sexually assaulting a minor. About the only accusation not levelled at Clinton was implication in the murder of JFK, and that was because Trump had already used it against his Republican primary rival Ted Cruz. If democracy is predicated on reliable information, it’s in serious trouble right now.
Leonard Pitts on the real damage of fake news.
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free … it expects what never was and never will be.” — Thomas Jefferson
… the good news is that anyone who wishes to avoid fake news can do so easily. There is, in fact, a news platform that specializes in gathering and disseminating non-fake news. So committed are its people to this mission that some have been known to risk, and even to lose, their lives in the process.
Granted, this platform is imperfect — sometimes it is guilty of error or even bias. But hardly ever will you find it trafficking in intentional falsehoods.
So what, you ask, is this miracle medium? Well, it’s called a “newspaper” Maybe you’ve heard of it.
I have. Only what I saw in the newspapers this cycle might not have been “fake,” but it was astoundingly tone deaf, full of false equivalence, and generally unwilling to apply any kind of recognizably consistent standards. It also seemed entirely unwilling to call a lie a lie until after a little thing called the election. But back to the fakeness ...
The New York Times recently did a case study of a fake news story. It originated with Eric Tucker, a marketing executive in Austin who posted pictures of buses he claimed had been used to to transport paid protesters to an anti-Trump rally. This blew up on Facebook and Twitter. By the next day, Trump himself was tweeting about “professional protesters, incited by media.”
The willingness—the hunger—to accept these stories is astounding.
One recalls what Jefferson said about the incompatibility of ignorance and freedom — and one wonders how long we have. Fake news drives a fake worldview. But the decisions made from that will be real.
