We begin today with former Representative Barney Frank writing for The Boston Globe about the implications of the deal that Kevin McCarthy made with the far-far-right of the Republican Party in order to become speaker.
This unchallenged reign of the militant right has two important implications for the state of our politics.
First, it refutes the criticism leveled at Democrats for affecting primaries by highlighting the views of right-wingers in ways that help them defeat more responsible Republicans. We now have a hard list of the number of GOP members prepared to stand up to the extremists: zero. (And of course many of those supposed victims of Democratic efforts were also election deniers.)
Second, it has an even more profound meaning for final elections. The power to veto legislation McCarthy has given the most right-wing members of his party means that the bipartisan majorities that passed the infrastructure bill, the CHIPS and Science Act, and other legislation in the Senate will have no chance to form in the House. Nothing unacceptable to Jordan, Greene, Matt Gaetz of Florida, and Lauren Boebert of Colorado will pass.
By contrast, under former speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership, critically needed legislation was adopted over the dissent of the most left-wing Democrats.
Charles Blow of The New York Times looks at the hypocrisy of the Republican Party investigating law enforcement and other agencies.
I believe Republicans are attempting to provide a counterweight to the damning evidence and testimony made public by the Jan. 6 committee. They plan to concoct an equivalency.
As part of their quest to punish the agencies attempting to hold them accountable, the party of law and order plans to go after federal law enforcement. This is how you know that the support for the Blue Lives Matter movement was a charade. They simply wanted to shield officers who disproportionately killed Black people.
For them, law enforcement has always been a tool for the control and restraint of the “other.” When law enforcement attempted to control and restrain them, they cried foul. How dare the Justice Department equally apply the law! That wasn’t the plan. That wasn’t the design.
Another tactic Republicans have started to use in recent years is the co-option of virtue, the stealing of civil rights language, the invoking of righteous causes of the past to justify their own corrupt efforts.
Jill Lepore of The New Yorker reviews the 845-page report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.
“The Big Lie” is not a big lie. It is an elaborate fiction, an artful story, with heroes and villains, exotic locales, and a sinister plot. The election was stolen by a cabal of Democrats, socialists, immigrants, criminals, Black people, and spies. This story is vicious and idiotic, and none of it is true, but it is not a Big Lie devised by an orange-haired supervillain born rich in 1946: it is the latest chapter in a fictive counter-history of the United States which has been told by the far right for decades and decades and wretched decades. In 2020, it gained so much speed so fast that it acted something like a stampede. Unfortunately, reading the report is like being in the stampede. “The stolen election narrative has proven to be remarkably durable precisely because it is a matter of belief—not evidence, or reason,” the report states. It does not ask why this should be. Why believe? Two in five Americans and three in five Republicans still believe. Republicans who most fiercely believe hold the Party by the throat. The 9/11 Commission Report asked, “How did Bin Ladin—with his call for indiscriminate killing of Americans—win thousands of followers and some degree of approval from millions more?” The January 6th Committee Report, for all its weight and consequence, never asks why anyone believed Donald Trump, which is why it is unlikely to persuade anyone not to.
Why believe? Answering that question would have required a historical vantage on the decay of the party system, the celebration of political intolerance by both the right and the left, the contribution of social media to political extremism, and the predicament of American journalism. Calling the system rigged when you’re losing is an old trick. At the end of the Cold War, American zealots turned their most ruthless ideological weapons on one another, Manicheans all. In 1992, Newt Gingrich told Republican candidates to get the message out that the Democrats were going to rig the Presidential election. It didn’t matter to Gingrich that this wasn’t true. “They’re going to buy registrations, they’re going to buy votes,” he warned. “They’re going to turn out votes, they’re going to steal votes, they’re going to do anything they can.” After the contested Bush v. Gore election, of 2000, sowing doubt about elections became common practice for outsiders in both parties. “The system is rigged” was the watchword of Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign: primaries rigged against challengers, the economy rigged against working people. Suspecting that things like elections might be rigged, even when that’s not true, isn’t a crazy conspiracy theory; it is a political product routinely sold to voters in every city and state in the country.
Why believe? In the past two decades, public approval of Congress has fallen from eighty percent to twenty percent. Might it be that Congress has lost any real grip on the American experience, and no longer speaks for a nation and a people that Richard Hofstadter once called a “huge, inarticulate beast”? The report lacks not only a sense of the past but also a meaningful sense of the present. A chronicle that runs from April, 2020, to January, 2021, it is a story told out of time. The “facts, circumstances, and causes” relating to the insurrection that it fails to investigate and, in most cases, even to note, include covid-19 deaths, masks, lockdowns, joblessness, farm closures, guns and mass shootings, a national mental-health crisis, daily reports of devastating storms and fires, George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, and partisan, and especially congressional, eye-gouging over each and every one of the items in this list. Why believe? Was the election stolen? No. But was 2020 painful? Yes.
I agree with Lepore on most of these points; for instance I don’t think that the Jan. 6 insurrection happens without the COVID-19 pandemic. There was simply a lack of time to do a proper historical treatment of the Jan. 6 insurrection IMO.
Robin Givhan of The Washington Post wonders when teachers will have had enough and what will happen if and when they do.
But how much longer can the country expect teachers to be that selfless? It’s no secret that they’re underpaid for all the duties they perform. The average public school teacher salary in the United States is about $66,000. They should be paid more. They should be paid more. They should be paid more. The country went through a brief phase of teacher worship when schools were shut down because of the pandemic and parents were left to wrangle their children on their own. After parents logged their homebound kids into virtual classrooms, they were able to bear witness to the kind of patience, calm, empathy and determination that’s required of teachers on a daily basis. Parents expressed their heightened respect for teachers. They oozed thankfulness.
And then the schools reopened. Parents quickly recovered from the shock of dealing with their own kids all day. They began to harangue teachers with a newfound gusto. They forced teachers to fend off accusations that they were teaching critical race theory when they were really just trying to get someone’s recalcitrant child to understand that racism has consequences. School boards began putting restrictions on how teachers discuss
gender, in essence asking teachers to tamp down their sense of empathy and muzzle efforts at inclusion. School districts began banning books and narrowing children’s vision even as they demanded that teachers prepare students for a more complex and competitive world.
The United States has lost 370,000 teachers since the start of the pandemic. And yet the teachers who remain continue to do those things that prompt police officers to call them heroic and that have parents compliment their ability to treat every student like an individual rather than an anonymous seat-filler. Teachers continue to speak up even when doing so can cost them their job for reasons that completely blindside them.
Patricia Mazzei of The New York Times looks at the popularity of the Affordable Care Act in South Florida, particularly Miami-Dade County.
On its face, the program’s outsize popularity in South Florida remains one of its most intriguing data points. The evidence is visible in every Obamacare logo deployed — not just on storefronts but on trucks, flags and billboards — to sell health insurance, as agents in the crowded local market jockey to enroll people. This year’s open enrollment period ends on Sunday.
Florida has far more people enrolled in the federal health insurance marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act than any other state does, a distinction that has been true since 2015. Driving those numbers has been the Miami area, where older, Republican-leaning Hispanics appeared loath to embrace government-subsidized health insurance when the law was enacted. At the time, it ignited some of the most pitched partisan battles in the nation’s recent history.
In particular, some Miamians who had fled left-wing leaders in Cuba and other Latin American countries chafed at the law’s requirement — later eliminated — that people have health coverage or face a penalty, which critics decried as “socialism.”
The region has only tilted more Republican since then, flipping red in the governor’s race last year for the first time in two decades. Yet in 2022, the two ZIP codes with the most enrollees in Affordable Care Act coverage nationwide were in Doral and Hialeah, cities west and north of Miami known for their right-leaning Venezuelan American and Cuban American communities. And the county with most enrollees in the country remained Miami-Dade.
Jemele Hill of The Atlantic examines the domestic violence incident of Ultimate Fighting Championship President Dana White hitting his wife and then suffering very few repercussions.
Last week, TMZ released a video that shows White in a heated argument with his wife, Anne, at a nightclub in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, on New Year’s Eve. In the video, White approaches his visibly distraught wife, who strikes him in the face. White then retaliates by slapping her twice, and the two briefly tussle before she storms away.
White subsequently expressed embarrassment while also downplaying the importance of the incident. “People are going to have opinions on this, and most of their opinions would be right,” White told the celebrity-news website. “You don’t put your hands on a woman—ever. My wife and I obviously love each other. We’ve been together for a very long time. We’ve known each other since we were very little, and this was just one of those unfortunate situations.” White’s wife also released a statement to TMZ blaming alcohol for the reason their confrontation turned physical. “Unfortunately, we were both drinking too much on New Year’s Eve and things got out of control, on both sides,” she said.
There are plenty of examples of athletes and other sports figures facing some repercussions when credibly accused of domestic violence: intense public scrutiny, suspension, loss of income or, in extreme cases, their employment.
But curiously, since the video’s release, White has not been subject to an avalanche of media coverage or nonstop discussions about whether he should be fired, fined, or otherwise. His behavior hasn’t been condemned by UFC’s parent company, Endeavor, or UFC’s biggest television partner, ESPN, which reached a five-year, $1.5 billion broadcast-rights deal in 2018 to air mixed-martial-arts events and then, in 2019, extended the arrangement to make ESPN the sport’s exclusive pay-per-view provider.
Jens Glüsing of Der Spiegel looks at the role of Brazil’s organized police forces in the attempted coup against Brazil’s duly elected government.
Sunday’s riot has once again demonstrated the degree to which the country’s militarily organized police forces, which are under the control of the state governors, have been infiltrated by Bolsonaro supporters. Lula can really only trust the federal police force, but even there, he must be wary. The military has thus far stayed in the background and there doesn’t appear to be an imminent threat of a military putsch. But that doesn’t mean that the troops will readily obey all orders from the president, who is the commander-in-chief of Brazil’s armed forces.
Lula’s justice minister twice ordered the military to clear the tent camp that Bolsonaro followers established in front of army headquarters in Brasilía after Lula’s election on October 30. That tent camp is where radical Bolsonaro followers prepared the "protests" against Lula’s victory ceremony on Dec. 13, during which numerous buses and cars were set on fire. The radical Bolsonaro acolyte who placed an explosive device on a tanker truck intending to blow it up at the Brasilía airport also claims to have planned his attack here. But the military did nothing.
A week ago, tent-camp occupants threatened DER SPIEGEL correspondent Jens Glüsing when he visited the site. Guards from army headquarters escorted the journalist out, but they told him they could not guarantee his safety.
I wonder if Glüsing went to any right-wing diners in Brazil after the right-wingers threatened him.
Bernd Debusmann Jr. of BBC News reports that while the protests planned for Tuesday in Brazil fizzled out, the conspiracy theories about how Sunday’s riot and insurrection are carrying on.
On social media, some supporters of the former president speculated that the potential rallies were government ploys to entrap potential opponents.
One widely shared image, for example, depicted a mouse trap with the caption "a trap for patriots waiting in Brasília".
Lucas, a 25-year-old Bolsonaro supporter, told the BBC he chose not to attend the rally because he didn't trust the authorities overseeing security.
"Where were they when the riot happened? Now they are calling us terrorists," he said. "How would anyone know there aren't infiltrators?"
Some Bolsonaro supporters - including Lucas and Gustavo - continue to insist that the 8 January riots were the work of provocateurs, a theory that - despite no evidence - has become increasingly popular among hardline "Bolsonaristas".
"Right-wing people don't have the profile to do this. They are workers. They are family people. They don't break things," Gustavo said. "They are being blamed [for the riots] by a dictatorship."
The “economic anxiety”/antifa excuse is getting a little old.
Nadezhda Azhgikhina, writing for The Nation, looks at the state of independent journalism in Russia.
According to expert estimates, the total number of those who work in the media in Russia ranges from 250,000 to 300,000. And not all of them are inveterate propagandists or cynical opportunists. In the more than 30 years since the adoption of the post-Soviet Media Law, which guaranteed freedom of speech and the rights of journalists to adhere to their convictions, a professional environment has formed in the country and a new generation of journalists, committed to the most important values of the profession, has emerged. The development of the Internet, which swiftly covered the whole country, including those isolated in villages and settlements, in the forests or in the mountains, facilitated its growth. Independent, primarily online resources aimed at the residents of specific cities and regions emerged (almost) everywhere. During the pandemic, the connection between local media and the audience has grown even stronger; moreover, people who until recently were not willing to pay for independent information have begun to fund independent media. The “accomplices” of Novaya Gazeta, that is, the contributors who contribute funds to it, simultaneously participate in shaping the content, suggesting new topics. This form of interaction has become widespread in the regions.
In the many months of restrictions in Russia, a number of new media projects have emerged that focus on specific topics and problems, primarily online. These include environmental protection, the economy, regional problems, women’s rights, and family members in the military. Many well-known journalists have opened their own Telegram channels. “Eyewitnesses” talks about how the military operation affects people’s daily life. “NeMoskva Speaks” brings together journalists from the Russian countryside and those who have left the country, reporting unique information about life in the regions.
Finally today, The Grammarian writes for The Philadelphia Inquirer about the right-wingers that are angry that the Cambridge Dictionary changed its definition of “woman.”
Just months after Supreme Court nomination hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson, when Sen. Marsha Blackburn threw blood-red meat to conservatives by asking Jackson to define the word woman, Cambridge Dictionary’s editors recently edited the entry for woman to include the following: “an adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth.” The entry for man includes a corresponding definition.
Like Pavlov’s dog, conservatives again started salivating.
“Cambridge Dictionary Changes Definition of ‘Man’ and ‘Woman’ in Massive Cave to Trans Activists,” howled the right-wing blog RedState.
Fox News: “Cambridge Dictionary changes definition of ‘man’ and ‘woman’: ‘1984 wasn’t supposed to be a how-to manual.’” [...]
In a naked effort to inspire rage-clicks, each of these publications — even those that, on the surface, appear to adopt a less hysterical tone — exhibited either a shameful ignorance or a willful disregard of how dictionaries work.
Have a good day, everyone!