- Robert Reich wonders how this race can still be tied, and reflects on bullies;
- With relevant items about Charlie Kirk, and Russian operatives, and a scamvangelist;
- An extensive guide to Trump’s lifetime of scandals;
- A video about the actual integrity of the voting system;
- Paul Krugman on Trump’s take on the Civil War, rich people, and wokeism.
Robert Reich, 22 Oct 2024: How the hell can the race be tied?, subtitled “Two weeks before an election in which America should be sending Trump home (and then to jail), he and Harris are in a statistical tie in the battleground states.”
Reich writes about dealing with bullies all his life (in part because he’s short), including (as an adult) Republicans.
But in all my years, I have never come across a bully more squalid than Donald Trump. He is the bully of all bullies. He emits dangerous lies like most people breathe. He has demeaned and degraded our system of self-government, attempted a coup against the United States, divided Americans with venomous bigotry, and rewarded his rich backers with tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks.
Reich entertains various explanations, then settles on certain people. Rupert Murdoch, Elon Musk, a cavalcade of billionaires and various business leaders, and folks like Charlie Kirk, Russell Vought, and Kevin Roberts. (And somewhere out there, Vladimir Putin.)
What does it all mean, in the terms I’ve been entertaining in recent months? That people, in particular conservatives, are essentially selfish; that concern for others, especially among conservatives, rarely extends beyond one’s tribe; that the altruism and cooperation genes that have enabled our global society are confined to only about half of the population. It’s a perpetual three steps forward, two steps back.
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Speaking of whom.
JMG, 22 Oct 2024: Charlie Kirk: Christians Who Vote For Harris Hate God
The tribalists are so sure that their God hates exactly the same things that they hate!
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And speaking of which.
Salon, Marin Scotten, 22 Oct 2024: Russian operatives responsible for bogus Walz accusations, US officials say, subtitled “Officials say the smear campaign was part of Russia’s attempt ‘to undermine the Democratic presidential ticket'”
Last week, videos and other content spread online accusing Walz of various misconduct when he was a high school teacher and football coach. One video claimed to feature a man, identified as Matthew Metro, who asserted that he was abused by Walz as a student. It widely circulated on X but it was entirely fabricated.
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This is why so many of us think so many of the religious MAGA are dim-witted idiots.
JMG, 22 Oct 2024: Scamvangelist: Trump Repeated My Sermons Verbatim
Hello! I believe I’m here with some world changers right now, and I believe that God is raising up a mighty army! If you’re part of that army, you should shout, ‘Yes’ if there’s a company of Esthers here. Come on, Davids, Daniels. I believe that there are some Nehemiahs being raised up here for such a time as this. And this is your finest hour.
This is also an illustration of the perils of Bible study: you come to see the world only in terms of mythical, or semi-historical at best, characters from primitive tribal states of humanity. It’s like being stuck with a childhood mentality, forever.
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Handy guide.
NY Times, Peter Baker, 21 Oct 2024: For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgment, subtitled “No major party presidential candidate, much less president, in American history has been accused of wrongdoing so many times.” [gift link]
It’s very long. Again, what are his supporters thinking? Are they… ‘aware’?
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Just once, I’d like one of these conservatives who think voting is fraudulent *show us* exactly how voting fraud is done. Show us how a voting machine changes the vote — get a machine into a room, put in a ballot, and show us the machine’s tally is different. (Better yet: show us the code that does this.) Show us how election workers swap out real ballots for fake ballots. Show us how an illegal immigrant can walk into a polling place and get a ballot and cast it. But none of them ever do. They cannot.
NY Times, Neil Makhija, 22 Oct 2024: You’re Being Lied To About Voter Fraud. Here’s the Truth.
It’s a 6 1/2 minute video, about how voting actually works.
(My explanation: the complexity of the real world, with all its redundancy and self-checks, compared to the simplex thinking generally found among conservatives.)
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And finally for this afternoon, Paul Krugman.
NY Times, Paul Krugman, 21 Oct 2024: Trump on the Civil War, in His Own Words
Krugman keys off a remark Trump made on Fox News about Abraham Lincoln. This excerpt begins with Trump’s comment, then Krugman’s comments.
“Lincoln was probably a great president. Although I’ve always said, why wasn’t that settled, you know? I’m a guy that — it doesn’t make sense we had a civil war.”
What in the world was he talking about here? Is he implying that Lincoln should have let the South maintain slavery in some form, keeping some number of Black people enslaved, just deal points in some sort of run-of-the-mill public policy negotiation? If so, once upon a time Trump would have had enough self-control not to suggest anything like that so openly.
It’s all about “wokeness” and the resistance of the wealthy to criticism. Krugman finishes:
What does this have to do with America today? To a large extent, Trump’s campaign is being kept afloat financially by a handful of aggrieved billionaires, Elon Musk in particular. Why are these (mostly) men so disgruntled? I don’t think it’s mainly financial self-interest — the ultrawealthy will pay lower taxes if Trump wins, but Musk has essentially set fire to millions, even billions, of dollars in pursuit of his political agenda. No, if you listen to them, what really seems to infuriate them is what Musk calls the “woke mind virus.”
I think most of these billionaires would struggle to actually define wokeness, but what’s so terrible about it? Whatever it is, wokeness hasn’t gotten in the way of soaring profits and stock prices. But one consistent theme is its criticism of abuses by people with power — and some people with power just can’t abide the notion that other people are allowed to talk about its possible abuse, let alone the notion that government should do anything about it.
What this means to me is that many people, including and especially some rich and powerful people, who imagine that their lives will go on as before if Trump wins — because they themselves aren’t undocumented immigrants, or part of the “fake news media,” or federal employees who might be suspected of disloyalty, or anyone else whom Trump casts as the “enemy within” — are deluding themselves. Trump and many of those around him are hypersensitive to criticism, and if he wins, you can expect them to punish critics, whoever they are, and demand affirmations of loyalty across the board.
And that prospect alarms me as much as the idea of putting a man who uncontrollably blurts out vulgarities in charge of our nukes.
