The President Believes What He Believes

Here is the "study" Trump could be referring to, simply because he referred to it on October 22, 2016.  It's actually a blog post about a study, which carries this disclaimer at the top now:

Note: The post occasioned three rebuttals (here, here, and here) as well as a response from the authors. Subsequently, another peer-reviewed article argued that the findings reported in this post (and affiliated article) were biased and that the authors’ data do not provide evidence of non-citizen voting in U.S. elections. 

The article itself focuses on the Senate election in 2014, not on the general election of 2016, and it doesn't posit voter fraud across the country in all races (which is weird, because, what, illegal voters only vote for Senators?).

And as Politifact points out, the study relied on didn't analyze the responses to the questions.  When that was done, many respondents changed their answer about being "non-citizens," because they marked the wrong box on the form (and if they're lying now, how do you rely on their previous answers?  All determination of "non-citizens" voting in the article Trump relied on in October were based on self-descriptions of citizenship status):

"When we took out people who changed their answer on the citizenship question and only look at people who answered consistently that they were noncitizens, we found no reported noncitizens who voted," Schaffner told PolitiFact.

News 21, a national investigative reporting project, found 56 cases of noncitizens voting across all elections from 2000 to 2011.

Or roughly 5 per year; a far cry from 5 million in November, 2016.

Rick Hasen, an election expert at University of California at Irvine’s School of law, told PolitiFact that Trump’s statistic is bogus. He also cited Ansolabehere, Luks and Schaffner’s study rebutting Trump citation.

Hasen wrote in the Wall Street Journal recently that "the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit concluded last month than only a ‘tiny fraction’ of voters are noncitizens and that there is no evidence it is a serious problem."

Liberal judges, amirite?

Sarah Pierce, an associate policy analyst of the U.S. Immigration Program at the Migration Policy Institute, said there are substantial legal deterrents that are in place to keep a noncitizen from voting.

First, it’s a criminal offense to unlawfully vote in a federal election. Second, this offense is worthy of deportation, even without a conviction.

"Voting renders an individual permanently inadmissible — again, even without a conviction," Pierce said. "This means that if someone were to be found inadmissible for having voted, they could never return to the United States, even temporarily, no matter the circumstances.

And considering how few citizens vote, what's the upside to voting illegally in massive numbers that would swamp the system?

Oh and Trump isn't just complaining about California; he includes Virginia and New Hampshire in his rants, at least from time to time.  Then again, his Press Secretary says the problem is in the "urban areas" of states that didn't vote for Trump, like New York and California.

Olbermann is right; this guy is crazy.

Adding:  oh, crap.  And:  yes, that is the problem.  Also:  as others have noted, no, we aren't talking about Russia anymore.  And frankly, if we hear anymore about an investigation of voter fraud next week, I'll be mildly surprised.  Because if Trump can't handle it with a tweet or an executive order, I'm not yet convinced he can do anything.

Why investigate the "red" states?

Just in case you thought Trump's investigation into "voter fraud" is not a matter of ego satisfaction, Sean Spicer wants to disabuse you of any such notion:

"There's a lot of states that we didn't compete in where that's not necessarily the case. You look at California and New York, we didn't look at those two states in particular," Spicer said. "I mean, as the president has noted before, he campaigned to win the electoral college, not the popular vote."

He said that Trump would have campaigned more in "big states, very populous states in urban areas" if he was trying to win the popular vote.

"But he played the game according to the rules of the game, which is electoral strategy," Spicer said. "That being said, I think when you look at where a lot of these issues could have occurred in bigger states, that's where I think we're going to look."

It's all about why Trump didn't win the popular vote, and why California and New York, at least, were involved in voter fraud.  Because, you know, "large urban areas" and all that.

Yup.

Et in dystopia ego

The preferred metaphor here is probably "through the looking glass."  The POTUS has tweeted that he will investigate voter fraud, including dead people on voter rolls (which is not fraud, simply a record keeping problem), because he is being denied the claim that he won by the greatest margin of victory in U.S. history.

In other words, because of the raging narcissism of Donald Trump, the entire election process of last November, an election which selected hundreds of thousands of people to office from city government to the Oval Office, is to be treated as corrupted and the results unreliable because the man who now lives in the White House can't enjoy it because reality is the pea under his mattress, and he can't get any sleep.  If Trump is the victim of electoral fraud, what other elections must be called into question?  And does this only run one way, in favor of Trump and conservative Republicans?

This is not "through the looking glass."  This is 25th Amendment territory.  This is a challenge to the legitimacy of the democratic process which is the basis of this nation by the President himself, because he didn't win enough votes to salve his enormous ego.  This is the very definition of a man unfit to hold the office, and incapable of carrying out its duties.

This is what Republican senators were saying yesterday, in response to Trump's statement and Spicer's answers at the press briefing:

“I’m just not concentrating on that. I’m looking at the policies he’s putting forward, and they look good to me," Sen. Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV) said, when asked about Trump's claim that millions of undocumented immigrants had committed voter fraud.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said he wasn't even paying that close attention to Trump's first days.

"I've been working on health care. Truly health care," Cassidy said. "I don't want to be like in a bubble, but I'm thinking about health care and getting our plan across."

Even Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) tried to down play Trump's comments.

"There are always arguments on both sides about how much, how frequent and all the rest," McConnell said about Trump's voter fraud accusations Tuesday.

Other Republicans – two who pulled their support for Trump during the election– however, vehemently pushed back on the notion that Trump had been robbed of votes.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said that he had "no evidence of it" when asked about voter fraud.

“I don’t think there is any evidence to support that. He won the election. Move on," Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) said. “I'm not going to tell [Trump] what to do. I’m just saying he won the election, we ought to move on.”

Do they still want to move on this morning?

You shall know the truth

No other snowflake is like this one.  Thank goodness....

and the truth shall make you sad.  Or just small and bitter:

"There is this constant theme to undercut the enormous support that he has," Spicer said. "I think it's unbelievably frustrating when you're continually told it's not big enough, it's not good enough, you can't win."

Trump approval rating:  42% approve, 51% disapprove.   That is the lowest on record.   Is that "good enough," or not?  What it is not is any indication of "enormous support."

Attendance at the inaugural is estimated at anywhere from 250,000 to 600,000.  Obama has 1 million at his second inaugural, 1.8 million at his first.

Old news, but then you learn more, and you have to wonder:  has this guy learned nothing in 70 years about how to treat people?

Trump has had a tumultuous relationship with the press, frequently calling the media dishonest and insulting individual reporters by name at his rallies and on Twitter. Still, two people close to Trump said he expected his coverage to turn more favorable once he took office. Instead, he's told people he believes it's gotten worse.

The bad press over the weekend has not allowed Trump to "enjoy" the White House as he feels he deserves, according to one person who has spoken with him.

The disjunct between the first sentence of the first paragraph, and the second, is glaring.  Why did he expect kinder treatment?  What was supposed to cause it?  And he hasn't been able to "enjoy" the White House?

Oh, dear.  Was he supposed to?  Does he really need the national press patting him on the back and telling him he's a very, very special snowflake, in order to be able to do his job as President?

Which would be funny, if he weren't the President.

The Face of Evil?

So I started with this, where the President's Press Secretary proves that meme to be true:

“I believe that we have to be honest with the American people, but I think sometimes we can disagree with the facts,” Spicer told reporters Monday in the first press briefing under President Donald Trump. 

I don't know how to understand that statement except as a confused obfuscation.  We may disagree on what the facts are; that, indeed, is the basis of argument.  You disagree that the facts on one side are dispositive, or the only facts of the matter, or with the reasoning based on those facts.  But you can't disagree with the facts.

The very nature of facts is that they can't be disagreed with.  But supposedly we're to judge the Trump Administration by what's in their hearts; not by what they say, but by what they mean:

“Our intention is never to lie to you,” he added.

Well, that's alright then.  Whenever they do lie, they'll just alter the facts to fit their views.

And that turned into some reporters deciding this press conference proved Spicer was a square guy after all, following the unhinged rant on the day after the Inauguration.

But then Kellyanne Conway goes on FoxNews and says this:

We invited the press pool into the Oval Office, I was there ... And it was to witness the President signing these executive orders ... We let the pool press in, and immediately the print pooler sent out the pool report that the MLK bust had been removed. It is false. I don't say his name publicly because I don't want him to get attacked like I do. Because of what the press is doing now to me, I have Secret Service protection. We have packages delivered to my house with white substances. That is a shame and yes I hold him into account for it. This guy puts it out. It gets tweeted and it gets reported 3,000 times. He still can't take it back. He apologized to his colleagues in the press; he has not apologized to the President. And the damage is done because then people look at Donald Trump as the 'R word'. The darn bust was right there. I was standing next to it. It was being hidden by a guard. Why don't you ask us? Why don't you say, where is the bust? It presumptive negativity.

She is not the first White House staffer to get Secret Service protection, but she knows the general public doesn't know that.   And she blames it on a reporter, because that's the way this White House rolls.

The only question is:  how will the journalists respond?

"There are chains upon his hands/he is just riding on a train...."

Rosebud!

"The president has a modus operandi: He hits back, he strikes back, he's very impulsive at times. He likes to be authentic. It's worked for him for decades, his reputation, his brand, his candidacy," Ruddy said. "The problem is he's moved into a different position and that hasn't fully sank in yet. He's not speaking for Donald Trump and his company. He's speaking as the leader of the free world."

Donald Trump has no idea what he's in for.

He's already shown it, with his tweets, his refusal to leave his businesses behind, his inaugural address which Josh Marshall rightly called a Xerox of a campaign speech.  But I mean it literally.

All of my life I have worked for someone else, and I am the first to admit that, as I grow older, I grow crankier.  I prefer to think I'm just "ornery," but I know I'm not that charming.  I'm cranky.  I keep it in check, but it has cost me jobs from time to time.  The closest I got to being "self-employed" was when I was a pastor, because I was in charge.

At least, I thought I was.  What I was, primarily, was responsible. I was to blame.  Anything I said was twisted into what someone wanted me to say, what they wanted to blame me for.  If I spoke up for myself in a meeting, I was accused of behaving like a lawyer (it was the worst sin my opponents could accuse me of).  If I brought up a different point in another meeting from the one being mentioned, I was later accused of being dismissive, argumentative, even rude and arrogant.  Once I got a report of a hospital visit I conducted, with a comatose patient and an adult daughter of the patient whom I'd never met.  What I heard was that I did the exact opposite of what actually happened.  But my enemies had long knives, and I had only the position of responsibility; responsibility for keeping my enemies happy.

It's an impossible position.

Now look at the position of the President of the United States.  You are the most powerful individual in the world, you are told.  So close the prison at Guantanamo.  Pass gun control laws after the horrific massacre of children at Newtown, Connecticut.  Prevent war in the Middle East without sending in more American troops to die there again and again.  Unite the nation.

Go ahead; you are the most powerful person in the world, aren't you?

Now consider the daily realities of the job.  You aren't in power, you are in responsibility.  If you set up the systems below you in the right way, only the impossible situations reach your desk.  Daily operations of the Administration should never get to you; but you aren't the CEO.  You aren't the owner.  Your name isn't on everything that goes out, just your responsibility.  You can't fix the economy, but if it declines, it's your fault.  You can't control energy prices, but if they go up, it's your fault.  You can't stop wars in the Middle East, but if they break out, or go on, you are to blame for acting, for not acting, for doing too little or too much.  Am I exaggerating?

Obama was a terrible president who shepherded the American economy through a weak-kneed recovery, increased partisan divisions, diminished America's presence abroad, abandoned our allies, and emboldened our foes. He trapped his party inside a flaming wreckage so terrible that it enabled Donald Trump to get elected president.

Thanks, Obama!  Now, of course, Barack Obama is not directly responsible for the election of Donald Trump, but that's an article critical of Donald Trump!  You see how this works.  You aren't so much in charge, as you are responsible.

And you aren't in charge.  You can nominate people, but the Senate must approve them.  You can appoint some people, but that's all you can do.  You can't put anyone else in charge of all the operations, ultimately the buck stops with you.  You can't even decide what the operations are, where the crises will be, where you will put the nation's efforts.  Those things get decided for you.  You aren't running a business, you are dealing with crises.  A black man is shot in an American city; murders go up or go down; a terrorist bomb kills people somewhere overseas.  A country rattles its saber.  You don't get to choose which of those to respond to.  You don't decide to stop a business deal in the foreign country, to wait for conditions to change, to seek another lender or business partner.  You don't get to withdraw, wait, seek profit elsewhere.  You are the President. You are responsible.  You answer, not to your creditors, but to the nation.

Does anyone really think Donald Trump is ready to do that?  He's been in business all his life, going where he wants to go, doing what he wants to do, and engaging any number of failures.  Remember his football team?  His airline?  Trump University?  He can't abandon America like a bad business deal, or put it into bankruptcy and walk away.  He's worked for himself all his life:  convincing creditors to back his developments, selling his name for fun and profit, running everything with just family members as his closest advisors and employees.  When you're the President, you don't get to start new ventures and then put them into bankruptcy (i.e., engage the laws of the nation) to protect you.  It isn't you anymore, it's the nation that's involved.

Does anyone think Donald Trump understands that?

He think it's about power.  He's going to find out it's about responsibility.  As a businessman he has power, at least as much as his creditors give him.  As a President, he has responsibilities.  And he's really, really not used to that.  He's not even ready for that.

He think he's defeated his enemies, and he's won the prize.  He has no idea what defeat means, yet; and no idea what victory looks like.  He's going to find out his job is to keep his enemies happy.  He's going to find out his job is to be responsible for what happens.  He told FoxNews he had to be on Twitter because he had to counter the lies told about him in the media.  Then he went and told the CIA, in front of their most sacred memorial, how victimized by the press he still is.

The President has more power than a pastor, but also much more responsibility.  And the power is not the power to silence your critics, or to decide who will, and who won't, be able to approach the throne.  Trump thinks he can threaten the press and cow them into submission, or go completely around them and govern via Twitter.  He hasn't begun to encounter the Congress yet, and his team, who seem incapable or uninterested in filling the hundreds of positions the President must appoint, seem to have no clue how the Presidency works, either.  Three of his most public advisors spent the first weekend of his Presidency lying and antagonizing the press, as if that will make them more powerful, or well-serve the needs of their President. 

Trump has no idea what he's in for.

I read the news today, o boy....

And I promise not to do it again for a long time.....

The broader power struggles within the Trump operation have touched everything from the new administration’s communications shop to the expansive role of the president’s son-in-law to the formation of Trump’s political organization. At the center, as always, is Trump himself, whose ascent to the White House seems to have only heightened his acute sensitivity to criticism.

This account of Trump’s tumultuous first days in office comes from interviews with nearly a dozen senior White House officials and other Trump advisers and confidants, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations and moments.

By most standards, Spicer’s statement Saturday did not go well. He appeared tired and nervous in an ill-fitting gray pinstripe suit. He publicly gave faulty facts and figures — which he said were provided to him by the Presidential Inaugural Committee — that prompted a new round of media scrutiny.

Many critics thought Spicer went too far and compromised his integrity. But in Trump’s mind, Spicer’s attack on the news media was not forceful enough. The president was also bothered that the spokesman read, at times haltingly, from a printed statement.

Trump has been resentful, even furious, at what he views as the media’s failure to reflect the magnitude of his achievements, and he feels demoralized that the public’s perception of his presidency so far does not necessarily align with his own sense of accomplishment.

No, not just that:

 President Donald Trump told Capitol Hill leaders Monday evening that he lost the popular vote because 3 million to 5 million “illegals” voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton, according to three sources in both parties familiar with the meeting.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that he lost the popular vote in November’s election because of voter fraud. There is no evidence of this, and none that millions of undocumented immigrants voted for Clinton. It’s a fixation for Trump, who won the election because of Electoral College votes, but has had trouble accepting that Clinton won the popular vote by more than 2.8 million.

“I don’t think he was joking,” said one person familiar with what happened in the meeting. “He spent 10 minutes on his win and said he won the popular vote, except 3 to 5 million illegals voted for” Clinton.

Another source confirmed Trump used the word “illegals,” considered an offensive term for undocumented immigrants.

This was Trump’s first official meeting with congressional leaders since being sworn in as president on Friday.

As Josh Marshall points out:  three days in, there sure is a lot of leaking going on:

There is, to put it mildly, a rather clearly recurring theme: a torqued up man-child, alternatively rageful and fragile, both grandiose and profoundly insecure. To a degree it is difficult to maintain perspective since the contrast between the departed and incoming Presidents could simply not be any greater - either in the composure and steadiness of the man in question or in his associates' willingness to share his secrets with the press. Would it even be possible to mount a leak investigation when everyone seems to be leaking?

And if you really want to feel badly, pay attention to this from Politico:

First, his team will be very combative, even when the facts are not on their side, trusting that their political base dislikes the news media and will believe them no matter what. Sometimes, they are likely to muddy the water or throw a hand grenade into a political debate just to change the headlines.

First:  how soon do we hear that the President just needs have a drink with Sen. McConnell?  Second:  Do they understand his "base" is 37% or so, and shrinking?

And second, when Trump grows angry, he will usually want the strongest response possible, unless he is told no, and that he will often govern or make decisions based off news coverage.

"Most of the people around him are new to him. One of the things they don't understand about him is he likes pushback. They are not giving him the pushback he needs when he's giving advice. He's a strong guy. He's intimidating to a lot of people," said Christopher Ruddy, a Trump friend who talks to him often and is the CEO of Newsmax. "If he doesn't have people who can tell him no, this is not going to go very well."

Oh, great.

Clap Louder! That's a Presidential Order!!

Of course, we can still argue about what the facts are....

There's going to be a lot of this going around:

There are many who hope Trump’s supporters will hold him accountable. That they will insist he fulfill his promises about jobs or universal health coverage—and when those promises are broken, that their fervent support will turn into rage at having been duped, causing Trump anguish and eventually costing him re-election.

When people make big bets on miracle cures that fail to work, they rarely turn against the treatments or their merchants.

This is wishful thinking. Trump’s rise to power has followed a similar trajectory to that of quacks who peddle panaceas to the desperate—a bizarre and heartbreaking world I’ve long studied. Just like them, Trump will fail to deliver. But his supporters will find a way to exonerate him. Consider the ability of one “Archbishop” Jim Humble—a former gold prospector who claims extraterrestrial lineage—to persuade parents to pump their autistic children full of Master Mineral Solution, even though MMS, when activated by citric acid, becomes a dangerous form of industrial bleach. Or “Gerson” therapy evangelists, who talk cancer patients into paying thousands to detoxify with organic juice at a Tijuana, Mexico, clinic, despite studies showing the therapy is ineffective (unsurprising given that it was developed not by oncologists, but an early 20th-century Viennese doctor named Max Gerson as an unsuccessful tuberculosis treatment).

When people make big bets on miracle cures that fail to work, they rarely turn against the treatments or their merchants. Instead, they rationalize their misplaced faith, in order to save face, remain hopeful, and preserve an identity that’s defined by their courageous ability to reject the status quo.

Vague and glittering gernarlities based on the personal experience of the author:

Who, after weighing all the evidence, could actually take them seriously? Only credulous fools, right?

I used to think so, until about a decade ago, when my father called to ask if I knew anything about “zapping.” 

And based on the creation of a phrase that sounds vaguely academic and therefore respectable in the right circles; in this case, "epistemic uncertainty."   When really, the simplest answer is, as ever, the best:

Donald Trump requires constant and undiminished reinforcement of his greatness.

Emphasis in original.

And why do people buy what Trump sells?  Because there's a sucker born every minute.  Does this portend some sea change in American politics, though?  Don't we need to convert Trump supporters into rational beings like ourselves?

Of course not.

For one thing, Trump has the lowest approval ratings ever recorded, and this during his "honeymoon period" when he hasn't yet had a chance to disappoint anyone.  He's got nowhere to go from the inauguration but down, and he's already there.

Trump won the electoral college while losing the popular vote by a 3 million vote margin. Yes, that's the system, but in no other democracy in the world would the popular vote winner lose the election, and if that did happen, the results would be regarded as a wholly undemocratic action.  Which is not to say Trump is "illegitimate" in the technical sense of not truly having won the race according to the rules; it is to say the electoral college renders an illegitimate result.  But those are the rules and we are stuck with them.

We still fancy ourselves a democracy, though, and the President still serves at the behest of the people.  But Donald Trump doesn't want to be President; he wants to be reminded of his greatness.  Constantly.

And only about 30% of the people, by the best measure we have, wants to reinforce that greatness.  Trump doesn't represent a sea change in our politics; he is the result of a breakdown, coupled with an archaic system designed to bring slave-holding states into the union they would try to break less than a century later.  He is a fluke, a design flaw, a kink in the system.   He was not elected by a nation of credulous fools; he was elected by a basic error and a system meant to represent, not actually produce, representative democracy.  Trump's victory is a result of that system.  It was meant to protect the power structures established by the Constitution, but no system can function so perfectly as to never produce the antithesis of what it was designed to create.  Now the system meant to reinforce and stabilize power has produced a person determined to use that power to destabilize and disrupt the system.  Fortunately the system is too redundant, resilient, and occupied by opposing forces for one person, or even one Administration, to tear it down.  But having relied on the system for too long to take care of us, we find ourselves on the short end of the national stick.

As ever, we have met the enemy, and he is us.  Not us the Trump supporters; us the complacent who refused to vote because we didn't like the choices; or refused to vote because we saw conspiracies in every e-mail delivered by Wikileaks; or we just thought no one could be stupid enough to vote for Donald Trump, so why bother ourselves?  You can't begin to exhaust the excuses, but don't be fooled:  this didn't happen because of "them," it happened because of us.  It happened because, like Trump, we want to be reminded of our importance constantly.  Failing that constant stroking, why should we vote for the lesser of two evils?  Why should we vote for a candidate we don't really like, don't really care about, don't really trust?  Isn't this whole democracy thing about how we feel?

It was that attitude the "Founding Fathers" feared above all things.  That's why they warned us about creating political parties.  That's why they created an "electoral college" so the Presidency could never be a plebiscite.  And that's why we have a raging man-child narcissist who has to rant about the size of his inaugural audience and send his minions out to lie about it.

So while a stunned nation hashes and rehashes What It All Means®, I’m particularly hung up on this one fact:

The President of the United States forced his spokesperson to lie to the American people about how many people watched his inaugural.

This stupid, petty, in-the-grand-scheme-of-things meaningless thing was THAT important to him. He is supposed to be the leader of the free world focused on, you know, important stuff. But he forced his spokesbot to tell an obvious, easily checked lie about how many people watched his inaugural. It is that important for Trump. He must have the biggest, the best, the most, the (fill in the blank superlative), and yes, he will die on this hill. What little political capital he had was squandered on something stupid like crowd size because Trump demanded it.

Just let that sink in for a minute. It’s just … astonishing.

Does she exaggerate?  Not according to Trump's Press Secretary:

"He keeps getting told what he can't do by this narrative that's out there. And exceeds it every single time. And I think there's an overall frustration when you turn on the television over and over again and get told that there's this narrative that you didn't win, you weren't going to run, you can't pick up this state," he said. "Over and over again there's this constant attempt to undermine his credibility and the movement that he represents. And it's frustrating for not just him, but I think so many of us that are trying to work to get this message out."

The morning of day 3 of the new Administration, and that's where we are.  And it really doesn't matter if we can convince the hardest core Trump supporter that this is not a good place to be, because we are there regardless.    And we are the ones responsible for it.  Which means we are the ones who can fix it.  Not "them," those "Trump supporters;" us; you and me.

This is still a democracy, after all.

Nothing but good times ahead!

As soon as we learn to raise our hands and ask "Mother may I?" 

“We certainly respect people’s First Amendment rights,” [Counselor to President Trump Kellyanne] Conway said. “But I frankly didn’t see the point. I mean, you have a day after he’s uplifting and unifying and you have folks here being on a diatribe where I think they could have requested a dialogue. Nobody called me and said, ‘Hey, could we have a dialogue?’”

Maybe we could talk about "alternative facts"?  Or why you think this is "uplifting and unifying"?

"Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities, rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation, an education system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge, and the crime, and the gangs, and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now."

Because it sounds like the scenario to a B-grade apocalypse movie to me.  So maybe we could have a dialogue about that, too.  Or how about a dialogue about his remarks to the CIA on Saturday?

Trump’s remarks caused astonishment and anger among current and former C.I.A. officials. The former C.I.A. director John Brennan, who retired on Friday, called it a “despicable display of self-aggrandizement in front of C.I.A.’s Memorial Wall of Agency heroes,” according to a statement released through a former aide. Brennan said he thought Trump “should be ashamed of himself.”

Crocker, who was among the last to see Ames and the local C.I.A. team alive in Beirut, was “appalled” by Trump’s comments. “Whatever his intentions, it was horrible,” Crocker, who went on to serve as the U.S. Ambassador in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, and Kuwait, told me. “As he stood there talking about how great Trump is, I kept looking at the wall behind him—as I’m sure everyone in the room was, too. He has no understanding of the world and what is going on. It was really ugly.”

“Why,” Crocker added, “did he even bother? I can’t imagine a worse Day One scenario. And what’s next?”

John McLaughlin is a thirty-year C.I.A. veteran and a former acting director of the C.I.A. who now teaches at Johns Hopkins University. He also chairs a foundation that raises funds to educate children of intelligence officers killed on the job. “It’s simply inappropriate to engage in self obsession on a spot that memorializes those who obsessed about others, and about mission, more than themselves,” he wrote to me in an e-mail on Sunday. “Also, people there spent their lives trying to figure out what’s true, so it’s hard to make the case that the media created a feud with Trump. It just ain’t so.”

John MacGaffin, another thirty-year veteran who rose to become the No. 2 in the C.I.A. directorate for clandestine espionage, said that Trump’s appearance should have been a “slam dunk,” calming deep unease within the intelligence community about the new President. According to MacGaffin, Trump should have talked about the mutual reliance between the White House and the C.I.A. in dealing with global crises and acknowledged those who had given their lives doing just that.

“What self-centered, irrational decision process got him to this travesty?” MacGaffin told me. “Most importantly, how will that process serve us when the issues he must address are dangerous and incredibly complex? This is scary stuff!”

Or maybe we should criticize John Brennan and Ryan Crocker and John McLaughlin and John MacGaffin because they didn't ask Ms. Conway for a dialogue before speaking to The New Yorker.  Then again, there is already a dialogue:

Paul Pillar, a Vietnam veteran, rose to become deputy director of the Counterterrorism Center and later the National Intelligence Officer in charge of the Middle East and South Asia. He, too, was anguished by Trump’s comments. “He used the scene as a prop for another complaint about the media and another bit of braggadocio about his crowds and his support,” Pillar told me Sunday. “That the specific prop was the C.I.A.’s memorial wall, and that Trump made no mention of those whom that wall memorializes, made his performance doubly offensive.”

And as part of that "dialogue," Trump tweeted this:

“Had a great meeting at CIA Headquarters yesterday, packed house, paid great respect to Wall, long standing ovations, amazing people. WIN!”

So clearly the media is just telling more lies.

Does size really matter?

You gotta problem with so much whiteness?

No, ultimately, crowd size doesn't matter.  Trump is POTUS, whether 5 million turned out around the world in protest, or whether only 150,000 turned out to see him sworn in.

Though you could ask yourself how many people rode Metro for similar occasions, it still doesn't mean Trump is not the President of the United States.

It's the lies that matter.  Same as it ever was.  The lies behind Watergate, behind Iran-Contra, even behind the Gulf of Tonkin incident.  It's never quite the facts that matter; it's what's said about the facts, that matter.

And there are no alternatives to facts; there are only lies about them.

Well, at least Madonna would do it with her own money

Kellyanne Conway, Counsel to the President:

“You have a very prominent singer who’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars not going over to a woman’s shelter here in D.C. to write a check, but instead saying that she thought of, quote, ‘burning down the White House,’” she said.

And, in fairness to Madonna:

However I want to clarify some very important things. I am not a violent person, I do not promote violence and it's important people hear and understand my speech in it's entirety rather than one phrase taken wildly out of context.

Damned lying media!  But I still think her charitable contributions are her own money....

 

The Neverending Story

What Ian McKellan said...

Twitter doesn't love me anymore, as it won't let me embed tweets any longer.  No matter, the text is what matters:

Had a great meeting at CIA Headquarters yesterday, packed house, paid great respect to Wall, long standing ovations, amazing people. WIN!

At least he never said "I", right?  WIN!

Wow, television ratings just out: 31 million people watched the Inauguration, 11 million more than the very good ratings from 4 years ago!

Really?  The POTUS is spending his first two days in office obsessing over his inaugural?

Watched protests yesterday but was under the impression that we just had an election! Why didn't these people vote? Celebs hurt cause badly.

And the latest is how you know the staff is still taking the Twitter account away from him when they can:

Peaceful protests are a hallmark of our democracy. Even if I don't always agree, I recognize the rights of people to express their views.

And none of these are from the POTUS account.  Trump can't give up Twitter, even now that he's won; just like he can't give up fighting with the idea that there is anyone anywhere in the world who doesn't recognize his greatness.

Honestly, for reasons I'll put in another post, I give him two years.  If the country doesn't vote in a Democratic House and Senate just to impeach the guy (a long shot, even with Trump in the Oval Office), I'll still give odds he quits before his first term is up.  But until then, this is going to be the continuing theme:

"It's really time for him to put in his own security and intelligence community," she said. "We really would prefer the intelligence community that's going out the door to be much more respectful toward the President."

It's all about "respecting" the President.  If he can't have that, he can't function.  Well, I can respect the office (though not revere it); but I cannot respect the current holder of the office.  If Trump wants that, if Trump needs that, if Trump demands that, it is up to Trump to earn it.  So far, all he's done is complain about how much respect he doesn't think he's getting.  It is unseemly for a 76 year old man to throw such a continuous public temper tantrum.

It's frightening when that man is the President of the United States.  My response to Ms. Conway is:  then the President of the United State needs to be more respectable.

And he needs to follow the laws and the Constitution to earn that respect, too.  It may be Trump has already violated the Presidential Records Act.  It's not a firing offense, but considering how much hell he gave Clinton about alleged violations of law and deleted e-mails, shouldn't we uphold the law, not ignore it?  If Trump has no respect for the law, why should we have any respect for him?*

*And honestly, they just don't understand what they are doing:

Top Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway said in a Sunday interview that people expect the President "always to be the bigger man."

"It's when people attack him and then they wait to see what happens," Conway said in an interview on "Sunday Today."

She described Trump as a "counter-puncher," and said he has the right to "defend himself and clear the record."

"But at the same time, he swallows a great deal and looks the other way," Conway said. "And I just think we should give him a chance."

So Putin just needs to stroke Trump to get what he wants from him, and the rest of us need to salute the Commander in Chief to keep him happy and make him think he's always "the bigger man," because he needs the chance to show he can look the other way, even though a word in an interview with John Lewis is enough to send him on a three day rant, and a report from the government he now heads about crowd size is enough to send three of his employees out to the press to call them all liars.

Yeah, Trump just needs a chance.....

As my wife said:  we've elected a narcissist to the office.  God help us all.

"Somewhere a glory awaits unseen"

Actually, Obama's inauguration 8 years ago; but Trump 

is using it as the background for the POTUS Twitter feed 

because turnout for his inauguration was "Sad!"

Don't think of a liar?

Mr. Trump won the election on November 8 of 2016 in the largest electoral college landslide for a Republican in 28 years. He won over 2,600 counties nationwide, the most since President Reagan in 1984. Additionally, he won over 62 million votes in the popular vote, the highest all-time for a Republican nominee. He also won 306 electoral votes, the most for a Republican since George H.W. Bush in 1988.

First, I don't think the word "landslide" means "any electoral victory."  Besides, Bush beat Dukakis 428 to 111 in 1988; and George W. Bush defeated Kerry by 35 electoral votes in 2004, just two fewer votes than the margin between Trump and Clinton.

Counties?  Who are we kidding?  Why not count by municipalities, or polling districts? Yes, Trump won 62 million votes in the popular vote, but Clinton won 65 million.  And yeah, Bush never cracked 300 electoral votes in winning the White House twice, but again, no Republican other than W. won the White House between 1988 and 2016.

This is the story the President wants to tell about himself, to the world.  Which has to have the whole world thinking:  "How insecure IS this guy?"  Making our allies tremble, and our enemies chuckle.

And have you seen the pictures of the inaugural parade?

Nothin' but good times ahead!

"Tomorrow Belongs to Me!"

No, Trump's inaugural address didn't crib from Bane, he plagiarized Sophocles:

Voices: In supplication
Oedipus!  Oedipus our Lord, help us!  Help your people!
....
Chorus:
Oedipus!  Oedipus our Lord, help us!  Help your people!

Oedipus:
What is it, my children? You, my children, are the youngest generation of the ancient house of Cadmus. What is causing all these cries of anguish, all this waving of prayer branches? Their scent has filled the air of our city!  All this lamentation, these deep sighs of misfortune. What are they about?

Well? Here I am! You have me here in person and I have come to you so that I can find out what it is
that gives you this pain, directly from you, from your own mouths, rather than risk any mistakes that might be made by a third person.

Speak, sons and daughters of old Cadmus, you are talking to me, Oedipus! You all know me!

You, old priest, your advanced years well qualify you to represent this youth.  Tell me then, what has brought you all here?  Is there something you are afraid of?  Is there something you need from me? Tell me and it will certainly be granted!  Otherwise what sort of a man would I be if I had not enough compassion to help you, you, my very own folk, with all my heart?

Priest:
King of our Thebes, Oedipus!

Look at us! We are all here, gathered around your altars, praying. See? All the ages of men are here:
the youth, whose wings have yet to spread wide enough for flying far and the old men whose head and back are bent with years – like me, Oedipus, me, Zeus’ priest!

And look there! Look at our youth! The best stock of men in the world!  We are all gathered here. Here and in the city, too, around both the temples of our Goddess Athena, and by the fires inside Apollo’s temple, and by the altars of Ismenos whose oracles emerge from ashes. There is plenty of kneeling and lamenting and deep sighing going on there as well, my lord!  There, too, Oedipus, the laurels are waved in supplication.

But, you, too, Oedipus, with your own eyes, you can see how the whole of Thebes is in the grips of a battering sea storm of troubles and how she cannot raise her head from its murderous waves! You too, can see that our trees let drop their best flowers to the ground just before they become fruit; that our herds drop dead as they graze and our women have all become barren.

A despicable pestilence, my lord, has taken our Thebes within its murderous grip!

As if some fire-carrying god has swooped upon our land, hollowing out our homes while at the same time, cluttering the house of Black Hades with our moans and our cries of despair.
We are not saying, Oedipus, that you are equal to the gods but we have come to you and have gathered around your altars, because, out of all the men we know, we think you are the best in working out the meaning of these hardships that have been tossed upon us, by life and by the gods.
It was you, Oedipus, who came here, to our Thebes, to the land of Cadmus and who has saved us from the grips of that witch, that Sphinx, who held us all inside here, within the walls of the city, in dreadful fear.

You did not do this with our help, Oedipus but with the help of some divine intervention. With your act, you’ve let us live proper lives again.

And now, great Oedipus!  We fall before you in prayer and ask you to find, if you can, some remedy for our pains, either from some man’s wisdom or some god’s voice because I can see that the thoughts of experienced men are always the wisest.

Come then, our Lord and King!  Come, first among all mortals! Make our Thebes live again!  Remember, my Lord, this city calls you “saviour” because of your past act of generosity.  Let us not ever in the future think that “by Oedipus’ generosity we were saved but by Oedipus lack of action we died.”  Let us instead say, “Oedipus raised us to our feet yet again!”

You were driven here to our aid by a bright omen many years ago, so let it drive you to us once again!  Because, Oedipus, if you wish to rule this city, and I know you do, then it is far better to rule it when it is filled with men rather then when it is scraped hollow of them.  No tower, no ship is worth anything if it is bereft of men.

Oedipus:
My poor children!

I know you well, all of you and I know well your pain.   I know very well that you are all gripped by despair.  Yet no one is in greater pain than I am because your pain affects only you, each one of you, alone, whereas I ache for the whole city and for all of you.  So have no fear, I’m not asleep.  I am wade awake to your misfortune.  My soul cries for us all.  I have lost many tears and have travelled many paths of thought to find a way out of this until, finally, I have decided to put into action the only possible solution that came to my mind:  I have sent Creon, my wife’s brother, Menoikeos’ son, to Apollo’s oracle to ask what we should do to save our city;  to find out what deed or what word should we do or say to save our country.

In fact, Creon should have returned by now and I’m beginning to worry.  Let him come and tell us what needs to be done.  Then I would indeed be a terrible man if I did not do all that the god asks!

Granted, Trump is taking on the role of the people and of Oedipus, but then, Trump doesn't have the humility of Oedipus.

Although he certainly has the hubris.

Inaugural Blues

The inaugural of 2009 and the inaugural of 2016

Huh?

"Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities, rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation, an education system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge, and the crime, and the gangs, and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now."

It seems to be a nation only Trump can see.  I can't wait for his State of the Union Address.  Imagine what he thinks that is.

And we are not a divided nation because of Donald Trump or Barack Obama or even Hillary Clinton.  We are a divided nation because of this:

“I thought the speech was great,” John Falk, a biometric salesman who traveled 22 hours by bus from Cincinnati to New York City to Washington, D.C., to attend the ceremony, told TPM. “I liked that he sounded presidential, inclusive.”

“He didn’t say the “I” word once,” said his friend Dino Roscigno, who described himself as an “actor, director and security guard” from New York. “That’s more than I can say about a certain someone I can think of.”*

“He was magnanimous,” Falk continued. “He thanked Michelle and Barack Obama for the smooth transition when in reality we know it was much rockier than that.”

“He could’ve criticized those Democratic lawmakers who didn’t come and he didn’t,” Roscigno added.

“It was more statesmanlike,” Falk said. “I hope it’s a sign of things to come. He always has the Twitter bomb and he can pull out that weapon if he needs to, but I hope this is a sign he’s ready to assume the mantle, the weight of the job.”

*Perhaps; I haven't checked yet.  But there are several other things the President didn't mention, either. 

Ariel Poems: Marina

Quis hic locus, quae regio, quae mundi plaga?

What seas what shores what grey rocks and what islands
What water lapping the bow
And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog
What images return
O my daughter.

Those who sharpen the tooth of the dog, meaning
Death
Those who glitter with the glory of the hummingbird, meaning
Death
Those who sit in the sty of contentment, meaning
Death
Those who suffer the ecstasy of the animals, meaning
Death

Are become insubstantial, reduced by a wind,
A breath of pine, and the woodsong fog
By this grace dissolved in place

What is this face, less clear and clearer
The pulse in the arm, less strong and stronger—
Given or lent? more distant than stars and nearer than the eye
Whispers and small laughter between leaves and hurrying feet
Under sleep, where all the waters meet.

Bowsprit cracked with ice and paint cracked with heat.
I made this, I have forgotten
And remember.
The rigging weak and the canvas rotten
Between one June and another September.
Made this unknowing, half conscious, unknown, my own.
The garboard strake leaks, the seams need caulking.
This form, this face, this life
Living to live in a world of time beyond me; let me
Resign my life for this life, my speech for that unspoken,
The awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships.

What seas what shores what granite islands towards my timbers
And woodthrush calling through the fog
My daughter.

--T.S. Eliot

Thanks, Obama!

Howard Fineman  points out that Barack Obama was no LBJ, not even a Harry Truman.

But since Ike, who was?

Yes, I know, I'm dipping back before LBJ with that one.  But Kennedy came out of the Senate much as Obama did:  his campaign and his hagiography after his assassination, were all about Kennedy.  Kennedy was no more a "wheeler-dealer" than Obama was, and he didn't let LBJ do all that much for him.  LBJ was the last creature of an American politics that was dying when he took office.   He was almost an anachronism. Nixon was not a creature of the Senate or the House; Ford was, but what did that matter?  Carter?  A southern Governor.  Reagan?  Gov. of California.  GHWBush?  A Washington bureaucrat, hardly an LBJ legislative manipulator.  Clinton?  Another southern governor, like GWBush.

The creatures of DC in that time?  Al Gore, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld (no, never a POTUS or VPOTUS, but a creature of the DC bureaucracy).  And for Obama, it was Joe Biden.

Does anybody see Joe Biden as a better POTUS than Obama, as being more successful with Congress?  Biden tried to get the Congress to go along with some small measure of gun control after Newtown; how did that go, Howard?

Fineman draws the tightest noose around Obama's neck I've ever seen.  Most analyses blame the rise of the Tea Party on the economic collapse that occurred under Bush, and the ranting of Rick Santelli on CNBC.  And no small part of the organization of that "Tea Party" was owed to old Washington "insiders" who were hard-core conservatives in the GOP.  But according to Fineman, the Tea Party was completely grass roots, and completely Obama's fault:

Everything from the stimulus package to Obamacare was passed on straight party-line votes ― as though America ran on an English-style parliamentary system, rather than the cross-cutting give-and-take of a presidential and congressional one.

The result was the Tea Party explosion of 2010 and the diminishment of the Democratic Party ever since. He leaves behind a party weak, divided and confused at the end of his presidency. But he never really cared about the party. He was above all that.

He even dismisses, without mention, Mitch McConnell's infamous statement about making Obama a one-term President, or the vote of the GOP Caucus to defy Obama in all things.  Instead, yup, Obama's fault:

His response was to firebomb Congress from afar (“YOU have a drink with Mitch McConnell,” he said drily), and pressuring the only people he had the power to pressure, Democrats, via his foul-mouthed chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel. He also relied on professional Democratic arm-twisters of a Congress that was, at the start of the Obama presidency, entirely in Democratic hands.

I think the Democratic Party is in transition because political parties in the U.S. are in transition.  Hillary Clinton relied on the party to put her into the White House, but the party didn't show up at the polling places:  people did.  The party, once upon a time, gave people a reason to vote; but that motivation has been diminishing for decades.  The GOP, in their desperation, turned to inflammatory tactics and bomb throwers like Newt Gingrich (who took up the mantle from Dick Nixon, and turned that practice into an art form).  That is what turned into the Tea Party (that "revolution" was hardly sui generis or the result of Barack Obama's "cool" v. Rick Santelli's spittle); that and the blatant racism the Tea Party functioned on (remember any of that, Howard?  Remember the pictures of Obama the "witch doctor" and Obama the Communist?  Remember any of that invective?  Birthers and the like?  Why does none of that play a part in your "analysis"?).

The GOP has been riding that tiger since Gingrich won the Speakership, and now they wait to find out whether or not the tiger is going to eat them.  Problem is, the tiger may eat the country, too.  No, Obama was not our "magical Negro" who was going to sagely save us from ourselves; and maybe he thought he would be.  Or maybe he really believed in the "audacity of hope" and the "fierce urgency of now".  Certainly having a drink with Mitch McConnell was never going to change the course of the nation.  And certainly Obama had, has, a tremendous ego; get into the Presidency, hell, get into public office, without it.

As for what Obama tried to do:

It was a clever, technocratic and political strategy, sold inside the Beltway by a new wave of policy nerds who could follow Obama’s strange mix of GOP theory (marketplaces) and LBJ-style government “progrums.” But the final result ignored two things: the GOP’s willingness to cut benefits and their furious opposition to any new taxes.

In other words, the GOP are nihilist bomb throwers who want government to do only what they want it to do, and will oppose all other attempts at representing any more than a vocal minority of the country (did Donald Trump win because of the vote, or because of the peculiarity of the Electoral College?  In what other democracy on the planet would the loser of the popular vote legitimately win the highest office in the land?).   Do I exaggerate?  Right on cue, Newt Gingrich offers this explanation of why Trump's plan to cut the number of federal employees by 20% is such a good idea: “all those bureaucrats overwhelmingly voted for Clinton. There won’t be any real cooperation until we change federal law so we can fire them.” Thanks, Obama!

Even the Dixiecrats were never so determined to see government fail as the Tea Party has been, were never so determined to destroy the Congress and shut down the U.S. government if they couldn't have their way in all things.  And yet this sea change in American governance, this near collapse of the entire "American experiment," is the fault of one man, because he was a "clever technocrat" who thought a bit too much of himself.

Good grief.

"Dese are de conditions dat prevail!"

The Greek concept of tragedy was based on their cosmology.  For them, creation was a matter of logos, but not the logos John referred to in the opening of that gospel (close, though!).  Logos as reason, not just as word.  Logos, reason, imposed order on chaos, and thus the cosmos as we know it arose.

Problem was, logos was not that tight a lid on chaos.  Christians wrestle with the problem of evil; the Greeks wrestled with the problem of unreason.  When things went wrong, it was a failure of logos; it was an irruption of chaos.  Reason did all it could, but it could fail.  When it failed in tragic heroes, tragedy resulted.  When it failed in human affairs, chaos resulted.  Chaos was never defeated, but only controlled, only quelled.  The lid stayed on by the efforts of reason, and chaos stayed in the background.  But eventually, in the last tragedy of all, logos would fail, and chaos would reclaim its supremacy.

Call it another reason Plato was pessimistic about the viability of democracy.  It's not really part of Plato's argument, but like the elegiac in Old English literature that still sounds in the best British and American literature today (think of all the glories of the past on Tolkien's Middle Earth, gone, long gone, and never to return; and even when they do, Aragon's rule, too, will fade), it's somewhere in the background of Plato's reasoning.

So now comes Charlie Pierce to lament the rise of Trump and the departure of Obama, and he says, in his summing up:

But the one thing he never did—and the fact that his political opposition is so contemptuous of his personal style is proof enough that he was right—was to turn the office into what his successor apparently intends it to be: an endless celebration of nothing. On his last day, despite all the interviews he's given about how his faith in the American people has grown stronger, it's hard to believe he doesn't look out the windows of the White House now and wonder if he truly understood the country and its people at all. It is the last day he will be President of the United States, a once-great country that doesn't understand itself.

Obama understood the people, and he told them what they wanted to hear.  Trump did the same thing, but he managed to gain control with less than a majority of the country, and his support is going down.   Not that the support of the people means that much:  Obama had support of 90% of the country after the Newtown massacre, but he couldn't do anything with it.  Our system doesn't work that way; it never has.  That Trump won the White House, though, and Obama leaves more popular than Trump comes in, doesn't mean support for Obama or the Democrats is going up.  That's the zero-sum game Hillary Clinton played and lost.  Disgust with Trump didn't translate into support for Clinton, and Trump's victory hardly means he's got the whole country in his hands.   The system doesn't work that way; it never has.

 Still, the ancient Greeks had a better handle on it, though the Christian doctrine of original sin isn't inapplicable, either.  The way to understand the "American people" is to understand that:  the one thing that joins us is not nationality or patriotism or heritage or tradition.  We all have different understandings of those terms. What joins us is a concept of sin, or the nature of chaos.  In either one, reason fails, and trouble results.  Our institutions have never been able to make us do what we don't want to do, and have never been able to save us from ourselves.  We started with a compromise on the "peculiar institution" of slavery, and it took a war to end it.  We made no effort to right that wrong for another 100 years, and the past 60 years have been marked by the refusal to accept that promissory note Dr. King spoke about in 1963.  This country was formed with its own version of chaos, rooted in slavery from the arrival of Columbus, and we haven't managed to eradicate that sin with words, yet.

This country has never understood itself, and it never will; not until it hears the words of Jeremiah Wright, quoting a U.S. Ambassador, that the chickens truly come home to roost, and we are responsible for what we have done in the world.  It wasn't Obama's place to be our national preacher and tell us those truths.  He was right to praise the strengths of the American people; as right as Trump is wrong to peddle lies.  But humankind cannot bear very much reality, especially from its President.  And if the chaos does overtake us someday, well, it will be on us.  There will be a certain inevitability in it, a certain justice.  And it will be because we thought too much of ourselves; and too little.

Filling the small hours....

Like the President-to-be, you can envision me hard at work....

I wanted to highlight this bit from Dr. King's speech:

The crowning achievement in hypocrisy must go to those staunch Republicans and Democrats of the Midwest and West who were given land by our government when they came here as immigrants from Europe. They were given education through the land grant colleges. They were provided with agricultural agents to keep them abreast of forming trends, they were granted low interest loans to aid in the mechanization of their farms and now that they have succeeded in becoming successful, they are paid not to farm and these are the same people that now say to black people, whose ancestors were brought to this country in chains and who were emancipated in 1863 without being given land to cultivate or bread to eat; that they must pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. What they truly advocate is Socialism for the rich and Capitalism for the poor.

Because it goes directly against the current grain of the "rugged individual" and the "self-made man" which is part of the mythos of America  I am sick to death of hearing from people in the West who think they settled it all with their own two hands and a Colt revolver.  Without the land grants they were given to move across the Mississippi and head for the California coast, much of that area might still be controlled by Spain.  Without massive government support, the transcontinental railroad would still be a pipe dream.  Without all the things Dr. King mentions, the West might be even less inhabited than it is now.  And so much of California's prosperity is based on federal government spending it isn't even funny.

And, as he says:

They were provided with agricultural agents to keep them abreast of forming trends, they were granted low interest loans to aid in the mechanization of their farms and now that they have succeeded in becoming successful, they are paid not to farm and these are the same people that now say to black people, whose ancestors were brought to this country in chains and who were emancipated in 1863 without being given land to cultivate or bread to eat; that they must pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. 

I watched this show the other night, a laudable effort by Houston Public Media (NPR/PBS) to discuss the race issues of the fourth largest city in the country.  It was excellent, and telling.  The small panel in the visual on the website listened to, and responded to, answers to questions by two other small groups (six each) of white and black Houston residents.  The differences between the groups were telling, but none more so than the discussion of "affirmative action."

As one of the panelists pointed out, President Kennedy coined the phrase rather inadvertently when he issued an executive order that government contractors "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin."   It's the same concept King is getting at there; and the distinction is in something else the panelists mentioned:  Dr. King promoted integration; but his followers, after his untimely death, settled for de-segregation.

The difference haunts our efforts at facing racism to this day.

The white group each affirmed the idea that everyone should be treated equally, but all equally rejected the idea that this equality should be achieved by any action or any redress.  Their attitude was that of the Republicans and Democrats Dr. King addressed:  now that they are successful, people who were finally released from slavery 150 years ago, after 400 years of that peculiar institution dominating this country, should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

The way the ancestors of the current residents of the American West did.

We are profoundly divided on this issue because to face it squarely would mean to take a responsibility we, the white people of America, just don't want to take.  At the extreme this is the attitude of Dylann Roof, who thought his power would be stripped from him by black Americans.  Of course, Dylann Roof didn't have any power, so his impotent but murderous attack was not the response of the people interviewed by Houston Public Media.  More secure in their power than Mr. Roof was in his, they argue not for radical change to protect them, but for the status quo, to ensure them a comfortable end to their material existence.  The difference is profound, but the distinction is a fine one.

In an interesting programming choice, the PBS documentary "The March" followed the broadcast of  "Houston in Black and White."  I also recommend it, if you've never seen it.  The March on Washington was secure and successful only in retrospect.  At one point President Kennedy tried to dissuade Dr. King from the whole operation, on the basis that the FBI was reporting King's organization (and the others involved in the planning of the March) were infiltrated by Communists.  Which sounds like the paranoia of J. Edgar Hoover, until you remember the responses to the "Black Panthers" and consider the reactions to Black Lives Matter.

One of the things many of the participants, in the groups as well as on the panel, agreed on was that we must first put our house (whose house?  Don't worry about the details....) in order before we address the problems we have with others.  It's a comforting notion, this idea that we can set all our affairs straight and THEN address our relationships to others.  But it never works out that way.

In one sense, that argument is like Kierkegaard's swipe at Hegel; Kierkegaard imagined a man who became so abstracted from his own personal existence, so lost in the idealism of Hegelian thought, that he found one day he had died, and never realized it.  It is a comforting ideal to say "Once I am fine/perfect/comfortable, then I can take on my relationship with others," but you can no more abstract yourself from relationships with others than you can abstract yourself from your own existence.  And yes, I see that as the fundamental problem of the stereotypical "independent" Westerner:  a person so independent of others he dissociates from himself, and finds one day he's no longer alive, no longer human.

Auden was right:  we must love one another, or die.

We can't put "our house" in order without putting our world in order.  It is tempting to agree with Candide that we much each tend our own garden, but that only makes us gardeners, it doesn't make us community members.  We must take care of each other, or no one is taken care of; and we must begin with the other, and not with the self.

To put it in concrete terms, the rejoinder to the claim we must set our house in order first, we must take care of ourselves first, is the story of Elijah and the widow:

After a while the stream dried up, for there had been no rain in the land. Then the word of the Lord came to him: “Go now to Zarephath, a village of Sidon, and stay there; I have commanded a widow there to feed you.’ He went off to Zarephath, and when he reached the entrance to the village, he saw a widow gathering sticks. He called to her, ‘Please bring me a little water in a pitcher to drink.’ As she went to fetch it, he called after her, ‘Bring me, please, a piece of bread as well.’ But she answered, “As the Lord your God lives, I have no food baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a flask. I am just gathering two or three sticks to go and cook it for my son and myself before we die.’ ‘Have no fear,’ Elijah said, ‘go and do as you have said. But first make me a small cake from what you have and bring it out to me, and after that make something for your son and yourself. For this is the word of the Lord the God of Israel: The jar of flour will not give out, nor the flask of oil fail, until the Lord sends rain on the land.’ She went and did as Elijah had said, and there was food for him and for her family for a long time. The jar of flour did not give out, nor did the flask of oil, as the word of the Lord foretold through Elijah. 1 Kings 17:7-16 (REB)

Yes, it's the story of a miracle.  Yes, it's a story of faith, if you understand faith as "trust," not as some abstract concept relating an individual to God.  Elijah trusts the word of the Lord, and the widow trusts Elijah.  "But first," Elijah tells her; "but first make me a small cake...and after that make something for your son and yourself."  Had she not, she and her son would not have survived the drought; nor would Elijah.  The sensible thing for her to do was to insist she had nothing to share; because she wouldn't have.  But she didn't do the sensible thing, "and there was food for him and for her family for a long time."  It is a lesson in faith.  It is a lesson in hospitality.  It is a lesson in who you should take care of first.

Which is what Dr. King was talking about.  We set up systems:  systems of law, systems of economics, systems based on geography and social structures, and we say those systems will save us, preserve us, protect us; that if we only take care of the system first (family, friends, neighbors, wherever the boundary lines are drawn), then we can later take care of others.  We put our trust, our faith, in those systems.  Every time those systems fail and we insist they have not failed, they have only been failed.  Our trust, our faith, is truly blind, which is why we lash out at religious believers for their "blind faith."  Every time, we see in the world the reflection of ourselves, and call that the Big Idea the can never Fail.

Of course, if we put the other first, elevated the least and lowest and sent the first to the end of the line, if we tried first to take care of others so that all would be taken care of equally; what then?

Truly the more things change, the more they remain the same.  Unless we change them at the root; at the radix; unless we become radical.

The Doomsday Clock ticks closer to midnight....

Writing my inaugural address at the Winter White House, Mar-a-Lago, three weeks ago. Looking forward to Friday. #Inauguration pic.twitter.com/S701FdTCQu

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2017

Whaddya mean a tweet doesn't count as an inaugural address?

The PEOTUS has time for this:

No wonder the Today Show on biased @NBC is doing so badly compared to its glorious past. Little credibility!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2017

And this:

Totally biased @NBCNews went out of its way to say that the big announcement from Ford, G.M., Lockheed & others that jobs are coming back...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2017

to the U.S., but had nothing to do with TRUMP, is more FAKE NEWS. Ask top CEO's of those companies for real facts. Came back because of me!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2017

But not for this:

We're two days away from having a new president. But we're apparently a lot longer than that from having a Trump administration with even a minimally functional ability to govern.
...
Overall, out of 690 positions requiring Senate confirmation tracked by the Washington Post and Partnership for Public Service, Trump has come up with only 28 people so far.

The Atlantic's Russell Berman had a good story two weeks ago about how far behind Trump was. Since then? If anything, it's getting worse -- he's added only two of those 28 since Jan. 5. As Berman reported, the Partnership for Public Service suggested a president should have "100 Senate-confirmed appointees in place on or around Inauguration Day." At this pace, he won't have 100 nominees by the end of February, let alone having them confirmed and hard at work.

So what?  Trump won't start to work until next Monday, anyway.  What could go wrong?  Besides, I'm sure he'll keep tweeting to tell us how the press is telling lies about him.