Symptoms

Almost four year ago, I wrote Clinton vs Trump, in which I considered both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to be very weak candidates for President in an open field. I wrote then, “After a spirited primary season, it comes down to an establishment neoliberal candidate and a populist moderate candidate, both of whom are widely disliked and distrusted outside of their loyal core.” Clinton carried the popular vote, but failed to win the electoral college, failing to inspire rural voters in supposedly “blue wall” states Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Some pundits claim she hadn’t even campaigned in Wisconsin because she took it for granted.

Once again, Bernie Sanders ran an inspiring campaign but currently trails an uninspiring establishment neoliberal candidate, in this case his “good friend” Joe Biden. Sanders devotees are again stunned, again feel cheated (denial) and accuse Bernie of being too nice to rivals Biden and Elizabeth Warren and lacking a killer instinct (anger). Now some are claiming that Sanders has pushed the party left just by running (bargaining). Left-leaning sites claim that Sanders was actually out-maneuvered by former President Barack Obama, who orchestrated the withdrawal of other establishment candidates to allow a Super Tuesday surge for Biden. Centrists claim that Sanders’ call for a political revolution frightened moderates. Funky Academic, Irami Osei-Frimpong opined on Rising that,”black people look(ed) at Bernie Sanders the way most of America looks at Marianne Williamson.” – meaning I suppose, someone with good intentions, but who could cause serious turmoil if elected.

Though he was never as disliked as Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden is also a vulnerable candidate. One subplot of the failed impeachment effort was a cushy board position given to Joe’s troubled son, Hunter. Photographs of Joe Biden invading the personal space of various young women have been buttressed by a formal charge of rape by Tara Reade, a former staffer. The #MeToo movement has essentially disgraced itself as establishment Democrats refuse to take Reade’s accusations as seriously as those of Christine Blasey Ford.

Biden was once a snappy debater but now has to be led through interviews by his wife, Dr Jill. Though he is being touted as some sort of progressive, his record is conservative. After serving as VP in an Obama presidency that failed to deliver on the change part of “hope and change,” Biden has been widely quoted as assuring wealthy donors that, “Nothing will fundamentally change.”

As with Clinton, Biden’s only strength is that Trump is generally worse. But the smartest comment to come out of the hectic stage debates was Andrew Yang’s, “Donald Trump is not the cause of all of our problems. We’re making a mistake when we act like he is.” In contrast to the dominant theme of the DNC primary, Yang felt that Trump is, “a symptom of a disease that has been building up in our communities for years and decades.” Yang eventually dropped out and endorsed Biden, reportedly in exchange for the promise of a cabinet position, so now Yang seems to be a symptom as well.

In the runup to the last election, the press could not stop covering what certainly seemed to be a reality show masquerading as a presidential run. Trump got the nomination, Trump won the presidency, and even the media couldn’t deny that all the free coverage handed to the Donald had played a part in his victory. But they’ve obviously learned nothing. Trump has wildly mismanaged the US response to the worst pandemic since the Spanish flu and the establishment press has rewarded him with hours of airtime to drone on about how well he and his people are handling the situation. Reporters try to criticize him without realizing that the public trusts them even less than they trust politicians.

Some pundits who have seen it all remind us that defeating a sitting president is always a tough task. Since Jefferson in 1804 incumbents have won 60% of the time, and the only incumbent loss in the 20th century was Ronald Reagan defeating Jimmy Carter, who was a very good man, but a very unpopular and weak president. But Biden is not at the head of a strong movement like Reagan, and Trump, though incompetent at many things, is not as obviously ineffectual as Carter.

Once elected, Trump very adroitly abandoned his promise of being a populist bringing change. Once he fired Steve Bannon and stacked his cabinet with military-types, Trump was essentially absorbed by the establishment, and even though he makes a lot of populist and anti-immigrant noise, he essentially has done the establishment’s bidding where it counts: tax cuts and corporate largesse. Joe Biden has never not been a tool of the establishment, and would certainly also do their bidding, if he can get elected, and would stop the harassment of the mainstream media. But he has to hope that Trump’s popularity really suffers from the enormous economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic. By November, though, Trump could be taking credit for a world and nation returning to normal, or could be burnishing his image as commander-in-chief by managing a small war somewhere. Or simpler yet, as many left-leaning pundits have noted, Trump could simply use the pandemic crisis to appear to adopt some of Bernie Sanders’ proposals, beating the Democrats to the punch.

Biden can’t beat Trump; Trump has to beat himself.

The Roseanne Reboot

The legendary TV comedy Roseanne debuted in 1988. I hadn’t much use for the vulgar Married With Children, and thought this might be the same sort of show. So, I didn’t start watching until around 1992, and only then because a new girlfriend was a fan. I found that Roseanne Barr had turned the usual middle class family sitcom on its head. I enjoyed the inside jokes as cast members came and went, and watched fairly often until it went off the air. A few years ago, I started getting a broadcast channel called Laff TV, which showed four old episodes every night, and caught up from the beginning of the series to all the strange stuff that happened near the end.

In 2012, Barr campaigned as a candidate for the Green Party. I wasn’t sure she could be taken seriously after the crotch-grabbing national anthem incident, but at the convention I spoke to a very intelligent young woman who had really wanted to vote for her and was disappointed that Barr didn’t put forth more of a coherent campaign. Barr lost to Jill Stein, and then ran under the banner of the Peace and Freedom Party.

I thought Barr had settled down to a life raising macadamia nuts in Hawaii, but according to her bio she had tried to start several new comedy series, one of which – Downwardly Mobile – was rejected by NBC as too progressive.

In 2017, Sara Gilbert and John Goodman did a brief skit on The View, playing Darlene and Dan Conner watching football together. Then rumors swirled that the original cast would get back together for a reboot of Roseanne. That, I thought, could be great, but will probably be disappointing. It’s hard to recapture the magic.

Later I heard Roseanne described as a Trump supporter. On closer reading it seemed more accurate to say that she didn’t care for Hillary Clinton, but then a 2009 photo shoot with Roseanne dressed like Hitler surfaced. I suspected that Barr was cannily fanning the flames of controversy to get more people to watch the premiere, but it might have backfired. I’ve run across caustic anti-Roseanne tweets by Resistance types that refuse to watch the series because it must be pro-Trump.

In the first show of the reboot, Roseanne setup a long scene for a cheap joke. Roseanne had voted Trump, and had been estranged from Jackie, who supported Clinton, but who admitted that she had been convinced by Roseanne’s anti-Hillary rants to vote for Stein. “Who’s she?” was Roseanne’s rejoinder, skewering her old opponent. And that was about it for party politics. Roseanne and Dan do complain long and hard about economic politics, just as they had in the original show, but they are also surrounded by a rainbow coalition sort of family. DJ has an African-American child, and presumably an African-American wife serving in Afghanistan. Darlene is a single mother with a rebellious daughter and a sweet son who likes to wear dresses. Becky is a widow who waits tables and sleeps around. Jackie is now a Life Coach. Other former regulars float in and out, all with problems drawn from today’s headlines.

In one episode, Dan complains about losing a drywall project to some “illegals,” which is about as close to a Trump attitude as I have seen. In another episode, Roseanne is wary of the new Muslims across the street. When I was a kid there was an episode of Lassie where the family had a Chinese boy staying with them for some reason. Gramps was frustrated by how the boy planted seeds one by one, and neighbor kids threw rocks at him, but eventually tolerance prevailed over prejudice. I have seen the same plot in countless sitcoms over the years. Likewise, Roseanne and Dan quickly made their peace with the new neighbors.

I tell people that the series is pretty much like it always was, but, “The show has drawn both criticism and praise for its depiction of conservative views, most notably reflecting the political leanings of series star and creator Roseanne Barr,” according to an article in Variety: ‘Roseanne’ May Move ‘Away From Politics’ in Season 2, ABC President Says:

“In the episode, Barr and John Goodman’s characters fall asleep on the couch, with Roseanne saying “we slept from ‘Wheel’ [of Fortune] to [Jimmy] ‘Kimmel.’” Goodman’s Dan responded that they “missed all the shows about black and Asian families,” to which Roseanne retorted “they’re just like us. There, now you’re all caught up.” Many took the joke as a jab at fellow ABC comedies “Black-ish” and “Fresh Off the Boat.”

Dungey said she was “surprised at the reaction” to the joke. “We thought the writers were tipping their hat” to those other shows, she said.

According to recent reports co-showrunner Whitney Cummings is leaving for other projects. I hope the show survives., but ratings are everything, of course. John Goodman and Laurie Metcalf are still powerhouse actors, and Sara Gilbert is as sarcastic as ever. The rest of the cast is used judiciously. I like Lecy Goransen as Becky, but I’d like to see them bring back Sarah Chalke’s yuppie character again.

Best of all Roseanne is real without being a reality show.

Update 20180529: Roseanne Barr tweeted out, “Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes had a baby = v,” the v meaning Valerie Jarrett. Barr soon deleted the tweet and apologized, but it was too much even for coworkers Wanda Sykes and Sara Gilbert. ABC execs wisely canceled Roseanne. What a shame for a talented cast doing a pretty good show.

The Passing of a Playboy

I’ve been intrigued by the reactions to the death of Hugh Hefner – the founder of Playboy Magazine. Erotica goes back thousands of years on cave walls, in paintings, sketches, and later in woodcuts and engravings. Since the invention of halftone printing there have been magazines like PhotoBits, first published in 1898. Pinup girls like Bettie Page used to pose for such magazines, which were usually sold discreetly to adult men, who usually concealed them. Playboy was the first high-quality, mass market men’s magazine to feature nude pictorials, and the first of the type that many women and children ever saw on the shelves. My father concealed his Playboys, though not very well, but we had neighbors whose parents were less conscientious.

I subscribe to the self-described progressive outfit The Young Turks (TYT), who have one show called, “Old School.” During a recent broadcast founder Cenk Uygur announced Hefner’s passing as breaking news. Even though they have vastly different backgrounds and business models, Uygur seemed to feel a connection to his fellow entrepreneur/publisher:

Cenk: What’s funny is that I just got a little emotional. I almost teared up, I didn’t, but … what do I know about Hugh Hefner. I interviewed him once. He was nice…. He was part of America, man.

Malcolm Fleschner: He was an iconic figure in America.

Cenk: I just got really, really sad.

Malcolm: There is only one Hugh Hefner, there is nobody like him, and there never will be again, we’ve lost him, whatever you thought about him, he was a uniquely American figure and had a massive impact on our culture …

Cenk: If ever a person was iconic, it was Hugh Hefner … Man, he lived a good life.

On TYT’s Pop Trigger, a younger group, Brett Ehrlich, Grace Baldridge, Daron Dean, and Jason Carter also covered Hefner’s passing, and extolled Hefner as forward-thinking, even while acknowledging his objectification of women. On the TYT main show, Ana Kasparian, Ehrlich and Baldridge again seemed to take Hefner for granted as an exponent of social progress, despite his flaws. On their recurring youtube show, Reality Rescued, TYT’s roving reporter Jordan Chariton even tossed out that he had first masturbated to Playboy, shocking poor Emma Vigeland.

I had seen many of my father’s copies before December 1967, but will always remember a Playboy pictorial on erotic Art Nouveau engravings by Aubrey Beardsley, Gustav Klimt, Franz von Bayros and Norman Lindsay which my younger self found much more provoking than remote and detached photos of Hef’s carefully selected bunnies. I could probably buy a copy, but it probably wouldn’t live up to my memories.

Even though he was a vocal champion of (many) liberal social values, Hefner fares less well with liberals than the TYT progressives. In a New Yorker article, Hugh Hefner, Playboy, and the American Male, Adam Gopnik writes:

There was a time when his excursions into the Playboy philosophy, which was not quite as ridiculous a document as its title makes it sound, were, though never taken seriously, at least seen as significant. Now, they seem not merely quaint but predatory.

For The American Thinker, Rick Moran writes, Hugh Hefner is Dead:

What was Hefner’s role in this transformative America? Actually, he was a lot less impactful than certainly Hefner would have us and the media believe. He did not initiate the sexual revolution. We can thank the Pill for that. Rather, Hefner rode the wave of changing morals and mores by creating bankable images of nearly nude women, along with sharp political and cultural commentary from some of the best liberal writers in America. He made it cool to be a cad and reinforced the male fantasy of consequence-free sex.

And The New Republic decries, Hugh Hefner’s Incomplete Sexual Revolution:

What derailed the male revolt was the female revolt. Women reasonably asked themselves: If men like Hefner were abandoning the traditional claims of chivalry, then what were they offering? The answer: a patriarchy without any promise of protection—a raw deal.

Without a trace of irony, today’s intersectionally woke neoliberals signal their virtue by pointing out that Hefner profited from wrapping himself in the social revolution at the same time that he was sexually exploiting his lowly-paid female employees.

Interestingly, a woman architect really appreciated Hefner. Writing for the AIA journal, Architect, Karrie Jacobs penned, Playboy Magazine and the Architecture of Seduction in 2016, quoting Beatriz Colomina:

… Hefner made [midcentury modern design] mainstream. That’s the point of the exhibition, that Playboy did more for modern architecture and design then any architectural journal or even the Museum of Modern Art. At its peak, it had seven million readers.

I gave a lecture at Cornell at the beginning of this research. At the end of the lecture, a woman said to me, “Now I understand why my father, who never went to a museum, who never had any idea about art or architecture or design, had an amazing collection of midcentury furniture.”

And then I had a correspondence with her. She asked him, “Where did you get all this furniture?” And he said, “Playboy told me to buy it.”

That is absolutely spot on. Along with the girls, and the interviews, and the fiction, were descriptions of the Playboy Pad: apartments or houses that would reflect well on the bachelor’s good taste, with lists (and costs) of the Barcelona chairs, Burberry raincoats, Fleischmann’s Preferred Blended Whiskey, Miles Davis albums, Blaupunkt hi-fi sets, etc that midcentury human male bowerbirds could purchase and arrange to attract a mate.

 

 

Bad Boys, Mean Girls and Normies

Despite not knowing what it was for, I joined Twitter a few months ago. I don’t tweet much, but I follow people I respect, and read a wider variety of articles. Aussie progressive gadfly Caitlin Johnstone tweeted that, except as concerns Russia, President Trump seems to be caving to the establishment agenda. I decided to circle back to John Robb at Global Guerillas, and in an article from a few days ago, The OODA loop of Trump’s Insurgency has been Smashed, he agreed. OODA means Observe, Orient, Decide, Act:

 … the real uniting goal of Trump’s insurgency was “opposition to a failed establishment.”

That goal held the insurgency that put him in office together, despite gaffes, scandals, leaks, etc that would have ended the political career of any other candidate.  It was also a goal that allowed the insurgency to continue after winning the election.  In most cases, once the goal has been accomplished (i.e. remove Mubarak), the insurgency evaporates.

The reason it didn’t: the media. …

It was maddeningly clear that the establishment media was in the bag for Hillary Clinton over Sanders, then over Trump. In the world according to Robb, that was enough to keep resentment of Clinton stoked, but it hasn’t been enough to maintain a Presidency aimed at dismantling the Deep State. Steve Bannon, the architect of that goal, was ushered out weeks ago, and now:

 … senior military staff running the Trump administration launched a counter-insurgency against the insurgency. …

•Former generals took control of key staff positions.
•They purged staff members that were part of the insurgency and tightly limited access to Trump.
•Finally, and most importantly, they took control of Trump’s information flow.

That final step changed everything. General Kelly, Trump’s Chief of Staff, has put Trump on a establishment-only media diet.  Further, staff members are now prevented from sneaking him stories from unapproved sources during the day (stories that might get him riled up and off the establishment message). … by controlling Trump’s information flow with social media/networks, the generals smashed the insurgency’s OODA loop (observe, orient, decide, act).  Deprived of this connection, Trump is now weathervaning to cater to the needs of the establishment (as seen with his new stance on DACA and the Wall).

Robb broke down his view of the Trump political climate further back in August in, American Politics: Bad Boys vs. Mean Girls. I’ve quoted but rearranged his descriptions:

The political parties and the media aren’t the primary actors in the US political system anymore.  Increasingly, politics is being waged online by networks.  A fight between two powerful and very different online social networks:

Robb claims that the ‘Bad Boys’ “(similar to a gang or tribe) network grew in support of Donald Trump,” but I think they’ve been growing as long the middle class has been collapsing and have long flourished on certain corners of the internet. In Kill All Normies, Angela Nagle sets a possible beginning of transgression for it’s own sake in 2003 on 4chan, but I encountered the same sort of misanthropic and misogynistic ‘transgressors’ in usenet in the 1990s. Eventually, as explained by Ta-Nehisi Coates recently, they and Trump were bound to find each other.

 [Bad Boys] has one organizing principle: disrupt the status quo.  This network fights like an open source insurgency composed of many small groups and individuals acting independently.  It disrupts from the shadows.  It’s opportunistic, disorganized, and aggressive.  It misleads, angers, and intimidates.  It scores victories by increasing fear, uncertainty, and distrust.

Robb calls Trump’s opponents the ‘Mean Girls’ “(similar to a social clique or ruling aristocracy) network solidified in response to Trump’s unexpected victory.” Again, I believe that some sort of establishment or Deep State has been around for decades, but found a more compelling common cause in opposing Trump.

[Mean Girls’] cohesion and single mindedness neutered the Trump administration even before he took the oath. … It has one organizing principle: repel the barbarians.  This network fights like a ruling clique, albeit vastly larger than we have seen historically due to the scaling effects of social networking.  This network openly connects people in authority across every major institution (from education to the media to the government to the tech industry) and leverages it and the politics of identity to establish moral authority.  It fights by categorizing, vilifying and shunning enemies.  It scores victories by manufacturing consensus.

One only has to read my old haunts TalkingPointsMemo or dagblog, or watch Stephen Colbert or John Oliver or Samantha Bee go after Trump, or one of his staff, or even Bernie Sanders to see this clique in action.

Which leads to my question: Where does the progressive citizen who wants things to get better for everyone fit in? Clearly the Bad Boys want to toss out anyone who isn’t white (or doing a pretty good imitation of white) and start over in a pastoral America that never really existed. There’s no place for the Normies there.

Just as clearly, the Mean Girls profess a world where everyone can be equal and get ahead based strictly on merit. That’s great if you are one of those who can swing a tech job, but not much comfort when those tech firms are transferring the few remaining blue collar jobs to immigrants, foreigners or robots. The Mean Girls become much more pragmatic when asked to support the more progressive reforms proposed by Bernie Sanders.

Are the Bad Boys and Mean Girls just the loudest part of the electorate? Could we create a populist network to rival either of them?

Classical Gas Attack

I wrote about the possibility of a false flag operation during the Ukraine situation, but had been holding off on the recent Syria gas attack.

A few sites, Yournewswire, Antimedia, ShadowProof and the like, went false flag immediately, as did The Sane Progressive. They also noted that two previous Sarin attacks attributed to Assad had been later shown to have been carried out by rebels. Senator Rand Paul pointed out on camera that we didn’t know who was behind the Syria attack, and was roundly criticized in the mainstream media. Many liberal bloggers, like Juan Cole, pointed out that the US had just killed innocent civilians in a drone strike, and had used tear gas on its own citizens at the DAPL protest, but these bloggers seemed to go along with the assumption that Assad was probably culpable.

A few outlets urged us to be cautious in assigning the blame to Assad. On The Young Turks, Cenk Uygur felt that the timing seemed suspicious, with Assad mostly having what he wanted and peace talks looming.

But from his office away from the office at Mar-a-Lago yesterday, President Trump ordered that the military fire over 50 (to confuse Russian defense systems) Tomahawk cruise missiles at the suspected Syrian airbase in retaliation. After the attack, Common Dreams put out, Without Proof or Cause or Consent, ‘Impetuous’ Trump Bombs Syria:

Though Trump claims there is “no dispute” that Assad was responsible for the horrific deaths earlier this week in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, he is widely regarded as a serial liar and someone whose own FBI and top intelligence officials have had to discredit recent public accusations he has made.

Common Dreams quoted Sam Sacks on Twitter:

Guest after guest is gushing. From MSNBC to CNN, Trump is receiving his best night of press so far. And all he had to do was start a war.

Many pundits observed that George W Bush rescued his deeply unpopular presidency by attacking Iraq after 9/11 (based on false data about weapons of mass destruction), and worried that the even more unpopular Trump might resort to the same tactic. Assuming that the Deep State wanted Hillary Clinton to initiate a proxy war in Syria, I would say that National Security Adviser McMaster’s edging out of Steve Bannon and our subsequent attack on Syria represent a clear victory for the neoconservative/neoliberal Deep State over the anti-interventionism expressed by Trump during his presidential campaign.

Updates, from the Jimmy Dore Show, on Youtube:

Evidence Suggests S-Y-R-I-A G-A-S ATTACK Is False Flag

Proof Gov & Media Lied About S-A-R-I-N G-A-S Attack

No Country for Old Parties

On a cold Saturday, I was doing my laundry and browsing the internet, when I saw my old Talking Points Cafe buddy Jason in a Facebook video. Jason has started Artisan Politics, and plans to host interactive videos on Sunday evenings, and perhaps during the week. I skyped to ‘Artisan Politics’, and we had an off-the-cuff discussion – which is harder than it looks on TV – for about forty minutes.

At one point Jason said he thought that Richard Nixon had broken the Republican Party and that Ted Kennedy had broken the Democratic Party when he primaried President Jimmy Carter. That seems like ancient history, but it does roughly correspond with the regime change timeline proposed by Professor Corey Robin, which I summarized in a previous post. I was reminded of Jason’s comment while watching Press the Meat this morning. Chuck Todd introduced John Kasich:

CHUCK TODD:

Welcome back. Even though Governor John Kasich of Ohio won only one primary, Ohio, last year, he developed a reputation as a Republican who was willing to work with Democrats and really say what’s on his mind. And Friday he had an op-ed column in the New York Times arguing that Democrats created Obamacare without Republican support and that Republicans are now trying to repeal and rewrite the law without Democrats. He said Democrats were wrong then and Republicans are wrong now. Governor Kasich joins me now. Not surprising to hear something like that from you.

GOV. JOHN KASICH:

Well, it’s not sustainable. If you don’t get both parties together, nothing is sustainable. I mean, if they pass this just by themselves, we’ll be back at this again.

CHUCK TODD:

In three years when Democrats take over or whatever.

GOV. JOHN KASICH:

Well, you know, look. The other thing is I was there when we created the CHIP program, the health program for children. It was done on a bipartisan basis. It was sustainable. I was there in ’97 when we did the budget deal. I was one of the architects. It was sustainable. But when you jam something through just one party over another, it’s not sustainable. It becomes a point of attack.

Kasich failed to mention that the Republicans were committed to opposing everything Obama proposed, but sure, he wants to work together now. But back to broken parties:

GOV. JOHN KASICH:

We’re all big boys and girls in this town. I mean, if you really want to be a leader. Look, I believe the political parties are disintegrating before our very eyes. I think more and more people across this country see no purpose for political parties.

CHUCK TODD:

Do you?

GOV. JOHN KASICH:

Because — I’ll tell you something. You talk to people. There are more and more independents because of the squabbling. What’s at risk here to Democrats is you can’t turn your back on these people. And to Republicans, you need to invite Democrats in because we’re talking about lives.

All this consumption with who gains politically, you know, life is short. And if all you focus on in life is what’s in it for me, you’re a loser. You are a big time loser. And this country better be careful we’re not losing the soul of our country because we play politics and we forget people who are in need.

Unfortunately the moment of candor ended when Todd tried to put Kasich on the spot about his loyalty.

The question I have is whether the parties can be revitalized or whether something will arise to take their place.

Fake Accompli

I didn’t watch President Trump’s now-infamous Thursday press conference live. WBAL’s morning news said something about a meltdown, but I mostly pay attention to the weather, so I know what to wear on the bike. I did go to work curious enough about how Trump had handled the Flynn resignation to want to see the entire conference for myself.

When I walked upstairs for our Friday morning bagel and doughnut feed, I asked my office tennis buddy if he had seen the story on Eugenie Bouchard’s twitter date. He was too busy giggling and shaking his head over a video of the press conference on his iPad. He told me Trump was really crazy. A few minutes later another work buddy came over to my desk and asked me if I had seen the press conference. I told him I had a youtube link to watch over lunch. He said I had to watch it. It was great, he said, Trump really gave it to the press!

These are both bright guys, and I like them both. It wasn’t too surprising that they would disagree, but I was intrigued that they had vastly different takes on the same event. So I watched it over tea and a chocolate cake doughnut, and tried to keep an open mind.

I was waiting for him to pull out a pair of steel balls, but mostly saw Trump being Trump. He was lying here and blustering there, as always, but he wasn’t melting down. I don’t like the job he’s doing, but didn’t really blame him for calling out the press for attacking him. He’s threatening the established order – the Deep State – so of course the press is attacking him. And of course he’s going to play the victim.

At The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf posted One Press Conference, Two Audiences, in which he claimed:

Viewers who watched it themselves saw a rambling, misleading performance. But those who relied on conservative cable newscasts or talk radio hosts got a very different impression.

But my friend saw it himself, and loved it. So I’m thinking Friedersdorf is engaged in wishful thinking.

Perhaps the divergent coverage of Thursday’s press conference helps to illustrate that a great many of those people aren’t seeing the same information as those who oppose Trump — they are being fed lies and untruths by coastal-dwelling millionaires like Hannity and Limbaugh; and they exist at a time when even more responsible right-leaning outlets that make up their information bubble are unlikely to target the lies they encounter, and in a culture where a columnist like Goodwin sees what’s going on and celebrates it as Trump playing the game well.

I think we’re getting a predictable amounf of slant from both sides. Scott Adams thinks different expectations lead to Imaginary News.

We live in our own personal movies. This is a perfect example. Millions of Americans looked at the same press conference and half of us came away thinking we saw an entirely different movie than the other half. Many of us saw Trump talking the way he normally does, and saying the things he normally says. Other people saw a raving lunatic, melting down.

Adams is pretty much on board with Trump, but I don’t think he’s wrong about the people or the news. As others have pointed out, the mainstream media used the term fake news to vilify news they couldn’t control, and now it can’t control that many people see it as little more than better-packaged fakery.

From Russia, With Love

A story originating in The Washington Post, also known as Pravda on the Potomac, has become the leading excuse for the establishment presidential candidate’s stunning defeat in the electoral college. The Post asserts that the CIA believes that Russian hackers acted to swing the election to Donald Trump:

The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter. …

The CIA shared its latest assessment with key senators in a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill last week, in which agency officials cited a growing body of intelligence from multiple sources. Agency briefers told the senators it was now “quite clear” that electing Trump was Russia’s goal, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

The CIA presentation to senators about Russia’s intentions fell short of a formal U.S. assessment produced by all 17 intelligence agencies. A senior U.S. official said there were minor disagreements among intelligence officials about the agency’s assessment, in part because some questions remain unanswered.

Mainstream media are all over the story. On Meet the Press, Reince Priebus denied it, while on Face the Nation, John McCain pressed for further investigation. These are, however, the same outlets that did just about everything short of begging us to vote for Hillary Clinton, so I am not inclined to believe them.

Also, there have been reports of a power struggle with the CIA favoring Clinton and the FBI supporting Trump – “minor disagreements” – so it makes little sense that the Post should blindly repeat CIA claims without that perspective.

Even if Russia did hack the DNC, nothing that was revealed was particularly surprising. The DNC was in the bag for Clinton, and for big donors. Everyone knew that.

A useful hack would have been learning that Trump was going to stock his cabinet with establishment billionaires.

Choose Your Fake Reality

What are those Kubler-Ross stages of grief again? Oh yeah, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. I think a lot of us are still in denial, or maybe anger, but at Salon, Andrew O’Herir seems to be bargaining, as he attempts to prepare us for a Presidency in which the traditional media may well be out of the loop:

Fake news, a fake president and a fake country: Welcome to America, land of no context 

… After an election cycle driven by lies, delusions and propaganda — including lies about lies, multiple layers of fake news and meta-fake news — we are about to install a fake president, elected by way of the machineries of fake democracy.

The country that elected him is fake too, at least in the sense that the voters who supported Donald Trump largely inhabit an imaginary America, or at least want to. They think it’s an America that used to exist, one they heard about from their fathers and grandfathers and have always longed to go back to. It’s not.

Their America is an illusion that has been constructed and fed to them through the plastic umbilicus of Fox News and right-wing social media to explain the anger and disenfranchisement and economic dislocation and loss of relative privilege they feel. …

I have a quibble with selectively blaming this or that media. For all of us, our view of America has been fed to us by selective memories of older folk, by what is taught in schools, and by what is portrayed in our increasingly intrusive media. Our parents talked about the good old days – that’s nothing new. We were also taught that America is a beneficent democracy rather than an opportunistic economic empire – jingoism is not terribly new either.

And, for just one example, my generation watched endless melodramas in which a hero shooting someone actually solved more problems than he caused. That sentiment might not have been new, but we’ve progressed from clean deaths on The Rifleman to blood spurting everywhere on Call of Duty.  Just yesterday we saw some self-styled hero trying to “clean up the town” at Comet PingPong – which ironically was the subject of a fake news conspiracy asserting Clinton and Podesta were child trafficking out of that pizza place’s non-existent basement.

Trump supporters certainly imagine a fake America in which white people are the good guys and darker people can only succeed by emulating us. But Clinton supporters just as certainly imagined a fake America in which business is booming, unemployment is falling, and things would get even better for everyone if only we passed the TPP.

Who To Blame

By now we’ve all read many, many pieces to the effect that the burghers of the Democratic Party and the mainstream media, and much of the new internet media, vastly misread the working class electorate. Matt Taibbi has another good one in Rolling Stone.

But yesterday I ran across an article in CNN: How Gary Johnson and Jill Stein helped elect Donald Trump.

The entire scenario conjures up memories of Ralph Nader’s Green Party run in 2000. Nader’s share of the vote in that year’s razor-thin Florida contest was 1.63%, according to the final totals from the Federal Election Commission. Bush won the state by just .05%, which tipped the Electoral College in his favor. (Nader has for years denied his candidacy played a role in Bush’s 2000 victory.)

It’s impossible to know how an election could have gone under hypothetical scenarios, but the Johnson campaign regularly said they thought they were pulling support equally from would-be Trump supporters and would-be Clinton voters. Stein’s campaign, meanwhile, made a constant, explicit appeal to disenchanted Democrats and former supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

First, whenever the press mentions Al Gore’s electoral defeat in 2000, they never, never, never mention their complicity in the meme that Gore claimed to invent the internet. The video clip of Wolf Blitzer’s interview of Gore was strangely unavailable until after the election, but there was endless rehashing and misquoting of that story. Gore is a fairly vanilla guy, and ran a fairly lackluster campaign. He failed to carry his home state. According to all recounts but one, Gore won the popular vote in Florida, but lost in a controversial Florida Supreme Court decision, that was essentially upheld by the US Supreme Court’s refusal to review the case.

But they always have, and always will blame Nader.

Second, Gary Johnson did help Donald Trump win. But he did not take votes away from Hillary Clinton. Some Libertarians are very well read, but most are essentially conservative Republicans that want to smoke a little weed, don’t like the US fighting in foreign wars and know something about Ayn Rand and Freedom. Very few of them would ever vote for a big government Democrat.

With former Governor William Weld behind him, Gary Johnson was well-positioned to siphon Republican votes away from the disreputable Trump campaign. Early on, Johnson-Weld were polling between five and ten percent of the vote, or more. Then came Johnson’s “What is Aleppo?” gaffe, followed closely by an interview in which he could not name a foreign leader. Johnson limped out of the race taking only 3% of votes away from Trump.

After offering her spot to Bernie Sanders, Dr Jill Stein – who urges a healthy skepticism towards big pharma – was repeatedly savaged by online DNC trolls as an antivaxx advocate, and her campaign went nowhere, too. She took maybe 1% away from Clinton. If Johnson had known even a little about foreign affairs, and taken 5%, Clinton may have won the battleground states.

But third parties make excellent scapegoats.

Update 20161112: The video at the end of the Rolling Stone article also claims that third party votes contributed to Clinton’s loss, and Rachel Maddow has also made the same argument on her MSNBC show.

Update 20161113: John Laurits crunches the numbers of the third party vote. Thanks to trkingmomoe for the link.