The presidency is a performance. You are not just making decisions, you are acting out the things people want to believe about the president.
This week’s featured post is “A Big Week in the Trump Trials“.
This week everybody was talking about the Trump trials
$355 million, Fani Willis testifying, a trial date for the Stormy Daniels case, presidential immunity goes to the Supremes, and more: It was hard to keep track of which case any particular news story applied to. I sort it out in the featured post.
and Putin’s Republican sympathizers
Putin critic and political rival Alexei Navalny died in an arctic prison on Friday. Navalny is an inspirational fighter for democracy who Putin has tried to kill before. Prison authorities attributed the death first to “sudden death syndrome” and then to a pulmonary embolism.
The New Yorker’s Masha Gessen (my favorite Russia-watcher) pulls a number of themes together:
Putin appears to be feeling optimistic about his own future. As he sees it, Donald Trump is poised to become the next President of the U.S. and to give Putin free rein in Ukraine and beyond. Even before the U.S. Presidential election, American aid to Ukraine is stalled, and Ukraine’s Army is starved for troops and nearing a supply crisis. Last week, Putin got to lecture millions of Americans by granting an interview to Tucker Carlson. At the end of the interview, Carlson asked Putin if he would release Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter held on espionage charges in Russia. Putin proposed that Gershkovich could be traded for “a person, who out of patriotic sentiments liquidated a bandit in one of the European capitals.” It was a reference to Vadim Krasikov, probably the only Russian assassin who has been caught and convicted in the West; he is held in Germany. A week after the interview aired, Russia has shown the world what can happen to a person in a Russian prison. It’s also significant that Navalny was killed on the first day of the Munich conference. In 2007, Putin chose the conference as his stage for declaring what would become his war against the West. Now, with this war in full swing, Putin has been excluded from the conference, but the actions of his regime—the murders committed by his regime—dominate the proceedings.
Meanwhile, Ukraine withdrew from the city of Avdiivka in Donetsk. AP attributes the withdrawal to lack of artillery.
One reason for that lack is Speaker Mike Johnson, who still refuses to bring Ukraine aid to a vote (because it would pass). Johnson says he won’t be “rushed” into voting on aid that President Biden asked for in September. Russian forces may be gaining ground and Ukrainian soldiers may be dying, but what’s the hurry?
The elephant in the room here is Trump, who won a narrow victory in 2016 with Putin’s help, and has been in Putin’s pocket ever since. (Hillary Clinton correctly observed in a 2016 debate that Trump would be Putin’s puppet, to which Trump made a typical playground response: “No. You’re the puppet.”) Trump single-handedly torpedoed the Ukraine/Israel/border bill that the Senate had negotiated a few weeks ago, and was just about the last political figure in the US to make any comment on Navalny. As usual, Trump did not criticize Putin, and instead made his comment mainly about himself.
“The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country,” Trump posted, and then the rest is about himself and his troubles.
I’m sure both the beleaguered people of Ukrainian and Navalny’s grieving widow take great comfort from that.
While we’re talking about Tucker, he followed his Putin interview by going to a Moscow supermarket to show his viewers how great conditions are in Russia.
Lots of people pointed out that things usually are cheap in poor countries, which Russia is at this point in spite of its vast natural resources and educated population. In 2021, Tass reported that sixty percent of Russian citizens spent at least half their income on food. For context, in 2022 Americans spent about 11.3% of their income on food, and the poorest quintile of American society spent 31.2% of its income.
But The Atlantic’s Graeme Wood has travelled in Russia and went deeper. Yes, there are some things that are better in Moscow than in New York.
Carlson’s videos never quite say what precisely he thinks Russia gets right. Moscow is in many ways superior to New York. But Paris has a good subway system too. Japan and Thailand have fine grocery stores, and I wonder, when I enter them, why entering my neighborhood Stop & Shop in America is such a depressing experience by comparison. Carlson’s stated preference for Putin’s leadership over Joe Biden’s suggests that the affection is not for fine food or working public transit but for firm autocratic rule—which, as French, Thais, and Japanese will attest, is not a precondition for high-quality goods and services. And in an authoritarian state, those goods and services can serve to prolong the regime.
and another Democratic election victory
Democrat Tom Suozzi flipped George Santos’ House seat in a special election Tuesday. Suozzi won by 7.8%, almost exactly reversing Santos margin in 2022.
One lesson from the election appears to be the mistake House Republicans made by giving in to Trump and scrapping a bipartisan compromise on the border. Suozzi was able to flip the script on the GOP in this race: Democrats tried to do something about the immigration problem, but Republicans blocked them.
The election followed a long string of recent Democratic victories since the Supreme Court ditched Roe v Wade. The great political mystery of recent months has been how polls show Democrats in trouble, but then Democrats win elections anyway.
You might think that another Democratic victory would be good news for other Democrats, like Joe Biden, but you wouldn’t guess it from reading the New York Times. In the Times, nothing is good news for Biden.
This is a regular theme in the humorous Twitter account New York Times PItchbot, which suggests how the Times should frame various stories. Tuesday afternoon before the polls closed the Pitchbot tweeted:
If Democrats win today’s special election in NY-3, it’s further proof that special elections don’t mean anything. But if they lose, it’s very bad news for Biden in November.
And that turned out to be more-or-less exactly what the NYT’s Nate Cohn wrote Wednesday morning.
As we’ve written recently, it’s hard to glean much from special elections. … If anything, one could advance the idea that the results were slightly underwhelming for Democrats, given all of the aforementioned advantages than Mr. Suozzi seemed to possess. Either way, a single special election result like this one is entirely consistent with polls showing Mr. Biden and Democrats in a close race heading into 2024.
While we’re talking about Biden and his prospects in November: In this 25-minute podcast, Ezra Klein makes the most convincing Biden-shouldn’t-run argument I’ve heard yet. Last week, I wrote about my strong belief that the Biden-is-too-old-to-be-president argument is misguided, and how his occasional use of the wrong word should not raise worries that he isn’t up to the job. I still believe all that.
But Klein makes a subtly different argument. He acknowledges that Biden has been an excellent president, and says that everyone he talks to who has observed Biden’s performance in decision-making meetings agrees that he is still quite sharp. But Klein points out that running for president is different from being president. Yes, the Republic would be in good hands if Biden were president for an additional four years. But is the Democratic Party in good hands with Biden at the top of the ticket in 2024?
Klein thinks not, and says that the kinds of people who run campaigns — unlike the kinds of people who run governments — are deeply worried about Biden’s reelection.
In the final section of the podcast, he paints an upbeat picture of an open convention choosing candidates the way old-time conventions did: Imagine younger Democrats like Gretchen Whitmer, Kamala Harris, and Gavin Newsom giving speeches that actually mattered, as they tried to convince delegates to pick them. Maybe there could even be a boom for a dark horse like Andy Beshear, who has managed to convince red Kentucky to elect and reelect him as governor. Contrast that with MAGA lackeys kissing up to Donald Trump in the Republican Convention.
I will need to consider that convention fantasy, which could also go wrong in any number of ways. And I’m not sure I’m ready to change my mind, but Klein’s podcast definitely gives me a lot to think about.
and two right-wing conspiracy theories collapsed
For years, Fox News talking heads like Sean Hannity have been talking about “the Biden crime family”, and House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer has been implying that he had evidence of a bribery scheme where money flowed through Hunter Biden to his Dad, who then did something-or-other in a quid-pro-quo sort of way. This has been the basis of House Republicans’ so-far-unsuccessful effort to impeach President Biden.
The evidence for this story was always kind of thin, and depended heavily on the testimony of one guy, Alexander Smirnov, who Hannity and Comer touted as a “trusted FBI informant”. But in fact the FBI didn’t trust this informant or his story, which is why the investigation never went anywhere, even during the Trump administration.
This week we found out just how much DoJ doesn’t trust Smirnov: The special prosecutor handling the Hunter Biden investigation just indicted Smirnov for making up his story, including inventing meetings with people who were provably somewhere else at the time. Jay Kuo has a good summary.
If the Republican effort to impeach Biden were based on anything more substantive than seeking revenge for Trump’s well-deserved impeachments, it would fold now. But I bet it won’t.
If election-deniers still show up in your social media feeds, you are bound to have heard about Dinesh D’Souza’s 2022 film 2000 Mules, which presents a conspiracy theory about
unnamed nonprofit organizations supposedly associated with the Democratic Party [who] paid “mules” to illegally collect and deposit ballots into drop boxes in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin during the 2020 presidential election.
The film’s methodology and conclusions have been widely debunked ever since it came out nearly two years ago. But if you really want to believe that Democrats stole Donald Trump’s “landslide”, you can ignore all that.
The movie … uses research from the Texas-based nonprofit True the Vote, which has spent months lobbying states to use its findings to change voting laws.
The group filed claims with Georgia’s secretary of state’s office, which then launched its own investigation into ballot-harvesting. You’d think that would be the whole point of filing complaints, but True the Vote was strangely uncooperative and refused to give Georgia the evidence it said it had collected. Eventually, Georgia officials lost patience and got a court order.
A Fulton County Superior Court judge in Atlanta signed an order last year requiring True the Vote to provide evidence it had collected, including the names of people who were sources of information, to state elections officials who were frustrated by the group’s refusal to share evidence with investigators.
This week, True the Vote reported to the judge: It has nothing.
This has been the pattern for all of Trump’s Big Lie claims, going back to the court cases it filed immediately after the election: Tell the rubes who believe Trump that they have bountiful evidence of election fraud, and then, when challenged in court, produce nothing.
and the Super Bowl parade shooting
At the parade celebrating the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl win, 23 people were shot, including 11 children. One person died.
If you’re just talking about deaths or even injuries, this event doesn’t rank high on the list of recent mass shootings. But I think it will have a huge impact on the national psyche. Like the 4th of July shooting in Highland Park in 2022 and the 2017 shooting at a Las Vegas music festival, it reinforces the idea that in America, it’s not safe to be outdoors in a crowd — not unless the area has been locked down by police and you had to go through security to get in (like at an inauguration). If you do go to a big outdoor event, you’ll have a hard time not wondering whether the people around you are armed, or looking for snipers in the tall buildings.
Being armed yourself is no answer. In Kansas City, there were 800 armed police assigned to the parade area. All those “good guys with guns” couldn’t stop this from happening.
Other countries are not like this. The NRA rhetoric about guns “protecting our freedom” has it exactly backwards. We are less free than the citizens of other countries because we live under the tyranny of guns.
Remember those pro-Jesus He-Gets-Us Super Bowl ads? We now have a better understanding of what that’s about, thanks to Kristen Thomason at Baptist News. The effort is funded by shadowy conservative political groups that are trying to get churches to partner with them, helping churches with their outreach to local people looking for a church. The political goal is to gather enough information to make personal profiles of people who might be persuadable (through targeted marketing) to support conservative causes.
and you also might be interested in …
The NYT thinks it has identified Trump’s abortion position:
Former President Donald J. Trump has told advisers and allies that he likes the idea of a 16-week national abortion ban with three exceptions, in cases of rape or incest, or to save the life of the mother, according to two people with direct knowledge of Mr. Trump’s deliberations.
Other Republicans have tried to run on this “moderate” position recently, but without much success. That’s probably because it doesn’t satisfy the anti-abortion zealots, but it still has the logic flaw that the stricter abortion bans have: When you allow any exceptions, you’re admitting that the issue is not simple. Even after N weeks, there are still hard cases where difficult decisions need to be made. And then you’re assigning those decisions to the government rather than to the people who are actually involved and understand the details of the situation. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Here’s a scenario every ban-supporter ought to run through their exception protocols: A pregnant woman past the ban deadline discovers a cancerous tumor that is currently small but of a very aggressive type. Statistics indicate that if she has an abortion immediately and goes straight into chemotherapy, she has a 90% chance of survival. But if she waits a few months, delivers the baby, and then goes into chemotherapy, she has only 40% chance of survival. She and her husband decide to seek an exception because they really want her to live, and figure they can try again to have a baby later. What happens? Do they get the exception or not?
Can you imagine being in such a situation knowing that somebody else was making that decision for you?
Late to the party: I just noticed this episode of NYT’s “The Daily” podcast from December. If you have no idea what the whole phenomenon of Taylor Swift and Taylor Swift fandom is about, this would be a half-hour well spent.
Joe Manchin has announced that he won’t mount a third-party run for president.
Trump has a new explanation for why he repeatedly said “Nikki Haley” when he was talking about Nancy Pelosi: He meant to do that. He was being “sarcastic”. (I don’t think he actually understands what that word means.)
As I’ve said often before, we all knew people like Trump when we were six years old: They were never wrong. Anything they did was something they meant to do. Any game they didn’t win was rigged, and anybody who beat them cheated.
Maintaining such childish character traits into his late 70s is far scarier than saying the wrong name occasionally.
Vox explains the rush in several states to ban lab-grown meat, which barely exists yet, and is nowhere near being a marketable product. The associated politicians may give all kinds of reasons, but what this effort comes down to is protecting the meat industry as it currently exists.
The proposed bans are part of a longtime strategy by the politically powerful agribusiness lobby and its allies in Congress and statehouses to further entrench factory farming as America’s dominant source of protein. …
The cell-cultivated meat bans and the plant-based labeling restrictions represent one side of agribusiness’s policy coin: proactive measures to weaken upstarts that could one day threaten its bottom line. The other side of that coin is sweeping deregulation that has made meat abundant and cheap, but at terrible cost to the environment, workers, and animals.
Agriculture is exempt from the federal Animal Welfare Act, and most farms are exempt from the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act, loopholes that have resulted in awful conditions for animals and widespread pollution.
Family farmers (like my Dad once was) are the poster children of this effort, but the money and political clout comes from the giant corporations that are pushing family farms into extinction.
I imagine that someday we’ll get lab-grown meat figured out, and some future generation will be able to enjoy all our favorite dishes without slaughtering sentient creatures. Probably they’ll look back on this era the way we look back on slavery, and be appalled that so many people worked so hard to hang on to their gory practices.
Speaking of animal welfare: One of the week’s stranger stories concerns plans for a 200-acre “mini-city of monkeys” in Georgia. The proposed breeding facility would house up to 30,000 long-tailed macaques for use in medical research. The plan faces protests from two sides: Residents of nearby Bainbridge (human population 14,000) are afraid the macaques will be bad neighbors, and animal rights activists oppose the cruelty of using such intelligent creatures for research.
Medical researchers argue back that they need primates precisely because they are so similar to humans. Without primate research, the first round of human tests of some possible medical advance would be far more dangerous.
About 70,000 monkeys a year are still used across the US in tests for treatments to infectious diseases, ageing and neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s, with researchers warning that the US is running low on available primates for tests.
I am reminded of some hard-won wisdom from a friend who studied psychology in graduate school: If a lemur gets loose and finds its way into a suspended ceiling, it’s almost impossible to catch.
and let’s close with a question
Usually, my closings are little amusing snippets, and if you’re looking for one, the story above about the “city of monkeys” is pretty close.
But today I want to ask a question, which I invite you to answer in the comments. First, some background: Last Monday, when I was defending Joe Biden’s mental competence, Paul Krugman was taking a step back and reacting to the whole national conversation on that issue in “Why I Am Now Deeply Worried for America“.
[W]atching the frenzy over President Biden’s age, I am, for the first time, profoundly concerned about the nation’s future. It now seems entirely possible that within the next year, American democracy could be irretrievably altered.
And the final blow won’t be the rise of political extremism — that rise certainly created the preconditions for disaster, but it has been part of the landscape for some time now. No, what may turn this menace into catastrophe is the way the hand-wringing over Biden’s age has overshadowed the real stakes in the 2024 election.
I’ve talked before about why I think Biden will beat Trump in the fall, but like Krugman (and like most of you, I suspect), I have moments when I just can’t believe where the national conversation has gotten to, and I get a vertiginous feeling in my stomach that says I don’t really know what can happen.
There’s something paralyzing about that fear, and I think we need to talk openly about it so that we can support each other these next several months. And even if we’re not paralyzed, actions taken out of fear are usually not effective. We’re going to do a better job saving the country if we have faced our fears and found our courage.
So here’s my question: If you have those moments of paralyzing or reactive fear, what do you do? Does it help? Do you have any insight in how to push through fear and come out the other side?
The Weekly Sift 
Comments
I repeat two things to myself on a regular basis whenever I start getting anxious about a maga dictatorship.
It helps me center myself.
Actually, the only way to stop a bully is to punch him in the nose – hard. Yeah, you have to give him enough rope so everyone watching agrees it was overdue. But bullies only understand one thing: you’re not going to take it anymore.
I’ve learned to pick an issue — not something I can control, necessarily, but something (pushing back against anti-book policies, in my case) in which I can acquire both some expertise and a sense of community — and focus on that by getting actively involved.
Where that issue is concerned, I can find cause for hope. And that hope has a way of spreading.
With regards to the observation “Trump has a new explanation for why he repeatedly said “Nikki Haley” when he was talking about Nancy Pelosi: He meant to do that. He was being “sarcastic”.”
Having raised two children myself, it reminded me of the common excused that 6-year old kids make when they get caught doing something wrong. They try to get out of it by saying “I was just joking”. Parents should never let them get away with this, and neither should a voting public.
The powers that be have always disliked primaries because they can’t be controlled. I’m not surprised that Klein is calling for a return to the old-fashioned smoke-filled rooms version of candidate selection–takes the choice away from the people and puts it back into the hands of the elites. Please also note that these brokered conventions were also reflective of an era dominated by caucuses instead of primaries–and caucuses are also unrepresentative and dominated by the elites.
I strongly suggest that anyone hungering for the “good old days” of candidate selection spend some time reading the actual political history of those days and the deal-making and corruption involved. There Are Reasons why we have the current system.
One of the very first books I read as a new, wet-behind-the-ears freshman poli sci major was Dye & Zeigler’s “The Irony of Democracy”, which explained very convincingly that our American system of government works precisely because it’s not a populist democracy, but rather because it’s run by a small group of well-educated political elites committed to certain norms and values, norms and values that most Americans, when asked about specific examples rather than general platitudes, don’t share.
For instance, the sole functional purpose (as opposed to its political reason for existence) of the Electoral College is to serve as check against momentary popular sentiment putting an unqualified person in the WH, because the typical voter has no idea what constitutes a qualified candidate – and this was true even back when only white men with property could cast a ballot. Had it functioned as intended, our country would have been spared the disaster of the Trump administration and its enabling of the rise of white nationalist fascism as a realistic future.
There’s no perfect system. And, to be sure, the normative values and respect for our Constitution and laws that were once shared by members of different parties that made bipartisan negotiations a regular part of governing have given way to crass money-grabs of power that rivals the days of the trusts and robber-barons. But this has happened in the vacuum created by things like the end of fairness doctrine, the decline in valuing the humanities, and the rise in the ethos that the only thing that matters is me and making as much money as I can at the expense of everyone and everything else by any means possible. The turning point in our country can be clearly identified with the election of Ronald Reagan.
The reality, however, is that America is better served, when everything’s added up, by most people not asserting “my ignorance is just a valid as your knowledge”, especially with a contemporary body politic that’s woefully poorly educated and wildly misinformed, and instead leaving the decisions to those who actually know what they’re doing.
The challenge isn’t to expand unscreened participation, as this inevitably results in the rise of populist authoritarianism led by amoral grifters, but rather to return our nation’s politics to a place where well-educated, ethical leaders are incentivized once again to choose public service instead of avoid it, and the likes of people like Trump and Jordan and MTG and all the other nihilist vandals are driven out of government.
But, don’t take my word for it. Read Dye & Zeigler. The challenge before us is how to balance the realities they present with the political legitimacy only possible through providing the one-person, one-vote franchise to every citizen. What we want is “We, the People” standing guard as a check against those in charge abusing the trust placed in them to perform their fiduciary responsibilities, not “We, the People” deciding who is qualified to apply for the job. Because they can’t, and that’s how we get charlatans like Trump and JD Vance and a whole host of others just like them while people like Joe Biden have almost no one in the wings to replace him.
I live in a town that runs by direct democracy: an annual or biannual town meeting is essentially the legislature. The overwhelming majority of citizens don’t show up for the meetings, resulting in more-or-less what you’re talking about: a well-informed minority making the decisions.
The reason this works, I believe, is that the well-informed minority has the faith of the general public. Most people, I think, understand the nuisance it would be to get involved in any effective way, and believe that decisions currently are being made well enough that the effort isn’t worth it to them.
What we’re seeing in the rise of populism nationally is a loss of faith in the expert class that has been running things. We saw that clearly during the pandemic, but I think it’s a more general phenomenon. A lot of that loss of faith, IMO, is undeserved. (I think Dr. Fauci was doing his best, for example.) But it’s still real. So the underlying issue over the long term is how to form a governing class that does have the faith of an overwhelming majority. I don’t know how we do that, in an era of social media, conspiracy theories, and disinformation.
I am deeply worried about the influence wielded over the more credulous citizens in the US – and how vicious so many of those become. I am not in a position to try and change minds, and (having just retired) don’t really have the $* to throw at the problem either.
If it comes to it (I hope) I will have the courage to stand up to an authoritarian regime, but realistically think that is unknowable until the test is in front of me.
I also resent like h*ll that we even have to go through this because of the imbalance in our lives which allowed this to happen.
I do NOT want to re-experience the sinking feeling of dread and horror which I had on waking up the day after tRump’s win.
*Currently the only useful thing I feel we can do is keep making donations to the parts of society are most abused by the current situation.
(Thank you for your efforts and insight – sometimes you even bring me hope.)
Against the odds, I’m an optimist these days. To combat the legitimate concerns about President Biden’s age and evident physical challenges (peripheral neuropathy?), I think of things like these:
Since reading Liz Cheney’s book “Oath and Honor,” I have thought, that is how to stand up for The Constitution. She lost her seat in the house, but not her self respect. I have not agreed with her politically, but her moral compass is well tuned. She acted in spite of the fear. We all can do the same. Be courageous! Encourage each other. Read reports that remind us of the truth, share with those who doubt and may push back. This may be the most significant election of our life time. We can do it!
Reciting Rage Against the Machine lyrics in my head, mostly.
When I hear people say things that are wrongheaded and counterproductive about the state of politics in this country, they are usually in a doom spiral that they got on from Fox News. If they are close friends, I say, “Why are you saying that, don’t say that, that is completely untrue and if you say if you might start believing it and people who hear you say it might start believing you. Get out of your doom spiral and fight for reason and sanity. One candidate wants to strip our flesh from our bones and sell the meat on the open market, one candidate wants to grow the economy from the bottom up and middle outward, and he is wildly successful. I know there is comfort in the certainty of a doom spiral but step of the elevator and join the living.” Sometimes it works.
The best I can offer is an answer most will not like: we need to learn to be comfortable with uncertainty and with losing the White House about 50 percent of the time, otherwise we’ll be forever enslaved to anxiety and at risk for depression.
Whether President Biden is re-elected or not, this is not the last time we’re going to feel like this. The best case scenario is that he is re-elected and we have a brief respite until we get to worry again in 4 years when the next candidate (DeSantis again?) comes along. I’m old enough to remember when we all dreaded (and then mourned) the re-election of Bush in 2004.
This type of cyclical and eternal anxiety and stress is not healthy and is no way to live. And as far as I can tell, the only way to deal with it is radical acceptance. We will almost certainly have a Trump or Trump-like president again within the next 10 years – even if it (hopefully) doesn’t happen this year. And then we’ll have another moderate-to-liberal president after that…. The best case scenario is that we get a more standard Haley-type conservative instead of a Trumpian next time around. But conservatives-MAGA-Republicans, whatever you want to call them, are about half of the country and are going to win the presidency about half the time. We all hate it, but that’s the country we live in.
I know that the group that reads this blog is very liberal and very politically engaged (myself included), so we’re the ones that will always struggle the most to live in the US and be happy during a Republican administration. But in the end, if we can’t learn to adapt to the cyclical nature of our politics, we’re the ones who will suffer for it. To be blunt: if you want to live in the US and be happy, you need to be ok with living under Republican governance about half the time.
So yes, vote in November, stay engaged, and do your part to help President Biden. But don’t let unreasonable expectations (like the idea that Democrats will control the White House forever) prevent you from thinking clearly.
That’s ridiculous. I also remember the Bush election. But Bush was never a threat to democracy. If Trump is reelected he will try to end democracy and have himself declared President for Life or some shit like that. I’ve lived through a number of Republican presidents. Trump is different. We cannot allow that to happen.
I agree that a second Trump presidency would be a disaster, but he has neither the courage nor the competence to turn the US into a dictatorship.
But it’s not just about him. His MO is an intuitive knack for catching waves. He’s a front man to a force that started around the Reagan/Gingrich era. Look up Project 25. This push for autocracy is way more than he-I-will-not-name.
That’s the concern, that the more competent forces of evil will be better prepared this time to take advantage. Their problem will be that Trump is also better prepared and will be more focused on surrounding himself with sycophants with no regard for competence.
I think your anxiety is clouding your judgement. Here’s a test that might help return you to reality. If Trump is re-elected this year, how much money (as a percentage of your life savings) would you be willing to bet that he will still be president after 1/20/29? I’m guessing very little. If I’m right, this would show that your fear and anger is overriding your judgement and causing you to overestimate the likelihood of things you don’t want to happen. When you have to have “skin in the game” to go along with your predictions, that helps to create better judgement.
I would turn the question around: How much would you bet that he WON’T be president after 1/20/29? What odds would you be willing to give on that bet?
I strongly believe Trump will try to stay on, if he hasn’t died of a heart attack by then. Will he succeed? The odds may not be in his favor, but they’re way higher than I’m comfortable with.
It’s not Trump per se that’s the existential threat to our Constitutional democracy, but rather those who will seize this opportunity to turn America into Hungary, or worse, and are smart enough (which Trump isn’t remotely) to know how to make this happen, especially with the compliant SCOTUS available to them. The plans are already being developed to do this. All that’s needed is a few swing states falling their way.
I think that if you believe (or fear) that Trump might be president after 1/20/29, you’re catastrophizing, which is a symptom of anxiety and depression.
I think the increase in political polarization, catastrophizing, and mental illness are connected. This is just one example. This is an unhealthy way to think, as any psychologist who treats people with depression will tell you.
The conservatives clearly aren’t going to be able to claw their way out this psychological hole (Biden equals socialism!), but I think our side still has a chance.
I was a liberal leaning centrist until I noticed my mix of Republican and Democrat voting based on individual candidates started leaning away from the GOP. I mourned this, honestly. They relinquished their balancing role for outright desperation, making their competition the enemy. And here we are. I was bummed about Bush. I went into full-on depression after 2016. And my unfortunate expectations played out. Nope. This is not my grandparents’ political state of affairs. Far from it.
we are making real plans to liquidate everything and head to Costa Rica or other suitable place if MAGA and his cohorts control all the branches of government. As this will mean there will never be a real, free election in my lifetime afterwards. I’m 71.
I’m as liberal as anyone on this blog, but I don’t understand this at all. No offense, but making a moving decision like this based on who wins the election is just ridiculous. Seriously, you need to get a life.
Start by working to understand instead of assuming your perspective is what’s reasonable and the one above means “they need to get a life”. You’re not a liberal; you’re a narrow-minded, judgmental scold.
Elections have consequences. More than one political refugee has left his country because of who ascended to power, and plenty have stayed who wished in hindsight they’d left.
Personally, I don’t have plans to liquidate and move. I’m 67 and well embedded in my current community, so it’s a little late to start life over. But I recognize that in part I’m depending on my privilege: I’m white, cis, straight, native born, and reasonably well off. Probably if I keep my head down, I’ll get by in a fascist America until either it falls or something else kills me. I don’t know if I will keep my head down, but at least I’ll have that option.
If I weren’t as privileged, or if I were younger and had decent prospects in some other country, I definitely would have an escape plan. I wouldn’t instantly leave after the election, but I would have a tripwire in mind: If X happens, I’m out of here. Lots of people stayed too long in Germany, and they paid the price.
Denial. When I get those fears, I tend to talk myself out of it and refuse to believe that Donald Trump will win. But I also redouble my efforts to get reasonable candidates elected. I don’t have the energy (I’m 79) to do any on the ground campaigning, but I make a lot of small monetary contributions. Mostly to downballot candidates. That’s okay so long as the Market stays up, but if that changes, I may have to reevaluate. And I vote in every single election, even the local water conservation district which is separate from everything else.
My sister agrees with me politically, but I think she’s less hopeful. She has purchased a house in France and plans to live there for about six months a year. If Trump wins, she’ll probably move there more or less permanently. That bothers me. It seems like giving up the fight. That may not be fair. She still votes regularly and certainly participates in more demonstrations than I do (when she is here). But still I feel like that option is abandoning our democracy.
No question the daily news is disturbing and, although I’m an optimist, it can be worrisome. My strategy? Send money to causes I like, and watch the Youtube of “Pub Choir – Africa” you suggested a month or two ago. It always brings a tear to my eye and a smile to my face! Thanks for that tip! It’s like an antidote to the news.
Absolutely – most people I know do have moments of strong reactive fear. Part of what helps overcome that is knowing so many people who think as I do – and reading so many of you who publish well written progressive thoughts about politics and life. Also to me, history provides hope. It sometimes seems that things have to get very bad before the average person pays attention. In that ‘moral arc of history’, it seems that in the end, good people, believers in social progress, prevail – although often in a ‘two steps forward, one step back, this shouldn’t be so hard’ kind of way. I could be wrong. We could be entering a prolonged dark time. I hear the despair of folks who pay attention, but I hold out hope that even with cronies and packed courts and dictator for life mentality, that it won’t come to that prolonged darkness – that there will be enough push back, and trump will be just a dark spot in the world’s history. As far as pushing through the fear to come out the other side when you feel paralyzed or hopeless, just look at the black times of history and remember that there were still good people doing what they could to combat evil. Hope that you have the strength to be one of those good people if comes down to it.
We need to stop with the fantasy of a Democratic nominee other than Biden. A brokered convention would be a disaster. Remember 2016 and the cries of how Hillary “stole” the nomination from Sanders? Imagine that actually happening – the party bigwigs taking the nomination from the guy everyone voted for and awarding it after a contentious convention to a candidate either unknown to a majority of Americans, or hated by over half of his own party.
The only way this happens is if Biden dies or has a serious health crisis and has to drop out. And regardless of who replaces him, Trump will win in a landslide.
This. Elections aren’t remotely conducted in the manner they were back when party elders conducted brokered conventions to select nominees.
For instance, Biden’s SuperPAC already has invested $250 million to launch media advertising in battleground states starting the day after the DNC. Does anyone really think that money is simply going to be re-directed to whoever might emerge from a cattle call of mostly regional politicians lacking any national name recognition or operation? Or that such debilitating liabilities could be overcome in 3-4 months? This level of naiveté is disqualifying.
Klein is engaging in inspid navel gazing. The DNC doesn’t run presidential campaigns anymore (and the RNC is now little more than Dear Leader’s legal defense fund). Joe Biden and his surprisingly exceptional record of recovery and renewal is the Democratic candidate on the ballot. Stop wasting time and energy on fantasies and get behind him.
There are those who say that fear is an acronym. The typical acronym of FEAR is F*k Everything And Run. The more evolved acronym of FEAR is Face Everything And Rejoice. There are two types of fear: necessary and unnecessary. Our bodies are hardwired to deal with necessary fear. The vagus nerve is part of our physiological alarm system. So, when we are facing actual imminent danger, fear, and the part of the brain that runs our fight, flight, freeze response gets activated automatically. We either survive and like other mammals, resume our typical activities, or we don’t survive, and that’s that. Unnecessary fear is man-made, and has been growing exponentially for generations. Humans created war and torture and prolonged, cruelty, neglect, and all sorts of inhumanity to each other and the other creatures on the planet. We bully each other, we threaten each other, and we have created devices to frighten each other with pictures, text, video, and other technology. Unnecessary fears, what has caused an exponential growth in mental and emotional unwellness. So, this topic has become a significant interest to me.
First, I have spent the last few decades learning about how my body receives emotional information. So I know what fear feels like in my body now. When I worry, ruminate, fixate… that kind of information is not due to imminent danger. That kind of fear is story-based fear, future tripping. I have skills and practices to reduce my anxiety and shift my focus. Slow, very deep, breathing, and focusing on the inflation and deflation of my lungs always helps. Choosing another, more pleasant focus helps. Reaching out to connect with, and potentially be of service to people I care about helps. Attending to my bodies basic needs helps (hydration, movement, nutrition, connection, rest…). I have found one key is avoiding much of the emotional manipulation that seems to be gushing like a fire hose from the frightwing party. I will often reduce my input of information. I will spend more time in nature. And, whenever I receive information that provokes fear based feelings in my body, I do my research to find who originated the message, and what they gain from my terror. It makes more sense to me when I realize that there are predatory forces invested in my emotional dysregulation, and the dysregulation of my fellows. When we are frightened or excited, we are off-balance. Fear and excitement are the same physiological processes in the body and they both compromise of the frontal lobe, the executive functioning part of the brain.
My most powerful tools for dealing with unnecessary, story-based (and disproportionately-magnified) fear are: sincere curiosity, compassion, self-care, safe connection with self-regulated others, expressive arts (writing, journaling, singing, drawing, dancing…), and playful humor.
I signed up for the Hopium Chronicles. The only place I get regular optimism regarding the upcoming election. Negativity only frightens and depresses me and leaves me incapable of volunteering for writing postcards or making calls. I will do what I can, but I need some motivating that is positive, not negative
I preached on a topic very close to this recently–how can we stay sane and centered when everything seems so awful? Here’s where I came down: First, we need to keep a long-term perspective. Things have been terrible in the past in all kinds of ways, but we’ve come through, and we will again. Go on a news diet–once you’ve heard a story, don’t keep reading/listening to it over and over. And–you’ve said this more than once–don’t spend your energy worrying about what hasn’t happened yet (what if it does? what if it doesn’t?). Find what helps you be centered, and brings you closer to your own inner wisdom. It could be anything–meditate, do yoga, walk, jog, journal, spend time with those you love, cook good meals, make music, read or write poetry–anything that does it for you. Just do it, every day. And breathe. Then, when you’ve done all that, find one thing, one issue you care about, maybe one you already know a lot about, or one you want to know more about, and do what you can. Give money, knock on doors, write letters, volunteer with a group that’s already working on it, replace your furnace with heat pumps, plant a tree, anything. And trust that there are other people out there working on all the other things you can’t do. That’s what I try to do, and it helps.
Teri Kanefiield has written a multi-part piece that gets at the sources of the paralyzing fear.
https://terikanefield.com/conclusion/
I haven’t finished reading it yet, but distilling down the part of her advice I have read…
Are you afraid because of what is actually happening, or is it because you are watching too much 24 hour news and social media and are being exposed to spin that profits from making you afraid? When it’s the latter, it’s time to step away from the news and spend your time better.
Regarding your question: get involved in a volunteer organization like Vote Save America. The best way to deal with despair is to do something positive like this that will increase Biden’s and the Democrats’ chances of winning. One of my friends calculated that he may have influenced 20,000 people through his work with the group.
Fear, as an emotional response to an unknown, negative future, is best addressed by accepting the possible outcomes and preparing for them, first by identifying what can be done to prevent them from happening, and second, by identifying what can be done to mitigate them if they do.
For instance, we all fear our home being consumed by fire, so we take care not to do things that could cause a fire, and to insure it should our efforts prove unsuccessful.
In the context of our nation’s drift toward populist authoritarianism backed by reactionary plutocrats, what we can do is always speak up for American values and principles, as people such as Liz Cheney have done, support fact-based civics education in our local communities, use our own personal talents and gifts to make the spaces we move through better for those around us, and then to forthrightly prepare for a future if and when these efforts aren’t enough to save the country we want to live in as it used to be, and is supposed to be.
Some of us don’t have the means to leave, but will instead need to learn how to survive, whether via resistance or acquiescence. Some of us will become expats hoping a younger generation will rise to restore an America based on the Preamble to our nation’s Constitution rather than the raw power of a corporatist plutocracy backed by theocratic populism. And some, possibly people we consider good friends, will thrive in such a political environment as they see it reflecting a value system that fulfills their own personal desires, the consequences on others not being of any concern.
Whatever one chooses, the first step is to face the truth of our current situation and where it may go. Democracies die. They always have throughout history and always will. This country isn’t remotely the same one I grew up in – in some ways for the better, but in many more ways for the worse. But acknowledging this, and then rolling up my sleeves to fight the good fight on behalf of whatever is to come, is the single best antidote to a paralysis-by-fear of what may come to be.
I do not have those moments of paralysis because of two reasons. First, I’m a fairly typical white male without much economic anxiety and I “escape” from dread easily by just not paying attention. It’s simple, it is not going to affect me. Much.
Second, and this is the more important point, is the past. This country has gone through monumental changes culturally, economically, physically, environmentally, politically, existentially. We’ve crushed indigenous empires, propped up others on other continents, repaired some we’ve even destroyed. The lifestyle and outlook we have today would’ve shocked the Founders. Shocked isn’t a strong enough word but it’ll do. Split into two once and healed, albeit with ugly scars and some lingering disability. Economic failure, economic mastery. Disease, cure, etc etc And the nation sails on.
What really scares me about this country is something that most mainstream conversation rarely touches: the constant and apparently uncontrollable pursuit of profit at the expense of the ecosphere. It is a flaw in our national gestalt. It may be fatal. But then I return to the first solution…
“the constant and apparently uncontrollable pursuit of profit at the expense of the ecosphere”
This is a “business model that causes harm.” When I first heard this phrase the discussion was more about harm to children, but the phrase fits in more places than that.
If you don’t have much economic anxiety, but have one thing that really scares you, you could find an organization that is trying to address the thing that scares you, then set up a recurring donation to them. You would be doing something about the thing that scares you even when you’re doing nothing.
Silly someone, I’m trying to illustrate that most people are afraid of things that they shouldn’t be afraid of …
Silly someone thinks you should thank me for prompting you to clarify your unclear writing. I’m likely not the only person who missed your point.
One of the things about this election that worries me is too much “preaching to the choir.” People who are already supporting Biden spend too much time complaining about Trump to other people who are already supporting Biden. Which might make them feel better, but doesn’t move the needle on the election.
There was an interesting interview a couple of days ago, which made the point that despite the big divide between the politically-active right and the politically-active left, there is a bigger divide between the politically active and the not politically active. We should be trying to reach the not politically active.
“Pod Save America’s Jon Lovett on Trump: “The Threat of Jail Time Sharpens the Mind”
https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/pod-save-america-s-jon-lovett-on-trump-the-threat-of-jail-time-sharpens-the-mind
As for what to do about the fear, deep breathing helps, as does sleeping and eating healthily.
And as mentioned by other posters, taking action definitely helps.
For specifically reaching people who aren’t politically active, a couple options are:
Preaching to the choir is something I think about a lot, since I don’t imagine too many undecided voters read my blog. I always come back to the thought that the choir needs to be well informed, and to have sharp factual arguments available to them. When we do run into undecided voters, or wavering voters who are buying MAGA talking points, we need to have some better response than “I don’t know. Maybe you’re right.”
Preaching to the choir not just for you, but for all of us. I get a good laugh and feel better after watching comedians on late night TV making Trump jokes, but I’m not moving the needle on the election. We each need to figure out how we ourselves can help move the needle.
Lots of things to be afraid of now a days, but, there’s something l learned years ago when I lived on the wrong side of Beacon hill in the 70s, even when there are many criminals around, and lots of drugs and guns, there are things you can do to lessen the odds of being injured. Reinforced this right after 9/11, during Covid, and now. Risk assessment, risk prevention, safety assessment.
It also helps me greatly to have a plan, a way to work to make it better.
Like you, I write. But my focus is very narrow and in depth. People say its helpful. I know working on the issue to understand and report truthfully helps me a lot. Its my way of fighting for a better future.
I also brew beer .and make soup.
For me, coping with the fear comes from contemplating the long arc of history as it bends towards justice. It begins by looking from a historic context (one of the reasons that HCR, and of course the Sift, are my almost exclusive sources in recent years) and recalling that my struggle is a continuation of that of others in past generations. One could lose heart in this awareness (we’re still fighting to solve this thing?) but somehow I always find comfort from consideration of the giants on whose shoulders we stand in the current struggle. Then it shifts to contemplation of the future. That too could be discouraging (we may not even get this solved in my own lifetime?) but I take heart in the demographics of the voters; looking at how an election would have gone if the oldest cohort, or the oldest two cohorts, hadn’t voted.
The way I handle my fear: In my head I try to live as if Trump will be the next president. If this happens life is really going to be bad for a lot of people. Some of the bad things are going to come home and surprise some of his supporters. Amazingly, the lives of most Americans will not change much, all the stuff that makes up their daily lives will not be perturbed. Most of them don’t really pay much attention to anything but their immediate daily concerns and entertainments, anyway.
The biggies are:
(1) Will Trump establish a dynasty that will be the end of American democracy?
(2) What will be the effect of his presidency on the rest of the world?
(3) As the effects of a Trump presidency affect the rest of the world, will the chance of the use of nuclear weapons increase?
(1) I don’t think it is all that likely that Trump can establish a dynasty. In general, people don’t take action against a threat until things get really bad. As nearly as I can tell, after three years of Trump things will be really bad.
(2) For the rest of the world the question is whether the other democracies can weather the storm or not. If they cannot, autocracy will rule and the First Worldwide Civilization will enter a dark, or at least a grey age. Maybe such a bad period is needed in order to get to a worldwide golden age that is now possible.
(3) In my opinion the existential danger of a world dominated by autocrats is that it makes the long term probability for the use of nuclear weapons a near certainty. It is possible that if this occurs, it might foreclose the possibility human civilization on Earth forever.
Incidentally, I wonder why we’re not concerned about the chaos that is likely to occur if he loses.
For me, living in my mind as if Trump becomes President provides an emotional cushion against devastating shock. I’ll have no trouble adjusting if he loses.
Real work will begin if Trump loses. American society has become unglued. Can we get it back together? Also, Trump has masterly pointed to weakness in our Constitution. Can we fix them?
A Citizen Philosopher (substack)