The Weekly Sift

This was a week that seemed to get to a lot of people. It’s Trump’s nature to puff himself up to look as big and scary as possible, and his acquittal by the Senate blew some more air into him. So he’s out there making threats and kicking better men (like Colonel Vindman) to the curb. At the same time, the Democrats had a PR disaster in Iowa, which got a lot of folks thinking “What if we don’t beat this guy?”

The point of Trump puffing himself up is to scare people into giving up or giving in. Like mice, we’ll freeze and make ourselves small and maybe we’ll survive. That strategy is deep down there in our mammal DNA, and at times like this it pops up and almost sounds reasonable. Why we’re in this sorry position now is that dozens of Republican senators froze and made themselves small.

But that strategy is the reason why there’s no Mouse Republic. Democracy is about envisioning what could happen if we all came together, and then all coming together around that vision. It’s a fundamentally courageous way of approaching the world, and it’s precisely what the Trumps and Hitlers and Caligulas have tried to scare us out of all through history. That’s what FDR was on about when he said, “We have nothing to fear but Fear itself.”

We need to come together and get big, not stay separate and get small.

So anyway, I decided that the best thing we could all do for each other today is try to talk ourselves down. That’s the point of the featured post “Let’s Talk Each Other Down”. It should be out shortly.

The weekly summary, though, has to cover all the scary things that make us want to curl into a ball, so it does: the acquittal, the revenge tour, the mess in Iowa, the virus, the State of the Union, and a lot more. Then I close with a reference to my favorite Star Trek episode. That should be out before noon.

I think you’ll be pleased to learn that this week’s Sift is not entirely about impeachment. I’ll pay attention to the Senate trial, of course, because how can you not? But the featured article is about a much longer-term situation: I’ll explain some of what’s in a fascinating report from the Bank of International Settlements, The Green Swan: Central banking and financial stability in the age of climate change.

OK, maybe that didn’t sound as fascinating to you as it did to me, but give me another sentence or two. The report represents an important shift: the world’s central bankers are starting to get religion about climate change. They could become allies instead of enemies, at least on some issues. The report contains this line, which is (on the one hand) obvious to environmentalists, but (on the other) revolutionary in central-banking circles: “The stability of the Earth system is a prerequisite for financial and price stability.”

I’m running a little late this morning, so that article probably won’t be out until 11 or so EST. The weekly summary has a lot to cover and will run long: the impeachment trial, the drip-drip of new evidence against Trump, the Chinese coronavirus, Mike Pompeo’s outrageous attack on an NPR reporter, the sports-medicine significance of Zion Williamson’s knee, and a number of other things. I’ll predict that to appear around 1.

Like a lot of the media, I struggle with how to avoid normalizing Trump’s behavior. He’s been behaving this way consistently for three years, so on that time scale whatever he’s doing today is normal; it’s what we’ve come to expect from him. And yet, I think it’s important never to lose sight of just how abnormal Trump’s behavior is: Presidents do not act this way, and we hope they will never act this way again after he leaves office.

His recent behavior regarding Iran — not just the Soleimani assassination itself, but the way he and his administration have presented it — has been extremely unpresidential: self-aggrandizing, partisan, and disrespectful to Congress, to our allies, to the previous administration, and to any American who was not part of the 46% who voted for him. But after three years of similar behavior, how can I express the abnormality of it all?

This week I decided to take a history tour to remind us all what “presidential” has meant until now. I went back to FDR’s speech after Pearl Harbor, and looked at the subsequent history of presidents talking to the nation about major military moves: JFK’s Cuban Missile Crisis speech, Eisenhower announcing the Korean armistice, George W. Bush telling us that our Air Force had started bombing Afghanistan, Barack Obama announcing that Osama bin Laden was dead, and several others. (I found examples from every modern president but Ford.) Those speeches all demonstrate a particular tone that defines “presidential” and exemplify an attitude that we have come to expect from our leaders.

Until now. Trump is such an abrupt departure from the established pattern that the differences stand out immediately. (LBJ’s Gulf of Tonkin speech, for example, was just a few months before the 1964 election, but Johnson is this non-partisan: “Just a few minutes ago, I was able to reach Senator Goldwater, and I am glad to say that he has expressed his support of the statement that I am making to you tonight.” Imagine Trump reaching out for support to some Democratic leader, and mentioning that fact to the public.) When we call him “unpresidential”, it’s not just an insult; it’s an objective observation.

Anyway, that post — currently titled “Remember Normal Presidents?” — should be out around 11 EST. The weekly summary, which will cover the more immediate Iran news, impeachment, tomorrow’s Democratic debate, and a number of other things before closing with some amazing wool-based animation, should be out between noon and 1.

This week between Christmas and New Years has been comparatively quiet for the Trump era. Sure, the President tweeted out the name of the suspected whistleblower in apparent violation of the law, but “President Breaks Law” has become a dog-bites-man story and barely draws attention any more. The impeachment story largely went dormant, as the House delayed delivering the articles of impeachment in hopes of negotiating an agreement in which Mitch McConnell’s Senate would do its duty and hold a trial.

I wrote two featured posts for this week. The first is a short note that outgrew the weekly summary: “Trumpist Evangelicals Respond to Christianity Today”, which should be out shortly. Last week I wrote a post about the Christianity Today editorial calling for Trump’s removal from office. This week 200 evangelical leaders responded, sort of. They skipped over the substance of the editorial and told their followers why they should pay no attention to it. It was kind of a microcosm of Trumpist non-defense defenses, which say nothing about the evidence against him, but rally tribal loyalties.

The other post is my end-of-the-Teens article. I usually proclaim a theme of the year around this time, but given that we’re about to enter the Twenties, I thought I’d proclaim a theme of the decade: the decline of democracy in the US and around the world. I’ll try to get that out around 10 EST.

Impeachment has a way of swallowing up all the other news in the world. (The UK is having an election Thursday. Who knew?) But we really are reaching the only-two-episodes-before-the-series-finale point. The Intelligence Committee submitted its report on the facts of the Ukraine scheme, the Judiciary Committee reported on the constitutional basis of impeachment, and Nancy Pelosi gave the go-ahead to write articles of impeachment.

So this week’s first featured post is “Articles of Impeachment: Broad or Narrow?”. It will cover the discussion about whether Democrats should focus on the simple Ukraine story, or attempt to produce a complete list of all of Trump’s impeachable offenses. It should be out shortly.

The second featured post has nothing to do with impeachment and is mostly a book review. I read Sean McFate’s The New Rules of War, which got me thinking about the fundamental illusions at the heart of most of our defense and foreign-policy discussions. Let’s predict that to appear around 11 EST.

The weekly summary covers impeachment stuff that the first featured article missed, the NATO summit, a series of more-or-less unrelated stories about Confederate symbols, restoring the Voting Rights Act, Hong Kong protests, North Korea’s latest threats, why Katie Hill didn’t kill herself, the UK election, and a bunch of other stuff, concluding with how a dog helps out on Boise State’s kickoff plays. That should be out between noon and one.