Thursday, October 31, 2019

Quotes: On the effort of gender transition

I was aware, during the time of boygirl, that I had been given a rare and precious gift, to see into the worlds of both men and women for a time and to be able to travel almost effortlessly between them. ... It was like being Clark Kent and Superman, in a way.

* * *

I think it is hard for me to be with people that I love for whom my transition is something other than a cause for unbridled celebration. I feel great these days, like somebody who just got out of prison after 40 years for something she didn't do, like I got pardoned by the governor. When dear friends deal with me with mixed emotions, it is a little like being told, 'Well, Jenny, we're glad you got sprung, really, but quite honestly we did kind of like you better when you were in jail.'

Jennifer Finney Boylan. She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders. New York: Broadway Books, 2003. p. 153, 179-80.

...the psychiatric disorder of transsexualism [means that one has]...agreed to go through life with an official diagnosis probably comparable in many people's minds to necrophilia.

Amy Bloom. Normal: Transsexual CEOs, Crossdressing Cops, and Hermaphrodites with Attitude. New York: Random House, 2002. p 28.

I found myself resenting the psychological requirements [for gender transition]. Part of it was distrust; after years of therapy and meditation, not one single person had noticed this truth, and now that I had finally found it, I was supposed to go to them again?

Dhillon Khosla. Both Sides Now: One Man's Journey Through Womanhood. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2006. p 17.

I smiled, grateful for my masculine traits that testosterone now emphasized, but I was trying to forget about that change, too, since at that time I still believed that the mark of success for any transsexual person is when he or she is able magically to make his or her transsexualism disappear.

Jamison Green. Becoming a Visible Man. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004. p 25.

Lacking the Karhidish “human pronoun” used for persons in somer [the asexual cyclical stage], I must say “he,” for the same reasons as we used the masculine pronoun in referring to a transcendent god: it is less defined, less specific, than the neuter or the feminine. But the very use of the pronoun in my thoughts leads me continually to forget that the Karhider I am with is not a man, but a manwoman.

Ursula K. LeGuin. The Left Hand of Darkness. (1969) New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2004. p. 94.

Ladies are the kind of people who won't let my girlfriend use the public ladies' room, thinking she's not a woman. Oh, but they're not going to let her use the men's room either—they're not going to let her be a man either. If she's not a man, and she's not a woman, then what is she? Once I asked my mother what fire was: a solid, liquid, or gas? And she said it wasn't any one of those things—it was something that happened to things: a force of nature, she called it. Maybe that's what she is: a force of nature. For sure she is something that happened to me.

Holly Hughes, Clit Notes, 1993, quoted by Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us. NY: Vintage Books, 1994. p 102.

Mr. Jeavons asked me whether this made me feel safe, having things always in a nice order, and I said it did.

Then he asked if I didn't like things changing. And I said I wouldn't mind things changing if I became an astronaut, for example, which is one of the biggest changes you can imagine, apart from becoming a girl or dying.

He asked whether I wanted to become an astronaut and I said I did.

Mark Haddon (in the character of Christopher). The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 2004. p 25.

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Wednesday, October 30, 2019

Is Trump's time up? (impeachment 2019)

Trump admits that he brought up the Bidens on a phone call with Ukraine's president. A Trump adviser said, as CNN reported on Sept. 23, "This is a serious problem for us. He admitted doing it." More specifically, the whistleblower's Aug. 12 claims have been corroborated, as shown by the New York Times on Oct. 26. And witnesses have begun to testify against him (see my blog post published yesterday).

Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani is reduced to arguing that Trump referred to the Bidens only briefly on the phone call. Exactly how that is supposed to help, I don't know.

Tomorrow (Oct. 31), the House plans to vote on formalizing the inquiry. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said that having procedures will "eliminate any doubt as to whether the Trump administration may withhold documents, prevent witness testimony, disregard duly authorized subpoenas, or continue obstructing the House of Representatives." The procedural document is eight pages long and is expected to pass.

When the impeachment inquiry is completed, the government will decide whether to proceed to an impeachment trial. That outcome looks likely, as a New York Times editorial said on October 18, and "that will force Senate Republicans to choose. Will they commit themselves and their party wholly to Mr. Trump, embracing even his most anti-democratic actions, or will they take the first step toward separating themselves from him and restoring confidence in the rule of law?"

As of late November, Democrats are discussing whether the articles of impeachment should focus on the Ukraine scandal or be expanded to include the arguably criminal allegations in the Mueller report.

Will this end his presidency? Maybe. Here's some reasons why it might not, followed by reasons why it might. Then, I quote some opinions.

"No": Reasons why this scandal won't end his presidency

A certain demographic — historically powerful in the United States, though their dominance has waned somewhat — is nearly unanimously in favor of Trump remaining in office. In an October 2019 column, Michael Gerson wrote that "an extraordinary 99 percent of Republican WEPs [white evangelical Protestants] oppose the impeachment and removal of the president." Robert Jeffress appeared on Fox News citing the 99 percent statistic and claimed that evangelicals see impeachment of Donald Trump as an impeachment of their values. (Which is odd, because Trump's personal values are decidedly not in line with American Christian conservatives' and never have been.)

Elected Republican leaders are mostly not on board.

Rep. Francis Rooney (R-FL), as discussed by Jennifer Victor on Oct. 24,
recently indicated that he might support impeachment, and then announced just one day later that he would not be seeking reelection. So, even though support for Trump is eroding, and support for impeaching is growing, most low-ranking Republicans still don’t feel like they can criticize the president and live to see another election.

One newspaper's inquiry found Republicans largely unwilling to discuss the matter. In late October, Chris Cillizza wrote for CNN, "the conservative Daily Caller website asked the offices of each of the 53 Republican senators whether they opposed the impeachment and removal of President Donald Trump. Just seven of them said yes. ... The seven who did confirm they oppose impeachment to the Caller are: Sens. James Inhofe (Oklahoma), Cindy Hyde-Smith (Mississippi), Thom Tillis (North Carolina), Roger Wicker (Mississippi), Mike Rounds (South Dakota), Rob Portman (Ohio) and Jerry Moran (Kansas). ... Of the 46 Republican senators who didn't expressly reject impeachment, almost half — 22 — simply declined to comment to the Caller."

However, as of Oct. 26, fifty senators (all Republicans) had signed a nonbinding resolution to condemn the House impeachment inquiry. There remain three Senate Republicans who have not signed it: Mitt Romney of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine. So far, then, exactly half of all Senators have signed this nonbinding resolution. Nonetheless, wrote CNN's Zachary B. Wolf, "the show of Republican cohesion does demonstrate that Trump is in little danger of being removed from office by impeachment, at least right now. It would take 67 senators to remove him." In other words, at the conclusion of the impeachment trial (which has not yet begun — only the inquiry is underway), all 47 Democrats and 20 Republicans would have to vote to remove Trump from office. Regarding the resolution condemning the House's inquiry, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, as of Oct. 29, said he had not decided whether to bring the resolution to the floor for a vote. He said he would wait to see if the House's formalization of the impeachment inquiry would contain "due process protections" for Trump.

Juleanna Glover believes the impeachment vote could be held secretly. Article I, Section 3, of the Constitution says only that two-thirds of the Senate must be present. The Senate can set its own rules for the impeachment, but it will need "a simple majority — 51 of the 53 Senate Republicans — to support any resolution outlining rules governing the trial. That means that if only three Republican senators were to break from the caucus, they could block any rule they didn’t like." Glover said:

...it’s not hard to imagine three senators supporting a secret ballot. Five sitting Republican senators have already announced their retirements; four of those are in their mid-70s or older and will never run for office again. They might well be willing to demand secrecy in order to give cover to their colleagues who would like to convict Trump but are afraid to do so because of politics in their home districts. There are also 10 Republican senators who aren’t up for reelection until 2024 and who might figure Trumpism will be irrelevant by then. Senators Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski have been the most vocal Republicans in expressing concerns about Trump’s behavior toward Ukraine. Other GOP senators have recently softened in their defense of him, as well — all before the House has held any public hearings.

There’s already been some public speculation that, should the Senate choose to proceed with a secret ballot, Trump would be found guilty. GOP strategist Mike Murphy said recently that a sitting Republican senator had told him 30 of his colleagues would vote to convict Trump if the ballot were secret. Former Senator Jeff Flake topped that, saying he thought 35 Republican senators would vote that way.

Sen. Lindsey Graham has enabled Trump up to this point. He may continue to do so. He was quoted in the Washington Post as having said on Oct. 15:

“Sure. I mean ... show me something that ... is a crime,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) to Axios on HBO in an interview on Tuesday. “If you could show me that, you know, Trump actually was engaging in a quid pro quo, outside the phone call, that would be very disturbing.” * * * [Sen. Lindsey] Graham’s comments could signal an inflection point in this impeachment debate. He has in the past twisted and omitted facts to protect Trump, and he’s warning that at some point, he won’t anymore.

Are we at that point? One month later, apparently not yet, and it's unclear what will bring us to that point.

"Yes": Reasons why this scandal will end his presidency

First of all, Americans agree that this type of behavior &mash; seeking foreign help in a presidential election — is bad. There is bipartisan agreement on this. In mid-October, a poll found that over 80 percent of Republicans, evangelicals and people living in rural areas disapprove of a president asking for election assistance from a foreign government.

While theoretical disapproval of the crime does not always translate into specific support for impeaching Trump, a majority of Americans do support the impeachment inquiry. A poll in early October 2019 of the American public found that 1 in 5 Republicans support at least an impeachment inquiry (if they have not already personally reached the conclusion that Trump should be removed from office). Across both parties, then, more than half of Americans support at least an impeachment inquiry. Nearly 2/3 of Americans said that Trump should cooperate with the impeachment inquiry; that is to say, some Americans who do not support the inquiry nevertheless believe that Trump ought to cooperate with it. At the end of the month, another poll had similar results, finding that 49 percent of Americans (including 18 percent of Republicans) want Trump removed from office.

Similar findings come from Fox News, NBC News/Wall Street Journal, the University of Texas and the Texas Tribune, and Washington Post/ABC News.

On November 3, Trump told reporters that he rejected these numbers. "I have the real polls," he claimed. He said they reveal that "people don’t want anything to do with impeachment." He did not, of course, say what these polls were. They probably do not exist.

During an Oct. 30 lunch meeting, Senate Republicans discussed changing their talking points: that Trump's request was obviously a quid pro quo, but that quid pro quos are common in foreign aid. During that meeting, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said that a quid pro quo is only illegal if there is "corrupt intent," that is, if Trump had "a culpable state of mind." Since crimes do not usually depend on the criminal's state of mind (which is difficult to determine), this argument may not fly.

On Nov. 4, a Huffington Post reporter categorized all 53 Republican Senators' public statements. Only a slim majority (28) say there's nothing to see here, while the rest (25) have some reservations or have chosen not to publicly comment yet. Their positions are:

"The Call Was Totally Fine" (28 senators)
"The Call Was Bad But Not Impeachable" (7 senators)
"The Call Was Wrong" (4 senators: Thune, Murkowski, Sasse, Romney)
"I’m A Potential Juror And Shouldn’t Speak" (4 senators: Collins, Isakson, Young, Enzi)
"Criticized Impeachment But Have Not Weighed In On Call" (10 senators)

On Nov. 7, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said that, in an impeachment trial, he will "look at all the evidence like a juror, which is what the Senate serves as, and then I am going to make a decision and what’s based on the best interest of the country given the facts," rather than reacting to "what’s being leaked in the press or what’s being reported or what politicians are saying.”

Nikki Haley, who served as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. during the first two years of Trump's term, claimed that there was no quid pro quo because Trump was ultimately unsuccessful in his attempt to withhold aid from Ukraine. (He did, however, delay it for months.)

One indication that the Trump administration is panicking is that they are asking foreign governments to discredit U.S. intelligence findings on this scandal and related scandals, including the Mueller Report. The Independent:

Trump and Barr have also been asking other foreign governments for help in investigating the FBI, CIA and Mueller investigators. The US president has called on the Australian prime minister Scott Morrison for assistance, while the attorney general has been on similar missions to the UK and Italy.

And the information being requested has left allies astonished. One British official with knowledge of Barr’s wish list presented to London commented that “it is like nothing we have come across before, they are basically asking, in quite robust terms, for help in doing a hatchet job on their own intelligence services”.

Trump also, according to the Washington Post on Nov. 6, asked Barr to hold a news conference stating that the Trump/Zelensky phone call was not illegal, though Barr refused.

Republican leaders have to make a decision. Either they ally themselves with Trump at all costs, without qualifying their statements, whatever the evidence against him, or they forgo Trump's good will. A middle-of-the-road, wait-and-see position, such as that attempted by Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) — who said that Trump's attempted quid pro quo was "not appropriate" yet isn't "impeachable" — is both "gutless" and "ultimately foolhardy, since Trump will view it as an attack," as Michelangelo Signorile wrote on Oct. 30. Signorile said: "There’s no one left in the White House with good instincts who has any influence on him. He’s making all of the decisions now — decisions that even Republicans admit are terrible," and he "no longer has anyone competent to speak for him either, and the GOP knows this too."

Indeed — supporting Signorile's point — Lindsey Graham says that Trump is too incompetent to do anything corrupt and therefore cannot be impeached.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, is determined to cultivate his own incompetence by referring to the impeachment inquiry as "B.S." while admitting not having read the materials.

Graham also insists that the impeachment inquiry is invalid unless the original whistleblower's identity is outed and the whistleblower testifies before Congress. "It's impossible to bring this case forward in my view fairly," he said, "without us knowing who the whistleblower is and having a chance to cross examine them about any biases they may have. So if they don't call the whistleblower in the House, this thing is dead on arrival in the Senate." To the contrary, however, there are laws to protect the identity of whistleblowers.

It is not necessary to cross-examine the person who reported the crime. And it is a little strange that the defendant would want another one of his accusers to testify, when so many of them have already spoken against him. Outing the whistleblower would simply place the whistleblower at personal risk. It is to Trump's media advantage to paint the idea that he has an anonymous enemy in the government and that this enemy is untrustworthy and can be discredited simply because he or she is anonymous. Accordingly, Trump refused the whistleblower's offer of written testimony. He doesn't want to know what the whistleblower has to say; he wants the whistleblower to reveal his or her face.

Also, while a criminal defendant has a Sixth Amendment right to question their accuser at trial, it is also the generally held legal opinion that a sitting president cannot be indicted, which is to say that Trump is not a criminal defendant and it isn't clear that the Sixth Amendment right applies to him. Trump will go on trial by Senate on the question of whether he abused the power of his office and the consequence is that he may lose his job. That is not a criminal trial, and it isn't clear he has the right to cross-examine anyone.

He sows confusion with this line of argument. Demanding the whistleblower's identity (which legally can't be released) is a tactic to delay the process and divert the focus from other people's testimony. It also intimidates anyone else from reporting crimes in the future, anonymously or otherwise, about Trump or about anyone else.

Similarly, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) denies that Trump asked Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, which is fascinating, since going back to September, Trump himself has admitted doing that. He made a televised request apparently to Ukraine on Sept. 20 and to China on Oct. 3. From the time of the whistleblower's initial report in late September through early November, Trump tweeted about the Bidens over 50 times, generally alleging that they did something corrupt related to Ukraine. Trump is clearly asking Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. This is not in dispute.

Sen. John Kennedy, standing next to Trump at a rally, had this disingenuously apologetic ad hominem for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi for her attempt to impeach Trump: "I don’t mean any disrespect, but it must suck to be that dumb."

Rand Paul, who once promoted whistleblower protections...

...now wants to out the whistleblower.

Ultimately, Trump may be unable to stop people from testifying. As explained in a Huffington Post article on Nov. 15:

Someone who refuses to honor a congressional subpoena risks being held in contempt of Congress, which results in, at the very least, hefty legal bills. Someone who honors the subpoena risks being fired. The latter choice, though, can make the subpoenaed witness seem more sympathetic to the public while making the White House appear both vindictive and secretive.

'Aside from firing them or revoking their clearance, the president has no power to unilaterally do anything against these individuals,' [national security lawyer Bradley] Moss said.

Opinions

"Anyone who followed the president’s directive to 'read the transcript'...knows that even this sanitized version of the President's call exposes the scheme to public view," Joyce White Vance wrote for Time. "Far from a perfect call, it was a scheme to have a foreign country intervene in our election. It was so far off the mark that when White House officials learned about it, they stashed the record of it on a highly classified server, apparently in hopes it wouldn’t come to light."

James Carville had said Trump appears to be "done." Premature, perhaps, but let's see.

Nancy Gibbs suggested in October 2019 that Trump wants to be impeached because it lets him project an image that he is a victim.

"The polls are moving for a reason: Republicans and independents, even those serving in Congress, may not agree where the line is, but they know there’s one somewhere, and it does not involve a shooting on Fifth Avenue.

Consciously or not, might he conclude that impeachment and removal is his least bad option for escaping the 'great white jail'? Resigning is out; that’s for quitters. Defeat in 2020 is worse; losing is for losers. But being impeached and removed from office is the one outcome that preserves at least some ability to denounce the deep state and the quislings in the Senate who stabbed him in the back, maintain his bond with his tribe, depart the capital and launch a media business to compete with the ever more flaccid Fox News. (This all presumes that President Pence pardons him, for which there’s some precedent.) Impeachment lets him go down fighting, and he will call it rigged and unfair and illegitimate and a coup, all of which would be harder if the verdict was rendered next November by millions of voters."

Is he making maximal use of the messaging opportunity? No — he can't. He lacks "message discipline," meaning he changes his story every time he opens his mouth. Even Sen. Lindsey Graham cannot deny that the president is suffering from this critical personality flaw. At least when Bill Clinton was impeached, Graham pointed out, he had a team that was "on message every day."

Stephen Collinson's analysis for CNN on Oct. 25: "The President's wild attacks on witnesses — he blasted 'Never Trump Republicans' this week who criticize him as 'human scum' — may also be counterproductive and alienate undecided Americans."

"Trump has been behaving nearly hysterically in public, his language increasingly reckless and vulgar," Elizabeth Drew wrote on October 15. "And he’s made major foreign-policy errors that have enraged members of his own party." She added: "Trump’s defiance of Congress virtually guarantees that he will be impeached for obstruction, among other possible charges." Impeached, yes; but whether he will be convicted, or otherwise rejected by his own party, is another matter.

Former Republican Congressman Charlie Dent said on television: "People have to stand up and say...this is wrong.”

Just before the first televised impeachment hearings began on Nov. 13, Stephen Collinson wrote of the president: "His fate will have sweeping consequences for the future understanding of powers vested within the presidency itself. The hearings will test whether the ancient machinery of US governance can effectively investigate a President who ignores the charges against him and fogs fact in defining a new post-truth political era."

The accusations

could hardly be more grave. He is effectively accused of committing a crime against the nation itself and the political system that guards its freedoms.

Specifically, Democrats charge Trump with conspiring with a foreign power to influence a US election, an offense many observers believe satisfies the impeachable standard of "Treason, Bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors."

The eventual case may encompass campaign finance offenses, the flouting of his presidential oath to uphold the law and the Constitution and allege obstruction over his withholding of witnesses and evidence. In more symbolic terms, it would validate the fears of America's founders of one of the greatest threats to their democratic experiment.

Former Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), who left Congress in 2018, told CNN on Nov. 29 that he'd spoken to many Republican members of Congress, and "they’re absolutely disgusted and exhausted by the president’s behavior...They resent being put in this position all the time." He said they believe they have to make a choice between winning the next election or looking good in the eyes of history.

July 17, 2023: Nope. His time was not up, and now he's seeking a second term. Philip Bump in The Washington Post:

"The idea is uncomplicated: Make the bureaucracy fully accountable to the president. The downsides to this should be obvious, from eliminating enormous institutional knowledge to reinventing key systems of government every four to eight years. But it’s also easy to see the appeal to Trump, whose autocratic instincts are unsubtle. It would turn him from a president — one who presides over government — into the CEO of a private organization once again, with all that entails."

Hear his lawyer say, on January 9, 2024, that he could order the military to assassinate a political rival and he wouldn't even be subject to prosecution unless the Senate impeached and convicted him first.

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Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Who will testify about Trump's quid pro quo?

Dozens of witnesses have already testified in closed hearings. Official transcripts have been made of this testimony. As of Nov. 9, 2,677 pages of transcripts had been released. Public hearings begin Nov. 13.

As of Nov. 13, "Mick Mulvaney, Rick Perry, Mike Pompeo and Rudy Giuliani all are missing in the evidence of the case against the President, by their choosing or that of the White House."But other people are testifying. (White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said the president was "not watching" the first day of testimony on the television because he was busy "working," but the president was not so busy that he did not find time to retweet over 20 comments about the impeachment process on that same day.)

Who is providing, or might provide, damning testimony in the impeachment of President Trump?

Bill Taylor

Bill Taylor is the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine. On Oct. 22, he said there was a quid pro quo. This is expected to accelerate the impeachment inquiry. On Oct. 24, CNN reported: "Republican sources claim diplomat Bill Taylor's testimony was a game changer and is 'reverberating' up on Capitol Hill. And according to one GOP source, Taylor's testimony 'points to quid pro quo.'"

He will testify publicly on Nov. 13.

Tim Morrison

Taylor identified Tim Morrison, a National Security Council official, is a witness to the quid pro quo. Taylor testified that Morrison had told him about two conversations he'd witnessed between Trump's E.U. ambassador Gordon Sondland and a Ukrainian government official. It is also believed that Morrison was on the July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelensky. Morrison testified Oct. 31. He "corroborated a key part of US diplomat Bill Taylor's testimony" but said nothing about the phone call seemed illegal to him.

Gordon Sondland

Gordon Sondland "is a Trump donor and a Trump loyalist," explained Ari Melber on MSNBC's "The Beat." "He was handpicked by Donald Trump to be the U.S. ambassador to the European Union. He is also not a longtime Washington insider, or someone who could be accused of having agency or State Department loyalty. Nothing like that. He is a basically successful businessman up to this point with a lucrative hotel chain in the Pacific Northwest, and he's also, as mentioned — and this is how he got the job, according to many — a major Republican donor."

Trump once called Sondland "a really good man and great American" who is "highly respected." In addition to giving Sondland the ambassadorship to the EU, he gave Sondland special assignments, including with Ukraine. On Nov. 8, Trump said, "I hardly know the gentleman."

After initially denying that there was a quid pro quo, Sondland backtracked and said that Trump had asked him to deny it.

Trump boasted of having instructed Sondland to defend him.

Sondland provided his testimony to Congress: yes, there was a quid pro quo, and Trump's pressure grew "more insidious."

On Nov. 5, the transcript of his testimony was released. The new story is that Sondland "told a top Ukrainian official that the country likely would not receive American military aid unless," as the New York Times reported, "it publicly committed to investigations President Trump wanted."

Sondland testified that he had a “brief pull-aside conversation” with President Zelensky’s aide Andriy Yermak in Warsaw on Sept. 1, 2019, following a meeting “in which President Zelensky had raised the issue of suspension of U.S. aid to Ukraine directly with Vice President Pence...I said [to Yermak] that resumption of U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks."

What was this "public anti-corruption statement" that Zelensky was asked to recite? It was related to the manufactured scandal regarding the Bidens. Yermak had drafted a statement on Aug. 12 and sent it to Kurt Volker, the U.S. special envoy to Ukraine. "Trump administration officials in the field, like Volker and Sondland, continued to understand that the Burisma and hacking mentions were essential to the president," David A. Graham wrote for The Atlantic. (Furthermore, according to Sondland's testimony, Sondland realized in September that Trump wanted the statement "to come directly from President Zelensky himself.") This statement would have been nonsense, Graham continued, because,

even in Trump’s conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden, there’s been no allegation that his role on the Burisma board was tied to Ukrainian interference in U.S. elections.

On Nov. 24, Chris Wallace, the host of "Fox News Sunday," asked Republican Sen. John Kennedy whether "Russia or Ukraine...was responsible for hacking the DNC and Clinton campaign computers, their emails," in 2016. Sen. Kennedy said, "I don't know. Nor do you. Nor do any of us." The next day, he corrected himself to Chris Cuomo on "Cuomo Prime Time" on CNN. "I was wrong. It was Russia who tried to hack the (Democratic National Committee) computer. I've seen no indication that Ukraine tried to do it."

Moreover, the statement that Trump was trying to extract from Ukraine is steeped in Orwellian irony. Trump wanted Ukraine to pursue these investigation in order to further his chances at reelection in 2020. The Ukrainian government was having its arm twisted into giving a statement swearing to stop interference in U.S. elections — even as the statement was itself coerced interference in U.S. elections. (Sondland testified that a demand to investigate Hunter Biden would be improper.)

Sondland testified publicly, as scheduled, on Nov. 20. And here it is:

Boarding a flight back to Brussels later that day, Sondland said he had no intention of resigning his ambassadorship.

While Sondland had also testified that he spoke to Trump by telephone on Sept. 9 and that Trump had told him that he wanted nothing from Ukraine and simply wanted Ukraine to do the right thing. While this testimony "has emerged as a centerpiece of Trump's defense," no one can corroborate what Sondland heard, and the White House doesn't even have a switchboard record that the call took place.

David Hale

Ambassador Hale is the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. He is the most senior career official at the Department of State. He is a Trump appointee. He testified on Nov. 6. The transcript was released on Nov. 18.

David Holmes

He testified on Nov. 15. The transcript was released on Nov. 18.

Kurt Volker

Volker is the former special envoy for Ukraine. His testimony, released Nov. 5, says, in CNN's words, that "the Ukrainians didn’t know about the holdup of military assistance until after the Trump administration stopped pressing them to announce an investigation into the Bidens." This "bolsters a key tenet of Trump’s defense – that there was no 'quid pro quo' with Ukraine because the new government in Kiev was not aware that military aid was being withheld."

Mick Mulvaney

On Oct. 17, White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney acknowledged that, as CNN put it, "President Donald Trump froze nearly $400 million in US security aid to Ukraine in part to pressure that country into investigating Democrats." Indeed: "After weeks during which Trump denied the existence of any political quid pro quo in his withholding of security aid to Ukraine, Mulvaney confirmed the existence of a quid pro quo and offered this retort: 'Get over it...We do that all the time with foreign policy.'"

Later in the day, Mulvaney tried to backpedal. He essentially "attempted," as Michelangelo Signorile wrote, "to walk back something that can’t be walked back. He now appears to have been sidelined completely [from the Trump administration]...there’s talk that Mulvaney may soon be booted."

Mulvaney was subpoenaed to compel his testimony. He was scheduled to testify on Nov. 8, but was expected to defy the subpoena, following instructions from the White House. Indeed, moments before he was supposed to begin his testimony, his lawyer appeared and said that he would not testify because the President has "absolute immunity" from being investigated, let alone prosecuted. (This is false. No one except the Trump administration has ever argued that a president cannot be investigated.) That day, Trump said he'd asked Mulvaney not to testify because "I don't want to give credibility to a corrupt witch hunt," even though "I think he'd do great" on the witness stand. "What I don't like," Trump complained, "is when they put all these people [on the witness stand] that I never met before."

Mulvaney had intended to seek a judge's ruling on whether he needed to comply with the subpoena. On Nov. 12, his lawyer made a court filing to say he was no longer seeking the judge's ruling, as he had decided to simply obey Trump's order and defy the subpoena. This saga bewildered everyone.

Alexander Vindman

Meanwhile, Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, the White House's top Ukraine expert, a man who serves on the National Security Council, was scheduled to testify and did so on Oct. 29. He was on the call and had concerns about it. He also testified that the transcript of the call is incomplete; he said Trump had mentioned the existence of audiorecording of Joe Biden and that he named Burisma (Hunter Biden's employer), neither of which appear in the transcript.

According to a Huffington Post story, Vindman testified that "Ambassador Gordon Sondland made it clear in a July 10 meeting at the White House that the investigations of the Bidens and Ukrainian gas company Burisma would have to be opened for Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to get an Oval Office meeting with Trump." In his testimony, Vindman said he felt at the time that the quid pro quo "was explicit. There was no ambiguity."

Vindman was born in Ukraine and speaks Ukrainian and Russian. His family immigrated to the United States when he was three years old. He received a Purple Heart after being wounded in the Iraq War.

On Oct. 28, the evening before Vindman's testimony, former Justice Department official John Yoo appeared on the Fox News show "The Ingraham Angle" and said that if Ukrainian officials had asked Vindman for advice on how to handle Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani, "some people might call that espionage." Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia, said that Yoo's remark would be considered libelous in other countries. Two days later, in a CNN interview, Yoo backtracked on the "espionage" comment and said "I really regret the choice of words," and he also admitted that the transcript of Trump's phone call shows a quid pro quo.

By the way, on Yoo:

The next morning, as Vindman began his testimony, the idea that he sympathized with Ukraine over the United States was aired on Fox & Friends (by co-host Brian Kilmeade) and on CNN (by former U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy, a Republican who had been hired as a pro-Trump political commentator by CNN just a week earlier).

Duffy said on the air about Vindman: "It seems very clear that he is incredibly concerned about Ukrainian defense. I don't know if he is concerned about American policy, but his main mission was to make sure that the Ukraine got those weapons. I understand it. We all have an affinity to our homeland where we came from. Like me, I'm sure that Vindman has the same affinity."

The CNN host, John Berman, challenged Rep. Duffy: "Are you suggesting that you would put Irish defense over U.S. defense?"

Duffy changed the topic slightly, responding to the question with another question: "Are we saying that by giving this money to the Ukraine, that absolutely is the money that's going to secure American national defense against Russia? I mean, I don't believe that." With this comment, Duffy was suggesting that the hundreds of millions of dollars that Congress had allocated for arms to Ukraine was not actually necessary to support U.S. security needs, and was, perhaps, rather some kind of favor to Ukraine, which Vindman was championing simply because he had a personal "affinity" for Ukraine (and not because he was a U.S. government official who was supporting American foreign policy with a specific budget already approved by Congress).

Rep. Ron Kind, a Democrat, was quoted that morning as saying: "If that’s all they’ve got, is to question the patriotism of a lieutenant colonel who took a bullet for us and has a Purple Heart on the battlefield, well, good look to them. My goodness."

On Nov. 19, Rep. Devin Nunes referred to him as "Mr. Vindman," and Vindman corrected him: "It's Lt. Col. Vindman, please." Rep. Chris Stewart objected to Vindman making this correction.

Donald J. Trump Jr. elevated a crude objection.

Consequences of this kind of harassment:

Mitch McConnell

On Oct. 22, Mitch McConnell said he did not recall having spoken with Trump about his phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky. (Trump had claimed three weeks previously not only that he had spoken with McConnell about the phone call but that McConnell had characterized Trump's words as unproblematic.)

John Bolton

Former national security advisor John Bolton may be asked to testify — update, will be asked to testify — update, is supposed to testify on Nov. 7 but may not — update, did not show up. Like Mulvaney's lawyer, Bolton's lawyer cites the Trump administration's claim that the president has "absolute immunity" from being investigated, and therefore, Bolton's lawyer maintains, he does not have to comply with a subpoena to compel his testimony.

In the middle of this, Bolton landed a book deal with Simon & Schuster.

Christopher Anderson

Christopher Anderson was a top aide to Kurt Volker, the former U.S. special representative for Ukraine negotiations. A transcript of his testimony was released. According to Politico:

...he described an early-2019 conversation in which then-national security adviser John Bolton revealed Trump had called him at his home to complain about a CNN story that made it appear the Navy was pushing back against Russian aggression in the Black Sea.

“Ambassador Bolton relayed that he was called at home by the president, who complained about this news report,” Anderson told lawmakers.

Anderson described a sense of “Ukraine fatigue” emerging inside the administration that was evident when the Navy launched a routine “freedom-of-navigation” operation in the Black Sea. Anderson said officials notified the Turkish government, and when CNN reported on the move — portraying it as a response to Russia — the White House asked the Navy to cancel the maneuver.

Rick Perry

Energy secretary Rick Perry has been subpoenaed for documents. A week later, he announced that he would resign his position by the end of the year, and the Energy Department said it would not comply with the subpoena. Perry was asked to testify on Nov. 6 but has said he will not do so in a closed hearing; he may do so if the hearing is public and if Energy Department legal counsel is allowed.

Lev Parnas

On Nov. 4, Ukrainian-American businessman Lev Parnas said he would testify and comply with requests for records related to the impeachment inquiry.

In October, Parnas pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court to issues unrelated to the impeachment inquiry. The charges include illegally funneling money to a Trump election committee and to a former congressman. In these cases, the ultimate political aim (allegedly) was for Trump to remove the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. Parnas has ties to Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.

Michael McKinley

The former State Department adviser testified on Oct. 16.

Jennifer Williams

Williams, an aide to Vice President Mike Pence, was on the Trump/Zelensky phone call. The White House told her not to testify in the impeachment inquiry, so the House Intelligence Committee subpoenaed her. She showed up as scheduled on Nov. 7 and testified for about five hours. She said that she thought the Trump/Zelensky phone call was unusually political in its tone; that it was possible (but she did not know for certain) that the withholding of military aid to Ukraine was tied to the request for Ukraine to investigate the Bidens; and that she never heard Pence mention anything related to the matter. In a transcript released on Nov. 16, she said the call "struck me as unusual and inappropriate.”

George Kent

He will testify publicly on Nov. 13.

Marie Yovanovitch

She will testify publicly on Nov. 15.

Fiona Hill

She is a former National Security Council staffer, the author of a book on Putin, and was responsible for Russia and Ukraine. She testified that Trump wanted Zelensky to investigate Trump's political rivals in exchange for Zelensky being invited to Washington, and that this was clear as early as July 10. She said that this agreement was made with Mulvaney, and that she heard about it from Sondland.

Hill said that, in the administration's first year, people including former Homeland Security advisor Tom Bossert and former National Security Council advisor H.R. McMaster tried unsuccessfully to convince Trump that Ukraine did not interfere with the 2016 election. She also said she was "shocked" by Trump's comments about Yovanovitch and by the "pretty blatant" quid pro quo in the rough transcript of the July 25 call.

She gave a deposition on Nov. 14 and testified publicly on Nov. 21. Stephen Collinson wrote for CNN that Hill

effectively warned that the Republican defense of the President — by peddling Ukraine conspiracy theories — was in danger, in itself, of becoming an extension of the 2016 Russian election scheme that is tearing American politics apart and draining public confidence in its democracy.

* * *

...Hill said she only really began to understand the scandal herself while watching testimony from Trump's ad hoc messenger to the new government in Kiev Gordon Sondland.

"He was being involved in a domestic political errand. And we were being involved in national security foreign policy. And those two things had just diverged."

To hear her "domestic political errand" comment, skip to about 2 minutes into this video clip.

Hearings are closed

Republicans have been demanding transcripts. The committee released the first two transcripts on Nov. 4: the interviews with former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch (transcript) and Michael McKinley, a former State Department adviser (transcript). It turns out that Yovanovitch had told the investigators that Sondland had advised her to praise Trump in tweets to save her own job.

On Nov. 5, it released transcripts of interviews with former special envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker (transcript) and US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland (transcript).

Bill Taylor's transcript was released on Nov. 6.

On Nov. 8, they released Fiona Hill (transcript) and Alexander Vindman (transcript).

...they are closed, or are they?

On Nov. 8, Rep. Matt Gaetz tried to enter the hearing room. He is on the Judiciary Committee, but not on any of the three committees conducting the hearing (Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight). He was asked to leave. (Rep. Jim Jordan, who is on the Oversight Committee, tried to intercede for Gaetz by saying, "Really?")

Don McGahn*

On Nov. 25, federal judge Ketanji Brown Jackson ordered Don McGahn to testify regarding Mueller's findings in the Russia investigation. The judge also rebuked the White House: "Presidents are not kings." *McGahn was requested to testify in April, so this is not directly related to the Ukraine "quid pro quo" scandal that began over the summer, but some of Mueller's findings may eventually be included in the articles of impeachment.

Hearings will be public

Public hearings will begin in the second week of November. Unlike the closed hearings which were conducted by three committees (Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight), the public hearings will be conducted only by the Intelligence Committee.

On Nov. 8, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy temporarily changed who is serving on the House Intelligence Committee. He replaced Rep. Rick Crawford with Rep. Jim Jordan.

On Nov. 8, Trump said the hearings in the impeachment inquiry should not be public.

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Saturday, October 12, 2019

On the risk of fascism in the US

Some definitions: Literature (not to be confused with literary fiction) is a small subset of creative written works—of any genre—that continually set the standards for all other creative written works, even those that don’t aspire to literature; Fascism is a political ideology rooted in immutability and predestination that denies agency to anyone who doesn’t participate in its categories. Because fascism is a simple, reductive way to classify or “tag” individual human beings, it becomes the most immediately profitable politics for the wealthy elite in societies with extreme inequality and under-regulated commerce. Because one of literature’s greatest strength is to complicate individuals, to both enrich and translate their inner lives, it is, in aggregate (with notable exceptions), an antifascist endeavor.

Culture is where fascism and literature intersect, as well as where, say, disingenuous novelists, newspapers, publishers, and social media platforms can interfere with literature’s struggle against fascism. Culture is where the undermining of literature compounds and accelerates fascist politics...

— "An Irrelevance of Talent: Bigots Don't Really Care about Literature," Patrick Nathan, Substack, Dec 1, 2022

Fintan O'Toole wrote in June 2018 that "what is being trialled is fascism" and "what we are living with is pre-fascism."

Fascism doesn’t arise suddenly in an existing democracy. It is not easy to get people to give up their ideas of freedom and civility. You have to do trial runs that, if they are done well, serve two purposes. They get people used to something they may initially recoil from; and they allow you to refine and calibrate. This is what is happening now and we would be fools not to see it.

One of the basic tools of fascism is the rigging of elections – we’ve seen that trialled in the election of Trump, in the Brexit referendum and (less successfully) in the French presidential elections. Another is the generation of tribal identities, the division of society into mutually exclusive polarities. Fascism does not need a majority – it typically comes to power with about 40 per cent support and then uses control and intimidation to consolidate that power. So it doesn’t matter if most people hate you, as long as your 40 per cent is fanatically committed. That’s been tested out too. And fascism of course needs a propaganda machine so effective that it creates for its followers a universe of “alternative facts” impervious to unwanted realities. Again, the testing for this is very far advanced.

And, furthermore, O'Toole wrote, fascism aims to "inure people to the acceptance of acts of extreme cruelty. Like hounds, people have to be blooded. They have to be given the taste for savagery."

Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, after resigning from the Republican party, told Rolling Stone in June 2018:

We're seeing at this moment a president of the United States do five things. He is using mass rallies that are fueled by constant lying to incite fervor and devotion in his political base. The second thing we see him do is to affix blame for every problem in the world. Many of them are complex, not so different from the issues faced at the end of Agrarian age and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. We see him attack minority populations with words like "invade" and "infest." The third thing he does is a create a shared sense of victimization caused by the scapegoated populations. This is the high act of Trumpism: From Trump to Sean Hannity to Laura Ingraham, everyone is a victim. The fourth thing he does is he alleges conspiracy by nefarious and unseen hidden forces — the "deep state." And the fifth thing is the assertion that "I am the law, that I am above it." He just said immigrants don't get a hearing; they don't get a court representation.

"Revolutionary conservatism," if you happen to come across the term, may be a reference to fascism.

In October 2019, Paul Krugman argued that "if Trump were cannier and more self-controlled, the march to autocracy might well be unstoppable." But because "he actually seems to believe the bizarre conspiracy theories his supporters drum up to excuse his actions" and "evidently lacks any kind of self-restraint" to prevent himself from self-incriminating, American democracy has a fighting chance.

The surprising thing about the constitutional crisis we’re now facing is that it took so long to happen. It was obvious from early on that the president of the United States is a would-be autocrat who accepts no limits on his power and considers criticism a form of treason, and he is backed by a party that has denied the legitimacy of its opposition for many years. Something like this moment was inevitable.

What still hangs in the balance is the outcome.

In October 2019, Dana Milbank wrote:

[After taking office,] Trump soon stated that “I have the absolute right” to fire FBI Director James Comey. He subsequently proclaimed the “absolute right” to provide Russia with an ally’s highly classified intelligence; the “absolute right” to pardon himself; the “absolute right” to shut down the southern border; the “absolute right” to fire special counsel Robert Mueller; the “absolute right” to sign an executive order removing the Constitution’s birthright-citizenship provision; the “absolute right” to contrive a national emergency to deny Congress the power of the purse; the “absolute right” to order U.S. businesses out of China; the “absolute right” to release apparent spy-satellite imagery of Iran; and, most recently, the “absolute right” to ask other countries to furnish evidence that Joe Biden is corrupt.

Kellyanne Conway asserted Trump’s “absolute right” to give his son-in-law a security clearance over security professionals’ objections. White House counsel Pat Cipollone said current and former White House officials are “absolutely immune” from testifying before Congress. As others have noted, Trump has repeatedly said the Constitution’s Article II empowers him “to do whatever I want” and bestows on him “all of these rights at a level nobody has ever seen before.”

* * *

He responded to the resulting impeachment inquiry in the House with a bizarre letter from Cipollone asserting, essentially, that Trump is exempt from all congressional oversight and won’t participate in this “unconstitutional inquiry” — even though the Constitution expressly gives the House “the sole Power of Impeachment.”

Christine Emba's opinion for the Washington Post in November 2019:

Promoting his new book, “Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us,” Donald Trump Jr. naturally assumed that any protesters at his event at UCLA on Nov. 11 would be coming at him from the left.

But the hecklers who shouted him offstage last weekend hailed from the right. They were booing his college Republican hosts for not being reactionary enough.

Which means: The next wave of American conservatism is further to the right than President Trump himself.

John Stoehr writes in November 2019 about the fascism that can come if white people "tune out" its rise or otherwise assume it will turn out OK.

* * *

Jake Thomas wrote in September 2019:

CNN analyst and former FBI special agent Asha Rangappa noted on Monday that many of President Donald Trump’s political talking points just so happen to coincide with those put forth by Russia’s troll farm, as detailed in a criminal complaint filed in court last year. Rangappa highlighted that Trump’s Sunday tweet warning of civil war if he is impeached, by way of a quote from evangelical Pastor Robert Jeffress, was also one of the talking points pushed by Russians.

* * *

"This is what authoritarians do. They tell you exactly what they hope to achieve, and how they hope to do it. The problem is that nations don’t often take them seriously, because they can’t imagine the unthinkable. My friends: it’s time to imagine the unthinkable."
— “American Democracy Will Die in 150 Days.” Umair Haque. Eudaimonia. June 9, 2020.

"What was the purpose of the mayhem caused by police in front of the White House? Simple: It was a photo-op of Trump with a Bible he clearly doesn’t read in front of a church he doesn’t attend. The once seemingly hyperbolic comparisons to Hitler became crystallized. Trump signaled, through a series of disturbing events last week, that he is prepared to do whatever is necessary to hold onto power, even if it means literally and figuratively trampling on the rights of Americans."
— “Fascism Has Arrived in America. Now What?” Danielle Moodie. Zora. June 10, 2020.

"The pseudo-fascist establishment in the US has only one goal, retention of power to preserve the current collapsing system. That establishment consists of a small minority who have made fortunes at everyone’s expense and have no interest in any future that does not make them even richer and more powerful. They have no interest in rights or human well being, and the lies that they use with the outrageous claims that they make to keep people in line."
— “America Post-Collapse.” Mike Meyer. Age of Awareness. June 6, 2020.

"Autocrats declare their intentions early on," Masha Gessen says in Part 1 of Surviving Autocracy. "We disbelieve or ignore them at our peril." Trump has always expressed his admiration for autocrats. When he cozies up to them, there's usually no broader political strategy for U.S. benefit. He might have a one-off transaction in mind for his own benefit, Gessen says, but, more so, he genuinely enjoys their company and wants to portray himself as one of them.

"Senator Chris Murphy just said," Scott Dworkin reported on April 13, 2020, that "Trump playing a campaign video in the White House briefing room was against the law."

On June 25, 2020, the Stockholm-based Institute for Democracy published an open letter signed by hundreds of former world leaders and Nobel Laureates claiming that governments worldwide are using the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to scuttle democratic norms and processes.

In a New York Times article, reporter Ellen Barry spoke to a Trump supporter on November 6, 2020 after the vote count appeared to be in Joe Biden's favor. The Trump supporter said:

He could imagine the United States splitting into two countries, one governed by Mr. Trump and one not. He could imagine suspending elections so Mr. Trump and his family could rule without interruption for 20 years.

“I guarantee you, Trump supporters would not care,” he said. “I guarantee you, if you got 69 million Trump supporters, and you said, ‘Would you be good with Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump as president?’ a lot of people would be 100 percent behind that.”

2022 update: The 2024 presidential election prospects look bleak.

As Garrett Bucks wrote, fascism is "an ideology that asks its adherents to have a deeply pessimistic take on humanity in general — to lean towards distrust for the masses, to extinguish all hope of cooperation and trust and to replace it with a belief that salvation will come through the rule by a small group of our societal betters." (Substack, Sept. 1, 2022)

Update: January 2023

Of the Republican Party's unwillingness or inability to elect a Speaker of the House in early January 2023, Amanda Marcotte wrote for Salon:

...about the Republican Party's self-conception in its exciting new fascist iteration (which was forged under Donald Trump but doesn't really have much to do with him either). Fascism needs to be understood less as an ideological movement and more as a movement devoted to the worship of power for its own sake, and also a dramatic aesthetic of constant warfare and performative purification of an ever-narrower conception of the body politic.

Those are big words, and I apologize, but here's a simpler way to put it: Fascists are a bunch of trolls who are never satisfied. They must always prove their power by ganging up on someone who's been cast as an "outsider." As the Atlantic's Adam Serwer famously observed, "The cruelty is the point." Most of the time, the targets are racial and sexual minorities, liberals or immigrants. But sometimes, that restless need to constantly bully someone manifests in purification rituals, where a once-trusted or even beloved insider is deemed an outsider who must be ritually purged. It's just Kevin McCarthy's turn in the proverbial barrel, though he almost certainly hasn't helped his cause by constantly debasing himself before the hardliners. He's marked himself as a weenie, and that just makes his tormentors enjoy watching him suffer even more.

The Trump era has, understandably, led to a nonstop and frustrating debate over what exactly "fascism" is. I favor the famous 1995 essay by Italian philosopher Umberto Eco, who argued that fascism is a movement of "rigid discombobulation, a structured confusion," replete with contradictions and incoherencies, and yet that "emotionally it was firmly fastened to some archetypal foundations."

In other words, fascism is about vibes more than fleshed-out ideas. Very, very authoritarian vibes. One big reason we can identify Republicans as fascist now is because while their appetite for power knows no end, their willingness to govern — that is, to use power to achieve substantive ends — has diminished to nothing. It's all vibes and no ideas, beyond an inchoate loathing of anyone they deem too dark-skinned, too queer or too literate to be truly American.

In his "Ur-Fascism" essay, Eco laid out 14 features of fascism, which add up not to a coherent political philosophy so much as a series of antisocial impulses. It's worth reading in its entirety, but the McCarthy debacle illustrates some of Eco's most important observations: Fascism is deliberately irrational. Indeed, it makes a fetish of irrationality. It's a "cult of action for action's sake" that believes thinking before acting "is a form of emasculation." The fascist believes that "life is permanent warfare" and therefore there must always be an enemy to struggle against. That's why fascists love conspiracy theories. Their "followers must feel besieged," and since they have no real oppressors to rail against, they make up imaginary ones.

After Trump's coup failed and the red wave of the midterms didn't materialize, Republicans are turning on each other. Even healthy political parties tend to have periods of recrimination after suffering bitter defeats. For the dysfunctional Republicans, however, this anger is being refracted through their increasingly fascist worldview, which is paranoid, irrational and hostile to democracy. That's why the demands made by the anti-McCarthy faction are incomprehensible and seem to change by the hour. The mentality that "life is permanent warfare" leads to the party's desire to constantly purify itself of the enemy within, in this case the despised "RINOs." But as more and more RINOs get purged, the definition becomes more expansive and maintaining party purity becomes almost impossible. Eventually, craven sycophants like McCarthy are rechristened as RINOs and thrown overboard. There is no endpoint where the party has finally cleansed itself.

Adam Serwer on Bluesky, November 28, 2023: "Trumpism, like QAnon, is just politics as a murder fantasy. There are left wing versions of this kind of politics but they're not governing states or serving in Congress".

Relatedly, my essays for Medium (paywalled, please become a member!):
On Serwer's book, The Cruelty is the Point I hope they all cawthorn each other

Oh look, they did cawthorn someone (Oct. 3, 2023):
Kevin McCarthy Voted Out Of House Speakership | HuffPost, Oct 3, 2023
Kevin McCarthy Reached The Limit Of His Transactional Politics | HuffPost, Oct 3, 2023
Kevin McCarthy's Ouster As House Speaker Could Cost GOP Its Best Fundraiser | HuffPost, Oct 5, 2023
Trump endorses Jim Jordan for House speaker CNN, Oct 6, 2023
House remains paralyzed with no end in sight for speakership battle after Jordan’s exit, Clare Foran, CNN, Oct 21, 2023
Nine More Republicans Sign Up For Speaker Bid, Likely Public Humiliation: The GOP threw out Kevin McCarthy, rejected Steve Scalise, and strongly rejected Jim Jordan. Can they agree on anyone? Jennifer Bendery, HuffPost, Oct 23, 2023
The Republicans who say we don’t even need a speaker: Public polling shows that many on the right don’t mind if the speaker fight is protracted — and may even prefer it that way, Aaron Blake, Washington Post, October 23, 2023
They try to blame their opposition to gay marriage, which was legal throughout the US for seven years (since 2015) before being reaffirmed by lawmakers in 2022. They're still mad about it. Nice try at that displaced anger. I think Republicans are really mad about each other. Some Republicans Kept The House Shut Down Over Gay Marriage Rep. Tom Emmer’s support for gay marriage helped doom his brief bid to become speaker. Kevin Robillard, CNN, Oct 24, 2023

They continue: Ousted George Santos Plots Revenge Against Ex-House Colleagues In Online Tear The disgraced congressman fired off a series of tweets promising to file ethics complaints against some of the House members who voted him out. Hilary Hanson, HuffPost, Dec 2, 2023

On the other hand, many non-Trumpist Republicans have been worn down. While it would certainly "help immensely now" if "responsible Republicans" would "speak up more clearly" (Two magazine covers and 'preaching to the choir' about Trump: Would his supporters care if they truly understood the threat? Margaret Sullivan, Substack, Dec 7, 2023), it isn't clear who's left to speak up. Representatives Patrick McHenry, Ken Buck, and Mitt Romney are retiring, and Representative Anthony Gonzalez and Peter Meijer already did. The GOP’s death cycle: How the Republican Party turns fascist." Robert Reich. Substack. December 7, 2023.

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