The rot in our democracy

In a piece in The Atlantic, Prof. Marty Lederman and Ben Wittes (editor in chief of the respected blog Lawfare) carefully review the impeachment inquiry being conducted by the House of Representatives into Donald Trump's 25 July 2019 phone call with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Of greater importance, though, are their insights into the context of the call — specifically, what the call says about Trump and his world view, and what the reaction to the call says about us.

Trump defenders want us to believe that impeachment is only appropriate for a violation of the law. Lederman and Wittes know better.

The president’s derelictions are far more profound and more fundamental to the constitutional order than a mere violation of the criminal code. To use the scholar Charles Black’s canonical test for whether impeachment is warranted, Trump engaged in (1) extremely serious conduct that (2) corrupts or subverts the political and governmental process and “tend[s] seriously to undermine and corrupt the political order,” and (3) is “plainly wrong in [itself] to a person of honor, or to a good citizen, regardless of words on the statute books.”

Lederman and Wittes note that while both Nixon and Bill Clinton had their defenders, those defenders argued that the wrongdoing didn't constitute an impeachable offense. No one argued that no wrongdoing had occurred.

Yet that’s effectively where we find ourselves now—confronted with a president, and some of his defenders, who would insist that abuses of presidential authority are unexceptional or, worse still, consistent with the president’s constitutional oath and duty.

In the long run, this defense of Trump’s Ukraine machinations may well prove more corrosive than what occurred in the July 25 conversation itself. ... [W]e’re perilously close to the point at which there may no longer be a national consensus that there’s anything constitutionally problematic about using governmental powers to advance one’s own pecuniary and electoral interests.

The fact is, Trump followers' identification with Trump has gotten so problematic that they can no longer see an attempt to hold him accountable for high crimes and misdemeanors as not merely sanctioned, but required, by the rule of law. To those followers, any attempt to hold Trump accountable is nothing less than an attack on them, singly and collectively. Because Trump loyalists make up the largest constituency in the Republican Party, that party's lawmakers have refused to condemn what they know — or at least knew, before Trump came along — is Trump's copious track record of degrading the office of President.

The time of reckoning is at hand. Congressional Republicans now must ask themselves if their desire to stay in office is worth killing their consciences and bidding farewell to their morals. Their souls are at stake.

If Congressional Republicans continue to honor the demands of those of their supporters whose moral compasses have been deranged by Trump, all in hope of remaining in office, those lawmakers will have betrayed their oath and their country. They know what they're witnessing in Trump is abhorrent to the nation. They know he debases his office with his shameless greed and corruption. They know he is more sympathetic and attentive to the needs of Vladimir Putin than to ordinary Americans.

The damage Trump has done goes way beyond his own misdeeds. He has debased the country's sense of right and wrong. Impeaching him for a phone call seems like a ridiculously small amount of punishment for such grave harm — but it might be all we can do. Let's at least not blow it.

Our integrity and honor are at stake.

Dems, do you want to succeed?

Democrats and their sympathetic allies like me are anxious to end not just Don Trumpone's corrupt and corrosive presidency, but the reactionary and toxic hold of Republicans at the national (and often, the state) level.

Now, as a climate-change worrier (though I'm transitioning to resignation), I'm first and foremost concerned with mitigating our nation's catastrophically bad impact on our air, water, and soil. However, in terms of practical politics, I recognize a giant blind spot in Democratic policy discussions that is of far greater moment than climate change.

How will Democrats address the economic left-behinds?

I know, this is not exactly a new topic, and to some degree it has been part of many 2020 Democratic presidential candidates' talking points. However, it hasn't been central to anyone's, not even Elizabeth Warren's.

The reason we're talking a little more, and even contemplating doing a little more, about climate change is that Gov. Jay Inslee made that the singular focus of his campaign. Inslee, of course, ended his presidential bid after failing to attract enough support to participate in recent debates. However, his campaign's message lives on, and thank goodness for that.

Unlike climate change, which has a too-esoteric, too-distant relationship to everyday life for most people to care (though their children and grandchildren do and will vilify us for being so damned shortsighted and stupid as they suffer the consequences of our inaction), economic dislocation is an issue everyone cares about. Livelihoods being eliminated by technological and political changes hit as close to home as you can get.

Here's one canary in this coal mine, which just happens to be about coal mines in Wyoming.

A decade ago, about half of U.S. electricity came from coal-fired power. Now it’s below 30%, a shift that heavy equipment operator Rory Wallet saw as utilities became less willing to lock in multiyear contracts for Belle Ayr mine’s coal.

“The market’s changed,” Wallet said. “The bankruptcies all tie into that.”

The market's changed. Don Trumpone tapped into a lot of voters' anxiety that "the market's changed" when he promised to resurrect coal's role in the national economy. I doubt many in coal country believed he could turn back the clock that far — but at least he told them he gave a damn and he was willing to go to bat for them, however futilely.

I assume Hillary Clinton was concerned about those out-of-work coal miners, too, but she didn't send much of a message on that score.

Wallet, 40, followed his father, an equipment mechanic, into the Belle Ayr mine in 2008. He said the recent mine closures and loss of his $80,000-a-year job took him by surprise.

He has four children, ages 11 to 16, and his wife’s job at the Ruby Tuesday’s restaurant in Gillette is their main income while they await news about the mines.

Wallet didn't do anything wrong. He took a high-paying job that allowed him to support a growing family. Through no fault of his own, that job disappeared. A similar one might come along but there's no guarantee, and odds are he wouldn't be the only one competing for it if it did.

That story is one that both parties have been happy to ignore for decades, since at least the 1970s. The reckoning for Democrats came in 2016 when the unthinkably awful Don Trumpone squeaked into office by talking to the nearly economically dispossessed. (As many have observed, those already dispossessed tended to favor Democrats; Trump picked up those who were desperate not to fall off the economic ladder.)

What he told those fearful of losing everything was the sheerest bullshit and he is emotionally and intellectually incapable of actually helping them, but did anyone on the Democratic side compete with him?

Well yes, Bernie Sanders did. However, Democrats didn't nominate him.

I'm not a Sanders fan but his message that the system is rotten and needs major overhauling, not little tweaks, resonates. The original sin of our headlong embrace of globalization half a century ago has not yet been addressed: no politician cared what happened to the ones who lost their jobs.

Democratic Party, if you want to be relevant outside cities and tech hubs, you can't give the same tired answers to the same tired question, "What happens if I lose my job?" You must tackle the much scarier question, What do I do if my livelihood disappears? — and in your answer(s) you have to bring the same energy, focus, and depth of thought that Jay Inslee brought to his climate-change plans.

The problem with Shane Gillis

Saturday Night Live recently announced three new cast additions. One of them was a comic named Shane Gillis.

Unfortunately for SNL, Gillis has an extensive history of making ugly, derogatory remarks about Asian Americans, among others. Vulture's Megh Wright goes into more detail about that history and includes links to some of the material.

I only had the stomach to listen to the first of the items Wright cited, an excerpt from a podcast Gillis co-hosted. It's ugly. What is worse news for Gillis is that it's not funny. That's not a rebuke, that's an observation.

Gillis and his co-host obviously got their rocks off mocking a culture different from their own. That's the kind of humor that appeals to young boys, and by "young" I mean under the age of twelve. The rest of us outgrew it when we learned to be decent human beings.

Gillis and his ilk will dismiss my complaint as "political correctness". I've written about that twice before. Once was in a request to Rep. Mike Bost not to use the term "Orientals". In that request I noted, "... 'political correctness' is a term seemingly used only by those uninterested in the principle at its heart: civility — common courtesy".

The other mention was in a discussion of the racist massacre at a South Caroline church in June 2015. I digressed slightly from that topic to rebuke comedians who were then complaining that political correctness was shackling them, making them afraid to rake risks.

There has been a minor fuss raised by some comedians of late, railing against so-called "political correctness" and its supposedly deleterious effects on their standup routines. I almost blogged about it, but I thought Jerry Seinfeld's idiotic whining didn't deserve any more attention than it had already gotten. My feeling was and is, if you as a comedian can't figure out how to make people laugh without visiting tired stereotypes, maybe it's time to find a new job.

The impulse that keeps an audience from laughing when a comic makes an easy joke based on a dumb stereotype is the same impulse that keeps us from succumbing to the mindless contempt for somebody else based on irrelevant characteristics like race. It's a sense that tells us, "This ain't right". It's a moral compass. It's a conscience.

Gillis falls squarely into the camp of comedians who ought to find other work.

I say that because he pretended to apologize:

“I’m happy to apologize to anyone who’s actually offended by anything I’ve said.”

Bullshit, Shane. You're not happy to apologize to anybody and you sure as hell haven't apologized to anybody. You're pissed that your old material — some of which is only as "old" as 2018 — has resurfaced with such a vengeance, and you're worried that the blowback could cost you your new gig.

I don't know how to reach someone as defiantly close-minded as Gillis. I only know that his wide-ranging and simpleminded contempt for others, including gays and women as well as Asian Americans (and likely Asians generally), can't be written off as a necessary rough edge for comedy. That's a lazy excuse put forward by people who don't give a shit about denigrating people who are already targets of bigotry.

SNL, I don't give a shit if you fire Gillis. I really don't: I don't watch. What would give me a little hope would be if executive producer Lorne Michaels promised to take Gillis in hand and teach him to be a better person.

Not your job, Mr. Michaels? Perhaps not. In that case, then, you'll be judged by the company you keep and hire. We'll just have to accept that you don't mind, perhaps even endorse, Gillis' deep contempt for others and his penchant for punching down.

Honestly, I don't want to turn Gillis into a pariah who can't get work because of his crummy past behavior. I want Gillis to become a better human being who understands exactly why the rest of us condemn what he currently thinks, or pretends to think, is just "edgy" comedy. I want him to turn his life around and help to undo the harm he has done.

[UPDATE: I guess Lorne Michaels wasn't interested in taking on the challenge. Gillis is out.]

Illegality vs. danger

The CIA pulled one of its most important intelligence sources from Moscow in early 2017.

CNN initially reported the story. In its report, CNN claimed:

The decision to carry out the extraction occurred soon after a May 2017 meeting in the Oval Office in which Trump discussed highly classified intelligence with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and then-Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. The intelligence, concerning ISIS in Syria, had been provided by Israel.

The disclosure to the Russians by the President, though not about the Russian spy specifically, prompted intelligence officials to renew earlier discussions about the potential risk of exposure, according to the source directly involved in the matter.

The clear implication is that the CIA was spooked by Trump's big mouth and feared that sources would be inadvertently outed because he doesn't know how to keep his trap shut.

In its own reporting on the story, the New York Times clarified that the CIA's concern predated the new administration:

As American officials began to realize that Russia was trying to sabotage the 2016 presidential election, the informant became one of the C.I.A.’s most important — and highly protected — assets. But when intelligence officials revealed the severity of Russia’s election interference with unusual detail later that year, the news media picked up on details about the C.I.A.’s Kremlin sources.

C.I.A. officials worried about safety made the arduous decision in late 2016 to offer to extract the source from Russia.

So Trump wasn't solely, or even primarily, responsible for the CIA's decision to extract this Russian source.

But can there be any doubt that other sources are nervous about the Blabbermouth-in-Chief?

As noted in the above quotation from CNN, Trump blew an Israeli intelligence source. He has had multiple private conversations with Putin, conversations whose contents he refuses to discuss and which he took deliberate care were not witnessed by any other U.S. person. If he were motivated solely by patriotism, he wouldn't have objected to the presence of others who could have attested to those conversations' contents.

In short, Trump has contempt not just for national secrets (as opposed to personal ones, i.e., his own) but for the national interest.

The usual defense of Trump's imbecilic handling of sensitive data is, "He's President. He can declassify anything he wants." And so he can, under the law.

And as every honest observer knows, THAT TOTALLY MISSES THE POINT.

Legal actions are not always wise ones.

If the president who blabbered the Israeli intelligence data to the Russians had been named "Obama", every Republican in the country would have screamed that Obama was a secret Muslim selling the country out. (A lot of them said that anyway.)

If the president who held private discussions with Putin, unwitnessed by any other American, had been named "Obama", every Republican in the country would have taken to the streets, torch and pitchfork in hand, screaming, "TRAITOR!!!".

But because the president who did these things is named "Trump", Republicans have pretended that "legality" is the only concern.

Bullshit.

Legality is not the issue, judgement is. And Trump's judgement is appalling. One could argue that it's nonexistent. He is a feckless, thoughtless moron incapable of comprehending the gravity of the national secrets with which his office is entrusted. Worse, he is devoid of the empathy needed to feel the weight of his responsibilities and to exercise his office's authority with commensurate discretion.

Spare me the "it's legal" argument. That's bullshit and we all know it.

Trump's a threat to everyone who puts his or her life on the line to acquire intelligence for this country.

The wrath of con

The U.S. House of Representatives formally condemned Don Trumpone's recent tweets attacking four House members, all of whom are women of color. The vote broke down largely along party lines with only four Republicans joining all Democrats and new ex-Republican Justin Amash to pass the resolution.

Trump himself urged House Republicans to hold firm prior to the vote.

“Those Tweets were NOT Racist,” Mr. Trump wrote. “I don’t have a Racist bone in my body! The so-called vote to be taken is a Democrat con game. Republicans should not show ‘weakness’ and fall into their trap.”

What follows might be obvious to many. However, I suspect that any number of Trump supporters will not know it and I want to explain it as calmly as possible.

Trump told Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan to "go back" to what he called "the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came".

As it happens, three of those representatives were born in the United States. Ilhan Omar was born in Somalia but emigrated to the U.S. and became a naturalized citizen.

All four of them are therefore citizens of this country. Just like you, I would guess.

Now, unless you're Native American, you or your ancestors came from somewhere else. Your ancestors might have come from multiple different places, in fact.

How would you feel if you were told to go back where you came from? Not just told, but told in a hostile tone of voice (even if you were told by tweet).

Would you interpret that as, "Go back to the house you woke up in this morning"? Of course not.

Would you take it as, "Go back to the state/county/town where you were born"? Again, no.

There is only one way to interpret "go back where you came from": it's another way of saying, "You don't belong in this country".

You grew up here. Your family and friends are here. You know no other home. You pledge allegiance to no other nation. Yet none of that counts. As far as the one who told you to go back where you came from is concerned, you don't belong.

If that's incomprehensible to you, it's because you're white.

I know, bringing race into the conversation is inflammatory. Yet it's at the heart of the matter, whether you like it or not.

You might want to believe it's a coincidence that none of the four House members Trump targeted was white. You might want to believe Trump's denial tweet, quoted above. You might want to believe that having Ben Carson, an African American man, and Elaine Chao, an Asian American woman, in his Cabinet means that Trump can't be racist.

Above all, you might want to believe that if you don't know you hold racist views, you aren't racist. Nobody wants to be accused of being something he isn't conscious of being, and being called a racist is only a little less toxic and offensive than being called a child predator.

I get all that. But the things you want to believe very likely aren't true.

Trump didn't target House members whose ancestors came from France or the UK, both of which many Americans, including Trump, are fond of considering troubled nations. He targeted people — women, in particular — who are obviously not white.

House members who are white, both male and female, have criticized Trump many times over the last three years. He didn't tell them to go back to their ancestors' homelands. He saved that message for four non-white women.

Why?

Because "go back where you came from" is a favorite message of racists.

The message brands you as racist.

It reveals that you don't think that people who look or sound different from you could possibly have been born here. It reveals that you think they aren't entitled to live here.

So when Trump angrily declares he doesn't have a racist bone in his body, he is simply wrong. However much you want to believe that he isn't racist, he is. However much he wants to believe he isn't racist, he is.

I doubt Trump worries about being racist but he does worry about being thought racist. That might make some of his supporters think hard about whether they really want to stand with him through thick and thin.

In short, he's conning us. Or rather, he's conning you, his loyal supporters.

Trump gets publicly angry because a lifetime in the murky world of real estate development has taught him that most people back down in the face of visible anger. Scared people don't unmask con men: that's the lesson he has absorbed to the depths of his being. His vehemence isn't a sign of his innocence, it's a sign of his commitment to his con — and of his urgent need to keep you committed to it as well.

There is no way to stand with Trump on those tweets without getting the stink of outright racism all over yourself. If you are okay with those tweets, you are racist.

Are you?

Electronic voting cannot be secured

A while back I argued that governments should adopt only electronic voting systems that run on open-source software.

I have to take back that advice.

“You simply can’t construct a trusted paper trail,” [Georgia Tech professor Richard] DeMillo says, “if you let a machine make a ballot for you.”

...

... some of the nation’s leading experts on computer science and elections concluded that there is no “technical mechanism currently available that can ensure that a computer application—such as one used to record or count votes—will produce accurate results.” One reason the authors noted: Malicious software “can be introduced at any point in the electronic path of a vote—from the software behind the vote-casting interface to the software tabulating votes—to prevent a voter’s vote from being recorded as intended.”

Translation: wherever computers are involved in the voting process, bad actors could corrupt the software. Whether that means some votes are ignored or altered, whether it happens at the polling place or a county central facility, the vote will have been subverted.

The problem with my original recommendation is that there is no way for people to know what the software on a given computer is actually doing. In general we cannot even know with certainty whether a computer is running the software the vendor intended.

You might object that we all use computers every day in spite of this concern, and that things pretty much work out as expected. Why, therefore, should electronic voting machines be any different?

The answer is, electronic voting machines carry out a task that is hugely important to the country, a task whose consequences affect millions. That gives bad actors a tremendous incentive to penetrate and to subvert such systems, far more incentive than they have to break into your computer or mine.

If you take the problem of subverted computers seriously you can make such subversion a lot harder. The trouble is that elected officials don't take the problem seriously. They're too ignorant of computers and software to grasp the problem's potential scope. Or worse, they're too concerned with fighting the bad press from past elections. Such seems to be the case with Georgia state senator William T. Ligon, Jr. He is not familiar with the fatal vulnerabilities of software systems, nor does he comprehend exactly how they work.

... Instead, Ligon cites the testimony of former Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox as one of the reasons he chose to back a system based on touch-screen voting machines that print out a paper ballot.

Cox told the legislature about “under votes, over votes, and stray votes. They all come with hand-marked paper ballots,” Ligon says. It is clear to him that printed ballots bring more certainty. When asked about research demonstrating that voters don’t or can’t verify their ballots when printed, Ligon said, “Voters have to take some responsibility for verifying their ballots.”

Ligon's familiar with all the fiascos that embarrassed Florida in the 2000 election but he has no clue about the ones that will engulf him and his colleagues if Georgia's electronic voting systems are cracked. All he understands is a PR nightmare from two decades ago. Talk about fighting the last war.

By ignoring voters' predictable behavior, Ligon demonstrates contempt for voting itself. Worse, the supposed verification he cites as the safeguard for election security is absolutely meaningless. The votes that will be counted are the digital ones, not the ones on the paper record. (If you were going to count paper ballots you wouldn't need software at the polling place at all: you'd make people mark their ballots the old-fashioned way.) Subverted software could print a faithful representation of the voter's choices while altering or ignoring the digital record. And again, it's the digital record of the vote that will be counted (or not).

These are not hard problems to understand, but you have to be willing to learn from experts. Ligon is not willing to learn. And he likely has a lot of company. Between willful ignorance (whether from anti-intellectualism or simply finding the concepts difficult to grasp) and a thirst for campaign contributions (electronic voting companies throw a lot of money around to entice officials to buy their products), we can expect that too many jurisdictions will make the foreseeably harmful choice to adopt vulnerable electronic voting systems.

Guys like Ligon have to be held accountable: their feet have to be held to the fire until they listen to the experts who understand these things.

In the meantime, voters must demand paper ballots, no matter how cumbersome and primitive they seem.

Glitz versus greatness

The so-called leader who ducked out of military service in Viet Nam has ordered the military to participate in Washington, D.C.'s annual Fourth of July festivities.

White House officials have said Mr. Trump’s speech is not intended to be political, but rather an homage to the military and to the United States. Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, said, “The president loves America and wants to help all Americans celebrate our nation’s independence with a salute to America on the National Mall.”

If what made the United States great was its military, the United States would not have earned the respect of millions (at least before Don Trumpone waddled into the Oval Office).

The U.S. military was a relatively minor component of the nation before World War II. People didn't emigrate to the United States for more than a century because they lusted after its military hardware. They came because they heard the siren call of the nation's promise that all men could be free.

The history of this nation has been a struggle to live up to the ideals enshrined in the Constitution. Those ideals and our determination to embody them in the way we live are the wellspring of this nation's greatness.

To highlight the military on the national holiday that celebrates the country (rather than a religious event like Christmas) is to misconstrue the very nature of the country. The military is a fine institution but it's no accident that it is subordinate to the nation's civilian authority. The nation's heart is its commitment to shared ideals.

Trump comprehends none of this. He is obsessed with surface impressions, with visuals and sparkle. Fighter jets are impressive, tanks are impressive, and that makes them emblems of greatness in his eyes. If he could get a Ford-class aircraft carrier onto the streets of D.C., it would be part of his plans for the Fourth.

Anyway, Trump is uniquely incapable of uniting this nation around shared ideals. Even before his 2016 campaign he specialized in divisive, ugly rhetoric (birtherism, demonizing the Central Park Five, lying about Arab Americans cheering the fall of the World Trade Center towers) because he is incapable of inspiring others. He can only conceive of himself triumphing and others being vanquished. "Greatness" is reserved for him and his adoring followers alone.

Military parades, France's Bastille Day celebration notwithstanding, bring to mind tinpot dictators trying to distract their unhappy populaces. The comparison is all too apt in our own case, I fear.

Trying to link the military so tightly to the nation's "greatness" besmirches both. Trump will go to his grave not understanding that. The rest of us, however, must.