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.