Better government through cryogenics

I keep reading about supposedly wise, self-styled moderate politicians in D.C. and elsewhere who fret about the expense associated with averting anthropogenic climate change. And yeah, I'm talking to you, Joe Manchin (D-VA) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ). However, I'm also talking to Congressional Republicans, who to a one only remember their hard-nosed commitment to "fiscal responsibility" when a Democrat is in the White House.

Oh dear,, you all wail, how ever will our children and their children survive such a crushing load of debt? We cannot be so irresponsible as to burden them so!

The grim reality is that if we don't voluntarily and swiftly shift to an economy powered largely by renewables and non-fossil fuel sources (I reluctantly must endorse nuclear energy as part of the transition), future generations will have much, much worse problems than debt repayment. Between sea level rise and soaring temperatures in current deserts and the equatorial zone, millions will have to relocate from regions no longer hospitable to human life. No one can tell how badly worldwide agriculture will be disrupted as currently fertile regions become infertile. No one knows how many animal species we'll lose, some of which are crucial to maintaining the land and sea ecosystems humanity needs to survive.

Oh, pish-posh, scoff the moderates, you doth protest too much about the unknowable future. We worry about people right now, people whose lives your alarmist policies would destroy! What about all those with good jobs in the fossil-fuel industry? What about the workers???

This is such a spectacularly shortsighted concern, I don't believe it to be offered in good faith. If we can't figure out a transition program or programs for workers whose livelihoods will be disrupted by the needed shift in our emergy supply and use, we will have proven ourselves an embarrassment to our chosen name for ourselves, Homo sapiens, for we will have exhibited neither wisdom nor intelligence. In fact, I'm confident we can figure out such a transition. If we fail, the failure will be that we chose not to carry it out — and that failure will be the most damning evidence of our dearth of wisdom and intelligence.

I frankly am tired of the self-styled moderates, the ones who refuse to accept the overwhelming evidence of anthropogenic climate change, the ones who balk at looking past the next election cycle. So I propose they put their money — or rather, themselves — where their mouths are.

If you self-styled moderates (and your rhetorical brethren, "common-sense" conservatives) refuse to let the rest of us address the biggest problem staring humanity in its face, then you should bet your own lives on your obduracy. We should fund a cryogenics program, and every member of Congress who votes against measures to mitigate anthropogenic climate change should be required to freeze him- or herself at the end of his or her current term of office. You'll be thawed out in 2050, or perhaps 2100, so you may share the consequences of your decision.

I expect you'll be horrified by what you see. But whatever your reaction, at least your children or grandchildren, and billions of others, will be able to look you in the eye as they ask you what in the hell you were thinking.

At least your victims will have the chance to hold you accountable.

The myth of nonpartisan justices

Adam Serwer's grim Atlantic piece about SCOTUS is entitled, "The Lie About the Supreme Court Everyone Pretends to Believe".

It opens:

Justice Amy Coney Barrett is offended by those questioning the impartiality of the Supreme Court.

“This Court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks,” she announced at a recent event at the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center, named for Senator Mitch McConnell. “Judicial philosophies are not the same as political parties.”

For Barrett to insist on her nonpartisanship at a center named for the legislator whose procedural hardball was instrumental in securing her seat suggests that, although Barrett’s peers have praised her legal mind, her sense of irony leaves something to be desired. ...

Serwer provides a handy timeline of how the so-called "conservative" movement worked for a half-century to tilt the Court so far to the right that it's hard to believe it hasn't tipped over. He doesn't fault the movement for doing this, arguing that that's how politics is played. He does, however, tell the too-pious-for-words Justices trying to maintain the fiction of judicial impartiality (including non-conservative Stephen Breyer) to STFU:

The conservative movement seems to have secured the Court for a generation at least, but that is insufficient. The right-wing justices also demand their decisions be seen as the outcome of dispassionate legal reasoning, not partisan warfare. They do not want the legitimacy of their proclamations, or the institution itself, questioned to the point where their liberal counterparts might consider paths as drastic and radical as the ones they took to get here. They wish to be admired and celebrated as the sagacious intellectual giants they believe themselves to be.

Having reached the heights of the legal profession, it must be deflating for the justices to recognize that the public is not obligated to reflect their self-regard. In truth, the public is simply reciprocating the contempt that the justices show for the people every time they insist on lying to their face about how the Court works, or why it looks the way it does today.

Contempt. Yep, that's what I feel for our would-be Solons. Suck it up, right-wing Justices, because you've more than earned it.

The Texas anti-abortion law is incomplete

Thanks to all five uber-right-wing Supreme Court Justices turning a blind eye, Texas' now-infamous anti-abortion law has taken effect. The law criminalizes abortion after six weeks. (Most women don't even know they're pregnant at that point.) There is no exception for rape or incest. To keep from running afoul of prior Supreme Court rulings, the state of Texas doesn't enforce the law. Instead, the law allows a private citizen — any private citizen — to sue anyone who facilitated the abortion. That could include not just the medical personnel who actually carried out the procedure, but anyone who helped; the oft-cited example is the rideshare driver who dropped the woman off at an abortion clinic. Moreover, there's no downside for suing: the plaintiff isn't liable even if s/he pursued the claim frivolously. (That's my understanding from media coverage, anyway.) If the party being sued doesn't respond, a Texas court can enter a default judgment requiring the defendant to pay the plaintiff's legal fees plus a $10,000 fine.

It's a lovely piece of work. Congratulations, Texas Republicans: you crafted a law that is uniquely cruel and corrosive to the rule of law, substituting vigilantism for law enforcement.

However, the law could be made palatable (maybe) with a simple addition to its provisions:

Any party suing, or threatening to sue, under the terms of this law is required to take custody of an unwanted newborn — one for each suit threatened or filed. Otherwise a filed suit is dismissed with prejudice.

You feel strongly that all fertilized eggs should be brought to term? Then take responsibility for the resulting children.

Choice and vaccination

In a piece about tennis players as a population being less likely to be vaccinated than the actual U.S. population as a whole, French tennis player Gilles Simon is quoted as saying, "I’m not very scared of Covid, actually. My basic philosophy is: If you’re afraid of it, you get vaccinated; if not, no. It’s still a choice."

It's still a choice. A lot of people think that, especially in the U.S. Variations on "my body, my choice" are the rallying cry with regard to vaccination (for CoViD-19 and maybe all vaccines) among people who, I would guess, don't believe that when it comes to a woman's right to choose whether or not to have an abortion. But I digress.

Here's the thing, though. If you choose not to wear a seat belt, any bad consequence will be yours alone. Ditto if you choose to eat foods harmful to your health, or to go rock-climbing solo.

However, some choices don't just affect you. Cigarette smoke spreads beyond the smoker. Driving under the influence can injure or kill other motorists or pedestrians. And remaining unvaccinated just because you're "not afraid" of SARS-CoV-2 means you are more likely to catch and to spread it to others, especially those who can't be vaccinated or whose natural immunity is compromised.

And then there's the very high likelihood of getting seriously ill yourself. Think that only affects you? Not if you're in a relationship or need to be hospitalized. A lot of other people might have to endure the consequences of your illness.

In the U.S., for better or worse, getting vaccinated is a choice, yes. The government isn't going to strap you down and inject you.

But like driving drunk, your choice to remain unvaccinated "just because" or "because freedom" (another rationale, if one can use that term) puts others at risk.

As a country we put up with drunk driving for decades, apparently because it was a sacred freedom to be able to get behind the wheel without being able to control it. We finally wised up. Now driving drunk is despicable and you're a grade-Z putz if you do.

We're well on the way to the same consensus on choosing not to be vaccinated against CoViD-19. For the same reason: the risk isn't yours alone. You have no right to risk other lives.

Ed Yong clarifies where the U.S. is in the pandemic

The Atlantic's Ed Yong is credited as "a staff writer" who "covers science". That doesn't do him justice. He's really an acute, clear-eyed observer of not just science but the American political response to the natural world — particularly to CoViD-19.

In a quickie newsletter, he cuts through much of the fog of reporting surrounding the Delta variant. The result is a sober explanation of a few bottom-line facts:

• "Vaccinated people are not fully safe ... but they're much safer than unvaccinated people."
• "Breakthrough infections are relatively rare ... but won't feel rare."
• "Vaccinated people are unlikely to transmit Delta as easily as unvaccinated people ... but they can probably still spread it."
• "We are not back to square one ... but we're not out of the woods."

If you're dissatisfied with the foregoing — if you crave facts that don't leave so much room for interpretation — sorry. That's not how things are.

In a quietly devastating analysis last fall of why the U.S. response to CoViD-19 was so appallingly bad, Yong observed (among many other things) that we have a habit of assuming we can invent our way out of crises. That leads us to seek out, and to expect, magical technological fixes.

My instinct is to call such an expectation simplistic and foolish. However, that's too harsh. Looking for magic bullets bespeaks an optimism that is part of the national character, an optimism that even I must admit is crucial not just for the nation, but for humanity at large.

That said, we often let that optimism blind us to the need to take crucial action before any magic bullets are found. If you don't yet have a cure for zombieism, you'd better do what you can to avoid being turned into one. And you can't rely on just one defense: you have to have multiple layers of defenses, because those zombies will probably overwhelm or circumvent any single obstacle.

Vaccination is not a magic bullet for CoViD-19. It's a key defensive layer, though, just in case you become infected. To minimize the chance of becoming infected, you wear a mask (or masks), stay away from crowds if possible, wash your hands before touching your eyes, etc. — all the things you're tired of hearing about but that remain best practices no matter what you think. Taking all these steps gives defense in depth, which is the best you can hope for in the real world.

So that's where we are. It's neither as great as vaccine proponents hoped nor as dire as some fearmongering pundits think. The world isn't black and white: it's full of grays.

(The 5 August 2021 newsletter is a good summary of where we are, but if you want to know how we botched things as a country so badly, you must read the long piece from last year. He identifies multiple flaws in the national character that will cause us more suffering if we don't recognize and correct them.)

Don't trust Emergent BioSolutions

A few days ago the FDA approved the reopening of the Baltimore facility owned and operated by Emergent BioSolutions that originally was slated to produce large amounts of Johnson & Johnson's CoViD-19 vaccine.

As a reminder of why this matters:

The F.D.A. had halted production at the factory in late March after it was discovered that workers had accidentally contaminated a batch of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine with a key ingredient used in AstraZeneca’s, then made at the same site.

I never got around to posting about Emergent BioSolutions before this but I've followed news of its travails with anger and disgust.

This NYT piece discusses how Emergent came to exploit the federal government's worry over anthrax even as the nation faced shortages of personal protective equipment in the early days of CoViD-19. The company sucked up a lot of money that might have been more productively spent.

Because Emergent was the sole manufacturer of a product deemed critical to national security, the company has played what one former executive described to The Times as “the we’re-going-to-go-bankrupt card.”

Profiteering isn't necessarily a crime but it isn't exactly morally upright, either.

Another NYT piece, "U.S. Bet Big on Covid Vaccine Manufacturer Even as Problems Mounted", revealed yet more damning facts about Emergent.

More than eight years ago, the federal government invested in an insurance policy against vaccine shortages during a pandemic. It paid Emergent BioSolutions, a Maryland biotech firm known for producing anthrax vaccines, to have a factory in Baltimore always at the ready.

When the coronavirus pandemic arrived, the factory became the main U.S. location for manufacturing Covid-19 vaccines developed by Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca, churning out about 150 million doses as of last week.

But so far not a single dose has been usable because regulators have not yet certified the factory to allow the vaccines to be distributed to the public. Last week, Emergent said it would destroy up to 15 million doses’ worth of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after contamination with the AstraZeneca vaccine was discovered.

Why and how did the company blunder into this and other disastrous fiascos documented in this article?

... four former company officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they had signed nondisclosure agreements or feared retaliation, described an environment where top Emergent leadership tolerated and even encouraged the flouting of federal standards for manufacturing and marketing products.

One of the former officials said that as the company scrambled to meet the heavy demands of vaccine production, a senior manufacturing supervisor often responded to reports of quality errors by asking: “Do you want me to make drugs or fix issues? I don’t have time to do both.”

This second Times piece is required reading if you want to understand why you shouldn't feel relieved the Baltimore plant is reopening. The story behind its original closure reveals a management team that put profits above quality and responsibility, and a governmental bureaucracy that let the company get away with its recklessness (and make a ton of money in the process) despite being charged with protecting the public.

From the piece about the Baltimore plant's reopening (the first article I referenced):

“The American people should have high expectations of the partners its government chooses to help prepare them for disaster, and we have even higher expectations of ourselves,” Robert Kramer, the chief executive of Emergent, said in a statement on Thursday.

Bullshit. Pardon my French, Kramer, but bullshit.

From that same piece:

Mr. Kramer announced that Sean Kirk, a longtime Emergent executive overseeing manufacturing who went on personal leave earlier this year after regulators found a host of problems at the Baltimore site, would be leaving the company.

Was Kirk solely responsible for the plant's terrible history of mismanagement? The article is silent about that, presumably because Kramer was, too. Emergent hasn't issued a report explaining how its Baltimore plant came to be such a disaster area, and I doubt it ever will of its own accord. In the absence of radical transparency from this outfit, how can we possibly believe, much less trust, that Kirk was the only bad apple?

I sure as hell don't think all the wasted time, money, and other resources were the result of just one executive's misdeeds and inaction. Emergent has a corrupt corporate culture and firing one executive is a laughably inadequate response to this episode.

J & J is assuming oversight of the Baltimore plant but that doesn't mean Emergent BioSolutions shouldn't face a reckoning. The federal government can't let one more penny slip into the company's coffers until there's a public accounting of who did what, and an objective assessment of how the hundreds of millions of dollars Emergent has received was spent. Anybody responsible for squandering that money, including by pocketing it while covering up fraud, has to be held accountable.

Libertarians will be the death of us

A New York Times article describing unvaccinated Americans quotes one fellow who is adamant he will never allow himself to be vaccinated against CoViD-19:

“It has to do with my civil rights,” he said. “The United States government’s main job is to protect me from foreign and domestic enemies. Not my health. I’m in charge of my health.”

First off, I have to note that the article profiles several others before him who are, to varying degrees, more flexible on the subject. In other words, not all unvaccinated people are as adamant as this fellow. Thank goodness for that.

As for this fellow, who, according to the piece, "identifies as more of a libertarian than a Republican", I can only say that he reinforces my exasperation with libertarianism (which I've repeatedly expressed).

Presumably this guy would object to his neighbors contaminating his water by letting their sewage drain into it. Presumably he's grateful for water lines, water treatment plants, and sewers (he lives in Houston so I assume he benefits from them all). These conveniences of modern life don't fall into his tidy little categories of protecting him from "foreign and domestic enemies". Indeed, they are part of protecting his health, something he claims government shouldn't do.

I'm sympathetic to some of the concerns people have over the CoViD-19 vaccines: they were developed in an unprecedentedly short time and we obviously can't yet know if they have any long-term side effects. I think the fact that millions have been vaccinated without widespread bad consequences is good enough real-world evidence that they're safe but your mileage may vary.

But if you're just a stubborn cuss who can't be bothered to think beyond "I ain't letting anybody jab me because freedom", you get no sympathy. You're so obsessed with your favorite buzzword that you have no regard for others. "Freedom" is all about what you want, not about what anyone else might need.

How about thinking about more than yourself for a change?

Start by finding out why it's called public health, not just "health".

"What the Ben & Jerry's Decision Reveals About Israel", Yasmeen Serhan

Yasmeen Serhan's piece in The Atlantic has a thesis I find grim:

While the international community, including the United States, continues to distinguish between Israel and the territories it occupies, the reaction to the Ben & Jerry’s decision has shown that, as far as many Israeli politicians are concerned, that distinction no longer exists.

Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israel-based pollster and political strategist, explained the dynamic to Serhan in greater detail.

Why does Israel care about what an American ice-cream brand thinks of its policies? When I put this question to Scheindlin, she told me that for many Israelis, criticism of Israeli policy is often conflated with an existential threat to Israel itself. To hear many Israeli politicians tell it, “criticism from abroad of our policies is anti-Israel, it’s anti-Zionist, and it’s anti-Jewish, or anti-Semitic,” Scheindlin said. “And that’s really the narrative that we’ve been hearing.”

Serhan notes that while some left-leaning Israeli politicians praised Ben & Jerry's decision, their voices largely have been lost in the tumult raised by centrist and right-wing objections.

I can understand a lot of Israelis not taking kindly to a corporate policy change that explicitly criticizes Israeli policy. However, they should be a lot more careful throwing around that very loaded accusation, "anti-Semitism".

Israel's very existence is a reminder to the world that the ethnic cleansing of Jews during World War II was an abomination that must never happen again. People of good will everywhere can and do support that principle.

However, Israel is also a nation-state, and no nation-state is above criticism. Criticism of the Israeli state is not automatically anti-Semitic. If Israelis can't or won't acknowledge the difference, then Israel risks alienating even its staunchest allies and making "anti-Semitism" meaningless.

Now, it's true that telling someone not to be offended can be presumptuous. I've been on the receiving end of that argument, too, and I'll admit I've called "foul" on more than one occasion when told not to take offense. However, in retrospect, I must admit that I overreacted once or twice.

Take a deep breath, Israelis, especially you politicians lobbing rhetorical artillery fire at Ben & Jerry's. You might not like the company's implied criticism of your national policy but that's all it is: it's not hatred of your identity, it's not anti-Semitism. You conflate policy criticism and anti-Semitism at your own peril.

Let's vaccinate the willing

I sometimes think U.S. media forgets that there's a whole world out there that isn't the U.S.

We're drowning in stories about the unvaccinated all over the country contracting CoViD-19, especially the Delta variant. Many stories are framed as cautionary tales aimed at convincing the vaccine-hesitant to get vaccinated.

It's a worthy cause, in the abstract. It's even a practically useful one, inasmuch as the more unvaccinated hosts there are, the greater the likelihood that (a) breakthrough cases will occur, and, more troublingly, (b) a variant will evolve that is more successful at infecting vaccinated people, diminishing or negating the effectiveness of existing vaccines.

However, this is a worldwide pandemic, and with global travel slowly resuming, dangerous variants can arise anywhere and spread everywhere. While the proportion of vaccinated people in some parts of the U.S. is a lot lower than it ought to be, the proportion of vaccinated people in other parts of the world is even lower.

I fully support getting more, and more accurate, information to those who are genuinely uninformed about CoViD-19 and the vaccines against it. I fully support doing whatever's needed to work around whatever practical obstacles keep people from getting the shot(s), like the inability to take time off work or to get to vaccination sites because of a lack of transportation.

Yet at the same time we have to stop fantasizing that hardcore denialists, like those who think Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. makes sense, will ever get vaccinated. Efforts to reach out to them are a gigantic waste when there are literally billions of people around the world who would be thrilled to be vaccinated.

Right now, we have to prioritize getting the vaccines into the arms of willing recipients, because that will give us the best bang for our buck. Most of those willing recipients live in less affluent countries.

Yes, that means giving up, for the time being, on the idea of herd immunity in the U.S. Guess what? We have to do that anyway! Between the delusions of the ex-domestic Dear Leader, the fanatical irrationality of the existing anti-vaccine crowd, and the readiness of far-right media (traditional and social) to pander to both, we face a brick wall of reality-denial in something like a quarter of the U.S. population.

We have to stop wasting time beating on that brick wall, and redirect our energies to drying up the global supply of unvaccinated people to the fullest extent possible.

Once we've reached the billions of willing vaccine recipients, then we'll be in a position to tackle the truly hardheaded.

Persistent thoughts, July 2021

• Multiple books about the ex-domestic Dear Leader are dropping. The thing is, all the teaser stories are trivial: he was angry at Pence for hiring an ex-Donnie staffer; he complained about the low quality of his lawyers; he spoke favorably of Hitler; etc. Don't get me wrong: for any normal president (or any normal person, for that matter), any of these stories would be valuable, revelatory in all the wrong ways. However, the ex-domestic Dear Leader's reputation is so putrid that these new stories are frankly boring, amounting to inconsequential gossip.

  Publishers who want my dollars will have to commission genuine investigatory works that expose the corruption, incompetence, cruelty, and ignorance of his administration in pitiless detail. Such books take a lot more time and effort than gossipy tell-alls (which are essentially hardcopy clickbait) but a presidency as brazenly corrupt, stunningly incompetent (at doing helpful, useful things), operatically cruel, and pridefully ignorant as the ex-domestic Dear Leader's needs to be chronicled in all its fetid infamy as a warning to future generations.

  I hope and assume that professional journalists and historians are doing the hard, unglamorous work of uncovering the dirty deeds that haven't made the headlines, the dirty deeds that compromised our health (and not just with regard to the pandemic), our environment, our economy, and our national security. We know he did dirty deeds: he would sell out the nation in a heartbeat and there was a small ocean's worth of money sloshing around D.C. during his term, so dirty deeds were done, both by him and on his behalf. We don't know the details, though. And for our own safety, we need to know those details.

• How long can the far-right echo chamber of outrage sustain itself?

  How much money do the rubes who donate to these con artists have?

  How long can those rubes stay mad as hell without bursting a blood vessel?

  How many of them will wind themselves up so thoroughly that they'll engineer their very own mass-casualty incidents, and how many innocents will they take out?

  What will it take for them to ask why they trust the highly unreliable information sources they do?

  If they don't trust people who have spent years exploring a subject, why do they trust some random bozo on social media whose identity they can't determine?

  Some fraction of these folks will never emerge from their cocoons of delusion; the only question is how large a fraction. Already some of them have died of CoViD-19 while denying its very existence with their last breaths. It's tragic for their families and friends, of course, but also for the rest of us, because reality-deniers of all stripes are incompetent to help solve the very large problems humanity faces — and can worsen those problems immeasurably by preventing us from addressing them at all.

SCOTUS screws us again

Prof. Richard Hasen's op-ed piece in the New York Times well summarizes today's Supreme Court decisions' corrosive effect on voting in the U.S. The headline's not an overstatement: "The Supreme Court is Putting Democracy at Risk".

Of Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, Hasen writes:

Thanks to Brnovich, a state can now assert an interest in preventing fraud to justify a law without proving that fraud is actually a serious risk, but at the same time, minority voters have a high burden: They must show that the state has imposed more than the “usual burdens of voting.” Justice Alito specifically referred to voting laws in effect in 1982 as the benchmark, a period when early and absentee voting were scarce and registration was much more onerous in many states.

It is hard to see what laws would be so burdensome that they would flunk the majority’s lax test.

I don't know why Alito (I can't bring myself to use the title "Justice": the irony is too bitter) decided 1982 was a good year to set as a baseline but I can't say I'm surprised he went back in time nearly forty years. That's his M.O., to take us as far back as he can convince his fellow reactionaries to go.

With Brnovich, SCOTUS has rendered the 1960s-era Voting Rights Act an empty shell.

The other case, Americans for Prosperity v. Bonta, concerned disclosure of donors to charities. The Court significantly reduced the ability of states (or anyone else) to mandate such disclosure, even for law enforcement purposes (e.g., to detect campaign finance violations). Prof. Hasen explains the impact of today's decision:

In the Americans for Prosperity case, [Chief Justice Roberts] redefined the “exacting scrutiny” standard to judge the constitutionality of disclosure laws so that the government must show its law is “narrowly tailored” to an important government interest. This makes it more like strict scrutiny and more likely that disclosure laws will be struck down. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, “Today’s analysis marks reporting and disclosure requirements with a bull’s-eye.”

The court’s ruling calls into question a number of campaign finance disclosure laws. Perhaps even more significant, it also threatens the constitutionality of campaign contribution laws, which are judged under the “exacting scrutiny” standard, too. Lower courts can now find that such laws are not narrowly tailored to prevent corruption or its appearance or do not provide voters with valuable information — two interests the court recognized in the past to justify campaign laws. A requirement to disclose a $200 contribution? A $500 campaign contribution limit? Plaintiffs in future cases are likely to argue that a law targeting small contributions for disclosure or imposing low contribution limits are not “narrowly tailored” enough to deter corruption or give voters valuable information, even if Congress or a state or municipality found such laws necessary.

I'll let Prof. Hasen describe the combined ugly results:

As in Shelby County and in the 2010 Citizens United case, which struck down Congress’s limit on corporate campaign spending, this conservative Supreme Court in today’s rulings shows no deference to democracy-enhancing laws passed by Congress, states or local governments.

...

If you put the Brnovich and Americans for Prosperity cases together, the court is making it easier for states to pass repressive voting laws and easier for undisclosed donors and big money to influence election outcomes.

The wealthy and powerful (but I repeat myself) already had a vastly disproportionate say over our laws and public policies. The U.S. Supreme Court, courtesy of the reactionary Justices who now dominate it, has strengthened that stranglehold.

Inequity of opportunity, wealth, and access to power has driven this country to a brink not seen since the Civil War. Think I'm exaggerating? Look at any objective assessment of the haves and have-nots in American society today — I recommend Robert Reich's The System — and the yawning gulf between them looks a lot like that which precipitated the French Revolution. (And Reich's book was published before the pandemic had really taken hold. Suffice to say, the pandemic didn't invalidate any of his assessments: it reinforced them.)

With these decisions, the Court has guaranteed that the Republicans who represent a minority of the population will reinforce their grip on power. The Court also has guaranteed that more younger voters will be discouraged from participating in elections — indeed, some of them will conclude that "democracy" is a sham, a rigged game, just as the most poisonous and irresponsible voices on the far right are loudly proclaiming (though for entirely different and false reasons).

The far-right majority in Brnovich cloaked their reasoning in concern for election integrity and public trust in the election process. The effect of that decision, and the indirect effect of Americans for Prosperity, will be to diminish both.

From Citizens United onward, this Court has undermined the body politic through its blinkered obsession with safeguarding the rich and powerful. When the history of the United States is someday written, this Court's contribution to the era's disunity and dysfunction — and perhaps to the nation's downfall as a democracy altogether — will be as infamous as doomed Marie Antoinette's "Let them eat cake".

Let me offer earliest congratulations on cementing your place in history, right-wing Justices.

Cosby is still guilty

While Bill Cosby's accusers are understandably upset, to put it mildly, by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturning his conviction for sexual assault, it's crucial to remember that the court didn't find that the evidence against him was false. The court didn't find that he didn't do the things he was accused of doing.

No, the court vacated his conviction because a prior prosecutor gave Cosby what I've heard described as a "handshake" promise that the disgraced comedian's testimony in a civil matter wouldn't result in criminal charges. The state high court ruled that Cosby should never have faced the trial that ended in his conviction and imprisonment.

If ever one were justified in saying somebody got off on a technicality, this would be the time.

Now, I can frankly agree with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's vacating of the conviction. Cosby relied on the prosecutor's word, it seems. If you're pissed that he got off, blame the original prosecutor, one Bruce L. Castor, Jr. I don't know if he should have entered into the agreement with Cosby in the first place, but having done so, he should have made that fact clear to his office. Sloppy, Mr. Castor.

(It's of some interest that after leaving his prosecutor job, Castor went on to cover himself with glory — or something — defending the domestic Dear Leader during the latter's second impeachment trial. If Senate Republicans hadn't had the fix in from the beginning, Castor would very likely have cemented his place in history for a shambolic "defense" that led to the first presidential impeachment conviction. Castor is not my idea of a fine legal mind, nor does he seem to be detail-oriented.)

However, let me repeat that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court didn't find what was revealed at trial to be untrue. And what was revealed at trial convinced a jury to convict Cosby.

Cosby did the things of which he was accused.

He no longer has this criminal conviction on his record — but he is in no way innocent.

Evacuate our Afghan allies

My God, are we still fussing over how, or even whether, to evacuate the Afghanis who helped us during our long war in Afghanistan?

Apparently so, according to George Packer's piece in The Atlantic.

In the past few weeks, the outlook for Afghans who helped the United States in Afghanistan has gone from worrying to critical. As U.S. and NATO troops leave the country with breathtaking speed, the Taliban are attacking districts that had long been in the Afghan government’s hands, setting up checkpoints on major roads, and threatening provincial capitals. Many of the 18,000 Afghans who, along with their families, have applied for Special Immigrant Visas will soon have nowhere to hide, no armed force standing between them and their pursuers.

I don't know how President Biden made the decision to extricate U.S. forces from Afghanistan by 11 September 2021 (Packer says that informed opinion is that most will be gone by the 4th of July). I won't second-guess the decision, as I can imagine very good reasons for it. However, it would be unconscionable for the U.S. to abandon those Afghanis who put their lives on the line for us.

Packer cites possible reasons for the administration's foot-dragging:

No doubt an administration that polls poorly on immigration fears a public backlash, particularly as America approaches the bitter 20th anniversary of September 11. Evacuation would require the suspension of all kinds of standard procedures. There is always the risk of fraud, and perhaps of allowing an enemy combatant into the United States. The spectacle of evacuation might induce Afghan security forces to panic and desert in even larger numbers than they’re deserting now, causing a rush to the airports and borders and a collapse of the government of President Ashraf Ghani.

Most of these reasons strike me as abject moral cowardice that should not be tolerated in our government.

The immediate obstacles include legislative ones: Congress controls how immigration occurs. Congress must act swiftly to bend those rules. Guam has offered itself as a place where the necessary processing of immigrants (to keep out enemy combatants, for instance) can take place, rather than forcing all of it to take place in Afghanistan. The logistics of getting everyone out who needs to get out are manageable but becoming more difficult every day.

Mr. Biden, get your administration moving on this. You created this situation. You must address this consequence of your decision.

U.S. credibility and honor are at stake. Do we stand by those who have helped us, or not?

Awkward question about gun safety

The killing of nine innocent victims at the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) light rail yard in San Jose, California on 26 May was horrific. The gunman, himself a VTA employee, possessed what police later discovered to be a veritable arsenal, including more than 20,000 rounds of ammunition. He also appears to have tried to divert emergency responders away from the light rail yard by setting his house on fire (via a delayed-ignition mechanism) at approximately the same time he was starting his rampage. Clearly, he planned very carefully for his murder spree.

The gunman committed suicide as police closed in so we will never hear a reason for the slaughter from his lips. However, statements from his ex-wife and ex-girlfriend suggest that he was volatile — possibly mentally ill, though he was never diagnosed. Moreover, the Wall Street Journal reported that the gunman had been detained by Customs officials in 2016 after returning from the Philippines; per the San Francisco Chronicle, the officials "found a notebook expressing hatred for his workplace, along with books about terrorism".

The Santa Clara County district attorney says Homeland Security never contacted San Jose police to report the 2016 encounter.

“I am concerned about an individual who has books about terrorism and is so angry at their coworkers that they are writing it down, not typing it but taking pen-to-paper and writing down how angry they are. Now that’s not a crime to do those things but it is certainly something for a D.A., for a police chief, would be of interest."

The D.A. has a point. On the other hand, what exactly would local officials have been able to do?

The Second Amendment, as the modern-day SCOTUS has interpreted it, offers a virtually unfettered right for private citizens to own firearms. There are very limited circumstances under which someone may be permanently barred from gun ownership, or have his or her weapons' temporarily seized (under so-called "red flag" laws). However, the exceptions are extremely narrow.

And when it comes right down to it, what law would have allowed police either to seize this guy's weapons, or to prevent him from buying them, prior to his rampage?

That's the awkward question this incident raises. It's why gun-safety advocates would be well-advised not to use this tragedy to argue for strengthened gun-safety legislation.

Yes, this guy was volatile and angry. However, this country has no shortage of volatile, angry people, and most of them, even if they own guns, don't shoot other people. (At least, that's my impression; if you've done the research to prove me wrong, speak up.)

Unfortunately, the ones who do pop their cork kill more than enough of the rest of us. Shooting sprees that kill four or more people at once (the definition of "mass shooting" used by some incident trackers) grab the headlines but a lot more of us die one or two at a time, often at the hands of someone we know.

So, absent the ability to read minds or peer into the future, shootings large and small will plague us. Prudent laws (limiting magazine size, for instance) might reduce the damage but ultimately shootings are unavoidable so long as private gun ownership is treated as sacrosanct.

(By the way, don't start with that "if everybody were armed we'd all be safer" crap. The idea that "good guys with guns" can neutralize the threat of "bad guys" is simpleminded horseshit that would leave the country hip-deep in bodies.)

This lamentable situation has convinced me that the Second Amendment must go. Moreover, its repeal must be followed by the drying-up of the unfathomably large surplus of firearms already in private hands. Neither of these things is likely to happen in my lifetime but nevertheless, that's my hope.

(I'll offer one alternative to repeal of the Second Amendment: an ironclad rule that gun ownership be licensed at least as strictly as driving, with periodic psychological exams to determine emotional fitness to operate guns safely. I doubt any such examination is possible today or will be possible in my lifetime.)

The ones who control gun violence

I tried to muster some horror, some sorrow — any emotion, really — when I heard about the shooting deaths of eight people at an Indianapolis FedEx facility.

Honestly, though, I couldn't.

No disrespect meant to the Indianapolis victims but we've all been here before. People die at the hands of non-police gun wielders literally every day in this country.

I've written angry, frustrated posts again and again and again in this blog; search for "gun control" to see them. I just went over those posts, and the tragedy of our time is that from 2012, when I wrote the first one, to 2018, when last I was moved to comment, right up to today, not a goddamned thing has gotten better.

Why? Because too goddamned many of you are single-issue voters who will crucify your (generally Republican) elected representatives if they even gesticulate vaguely in the direction of legislation making guns a little more challenging to own. As I wrote in 2015:

The problem wasn't and isn't with the majority of us. It was and is with the minority that believes any regulation is an abridgement of the Second Amendment.

You folks are the ones who need to get over your absolutism on the subject of gun ownership.

You folks are the ones with blood on your hands.

And you folks are making the rest of us angrier and angrier, thus making us more, not less, likely to countenance drastic overreach in gun-safety legislation — maybe even Constitutional amendments. You should think about our concerns before we stop giving a shit about yours.

Okay, done speaking to the Second Amendment absolutists.

For the rest of us, since it would be foolish to wait for a come-to-Jesus moment among Second Amendment absolutists, our only option is to become as single-mindedly focused as they. If you live in a county or state whose elected officials fear the wrath of gun-rights groups (not just the NRA), you will have to become a single-issue voter. You must tell your representatives, "You will only get my vote if you work your ass off to make meaningful gun-safety legislation happen" at either the state or federal level.

(It will, of course, be a much more effective strategy if you can corral a few thousand of your family and friends to do the same.)

By the same token, you must work to defeat even your favorite representative if he or she is a Second Amendment absolutist or provides aid and comfort to them.

Incidentally, one sign that your representative has the wrong mindset is the beyond-stupid argument, "This bill wouldn't end gun violence". Of course no single law will end gun violence. No single law or safety measure has eliminated injuries and deaths from car crashes, either — but we have a lot fewer than we did. The same common-sense logic applies to gun-safety legislation, too. Pretending to hold out for a miraculous bill that would fix everything insults voters' intelligence.

The path toward a less bloody future is blocked by Second Amendment absolutists: they control the level of gun violence in this country through their irrational intransigence. If they can't be unburdened of their paranoia, the rest of us will have no choice but to match their fanatical zeal to defend their weapons with our own fanatical zeal to defend our lives.

The empty suits

Let's not beat around the bush: the Senate Republicans who voted to acquit Donald Trump of the impeachment charge for the 6 January 2021 insurrection dishonored their oath of office. They refused to carry out their responsibility to defend the Constitution, not to mention the country, from a domestic enemy — Donald J. Trump.

It is patent bullshit that the impeachment trial was unconstitutional because Trump was no longer in office. The impeachment itself occurred while he was still in office. Nothing in the Constitution bars an impeachment trial after an officeholder has left that office. There is no law that bars such a trial, either. In fact, the Senate has conducted such trials in the past, though not of a president. (Incidentally, the only reason the Senate trial didn't start while Trump was still president is that Mitch McConnell flatly refused to reconvene the Senate until the day before Biden's inauguration.)

"Impeachment after leaving office is unconstitutional", though, sounds plausible as a defense, if your audience either (a) doesn't know much about what happened or (b) is deeply motivated to find Trump innocent no matter what.

Acquittal was dishonorable. Yet people — even senators — want to think of themselves as honorable. So why did those Republican senators vote to acquit?

The popular answer is, they fear Trump's sway over Republican voters. And if the subject at hand had been a simple legislative issue, like a particular bill, I could understand that fear.

But the subject at hand wasn't a bill. It was the role the former president played in fomenting violent insurrection.

Incessant angry lies by Trump and his allies hadn't altered the process of certifying the electoral results (though they came disturbingly close). Violence was the only logical recourse for the 6 January 2021 rallygoers, who took Trump seriously and literally.

The election was nearly undone by a violent mob acting under the influence of lying propaganda. That should make anyone who took the oath of office — which, no matter the office, calls above all for upholding the Constitution — mindful of what that oath means. Peaceful transfer of power is at the heart of the constitutional order. If the transfer of power between elected officials can be disrupted by a mob, the Constitution is an empty document.

The senators who voted to acquit not only did not hold to account a man who fought to overturn the constitutional order, they encouraged future sociopaths who will see a roadmap to autocracy if they can only emulate Trump's strengths (demagoguery most of all) while avoiding his conspicuous failings.

If you — I'm talking to the Senate Republicans who voted to acquit — can't uphold the primacy of the Constitution over a single man, how are you fit to hold office?

For that matter, why do you hold office?

What good do you think you do in office, when at the moment the country needed you most, you chickened out of doing the right thing?

Whatever you think you stand for, you don't stand for the constitutional order. You're an electoral tautology, wanting to hold office because you hold office.

You're an empty suit.

A little kindness

Sometimes you don't realize how dirty the air around you is until you can take a breath of clean air. You might know something's wrong but be unable to pin down what until that magic moment someone opens a window.

It took watching the inauguration and coverage of the new administration's first day to clarify what made Trump so uniquely appalling. If you watched Biden's remarks today — particularly his remarks to the thousand or so staffers he swore in virtually — what would strike you was his unfailing kindness. Yes, there was also dignity and clarity, two other qualities sorely lacking in Trump's public persona, but kindness above all.

Trump made everything toxic. You could not disagree with him solely on policy: if you disagreed with him, you became his personal enemy and he would stop at nothing to destroy you, not merely defeat you in the current debate. He is a mean man who inspires intense dislike.

Whatever you think of Biden's policies, you're probably as relieved as I am that we won't be subjected to the petty and nationally humiliating outbursts the deeply unkind Trump made a hallmark of his term.

I hope the political air gets cleaner quickly.

I breathe a little easier now

The clock has ticked over past noon, meaning that Donald J. Trump is no longer president. He no longer has the power of the U.S. presidency at his disposal.

A weight has been lifted off our shoulders.

Accountability for the attempted coup

Accountability for the attempted coup on 6 January will be a long time coming. It will take a lot of investigatory work and possibly a lot of soul-searching, too.

However, there are a couple of obvious, immediate to-do items:

• Remove Donald J. Trump, the domestic Dear Leader, from office immediately.
• Record the names of the Congressional enablers of this attempted coup in a book of infamy. They aided and abetted the sedition by amplifying and lending their credibility to Trump's lies.

Why remove Trump immediately, rather than letting him stay in office until 20 January? Because he cannot be trusted with the power of the office one second longer. He has already incited one seditious act, resulting in five deaths, and has absolutely no remorse for his grotesque betrayal of his office and his oath. He will do anything to protect himself and does not care what damage he might do to the nation in the process. He is by all accounts emotionally unstable contemplating the end of his term, and he does not have a conscience. He is the last man who should have the power of the presidency.

Impeachment is the only answer. He will not resign, nor will Pence and the Cabinet remove him. Even if either of these things occurred, he would still be free to run for a nonconsecutive second presidential term. Only impeachment, conviction, and a ban on holding federal office ever again will serve.

Moreover, I'm deeply concerned about how a self-pardon (or, considerably less likely now, a pardon from a temporarily elevated President Pence following a last-minute Trump resignation) might intersect with an impeachment proceeding.

• Does a pardon, however granted, prevent Congress from even considering impeachment of the pardonee?
• If a president pardons the impeachment's subject (himself, in this case) after an impeachment effort has commenced, may the impeachment continue?
• If an impeachment can continue in the House after the subject has been pardoned, and the House votes out the articles of impeachment, may the Senate choose not to take up the articles?
• If the Senate does conduct a trial and the pardoned subject is convicted on the impeachment charges, may the Senate continue on to consider removal from office and/or a ban on ever holding federal office again?

These are tricky Constitutional questions I can't begin to answer since I'm neither a lawyer nor a Constitutional scholar but my deep concern is that these questions don't have answers because we've never had to think about them.

If Mitch McConnell has even one drop of patriotism in his veins, he will reconvene the Senate as soon as possible to conduct a trial on the articles of impeachment the House will almost certainly pass this week, assuming a self-pardon doesn't short-circuit the effort. (McConnell has claimed that only the consent of all 100 senators can bring the chamber back into session before the 19th but I don't think that's a legal requirement: it's just his way of making reconvening as difficult as possible.)

Speaking of Republican enablers, the New York Times published the list of Congressional Republicans who aided and abetted the domestic Dear Leader's lies of electoral fraud by cynically objecting to the counting of Electoral College votes from a handful of battleground states. These Republicans pretended election fraud occurred at scale and that Congress could and should overturn the election results.

That their gambit failed (and indeed, wasn't meant to succeed) is irrelevant. Their actions signaled that disenfranchising millions of their fellow citizens was acceptable, that only some voters matter, and that Trump supporters should have the final say on which.

These elected officials do not respect democracy unless they like the results.

Some of them might argue they were showing Trump and his supporters that their concerns were being taken seriously. But those concerns arose from the lie that electoral fraud occurred — a lie that these Republicans repeated and reinforced. Pandering to a mob you helped to incite is grotesque.

Since you might be blocked by the paywall or the article might disappear someday, here's the list of Congressional Republicans who supported a barefaced lie that fomented sedition:

• Senate:
• Tommy Tuberville (Alabama)
• Rick Scott (Florida)
• Roger Marshall (Kansas)
• John Kennedy (Louisiana)
• Cindy Hyde-Smith (Mississippi)
• Josh Hawley (Missouri)
• Ted Cruz (Texas)
• Cynthia Lummis (Wyoming)
• House:
• Robert B. Aderholt (Alabama)
• Mo Brooks (Alabama)
• Jerry Carl (Alabama)
• Barry Moore (Alabama)
• Gary Palmer (Alabama)
• Mike Rogers (Alabama)
• Andy Biggs (Arizona)
• Paul Gosar (Arizona)
• Debbie Lesko (Arizona)
• David Schweikert (Arizona)
• Rick Crawford (Arkansas)
• Ken Calvert (California)
• Mike Garcia (California)
• Darrell Issa (California)
• Doug LaMalfa (California)
• Kevin McCarthy (California)
• Devin Nunes (California)
• Jay Obernolte (California)
• Lauren Boebert (Colorado)
• Doug Lamborn (Colorado)
• Kat Cammack (Florida)
• Mario Diaz-Balart (Florida)
• Byron Donalds (Florida)
• Neal Dunn (Florida)
• Scott Franklin (Florida)
• Matt Gaetz (Florida)
• Carlos Gimenez (Florida)
• Brian Mast (Florida)
• Bill Posey (Florida)
• John Rutherford (Florida)
• Greg Steube (Florida)
• Daniel Webster (Florida)
• Rick Allen (Georgia)
• Earl L. "Buddy" Carter (Georgia)
• Andrew Clyde (Georgia)
• Marjorie Taylor Greene (Georgia)
• Jody Hice (Georgia)
• Barry Loudermilk (Georgia)
• Russ Fulcher (Idaho)
• Mike Bost (Illinois)
• Mary Miller (Illinois)
• Jim Baird (Indiana)
• Jim Banks (Indiana)
• Greg Pence (Indiana)
• Jackie Walorski (Indiana)
• Ron Estes (Kansas)
• Jacob LaTurner (Kansas)
• Tracey Mann (Kansas)
• Harold Rogers (Kentucky)
• Garret Graves (Louisiana)
• Clay Higgins (Louisiana)
• Mike Johnson (Louisiana)
• Steve Scalise (Louisiana)
• Andy Harris (Maryland)
• Jack Bergman (Michigan)
• Lisa McClain (Michigan)
• Tim Walberg (Michigan)
• Michelle Fischbach (Minnesota)
• Jim Hagedorn (Minnesota)
• Michael Guest (Mississippi)
• Trent Kelly (Mississippi)
• Steven Palazzo (Mississippi)
• Sam Graves (Missouri)
• Vicky Hartzler (Missouri)
• Billy Long (Missouri)
• Blaine Luetkemeyer (Missouri)
• Jason Smith (Missouri)
• Matt Rosendale (Montana)
• Dan Bishop (North Carolina)
• Ted Budd (North Carolina)
• Madison Cawthorn (North Carolina)
• Virginia Foxx (North Carolina)
• Richard Hudson (North Carolina)
• Gregory F. Murphy (North Carolina)
• David Rouzer (North Carolina)
• Jeff Van Drew (New Jersey)
• Yvette Herrell (New Mexico)
• Chris Jacobs (New York)
• Nicole Malliotakis (New York)
• Elise M. Stefanik (New York)
• Lee Zeldin (New York)
• Adrian Smith (Nebraska)
• Steve Chabot (Ohio)
• Warren Davidson (Ohio)
• Bob Gibbs (Ohio)
• Bill Johnson (Ohio)
• Jim Jordan (Ohio)
• Stephanie Bice (Oklahoma)
• Tom Cole (Oklahoma)
• Kevin Hern (Oklahoma)
• Frank Lucas (Oklahoma)
• Markwayne Mullin (Oklahoma)
• Cliff Bentz (Oregon)
• John Joyce (Pennsylvania)
• Fred Keller (Pennsylvania)
• Mike Kelly (Pennsylvania)
• Daniel Meuser (Pennsylvania)
• Scott Perry (Pennsylvania)
• Guy Reschenthaler (Pennsylvania)
• Lloyd Smucker (Pennsylvania)
• Glenn Thompson (Pennsylvania)
• Jeff Duncan (South Carolina)
• Ralph Norman (South Carolina)
• Tom Rice (South Carolina)
• William Timmons (South Carolina)
• Joe Wilson (South Carolina)
• Tim Burchett (Tennessee)
• Scott DesJarlais (Tennessee)
• Chuck Fleischmann (Tennessee)
• Mark E. Green (Tennessee)
• Diana Harshbarger (Tennessee)
• David Kustoff (Tennessee)
• John Rose (Tennessee)
• Jodey Arrington (Texas)
• Brian Babin (Texas)
• Michael C. Burgess (Texas)
• John R. Carter (Texas)
• Michael Cloud (Texas)
• Pat Fallon (Texas)
• Louie Gohmert (Texas)
• Lance Gooden (Texas)
• Ronny Jackson (Texas)
• Troy Nehls (Texas)
• August Pfluger (Texas)
• Pete Sessions (Texas)
• Beth Van Duyne (Texas)
• Randy Weber (Texas)
• Roger Williams (Texas)
• Ron Wright (Texas)
• Burgess Owens (Utah)
• Chris Stewart (Utah)
• Ben Cline (Virginia)
• Bob Good (Virginia)
• Morgan Griffith (Virginia)
• Robert J. Wittman (Virginia)
• Carol Miller (West Virginia)
• Alexander X. Mooney (West Virginia)
• Scott Fitzgerald (Wisconsin)
• Tom Tiffany (Wisconsin)

(In the article the lists were alphabetized by abbreviated rather than full state name, hence the unexpected order in a few places.)

Reaping what the far right sowed

The seditious attack on the Capitol this past Wednesday, 6 January 2021, was not sui generis. It was the culmination of a long, expensive, and immoral effort by numerous parties, mostly on the far right, to fleece millions for fun, fame, and profit. This poisonous effort has rendered a substantial chunk of the country's population not just unmoored from, but actively hostile to, reality.

The domestic Dear Leader, the dishonorable and mentally disordered Donald J. Trump, bears primary responsibility for the attempted insurrection. He egged on his fanatical followers not just at a rally that morning but for weeks before, promoting the gathering that day in multiple tweets. In the run-up to the election (i.e., most of 2020) he repeatedly made the false claims that the election would be "rigged" to disfavor him, that fraud would be endemic, that his electoral opponents would employ every dirty trick in the book to ensure they won.

Some 60 court cases attempting to make at least some of those claims have been dismissed. While some dismissals were for technical reasons, like being filed too late, in other cases trial court judges, appellate judges, and even Supreme Court Justices examined the supposed evidence supporting the allegations and found the evidence totally unpersuasive.

Nevertheless, Trump has kept lying that the election was stolen from him. Further, he has tied his followers so closely to himself that they feel the election was stolen from them, too. They converged on 6 January not for a joyous lark but for a righteous battle to "stop the steal", in their words. They're not just talking about a stolen election, either. They think the whole damned country has been stolen from them.

Trump couldn't have instilled that outrageous lie so deeply by himself. Indeed, he couldn't have amassed such a cult following if the ground hadn't been prepared for him. These people have been primed to see themselves as victims of shadowy "others" who control everything. Who are these "others"? The idea is fluid and depends on what seems most threatening at the moment. Liberals? Black and brown people? Jewish people? Chinese people? (See: "China flu" and similarly aggressive misnomers for CoViD-19.) Muslims? LGBTQ people? Immigrants (except wealthy ones)? Non-right wing journalists (and right-wing journalists who critique the right)? The highly educated? All of them, and more, have been implicated as "other" in the last forty years.

Reagan took advantage of tremendous doubt and fear about the country's future under Jimmy Carter, a smart and decent man whose chief flaw seems to have been recognizing the immensity of the challenges facing the country and being paralyzed by them. It didn't help that the 1970s felt like a bad hangover caused by the late 1960s. Reagan cannily saw that liberal policies and attitudes were deeply unpopular in much of the country and he vowed to undo them. In so doing he harkened back to an idealized, idyllic (and mythical) image of the 1950s and to the streak of American exceptionalism that is a foundational element of our national myth. He persuaded much of the country that our problems lay in our drift away from "traditional values" and the ballooning of government beyond its supposedly proper size and functions. He effectively created the modern distrust of government, especially the federal government, though Watergate was a big help on that front.

Reagan assisted and was assisted by both a conservative intellectual movement that had been waiting for the chance to shape policy, and a nascent conservative media, mostly print and radio. Deregulation of markets and re-regulation of abortion and sexual relations were the early goals that united businesses (which often wanted nothing to do with social and cultural issues) and the deeply religious, who obsessed over the nation's putative immorality (read: failure to adhere to stringent Protestant norms) under the shared tent of the Republican Party. Politically, this alliance paid off spectacularly.

Emboldened by the Reagan Revolution, conservatives decided to carve out safe spaces in which to talk to one another without liberal bias creeping in. Conservative talk shows attracted large audiences and large profits to radio networks. Soon enough, conservative TV talk shows followed, and finally, Fox News, modeled on and intended explicitly as a challenge to CNN.

The downside to creating those safe spaces, as we can see in hindsight, was that they let conservatives talk solely to each other. Undoubtedly that was refreshing but it also created an unhealthy dynamic, one that, ironically, conservatives delight in pointing out when it afflicts liberals: the tendency toward groupthink.

Groupthink not only tends to exclude dissent, it encourages radicalization. Over time, the most radical ideas, by dint of sheer repetition, lose their shock value: they become normalized.

A radical idea can be a good one: the once-radical notion of a forty-hour work week, for instance, is one that many of us wish were still the norm. For every good radical idea, though, there are a lot of bad ones.

The other flaw — again, only obvious in hindsight — is that groupthink lets lies take root. Again, repetition is the key because repeating lies overcomes whatever resistance we might have to them. (And we might not have much resistance to certain lies in the first place.)

Decades of stewing solely in conservative media, including social media, have left millions vulnerable to groupthink, radicalization, and outright lies. The result? Clearly lunatic conspiracy theories find large, receptive audiences. When everyone around you is chattering about dark forces ("the deep state" or what have you) conspiring against you and yours, it's hard not to buy in.

Radicalization and anger reinforce each other, too, hence the prevalence of hate groups on the far right. Unfortunately, white supremacy and cultural conservatism are all too comfortable being bedmates, and while not all cultural conservatives are white supremacists, it's hard to imagine a white supremacist who isn't culturally conservative.

Finally, the profit motive underlies all of this. Slaking the thirst of millions for right-tilting news and talk has been immensely profitable for companies like Fox News, personalities like Sean Hannity, and political groups like the Republican Party. Talk radio and Fox News knew all about keeping their audiences engaged long before Facebook and other social media giants came along and made the process algorithmic. Audience engagement is maximized if you feed the beast (that is, the audience) raw meat. And for twenty years or so, right-tilting media has been less and less concerned about where that meat came from and whether it's good for the audience. Republican politicians have marched along in lockstep, both to stay in office and to earn a living afterward.

Media stars like Hannity and Alex Jones (a repellent person but undeniably a star on the far right) love the glory, too, and will do almost anything to hold onto it.

What about the motive of "fun" I mentioned? Well, trolling your critics and enemies is a big reason why Twitter and Facebook are battlegrounds for political speech. All that battling is great for audience engagement, which brings us back to the profit motive: social-media companies make a lot of money off the fighting.

For forty years these elements have been brought together to reinforce one another — and here we are, with millions

• prepared to believe whatever Trump says;
• certain that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected;
• convinced that letting Biden hold office not only would reward perfidy but would mean the end of the republic; and
• grimly determined to save "their" nation by any means necessary.

The frenzied mob that broke into the Capitol included objectively despicable people: white supremacists, Hitler apologists, anti-Semites, plain old hooligans out to create mayhem, and more. But some of those who broke in, and undoubtedly hundreds or thousands more who stayed outside, participated because they fervently believe what Trump and his enablers have been telling them. They showed up because they're desperate to save their country from the terrible threats that generations of opportunistic profiteers (hello, Rupert Murdoch) and snake-oil salesmen have conjured out of thin air.

They showed up for no good reason. They showed up because of big fat lies.

And the tellers of those lies must be held accountable.

The scramble to disavow responsibility has already begun among politicians. They're the obvious, high-profile figures because they were at the heart of the mayhem: Trump's rally, after all, was aimed right at the Congressional certification of the Electoral College vote count. He and his enablers hoped to change the count (somehow) in his favor, or at least to disrupt it for a time. Those enablers of that delusion must not be allowed to slip quietly into anonymity.

But the voices in conservative media circles who echoed and affirmed the lies, reinforcing them in their audiences' minds, also were complicit.

It also seems fitting to apply the longstanding conservative insistence on personal responsibility to all those who came to Washington, D.C. Wednesday, or who aided and abetted the effort. While I do believe their minds have been warped by the echo chamber they inhabit, they are not mindless automata: they have some agency. They could have interrogated the claims they heard, rather than swallowing them hook, line, and sinker. They could have questioned the truthfulness or intentions of the anonymous figures behind those claims. They could have asked themselves, "Am I really so special as to be 'in' on the 'real' secrets?" A measure of humility and introspection might have gone a long way toward averting tragedy and chaos.

In the end, though, we're left with the infuriating fact that the seditious riot of 6 January was the culmination — so far — of decades of decisions and actions by the far right wing of this country. Trump was the match but he lit decades' worth of fuel.

The day after the Capitol riot

So, um, yeah: a Trump-loving mob, incited by the domestic Dear Leader himself, rushed an insufficiently-guarded Capitol building in Washington, D.C. as Congress was meeting in joint session to certify the Electoral College count.

Did the mob that invaded the Capitol intend to keep Congress from its legal obligation to certify the EC votes, all in the hope of creating a "legal" means for the domestic Dear Leader to stay in office past 20 January? I don't know. What I do know, courtesy of remarks caught on camera by an ITV reporter, is that a number of the rioters were infuriated over the illusion that the presidential election was "stolen". They attempted to justify their law-breaking by claiming they had an inalienable right to invade "the people's chamber", that "these people work for us". They said they were only seeking redress for the supposedly fraudulent election.

The water is still agitated and the ripples are still spreading but a few takeaways are beyond dispute:

• The domestic Dear Leader incited insurrection when he told his supporters to march down to the Capitol.
• The rioters, and much of Trump's base, are deluded. They are immersed in the topsy-turvy world of so-called conservative media.
• That topsy-turvy so-called conservative media, and similarly inclined social media, have spread lies about electoral fraud. There is zero evidence of such fraud but far-right pundits and politicos flatly deny that truth even as they fail to produce one iota of proof.
• Nobody in that media ecosystem or political system gives a shit what those of us in the real world think of them unless we have a strong basis for suing them.
• The domestic Dear Leader refuses to do anything involving his job except to do anything to hold onto it.
• Don Trumpone is a clear and present threat to public safety.

A few random thoughts:

• Don Trumpone's complicit vice-president and Cabinet will not act to relieve him of authority under the 25th Amendment. We couldn't trust them to act honorably anyway: the most likely outcome would be that they would set him aside until the morning of 20 January, then magically declare him restored to fitness just in time for him to grant his final set of pardons (and then fire missiles on Iran or some such insanity as a giant middle finger to the country).
• Since the 25th Amendment is an unrealistic and possibly even dangerous "solution" to our current problem, impeachment remains the most appropriate step. Not only is his incitement to sedition far worse an act than anything any past president has allegedly done, but on the off chance it succeeds and the Senate (miraculously) convicts him, it would remove the possibility that he could serve a nonconsecutive second term. That would be no small victory for the nation.
• Everyone's focusing on Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz for enabling the flatly baseless objections to the Electoral College vote certification. People, it takes members from both chambers to force Congress to consider objections. Mo Brooks and that walking pustule Louis Gohmert led 100+ House Republicans to file those objections, too. For some reason Senate Republicans are expected to know better, while House members can be excused as barely functional imbeciles. I grant you that Gohmert displays less evidence of brain activity than your average coma patient but by and large, House members are as aware of the impact of their words and deeds as senators are. So when you make your list of complicit Republicans who gave aid and comfort to seditionists, don't leave off the House members.
• Yeah: the kid-gloves treatment of the white insurrectionists by law enforcement yesterday was as blindingly obvious a sign of white privilege as one can imagine. If you don't comprehend the anger Black people feel at the disparate treatment of non-whites versus whites at the hands of law enforcement, you are part of the problem.
• Finally — finally — I've started to hear media figures talk about the conservative media problem. It predates the domestic Dear Leader, it will outlast his presidency, and it remains the single greatest threat to the viability of our democracy because it feeds the delusional rage that animates Trump supporters. By amplifying Don Trumpone's lies and feeding him fresh lies on a daily basis, these purveyors of disinfomation are weakening the country by letting their audiences live in a cocoon of unreality, rendering them incompetent to help solve our nation's problems.
• But the more fundamental problem that the lying conservative media have exposed, albeit inadvertently, is that we are woefully, embarrassingly, appallingly uneducated as regards that quaint old subject, "civics". In fact, we are woefully, embarrassingly, appallingly uneducated in general, rendering too many of us defenseless against lies, delusions, and what is more colloquially but pithily known as bullshit. We badly need training in critical thinking, too.
• The domestic Dear Leader will self-pardon. You can bet on that because after his rage-filled public denigration of the VP, even the servile Pence would not oblige him with that favor, so you can forget the eleventh-hour-resignation-to-make-Pence-president-to-issue-pardons scam.

  Now, it's hard to imagine there wouldn't be grounds to challenge any president's self-pardon, but impossible to imagine there wouldn't be grounds in the domestic Dear Leader's case. There could not be a less promising set of Supreme Court Justices to hear such a challenge but I also can't imagine a president who would give more reasons to strike down the power to self-pardon.

And finally:

When it comes to pinning responsibility for the insurrectionist assault on the Capitol Wednesday, plenty of people can and should face the music. Not just the rioters themselves (who, it should be noted, are not "antifa" or whatever other scapegoat the lying participants will claim next); not just the domestic Dear Leader, though he remains a primary instigator; not just the right-wing politicians who encouraged the insurrectionists at their rally. The responsibility also belongs to the media figures who originated and repeated the lies the domestic Dear Leader uttered at rally after rally, in tweet after tweet. The responsibility also belongs to the domestic Dear Leader's Congressional enablers like, yes, Hawley and Cruz but also Brooks and Gohmert and the hundreds of other Republicans in the House and Senate who objected to the Electoral College vote certification for reasons they knew were false.

All these people reinforced a state of unreality among the domestic Dear Leader's supporters, driving them to a frenzied fury of unjustified grievance that culminated in an assault on the Capitol they believed was not just necessary but righteous. And all of them therefore are seditionists with blood on their hands.