Kari Lake, the Armor of God, and the Filter of Vaseline

 

Kari Lake called on her supporters in Arizona to arm themselves ahead of an “intense” period leading up to the election. “We are going to put on the armor of God, and maybe strap on a Glock on the side of us just in case.” The crowd roared its approval.https://t.co/otBB7H2mkK

— Chris Cameron (@ChrisCameronNYT) April 17, 2024

Having spent something like a year and 3/4ths insisting she actually won the contest for AZ governor and only appeared to have lost due to voter fraud rather than conspicuous own goals like eschewing the support of "John McCain Republicans", has now decided to show a more moderate side by (checks notes) suggesting holy war and armed conflict: 

It is not the first time Ms. Lake has alluded to armed conflict with her and her supporters. Last year, she said: “If you want to get to President Trump, you are going to have go through me, and you are going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me. And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the N.R.A.,” referring to the National Rifle Association. She added, “That’s not a threat — that’s a public service announcement.”

Her voice is just one in a rising chorus of violent, authoritarian or otherwise aggressive political rhetoric from Mr. Trump and his allies. The former president shared a video late last month featuring an image of President Biden, his Democratic rival, hogtied. He has also said that migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” and described his political opponents last year as “vermin” who needed to be “rooted out.”

I don't know about the John McCain Republicans, but this is a very familiar and tragic theme to Gabrielle Giffords Democrats. It is also a grave concern for AZ elections officials. And I think it is doubtful she will back off based on her previous history with such language and associations. Lake's true flaws are too big to airbrush away. She is a reckless demagogue. 

 

One War

 

BREAKING:
Pentagon: U.S. military hit two facilities in eastern Syria used by Iran in “self defense strikes.”

Secy of Defense Austin warns “If attacks by Iran’s proxies against U.S. forces continue, we will not hesitate to take further necessary measures.” pic.twitter.com/SI6jSUcUhd

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) October 27, 2023

Having considered the Israeli massacre by Hamas occurring on Putin's birthday and the way it directed attention away from Ukraine, I really can't count out the idea that there is one war. When I see Putin using Iran materiel, I see one war. When I see a Hamas delegation going to the Kremlin, I see one war.  International conditions, conceived in fuckery, owing to one guy who is probably chronically if not terminally ill and mentally unfit--Putin. Trying to make his former Soviet something again. 

I get how trying to make a country something again can be the most misplaced nostalgia in the world. All the more reason why I see a petrostate hand funneling money to support the assbackwards dreams of MAGA right here, funding the Civil War or Revolutionary ideation of the NRA via guns. As one pretty obvious example. Or more lowkey: they just own the right because of bigotry and authoritarianism. 

This nation (the US) started by overthrowing the right of kings to rule--a religious right to a chosen few sanctioning an abrogation of individual rights. The idea of God-appointed rulers should appall people living in our representational republic. And yet some want to install Trump and call him "chosen", As Putin got installed by various forms of unfreedom and leverage. As a Bashar al-Assad represents massive unfreedom so authoritarian right-wingers will approve.  It's not hard to understand. It is also not hard to understand that their support of this travesty of freedom isn't about liberation at all, but force. 

Force they want to use on the US to scare us away from the one war. The war against democracy and rule of law. 

The House GOP Found Their Johnson

 

You know, usually I like to make link-heavy blog posts that substantiate all the facts I drop in one of my screeds, but I will leave the research on this one to my readers because I had limited connectivity to the internet this week and have a whole carton of huevos to fry. But here's the funny thing to me: 

Look at the happy-ass motherfuckers in the picture above.  They think they just got their shit together and ended a long national nightmare. They just picked the most problematic of dudes to unify themselves around. He doesn't look like a whole lot, but whoo, this dude right here. 

This is a Christian nationalist of the kind it's been my whole life's business to want to take down. He's anti-science: a young earth creationist who doesn't believe in climate change. That right there is an air raid siren for me: he does not care about facts and doesn't care whether facts are even useful to the betterment of life for other people. He talks in terms of "belief" because empirical knowledge is inconvenient to his worldview. He is a 2020 election denier: that right there--he cares about power, and GOD DAMN the facts. 

He says he finds his proofs in Scripture: people write books all the time, but if you "believe in" God--who do you think put facts in the world? It feels very much to me like people who deny empirical knowledge are the ones really denying a revelation that can be understood and made accessible, and instead support a kind of false-witness bearing of twisting Scripture to one's own ends. 

Bleeding Texas

 

Mass Shootings in Texas
2023 Allen (9 dead)
2023 Cleveland (5 dead)
2022 Uvalde (22 dead)
2019 El Paso (23 dead)
2019 Odessa (8 dead)
2018 Santa Fe (10 dead)
2017 Sutherland Springs (27 dead)
2017 Plano (9 dead)
2015 Waco (9 dead)
2015 Houston (8 dead)
2009 Fort Hood (14 dead)

— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) May 7, 2023

No, this is inadequate. Charles Whitman climbed the watchtower on the University of Texas campus in 1966 and the Luby Cafeteria shooting is infamous from 1991. This mass shooting thing in Texas is deep and makes the resolve of the elected officials there to just rely on "thoughts and prayers" to do anything at all while broadly supporting the NRA disgraceful. Of course, nice thoughts aren't fixing this. 

The culture is clearly fucked up. but the resort of fucked up people to utilize guns to manifest their fucked-upness is a critical problem. I don't want to criminalize folks just having guns, but figuring out who potential criminals are and not arming them would be great. 

I see people out there decrying the folks mocking "thoughts and prayers" as being spiteful about god. Nope, these people are critical of prayers being used hypocritically, to be seen on the street corner doing conspicuous prayer, while being in private doing conspicuously nothing at all. While real humans suffer.  Being shot in innocent surroundings. Sometimes dying, sometimes living with a forever affected life. 

Do you have thoughts and prayers for the permanently maimed and terrorized? Do you consider that survivors have trauma and feel different in public spaces, maybe for a lifetime? 

It's Just Top to Bottom Fraud

 

There's something about the entire right wing that I wish the solid, earnest folks who support it with their donations knew--it's a goddamn scheme. Take Donald Trump's post-presidency fund-raising vehicle--Save America PAC. It's currently under investigation because of course it should be--Trump is saving American from what, now? He promoted dangerous lies about voter fraud and teases he's fixing to do something about it, but there wasn't any voter fraud and there isn't anything he wants to do more than have money is his legal fund to defend against his sedition (planned insurrection) and I guess also his treasonous (why does he have these top secret documents?) activities. 

Trump raised a lot of money under "Save America" but nothing went to voter fraud litigation because there was no provable voter fraud to litigate. So like, how do I know there's none?

Take the recall of Dinesh D'Souza's dumb book, 2,000 Mules, as an example of the problem.  It's a grift.  You see the movie, you buy the book, you paid to believe in the thing. But there's a problem--the book is recalled and I already know from the movie why--he didn't name groups he thought were responsible for the imaginary "mules" he posits based on cell phone data of people revisiting city blocks that happen to be in their own neighborhoods (which is just extra dumb) in the movie, but he decided to go ahead and do that in his book, because why not?

We Can't Look Away from Uvalde

 

This past week, we were able to see a surveillance video of the multiple, highly armed law enforcement officials in the hallway of Robb Elementary School doing not hardly enough while words about redacted screams were seen, encouraging a fearsome sound in the mind.  It's horrific and the release of it is fraught because in some ways, it feels like it is a desecration for people to ogle a tragedy, and in another way, it is necessary for people to understand what went wrong and to view this clinically. 

All in all, nearly 400 law enforcement officers arrived at the scene of this particular mass shooting. And somehow, one extremely damaged teenager who somehow despite a troubled history easily acquired weapons was not stopped before committing a deadly atrocity. It was because no one wanted to take leadership. 

I'm not trying to say this is a metaphor for anything, but just not wanting to take leadership, or being confused about what is absolutely necessary to do, feels like an instructive point. There has to be one, after all. Tragedies should be able to be stopped by people who understand what needs to be done. What matters is if and how they act. 

And right here, there was so much crucial inaction. I am so angry on behalf of these families, that they were not better served. We have to learn from this. We have to dispel the myth of the good guys with guns. 

I just can't see a better way for all this destruction of life and hope to be prevented than for this shooter to have never been armed. It isn't enough for him to be stopped eventually. It is ideal he never have the opportunity to start. There needed to be a strong red flag law here, I think. This was a kid whose acquaintances thought he had the attributes of a potential school shooter.

And I curse with utmost sincerity people who think an active shooter alert system is somehow a bridge too far. Just as with weather alerts or AMBER alerts, shouldn't communities be informed so that they can take action to potentially save lives? It really feels important, and like some people don't even understand that saving lives is something that people actually should want to do. It even seems like some people want to minimize active shooter reports because they feel like it defames, somehow, the gun culture. 

This is depressing, and only too likely. People who privilege the reputation of inanimate objects over the lives of human beings are sketchy. We need to have people who do hold firearms to be responsible people--that is a minimum request. I'm not for gun-grabbing, but accountability, and I think folks who want to misrepresent facts are causing actual harm by making inaction a default. And inaction gets people killed, see all the above. 

UPDATE: Sen. Cruz believes more cops will help with mass shootings, because knowing that 376 cops inside and outside of one elementary school isn't apparently failure of proof of concept enough for him. 

UPDATE: Just this:

In that report, Arredondo said that his approach was "responding as a police officer." 

"I didn't title myself. But once I got in there and we took that fire, back then, I realized we need some things. We've got to get in that door. We need an extraction tool. We need those keys ... As far as I'm talking about the command part...the people that went in, there was a big group of them outside the door. I have no idea who they were and how they walked in or anything kind of -- I wasn't given that direction," the chief said in the report.

Uvalde doesn't want to admit their guy made a crucial mistake for whatever reason. He didn't even have anyone try the unlocked door. He didn't know who was supposed to take point. He wasn't given direction, but understanding what was happening, he also never took initiative. It is an astonishing view of how things fail--when no one is in charge or takes charge, when no one can even take responsibility.

People die because no one wants to be responsible for people dying. How fucked up is that? 

Anyone Who Had a Heart

Gohmert fires back at Democrats on gun debate: "You think we don’t have hearts?" https://t.co/AbZhcO3ktD pic.twitter.com/UdlpX80nve

— The Hill (@thehill) June 3, 2022

Yes, Louie Gohmert has a heart--it's the thing that pumps the blood into his face when he acts indignant that he is being called complicit with the mass shooters. It's alwys been his brain that I've been agnostic about--maybe if he showed more eidence of it? But as it stands, if he and his Republican colleagues did actually care about the gun violence situation in this country, they would actually know more about how lax gun laws have worked to put guns in the hands of the wrong people instead of giving the same old NRA-derived talking points. I get that this agitated display was for the base, but it doesn't persuade anyone for sensible gun control of much. The only thing Republicans really seem to be working on is their acting skills.

It *Was* Worse

 

Gov. Abbott is livid that he was misinformed about the police response and that so many things he said in his comments following the tragedy and later on Wednesday turned out to be entirely wrong. The shooter had an AR-15, not a handgun. There was no resource officer on campus. The local cops were on the scene but waited nearly an hour, even stopping other officials and parents from breaching the classroom due to the wrong idea that the shooter was barricaded and no longer an active shooter--when he was locked in a classroom actively still killing children. And the children in the room were still calling 911. 

It could have been worse--but it is glaringly obvious that it should have been better. (It should not have happened at all. That young man had warning signs including animal abuse and misogyny, made threats and previously tried to get his sister to obtain a weapon for him. A red flag law may have stopped him,) 

If the governor is livid, I'm going to suggest that Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin (who was calling Beto O'Rourke a "sick son of a bitch" for interrupting the solemn lying because of politics) probably helped him get misinformed. The chief of police has his share of the blame. But to some extent, the worst kind of misinformation a man in a position of responsibility allows is the kind he invites. 

The "good guys with a gun stopping the bad guy with a gun" story was the narrative he wanted. It was more complicated than that. It always is. 

Interrupting the Solemnities

 

Democratic gubernatorial challenger Beto O'Rourke interrupted the assembled unified Republicans at their press conference whilst they were performing part of their sacred office--moving from the ritual saying of thoughts and prayers that sanctified the slaughter of the innocents, to the Ceremonial Blaming of Other Things. 

By pronouncing the feared "assigning of blame to Republicans about anything, ever", there was a narrow danger that attention might be directed at the people in the room who literally do less than nothing every single time this horrific nightmare happens. O'Rourke was expelled for the grave sin of politicizing the solemn event, because you know, people who politicize human misery are the wooooorrrrst. The danger past, the Republicans went on to assign blame to various things, like mental illness and doors, as others suggested rap music, fatherlessness, and lack of prayer in the schools. 

This is how Republicans demonstrate that they are so very serious about gun violence, in addition to mentioning Chicago. They will probably all go to a nice NRA event in a couple of days and their jowls will cease to quiver with rage about the heathen who violated their safe space with the threat of accountability and reality-facing. 

The Good Guys with Guns

 

Ted Cruz proposes armed cops in elementary schools to deter school shootings pic.twitter.com/sJ8B6cf9Xd

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 25, 2022

The cops engaged Salvador Ramos when he crashed his vehicle outside of the elementary school where he murdered 18 children and one teacher--they were good guys with guns, and he was wearing tactical armor. They failed to stop him. The good guy with guns thing fails again and again. There was an armed resource officer at Columbine High School. There was an armed resource officer at Mary Stoneman Douglas High School. Officers were on the scene at Sandy Hook within minutes of Adam Lanza entering the school. The good guy with a gun in Buffalo died because the shooter wore body armor, and he didn't. 

The good guys with guns don't prevent the tragedy, even if they can cut it shorter. It's astonishing to hear the same things, the same untrue things, again and again. The good guy with a gun doesn't come in time. The odds are against it. It's lazy to say something so frequently proven untrue. Isn't Cruz supposed to be some kind of smart person? 

He mentions deterrence. Deterrence. What the fuck? Meanwhile the incumbent TX AG who was indicted for securities fraud like years ago, who just won his recent primary says, man, outlawing guns won't do shit. "You can't stop bad people from doing bad things?"  Deterrence isn't even a real thing. 

And since an indicted MF is the top lawman in Texas, this really feels probable, and also, I don't understand why they outlawed abortion in Texas since obviously, that's still going to happen, not that I think getting abortions are bad, but laws are apparently useless, am I right? So like, why does Paxton even have a job? Since clearly law enforcement is some weird shit that never works. I MEAN, IT OBVIOUSLY DOESN'T IN HIS CASE. 

Did that sound like I'm frustrated with Republicans regarding their dependence on the NRA teat and the not-especially well-regulated militia and militia-curious voting demographic? Well, exactly. 

Colder, Deader

First Thing: how the NRA shot itself in the foot https://t.co/vanqzSI6tO

— The Guardian (@guardian) August 7, 2020

I'm a little late commenting on this one, but it's kind of hard to contribute much more than my "thoughts and prayers". The NRA had been promoting a culture war instead of anything like responsible gun-owner rights or whatever for some time; the organization had become ludicrously partisan, even basically laundering Russian access to GOP campaigns in 2016; they're about as financially bankrupt as morally bankrupt; and last but not least, it looks like as things got worse, the leadership just started looting and are pretty well caught dead-to-rights, you might say. You know things are pretty bad when Oliver North is disgusted at how your illicit slush fund is being run.

So, yeah, I think the 2nd Amendment is better off without corrupt clowns being the ones defending it and I don't even feel a little bit bad.

TWGB: We Could Call it "Floodgate"

This feels like it's going to be one of those weekends where the news just doesn't stop--given the penchant for the media to call scandals by names ending in "-gate", maybe we could call what's going on now, "Floodgate", for the deluge that is now pouring out. 

Regarding TrumpWorld, I've had a little maxim: "It looks bad because it is bad." The White House meeting with Lavrov and Kislyak back in May 2017 looked bad. We knew it was bad when Trump admitted firing Jim Comey to slow the Russia investigation--that was bad! But just now we're hearing that Trump also said that he did not mind Russia meddling in US elections because the US meddles in the elections of other countries. As in, everybody does it, so, um, keep doing it?

It's funny that this part of the conversation never leaked--we were assured instead that the conversation was "wholly appropriate". Maybe Trump convinced people that was a "perfect conversation" too?

This cynical attitude reminds me a lot of how Trump responded to Bill O'Reilly, comparing the United States to Russia, in regards to Putin having journalists killed. He said then "There are a lot of killers. You think our country's so innocent?" As if who doesn't have the odd reporter killed every now and then? Way of the world!  Given the inappropriate things he says in front of a camera with everyone watching, can we really be stunned if his one-on-one interactions are hair-raising?

The White House has known this, apparently since the beginning. We are also now learning that information regarding calls with many world leaders were treated differently after there had been a couple of leaked transcripts. This apparently includes to Vladimir Putin and Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Well, naturally. My best guess for why the air-tight restriction to prevent leaks? It's because they "look bad". And it's because the general situation....is bad.

Memorials to American Carnage

The brutality of this past weekend has an eerie familiarity that is difficult to shake, something like a recurring nightmare. We saw two horrific mass shootings, one committed by a white supremacist, another by, from all appearances, a vicious misogynist. This country has witnessed similar mass shootings over the years from people meeting both of these profiles.  The only really shocking thing was that they happened so closely together, and so soon after a shooting had taken place in California. 

But the proximity shouldn't startle us anymore--the recurring nightmare just keeps recurring. There have been six mass shootings this year in my city, Philadelphia.This past weekend in Chicago, 46 people were shot and 7 were killed. In this country, people can claim the honor of attending more than one mass shooting--survivors of the Las Vegas shooting of 2017 (which had claimed 58 lives) have been present at the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting and at the Thousand Oaks shooting. Multiple generations can claim to have been touched by shooting tragedies. 

Our gun culture, for a high-income nation not ravaged by war, has left us with a unique mass shooting problem.

And yes, I blame gun access, among a few other factors. It isn't mental illness that is causing the problem and it certainly isn't video games. Other countries have video games--they don't have the mass shootings we do. It isn't the lack of "thoughts and prayers" either--as for prayers, less religious nations than ours also have less shootings, and clearly, a barrage of prayers certainly follow each tragic event (although I believe we could stand to see more thoughts). It isn't same sex marriage or violent movies or musicians back-masking Satanic lyrics in the heavy metal albums. Any asshole in this country can amass as much of an arsenal as they want if they put their mind to it, and there are people in this country who consider it that asshole's God-given right to have one. End of story. Countries with stricter laws that make people work harder to amass an arsenal just don't have the same number of assholes potting away at the public. 

We also have a problem with toxic masculinity, and for those not that familiar with the term, don't misunderstand me--men are great. I like them. Men don't have to be toxic--but attitudes about what "makes a man" definitely can be, especially when they are centered on lack of empathy and embrace of violence. That term, fraught as it is, didn't come out of feminism but out of a men's movement to get men in touch with a better understanding of who they are and to break out of harmful stereotypical roles. Roles like needing to dominate women (misogyny) or other men (being an "alpha") are a part of the incel culture that really seems to have fucked with some young men's brains. (And no, women should not be expected to "take one for the team" to give lonely young men something to abuse to keep them from enacting violence on the general population.)  We have a problem when men are seeing violence as a kind of multitool for whatever bug is gnawing at their brainstem. 

There's also our broken political culture where one side (yes, one) simply does not care how inflammatory their rhetoric has become, and seems to have embraced conspiracy theory (like QAnon), white supremacy and genuinely fake news. And while unquestionably, this trend pre-dates Trump--he is not helping!

But the biggest problem we have is denial. We have politicians blame everything but guns, and who chide us not to "politicize" the events, and throw out these useless "thoughts and prayers" that never do anything. How can we avoid dealing with the heart of the shooting issue--the weapon being used? How can we not politicize mass shootings when some of the shooters write political manifestos? And what good are thoughts and prayers if they do not lead to purposeful action? 

The nightmare goes on until everyone wakes up. 

Something's Happening Here

Domestic terrorism in the US has been on the rise. There has been a rise in hate crimes in the US, as well.  The current head of the FBI, Christopher Wray, warns that white supremacist extremism is "a persistent, pervasive threat." 

But how does the Department of Homeland Security respond to this "persistent, pervasive threat" to the security of the US? Why, naturally, they virtually disband the unit of intelligence analysts looking into domestic terrorism. 

Wait? They stop looking into the actual terrorism that is happening right here in the Homeland? Doesn't that sort of sound like exactly the sort of thing Homeland Security should be doing? 

They are too busy not uniting little children with their families when they have been separated at our border, and too busy finding inadequate facilities to hold these people, and too busy tracking the menstrual cycles of teen girls. These things shouldn't seem as important and meaningful to DHS as addressing actual violence and terror head on, and, well, violence and terror are still very near to hand. 

(And I hear you, people who buy Trump's line about MS-13 and tattoos and "not the best people". Did you know gangs in Central America recruit at knife-tip and gunpoint? That even people who are affiliated with crime might have reasons to try and change their life? That some people want "not a life of crime" to be an actual valid choice for themselves?)

A White Power symbol was found near the burned-out Highlander Center.  Three black churches burn in Louisiana. And political figures receive serious threats--former Senator Jeff Flake describes multiple threats to himself and his family. Congressman Eric Swalwell shared a phone message of a death threat.  A man was arrested for threatening to assassinate Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. 

We are seeing a remarkably hate-charged atmosphere, but there is a theme, and it's one I have been seeing for some time--the rhetoric of Trump, and his racist, anti-journalist, anti-democracy views, that have made his red hat a symbol for far-right extremists. Even if not intended as a symbol for terror or hate, it has become a marker for disruption.  There is a reason why Trump superfans at Fox News demonize a congresswoman in a hijab, or regularly spew the exact line of hate regarding "replacement" that the Christchurch shooter used to justify his massacre, that the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter used, that the Charlottesville tiki-torch folks chanted. 

Maybe there is a reason, also, that the NRA supports far-right groups regarding how to manage their message after a massacre. I don't think it's too far-fetched to say that they, too, have become pro-terrorism. 

There is a sickness here born of dehumanization and othering. But it is supported by people who have become perhaps so cynical and nihilistic that they dismiss these terrible signs as just another form of negative political rhetoric, and can't see it for what it is--fascism, here and now.  The people who support this crap are, naturally, as Hannah Arendt would say, banal--grifters, attention-seekers, losers. But their dedicated and destructive mediocrity, inadequately challenged, is simply appallingly dangerous to any kind of democratic and free way of life. 

I am deeply distrustful of what is happening here. 

But if you were to ask certain DHS folks who the real villains were, perhaps they would say Antifa. And they might very well be patted on the head for their service to the state. 

The NRA is About "Gun Safety" You Guys

Someone sent me this image of the latest copy of NRA's magazine, featuring a story with the words "Target Practice" next to a photo of Nancy Pelosi with Gabby Giffords. Maybe don't do this @NRA. pic.twitter.com/u9fQhxwEyk

— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) February 22, 2019

When I saw this Tweet I was reminded of Thomas Ten Bears' comment on my last post about Sarah Palin's crosshairs and the damage done. The potential provocation of that ad campaign was not ever really directly connected to the gun rampage made by Jared Loughner, but to my mind, the idea that the language and imagery could be taken literally and not figuratively has always loomed large not because her particular symbolism was especially egregious or different from far-right discourse, but because of how much it was part of the same militant and culture war (heavy on the war, maybe not so heavy on the culture) and gun-specific references that feature in right wing media altogether. When Sarah Palin sued The New York Times (recently called "an enemy of the people" by Donald Trump) the court dismissed her continued "blood libel" whinge. Apparently, a failure to be treated as a free speech martyr is the worst consequence she will face, and that's fair enough. But an examination of inflammatory discourse seems pretty timely in light of the current environment--the rise in far right wing terrorism and hate crime.

I don't think it's wrong to say that the NRA has evolved from gun safety and education and being a general proponent of second amendment rights, to being a political monster that supports the Republican party (or is just very necessarily supported by Republican candidates because you can't be a real Republican if you aren't NRA cleared, so...) and that NRA rhetoric has gotten very...extra in the digital age. But the connection between the group that explicitly supports the second amendment seems to thrive on its connection to the folks that think they have reasons to stockpile weapons, and that's really concerning. Call it the "Chekhov's gun" of politics--you show people being really concerned about using weapons and buying loads of them in the first act, and you should be expecting them to use them, eventually.

The reason this is exceptionally egregious right now, though, is that the same weapons-stockpiling formerly anti-government violence-oriented types are gravitating to pro-government so long as it's their sort of folks--and the violence they want to bring isn't really good for democracy or peace. I mentioned in my post on Christopher Hasson that Fox News has been talking about civil war, but it's strange to really consider how long they've been at it--years, and how they try to underplay the activities of violent groups even now. (Sooooo not new, though, their acceptance of violence, as they for a bit--I don't think all that recently, though--had G. Gordon Liddy as a Fox News panelist, even though he advocated for the smart use of firearms against G-men, of which he once was one, although to be explicitly honest, not a very good one.)

But to bring this all back around to Trump and his associates, one of the not terribly funny things about the Roger Stone circus is that the guys he has in his circle? Are the alt-right fashy Proud Boys. Your basic Brownshirts reimagined in polos and chinos. I don't rightly know if that flatters PBs or insults them. Meh.

Anyway, the NRA probably laundered Russian money to who knows how many Republican candidates, but somehow are a proto-nationalist front and all they really seem to want is to arm bunches of folks to...fuck some shit up so badly that more guns are always needed. Which is a pretty amazing deviation from the bunch of hunting enthusiasts we used to think the NRA was about back in the day, right?

Also right-wing oriented media is a vector for brain worms and leads to just ridiculous Q-Anon and other assorted bullshit. Lara Logan and other people who say shit like "read Breitbart" should know that lefties do, but only enough to be sick, not enough to get literal brain damage.

TWBG: The Trump Theocracy

One of the things that strikes me as astonishing about Trump's biggest fans is that they may even know that he is actually incurious, ignorant and lazy and basically spends the first five hours of his day watching news shows and Tweeting shitposts but on a spiritual level, they don't care. The real Trump, the one that pays off porn stars or cheats his employees and the government, is nonetheless "good for the evangelicals" that make up a strong part of his base. It reminds me, in a way, of how George W. Bush (in standee form)  was made a literal item of worship for the kids in the documentary "Jesus Camp".

The president may be fake, but the worship is real. Ish.

This is why Trump can assert, in the midst of a flurry of pious falsehoods, that he will never let the folks assembled at the National Prayer Breakfast this past week down. He won't, because they won't let him let them down. They will believe in him, because he is improbable and could only happen if God willed him.  (But then again, folks, some believe God willed Hitler, so...YMMV.) And he can also gaffe and state that people of faith can be celebrated for the "abolition of civil rights".   (But is that just a gaffe, or is it more of a Kinsley gaffe? Because while the modern religious right likes to pretend they always convened over something like, well, the "right to life" , which is nothing to do with the rights of mothers with respect to prenatal health care or maternal mortality or even doctors, nurses, or patients at reproductive health care clinics for whatever reason when harassment, closure, or even terroristic threats and actions may be concerned) but probably has a lot more to do with the kind of white nationalism Trump more or less advertently espouses.

And all of this makes it a fine time to take note of how the National Prayer Breakfast was used to insert Maria Butina into the right wing social circuit because as luck would have it, the RW evangelical set had gotten a bit of a crush on Putin, and well, it was for the kinds of anti-Muslim and anti-gay things you might think. (Consider the relationship of Scott Lively to anti-gay laws elsewhere in the world with Manafort picking Mike Pence to be Trump's running mate--a guy who basically tried to make segregation for LGBT people a thing. This is the religious right in the US influencing and being influenced by an authoritarian current in the world.)  But this sort of thing becomes very awkward when it is revealed that Maria Butina was in favor of arming anti-American, pro-Russian Crimean separatists to be totally acting in self-defense and Paul Manafort was still working on Ukraine politics even after his indictment.

This really makes me wonder to what extent the religious right here in the US is letting their hot buttons about things like LGBT marriage and participation in the military and telling women they are murderers for having fetuses they can't carry to term or will to live even if they desperately wanted to, has them choosing to ignore things like absolutely naked corruption and graft.  And how this lets them ignore detailed documentation of the real money-grubbing connections, soundly and roundly lied about, between Trump and Russia even during the 2016 election.

This isn't even really about how Russian adoptions or the placement of South American children in the care of an agency connected to Betsy De Vos--except it is--about how the religious right concerns (like raising the theocratic children of the future) can influence US policy in ways that immiserate  millions, undermine US democratic institutions, and work with foreign influences that don't have the best interests of our republic at heart whether because of apocalyptic (it doesn't matter because we'll all be dead in the long run" or absolutist (destroying current day America to create a better, more pure tomorrow) reasons.

The Trump Theocracy isn't strictly religious--but it has aspects of a cult, with hidden knowledge (Q Anon) and shunning of family and friends who aren't on board. Reinforcing the god-cult of infallible Trump seems to be an important part of conservatism at the moment, with many Republican figures assumed to be sane mouthing words that make no sense except as respecting Trump as a kind of sacred figure who cannot be criticized. Which is absurd and demeaning--he is a man, elected for a four year term (barely) and can obviously be challenged.

Unless his installation as president had an indispensability for some force, somewhere, that had nothing to do with his actual competency for the job, which still appears to be slight to nonexistent.  But about that, I can only assume this serves the highest bidder based on the swampiness of Trump associations.

TWGB: The Messy Things Called "Details"

Even though I'm just a normal person who waits with bated breath for things like surprise indictments of peripheral Trump/Russia figures or who refreshes Twitter threads about secretive federal Grand Jury hearings like a twitchy addicted lab animal looking for a fix (especially on Fridays), I'm also kind of relieved that Saturday was relatively quiet on the news front, so I could finally catch up with some of the hanging news out there. There are times when taking in Trump World news is a little like trying to drink from a fire hose.

On Thursday, Maria Butina plead guilty to engaging in a conspiracy to infiltrate the political sphere of a certain political party with the goal of influencing US/Russia relations as a foreign agent working in hand with Russian billionaire Alexander Torshin. Some people might quibble over whether political folks who met her through the NRA should have been a little suspicious over whether she was just a little...obvious or whether being an agent of Russia or a spy are different things, but I think The Daily Beast article includes a pretty valuable perspective:

John McLaughlin, former deputy director and acting director of the CIA, described Butina as an example of Russian “espionage lite,” operating openly but hiding the direction and support she got from the Russian government.

Steve Hall, a former CIA chief of Russian operations, said Thursday, "It's my theory that Butina is not actually a staff officer of any Russian intelligence service. She is somebody who has been co-opted by somebody else in the Russian government to do a job."

So maybe not a spy like a "secret agent"--but some kind of agent, anyway.  I kind of suspect her gun rights org was a cut-out but what do I know? But did US people think this back when she was making friends and influencing people--and did they care?  Eh, details!

In other news, we got a further corroboration of the activities of Individual One with respects to Michael Cohen's activities: Donald Trump was in the room with Cohen and AMI's David Pecker when they discussed what to do about Trump's long and winding road vis a vis horndoggery--in August 2015. So the idea that Trump would be making arrangements regarding the silencing of troublesome wenches was not a spur of the moment post TMZ video thing; it was known to Trump that this would be a problem (how big, though--a real quote from Steve Bannon in Wolff's Fire and Fury suggested Trump's other attorney, Marc Kasowitz, handled maybe "a hundred"). It was a part of Trump's entire campaign strategy to minimize a seedy existence (which may entail snorting Adderall and sleazing on underage beauty contestants--stuff which was known about, but never really addressed, by MSM during 2016 when it might have mattered--thanks!) But eh, details!

It also turns out that Paul Manafort, of the maybe kinda/sort of JDA with the Trump defense even since his plea deal and the being too close to Russia to stay on as campaign manager in 2016, but who still shaped the Trump transition, also gave Trump advice about how to discredit the lawful investigation of his activities by the FBI. Who would have thought? But there was so much suggestion of obstructing justice and lying to create a bad opinion about the FBI's work. And it really seems in retrospect like this is what Trump did--with a will! Take the regular snipes against McCabe (who offended Trump I guess because of the opening of an obstruction of justice investigation that was totally well-deserved?) and the low-hanging fruit of the Strzok/Page relationship, which, while interesting, never resulted in any leaks from their Clinton investigation or from their general distaste for Trump, and never actually resulted in any out of the way cover-up by the FBI of their texts. Some RW pundits are maintaining that the standard resetting of returned electronic devices to factory specs (as is procedural) was somehow a "wiping" (great shades of the "acid-washing" of Hillary Clinton's emails!) of damaging material--but no. Information was recovered because that is how data retention works. But eh, details!

TWGB: She's a Real Pistol and He's a Son of a Gun

The new pleading from Maria Butina in the Trump/Russia, changing her admission of guilt from "not guilty" to "guilty", with the potential of a cooperation agreement, is apt to be down-played and misunderstood, and I definitely understand why. Butina was apparently very good at making friends and influencing people and a catalog of Google images with her and numerous different people in the Republican milieu  is uncomfortable extensive....to conservatives. Among people she has met with--Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal. Meh. Donald Trump, Jr. 

Wait a minute. Donald Trump, Jr.? It sort of seems that Maria Butina's status as an agent of Russia falls somewhere between Anna Chapman (who her handler indicates she may have "upstaged") and Natalya Veselnitskaya. I don't think it's far-fetched to consider her status as "spy"--she apparently successfully and intentionally infiltrated a known very conservative-oriented social political group with the intent of coming into the orbit of prominent political figures. Making kissy-faces at NRA politics has been a big part of the Republican party for yonks. 

And of course, people meet people and have all kinds of interesting international contacts all the time. But there is reason to believe Russian money got funneled through the NRA to the Republican party, and that the NRA illegally coordinated with the Trump campaign. A very worrisome thing is that the first introduction we have to Maria Butina regarding the 2016 GOP race is in 2015.   Meaning Russia already, before the primary had taken off in earnest, had an interest in Trump (which could have developed in 2013, or 2011, or thirty years ago--this is how far back Trump has had Russian involvement in his affairs).

And yet, Trump wants to allege that somehow, the connections are only being drawn to himself and Russia because he won the 2016 election. Not even close. The timeline on the investigation into the DNC hack started well before Trump ever won. But in the meanwhile, at least 16 Trump associates have been found to have been contacted by Russia, which is more than the "zero" he once claimed, and certainly his very own family's contacts should have been known to him. Not in the least because his family and immediate associates are a terribly chatty lot.

I mean, is it even coincidental that potential front-running AG pick, William Barr, who has written such favorable things about Trump's defense and delusions was previously contacted by Trump prior to his pick for AG as a possible attorney for Trump's defense? (Which would be a very good reason, were he to take the job as AG, to promise to recuse, that sort of thing being very ethically troubling. But I think he's a throwback nutter in several ways, so who knows what he'd do?)

In the also "funny, but that likely merits a recusal" vein, Jared Kushner (last seen bucking up Prince MbS from the "just killed a guy and got caught" doldrums) had met with acting AG Matt "Hot Tub Time Machine Bigfoot DNA Big Dick Toilets" Whitaker, and presumably sipped tea and didn't mention at all the shit he was liable to be indicted for. Because why would that even come up. right?

And this is why people like Nick "Silver Spoons looking got $50 million from consulting and shit MF" Ayers does not even want to be WH COS, even if that would be a really cherry thing to put on the old resume in one's mid-thirties. But the job is poison, now. Being a Trump-wrangler is not worth it, even with hazard pay. Even Mark Meadows has too much sense (as of last I checked).

I have said it before, but it stays current: This looks bad because it is bad. The Trump Administration has to throw lies after other lies are proved to be wrong, because the truth is not good. Other members of the GOP defend this for reason I can not fathom at this point, unless there is also leverage against them (real or imagined).

But the overall picture: not good. And among the potential casualties, the NRA now wonders if they are not able to survive, and are cutting things like NRATV "talent".

To which I say: "Good".

This is Another Time to Understand Why Some Kneel

Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford, Jr. was killed, not on a foreign battlefield, but by officers responding to reports of a mall shooting. He was armed, but had not been the person they were looking for. They simply thought he looked like he could have been. 

There is a lot of signifying foolishness we have to listen to regarding the use of guns in the US. We hear about the "good guy with a gun" who is supposed to stop a murderous rampage with lightning reflexes and his trusty iron. But we know this can go wrong--this month, security guard Jemel Roberson was exactly that person: the good guy with a gun, who stopped a shooting from becoming worse. And he was fatally shot. 

I don't know that what we are looking at with respects to officer-involved fatalities is necessarily explicitly or exclusively racial. I can see cases like that of Richard Black, Jr., a veteran who was shot by police having used his weapon in self defense, as an example of skin tone being no salvation. I understand that police ROE has sometimes become excessively "shoot-first" based because of training like "Bulletproof warrior".

We are not safer, as a society, if the people charged with keeping the peace, keep it by sacrificing others from fear, rather than respecting the call to serve and protect from trained strength. (Which could maybe do with better marksmanship.) And where we accept stunningly weak justifications for officer-involved shootings, we damage the reputation of those who are dutiful. I'm not persuaded that this is a simple issue at all--but I do think we suffer from a romantic, mythic view about guns, and about policing.

We need to explode the myths we have with a cold dose of reality, and that means being real about race and the access to firearms as drivers of violence, and discuss why zero tolerance for racism and less of a romantic view of guns are more stable points of view. I'm not for gun-grabbing, but for changing the idea that firearms are a kind of multitool for making everything or anything right, when other means might suffice.

But when those who currently serve or who are vets here have survived battlefields and yet find violent ends at the hands of our justice officers, we have a situation where the kneeling is for them, not against them (nota bene: it was never against them). Many of our vets are disabled and/or unhoused, which makes them populations that experience violence at greater rates. We can and should do better and expect better on their behalf.

Not Too Jaded, This TrumpWorld Grab-Bag

In a way, I feel a little trepidation stepping back into doing a TrumpWorld Grab-Bag blogpost, because they are pretty obsessive. It requires paying a lot of attention to little stories and trying to weave them together, which I don't necessarily have the time to do that I once did. I don't have any specialized knowledge (like, you know, legal stuff) or connections or insider tidbits. But I do read a shit-ton of news, and this is the internet, and I have one of those weird brains that likes sorting out details. Of course, I haven't done this for simply months.

And yet! One thing I have gained from my self-imposed vacation is that I have rested the little grey cells and am a bit less jaded than some Mueller/Russia investigation observers.  There were any number of Twitterati who were of the very strong opinion that surely, with the elections a fait accompli, Robert Mueller would now be handing out indictments like so much Halloween candy, certainly by Friday of this week.  Now that we are on the other side of midnight from Friday, the lack of a Don Jr. perp-walk (which seems like too much to ask of the times we live in, but people will dream!) might seem anticlimactic, but as for me, things continue to look pretty interesting.

For one thing, Trump basically fired his AG Jeff Sessions, largely because he never understood that by recusing from the Russia investigation, Session was doing him a solid. The President appears to suffer from the appalling idea that public servants are his servants, and doesn't entirely grasp that they give an oath to the Constitution, not to him, and clearly believed that Sessions' job was to be involved in limiting, ending, or waylaying the Comey investigation (at first) to help Trump. However, if Trump was ever to get any inkling that there are proprieties to be observed, the fallout from firing former FBI director Comey should have been a lesson in "what not to do". To wit: Trump fires Jim Comey for "reasons", partially because he claims the Clinton email investigation was handled badly, and had Sessions and Rosenstein fig leaf that justification with letters that sound serious enough, and then blows that reason up in a nationally-viewed interview with Lester Holt. (He also tells a few Russians, in a particularly stupid way.) And that is how he ended up with a Special Counsel. 

So how does he go about the firing of his AG this time out? Well, for one thing, he picks a very Trump-sympathetic hack (Bigfoots! Time travel hot-tubs! Massive hog toilets!) and then lets it be known he basically picked this person because he was a Trump-sympathetic hack. This might be construed, even to a layperson like myself, like even more obstruction of justice. (Like the Sally Yates, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, etc., things.) But then he has so little idea that what he is doing is abusive of justice, he just says what he did!

Meanwhile, the Mueller investigation does it's quiet and necessary work, despite obstacles. For one thing, an indictment made by Mueller's team against a Russian troll farm was upheld by a Trump-appointed judge. This is good news. (For another bit of good news this week, another Trump appointed judge ordered CNN reporter Jim Acosta's WH hard pass be restored, in a pretty refreshing victory for the 1st Amendment and reminder of judicial independence. )  Of note is that the indictment was about conspiring to defraud the US government. Free speech is one thing, but there are applications of speech that are by no means acceptable--for a recent example, the harassment of a Jewish woman by white supremacists was found not to be covered. 

Another interesting detail is the likely charges against Julian Assange of Wikileaks, which also carries potential First Amendment concerns. Nonetheless, the involvement of Wikileaks in disseminating Russian-obtained federal information specifically to act against the US government (specifically, the security of it's democratic elections) potentially at the direction of a foreign entity (Russia) seems like it supersedes straightforward First Amendment concerns. And that's something they kind of seem to have been doing. I don't know if, for example, Maria Butina's discussed plea deal will reveal information that enlightens us about that side of the operation, but on the "connections to GOP operatives" side of the equation, Roger Stone was apparently in the loop regarding what Wikileaks had and was dropping, and also, maybe, waste of protein Jerome Corsi (known for "Swiftboating" and "Birtherism"--two terms that never should have been entered into the American lexicon) both appear to have had relations with that man, Julian Assange (as had Dana Rohrabacher, with human hairy nevus Charles C. Johnson in his train--who also might be a yet another link to a potential Don Jr perp-walk fantasy, and Nigel Farage, who acted as if he always sometimes dropped by the Ecuadoran embassy for no particular reason).

But of people who Mueller seems to have dead-to-rights from the Trump campaign as having been all up in some kind of skullduggery, it is interesting to me that sentencing is delayed for Rick Gates and there has been an extension in reporting on the status of Paul Manafort's plea agreement. One really cool interpretation of this is that they are both being so very helpful. So. Very. Helpful. To the investigation. Which seems truer when you consider both those things in tandem, but I would guess anything further might be delayed until after Thanksgiving--

And I don't even mind! Because I am not jaded, and am genuinely interested in how all of this shakes out!