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Archives for January 2017

Drinking Liberally — Seattle

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DLBottleHere we are, a mere 11 days into the Трамп administration, and things don’t seem to be going well. For anyone. It is time for a drink! So join us tonight for an evening of resistance and venting over a drink of choice at this week’s Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally

We meet every Tuesday at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. You’ll find us in the small room at the back of the tavern beginning about 8pm.




Can’t make it to Seattle? Check out one of the other 199 chapters of Living Liberally, including ninteen in Washington state, three in Oregon and one in Idaho. Find, or go out and start, a chapter near you.

Open Thread 30, Jan

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Another weekend another massive protest against the horror of the Trump administration. The SeaTac and Westlake protests against the anti-refugee, anti-immigrant garbage. It’s going to be tough to maintain it throughout 4 years. But for now it is very heartening to see, and to be a part of these.

There will be more loses than victories for liberals over the next few years. And the victories will often times be things like people who shouldn’t have been detained at all are allowed to go about their lives.

Mutinyblogging – The Final Misfire

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“It lists Hitler as a fairly stable veteran of the Great War.” – Crow T. Robot

About a decade ago, I wrote a series of posts inspired by quotes from the legendary MST3K movie ‘Space Mutiny’. In the mid-00s, something about that terrible 80s movie, a rebellion on a spaceship being put down by a single muscle-bound hero, resonated with our relatively new “war on terror”. I wrote five posts about random topics – now banished to the internet memory hole – but there was supposed to be a sixth.

The post was meant to be the finale of the series – about Godwin’s Law and the mountains of shitty Hitler comparisons that passed for political discourse at the time. But it was also supposed to be about the realization that sometimes the comparison fits and we shouldn’t be afraid to make it. I never finished it…fuck that, I never really even started it. Trying to put parameters around when you can and can’t make a Hitler comparison quickly felt like an insane undertaking. And I’m a goddamn engineer, well aware that no one reads the shit I write anyway.

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A recent article in Politico about Russia has introduced me to an interesting term – “reflexive control”. The idea behind reflexive control is that you can condition people to act a certain way if you repeatedly put them on the defensive about doing the opposite. The example cited in that article is about the post-Cold War era, and how years of Russians accusing the west of wanting to revive the Cold War has caused westerners to reflexively to rule out the possibility entirely, lest they prove the Russians were correct all along.

I’m not totally convinced this happens as a matter of manipulation, but instead as a matter of hardened principle. The same thing can be said for all kinds of military undertakings right now. Many Americans have become reflexively against any kind of heavy involvement in actual ground combat anywhere in the world. The puppeteers driving that reflex aren’t any set of nefarious people who gain from our pacifism, they’re the never-ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a belief that these regional conflicts aren’t worth the deaths of American lives. We have a similar reflex to any politician who declares a war on drugs. This reflex isn’t conditioned by advocates trying to keep us from fighting it, it’s from the grim awareness that it backfires with all sorts of unintended consequences.

There’s also some reflexive control that drives the way we regard Godwin’s Law, and the desire to point out parallels to a time when democracy collapsed. It’s seen as a form of intellectual laziness and hyperbole to draw parallels between 1930s Germany and today. But I think now more than ever, we need to look to that time to have better context over the present, to be able to draw both parallels and contrasts.

A lot of scholarly articles have pointed at that Donald Trump isn’t a Fascist. It’s true. Fascism is a movement with a very narrow definition that many scholars think *only* applies to the movements under Mussolini and Hitler. Even movements that seemed similar enough had subtle differences in culture and style that made it not quite fit the label. By that narrow definition, Trump and his rabid follows aren’t truly Fascist, but that’s not to say there aren’t some pretty strong parallels that matter.

Reading through Volker Ullrich’s biography of Hitler, one of the many things that jumps out is how clear Hitler was about what he believed, yet how difficult it was for people to accept that his base motivations were genuine and that he’d follow through. The nationalism that drove his movement was fueled by a growing belief that Jews and other outsiders were parasites weakening the state from the inside. Disastrous economic conditions in the 20s and 30s caused that sentiment to spiral out of control, but the base sentiment that sank German democracy and drove the world towards war was a broad sentiment that multiculturalism was a cancer making Germany weak.

Michiko Kakutani’s review of Ullrich’s biography called out a number of other striking parallels that the book makes clear – Hitler’s narcissism, his stunning dishonesty, and his ability to play to crowds and appeal to the basest instincts of his followers. Trump’s campaign was also eerily similar to early Nazi rhetoric around cultural decay and the hope for national rebirth. So was their open disdain of a so-called “liberal media”. But it’s the backlash against a multicultural, socially tolerant, America that’s the cornerstone of the entire movement and the parallel that should concern us the most.

A number of the people that Trump has pulled into his inner circle – from Bannon to Flynn to Sessions – have a long record of projecting pathological anxiety over America’s increasing diversity. And his campaign drew support from all sorts of dark corners of America’s network of hate groups. His blanket portrayals of Mexicans as criminals, black communities as dangerous hellscapes, and Muslims as an existential threat to the west might seem like clownish rhetoric. But these sentiments have broader appeal than we like to admit, and even worse, they were not seen as disqualifying by an even larger subset of voters. Just as too many people ignored Hitler’s anti-Semitism as a mere side-show, we can’t do the same with Trump and his clearly bigoted worldview. As we learned back then, the anti-Semitism wasn’t just a side-show, it ended up being the main fucking feature.

But beyond that, it’s obvious that Trump himself is no Hitler or Mussolini. They’re very different people who took very different paths to their political success. Hitler was a failed art student who was briefly homeless as a young man before signing up to fight with the German army in WWI. Mussolini was a staunch socialist before taking his ultra-nationalist turn. Trump was a man born into extreme wealth who had a long life of fame and comfort before finally getting into politics. That’s not to say that there’s no concern about what Trump will eventually do, but that it’d be foolish to expect everything over the next few years to play out in a similar fashion to what happened in Europe nearly a century ago. Other extreme nationalist movements over the years have failed miserably in other places, including the United States. America’s democratic institutions, our wealthy urban areas, our open technology, and our culture of strident individualism gives us a better set of tools for taking on this kind of threat.

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The first full week of the Trump Administration has done nothing but reinforce all of this. They’ve signed an executive order to build a pointless wall along the Mexican border and threatened tariffs as a way to pay for it. Trump continues to insist without any evidence that vote tallies in areas with large numbers of minorities are illegitimate. They’re re-orienting the State Department to deal more with Islamic terrorism. He casually threatened on Twitter to send federal troops into Chicago to deal with homicides after being triggered by a Bill O’Reilly segment. They plan to publish a regular report of crimes committed by illegal immigrants, something the Nazi’s did with Jews in the 1930s. They continue to insist that the media is dishonest and untrustworthy, as they tell outlandish lies. And yesterday, Trump signed a ban on nationals from 7 predominantly Muslim countries entering the US, even those who’ve risked their lives for American troops. This should set off alarms for anyone with even a passing knowledge of history, not just of Fascism, but of any type of nationalist authoritarian rule.

The next few years are going to be rough, but America has defeated this shit before. MLK said “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” I picture it more as a slowly rising sine curve, and we’re on a downslope. A large segment of this country is willing to believe that up is down and black is white merely because they hear it from powerful people who share their deepest fears about our increasingly multicultural society. It’d be extremely naive to believe that there won’t be a lot of collateral damage from all this. There will be. The Trump Administration will go after the most marginalized first and dare us to speak up for them. This compels us to stand up and be counted, and stay firm in our affirmation of the American democratic values of pluralism and tolerance.

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Mental Floss: 38 facts about NASA.

Bill Maher: WTF is going on?

The Thin-skinned, Putin-puppet, Sociopath, Sexual Assaulter-in-Chief.

Ezra Klein: Democrats won the most votes. Why aren’t they acting like it?.

VSauce: The Brachistochrone.

Sisters March:

Bill Maher: New Rule.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Open Thread January 27

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While I’ve had problems with Mayor Murray before, I have to say, his stance on keeping Seattle a sanctuary city has been pretty great. The federal money could be a hit in places. But it’s not even near as bad as turning the city into an arm of Trump’s anti-immigrant goon squad.

I was also heartened to read the outlines of a legal strategy. I’m not a lawyer, but Trump’s usual strategy of bullying people with an incentive to settle probably won’t work as well in this case. Our elected officials have a much greater incentive to fight him.

In the mean time, I’m all for creative ways to make up the money.

More Letters

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A while ago, I wrote my Seattle elected officials asking to keep Seattle a sanctuary city. Now here’s one asking my legislators (find yours here) to keep, and hopefully improve our health care system:

I don’t know exactly how Donald Trump and the GOP Congress plan to change healthcare in America, but I’m urging you to make sure Washington residents still have access to healthcare after the Republican Congress repeals Obamacare. I hope that means a health care exchange, and I would love to see a public option included in that. Or if you can find the votes, just universal health care.

If Congress allows sales across state lines, I would hope we sell a public option as widely as possible. Without a motive to skim off the top, it might be able to make money for the state and provide better health care for the rest of the country.

Thank you,

Carl Ballard

HorsesAss.org

Drinking Liberally — Seattle

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DLBottleDid you know that each month more people attend their local chapter of Drinking Liberally than attended Trump’s entire inauguration? That’s a true “alternative fact.” Please join us tonight for an evening of administration heckling and resistance at this week’s meeting of the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally

We meet every Tuesday at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. You’ll find us in the small room at the back of the tavern beginning about 8pm.




Can’t make it to Seattle? Check out one of the other 199 chapters of Living Liberally, including ninteen in Washington state, three in Oregon and one in Idaho. Find, or go out and start, a chapter near you.

Open Thread 1-23

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Well, the Womxns March in Seattle was a grand success. Great crowds, amazing energy. You can see some great pictures at the link above or the hashtag on Twitter.

I will note 2 things: First off, it was pretty white. You can “Imeanit’sSeattle” it if you want. And it was certainly more diverse than a lot of protests and marches I’ve been to. But it is worth noting.

The other thing, I was thinking was that the only 2 other protests I’ve seen of a similar magnitude were WTO and the Anti-Iraq war ones. While they were both important, and probably had many positive long-term reverberations, they didn’t succeed in their initial goals. I hope that’s a note of let’s keep working rather than of despair.

#WomensMarch

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Across the U.S. today, people are marching in support of women. Why? Because we now have a government run by assholes who are openly hostile to women.

Exhibit one: The pussy-grabber-in-chief. That’s right, we are living in bizarro-world where the so-called leader openly boasts about using his position to sexually assault women or walk in on young women changing clothes at their workplace. It’s disgusting.

Americans are responding:

Women’s marches across the U.S. (@billmckibben)

Women’s march brings far more people to D.C. than Drumpf’s inauguration. Sad!

Here in Seattle we have the “Womxn’s March on Seattle” that starts with a rally at Judkins Park, followed by a march to Seattle Center at 11am. Something like 30,000 people are expected to participate. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is an underestimate.

Judkins Park (@KIRO7Seattle)

Judkins Park (@fwd2utopia)

To join the demonstration, check out this information.

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Trevor with Cecile Richards: The high cost of defunding Planned Parenthood.

Rick Perry’s “oops!” moment with Sen. Al Franken.

2016: Warmest year on record.

And the Justice Said to the Philandering Sociopath, “You’re In!”

Bill Maher with Jimmy Kimmel: Bill’s number one concern.

What you need to know about the 2018 Senate landscape.

With Grace and Humility, Obama Departs:

Presidential Training Video.

Ezra Klein: Republicans have one major problem on ObamaCare.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

#OPENTHREAD

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The Republican Senate, and particularly Matt Manweller, are sure into local control. Let the locality make its own decisions, they say. You wouldn’t want the state to micromanage where it’s not even their business.

You know what, I can’t keep this joke going. It’s pretty bad, but their desire to not let Seattle do commercial rent control is bad policy on its own. And hypocrisy is the laziest charge in politics.

Also, when a literal socialist cares more about small business than the freemarketwillsolveeverything guy, it’s time to just ignore labels.

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