Convicted Felon Picks "Never-Trump Guy" for Veep

I think that I’m going to vote third party because I can’t stomach Trump.  I think that he’s noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place.

--J. D. Vance, 

NPR "Fresh Air"

August 17, 2016

The words quoted were spoken when Trump was making his first run for the Presidency. Vance is now the junior Republican senator from Ohio, who began his political career just 18 months ago in January 2023 and today was formally named the vice-presidential candidate at the Republican convention in Milwaukee.  

Vance's remarkable rise from childhood poverty to Yale Law School to author and journalist to the heights of national politics is very well documented in his Wikipedia article as well as today's report on his nomination by the Associated Press.  I recommend these sources to all my truckbuddies for reading and reflection.

In 2016, Vance repeatedly condemned Trump harshly.  But by 2021, Vance had become one of Trump's staunchest supporters.  Now what on earth could make a smart guy like that do a total 180?  I wonder.  I highly recommend watching the following reports by Rachel Maddow and by Nicolle Wallace on Vance's stunning transformation from outspoken never-Trumper to toady-in-chief:

And if there's still any question in your mind where Vance stands, check out this New York Times report from last December that begins, "When a historian wrote an essay the other day warning that the election of former President Donald J. Trump next year could lead to dictatorship, one of Mr. Trump’s allies quickly responded by calling for the historian to be sent to prison."  Yep, it was Senator Vance - himelf a published book author and writer for the likes of CNN and the NYT -  who wanted a fellow writer thrown in jail merely for daring to suggest that the divine DJT could ever possibly become a dictator.  Perish the thought.

Who's really on the side of democracy here, and who's all for dictatorship, hmm?

For another perspective on the crisis in American politics, listen to the remarks by former U.S. Representative (R-Ill.) Adam Kinzinger on the Stephen Colbert show earlier this evening:

Part 2 of 3 - remarks about Vance

While in Congress, Kinzinger was an outspoken critic of Trump - one of the very few Republicans who had the guts to call a spade a spade - and served as one of the two Republican members on the January 6 Committee that conducted an exhaustive inquiry into Trump's failed self-coup in 2021.

And just for laughs, though it is no laughing matter, you could read this dimwitted opinion piece (or plain old propaganda?) by a completely cluleless Guardian contributor in the UK:  

Blue MAGA:  We Need to Talk about the Cult-like Turn of the Democratic Party.

That's as Orwellian a wordfuck as I ever saw:  black is white, white is black, and 2 + 2 = 5.  Sad!

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Nightmare World: Facebook Wants Your Bank Account

I'll be honest with you, fellas:  Much as I try to keep a stiff upper lip about the decay of civilization, there are days when any attempt at optimism seems hopeless, and the vision of a nightmare world that surpasses anything Orwell ever dreamed of seems not merely imminent, but already present.

Facebook is not your friend, despite the happy college-kid face it presents to the world.  They now want to "partner" with banks to "improve customer service" and "benefit the consumer."  If you believe that, you are a fool.  It's a business, a huge, sprawling, corporation without a human soul.  A corporation is a machine to make money with - like any tool, it can be used for good or ill purposes.  But what all corporations want is to increase their stock prices and dividends, and too many corporate leaders tend not to care if any and all consumers get screwed in the process - hey, too bad, it's progress, wheeeee!

"Privacy" notice I got a few days ago from Google.  Even what your or I watch on YouTube or what places we look up on Google Maps are all tracked under the unceasing, unblinking eye of Big Brother, and filed in his unforgetting, ineradicable memory.  
If Google can follow your every stray thought, who else can too?  And is?

I could go on and on and on about the madness that has engulfed us all in the last 25 years since the advent of the Internet - and even though some antisocial types, like me, have never joined Facebook, there are who knows how many other companies, like Google, and countless little ones nobody ever heard of, all busily digging into everyone's privacy every minute of every hour of every day.  There is in fact no privacy left in the world for anyone, except maybe for some of those lost tribes in the Amazon jungle, and even their remote little world is being steadily invaded.

And it's not merely things that you think of as data-sharing sites.  There's also the ghastly Internet of Things, which to put it another way, means that your car, your refrigerator, your dishwasher, your microwave, and just about any other electronic gadget can in fact be made to spy on you and report everything you do, every word you say, and how you spend every second of your life, waking or sleeping.

From "sponsored content" about harvesting your privacy from the Internet of Things at Politico, 7/16/18.  Click to enlarge.

And every utility - electricity, gas, water - is produced, distributed, and metered by mini-minds that can also be misdirected or shut down.

And furthermore, every last one of those devices, in your home, or at the power plant, can be unlocked and controlled, probably, by some teenage hacker down the street or some spymaster on the other side of the world, with a few taps on a keyboard.

Just last year, somebody in Dallas broadcast a radio signal that activated all 156 of the city's tornado alarms, an amazing feat of digital malevolence.  Lily Hay Newman reported for Wired:

The Dallas incident fits with the broader uptick in infrastructure hacks around the country. From electric road signs to emergency text alert systems to suburban dams, hackers have targeted vulnerable structures with increasing boldness. And while the Dallas sirens did have some alarming secondary effects—over 4,000 calls to 911 flooded the city's emergency response lines for several hours—it's nothing next to the real danger that hacks like these could cause.

"There’s a steady drumbeat of these types of attacks and they’re all pretty benign right now, but what’s next? Is it water? Is it sewage?" says Chris Pogue, the chief information security officer at the data analysis firm Nuix. "Let’s not waste the potential lessons learned by saying it’s an isolated incident."

I don't want to be part of this nightmare.  And I don't want to be part of this ugly, vulgar, hate-filled century, which I'm afraid will one day make the horrors of the 20th century look like a Sunday-school picnic.  But what can any of us do now?  We walked into the enticing trap of the Internet willingly, all unsuspecting, and now the doors are closing on us, it seems.  One day, sooner than you think, Siri and Alexa and other talking boxes will not be optional - they will be required in every home.  Maybe even in every brain.  And then the last hope of resistance - of truly independent human personality - will have vanished.

And it won't be fresh-faced, innocent-looking types like Mark Zuckerberg pulling your strings.  It will be the ruthless, power-hungry leaders of the left or right - when they have a good grip on you with the ruthless digital hand, it won't much matter which side they are.

You may say, "Oh, Russ, you're just being melodramatic, don't get so excited, just chill."  Well, okay, boys - if you all don't think there's any danger to worry about, you just sit back and relax.  While you can.

But when a day comes that your bank balance is zeroed out, your credit cards too, and your car won't start, and you have no electricity - unless you do as you are told - for gosh sakes, don't come whine to me about it, "Oh I never dreamed this could happen."

It can.  Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

You have been warned.


P. S. -- Of course, I could be wrong. So was Orwell, so was Bradbury, so was Forster, so was Wells, and so were a lot of other writers who have rung the alarm bells about present trends and coming events, if you look only only at the small details of what they prophesied.  I don't have the talent for spinning a fascinating yarn as they did, either.

Nevertheless, no one doubts that they were right to sound a warning.  Forewarned is forearmed.

What Fascism Looks Like

Andrew Sullivan's been all but silent on the Obama-DOMA crisis; he's in his glory, reporting on the Iranian uprising, and is doing a helluva job keeping readers informed.

He posted this video today of a gang of masked militia, government agents, beating the living hell out of a defenseless demonstrator:

Sullivan says about this, all he can think of is Orwell (from Nineteen Eighty-Four):

There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless.

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.

Also found on Sullivan's site, a link to this moving story by an Iranian man in Tehran:

What I saw today was the most elegant scene I had ever witnessed in my life. The huge number of people were marching hand in hand in full peace. Silence. Silence was everywhere. There was no slogan. No violence. Hands were up in victory sign with green ribbons. People carried placards which read: Silence. Old and young, man and woman of all social groups were marching cheerfully. This was a magnificent show of solidarity. . . .

I felt proud to find myself among such a huge number of passionate people who were showing the most reasonable act of protest. Frankly, I didn't expect such a political maturity from emotional Iranians who easily get excited. My family and I had put stickers on our mouths to represent the suppression. Placards that people carried were different; from poems by the national poet Ahmad Shamlu to light-hearted slogans against Ahmadinejad. Examples include: 'To slaughter us/ why did you need to invite us / to such an elegant party" (Poem by Shamlu).'

We arrived in Azadi Square where the entire square was full of population. It is said that around 500,000 people can be accommodated in this huge square and it was full. Suddenly we saw smoke from Jenah Freeway and heard the gunshot. People were scared at first but then went forward. I just heard the gunshots but my sister who had been on the scene at that part told me later that she saw 4 militia came out from a house and shot a girl. Then they shot a young boy in his eye and the bullet came out of his ear. She said that 4 people were shot. At least one person dead has been confirmed. People arrested one of the Baseeji militia but the three others ran away when they ran out of bullet. . . .

Since yesterday, the Iranian TV was announcing that there is no license for any gathering and riot police will severely punish anybody who may demonstrates. Ahmadinejad called the opposition as a bunch of insignificant dirt who try to make the taste of victory bitter to the nation. He also called the western leaders as a bunch of 'filthy homosexuals'. All these disgusting remarks was today answered by that largest demonstration ever. Older people compared the demonstration of today with the Ashura Demonstration of 1979 which marks the downfall of the Shah regime and even said that it outnumbered that event.

The militia burnt a house themselves to find the excuse to commit violence. People neutralized their tactic to a large degree by their solidarity, their wisdom and their denial to enage in any violent act. I feel sad for the loss of those young girls and boys. It is said that they also killed 3 students last night in their attack at Tehran University residence halls. I heard that a number of professors of Sharif University and AmirKabir University (Tehran Polytechnic) have resigned.

Democracy is a long way ahead. I may not be alive to see that day. With eyes full of tear in these early hours of Tuesday 16th June 2009, I glorify the courage and bravery of those martyrs and I hope that their blood will make every one of us more committed to freedom, to democracy and to human rights. Viva Freedom, Viva Democracy, Viva Iran.

On a lighter note, check out this brilliant photoshop job of the Mouse That Roared.

Where to Go from Here?

It's very late here - I'm hungry, I'm tired, and I'm tired of thinking about the enormous betrayal of my faith by a man I believed in.

It seems very familiar, somehow.

When you meet a boy that you like a lot
And you fall in love, but he loves you not,
If a flame should start while you hold him near
Better keep your heart out of danger, dear.

For the way of love is a way of woe . . .

Oh hell, I could say a lot about that scenario. And this one, which is just like it. But I want my supper, I want to watch a movie, my head's foggy and a little achy. So I'll just say this.

Seems as if in the past few days, we've all come to realize we were defrauded; not just by Obama, but by the Democrats in general.

And I've always, all my life, voted the Democratic ticket. But ya know, guys, when you keep tricking with the same kind of guy, and it keeps turning out the same damn way every time, that's kinda stupid to keep going on like that and expecting different results, don't you think?

What I'm seeing is not what I thought the Democratic party was all about: it's Republican Lite. Same old make-nice, and don't-rock-the-boat, and be-calm-and-just-wait.

To quote David Mixner, I say Bullshit.

The two-party system has worked for a long time; we could argue over how well it's worked in various ways, but what I can say for a certainty is that it's not working for me, not like we've just seen in the past week.

So why don't we stop the madness and create a new party that will meet the needs of liberal, progressive, fair-minded people?

If all this had happened at a younger, more hotblooded time in my life, I'd be ready to raise the red flag now and go the Socialist route. Never thought I'd say that, it goes against every instinct of my Southern upbringing; but I've come to realize that my Southern upbringing was for shit, politically speaking.

But age does bring wisdom born of experience. I don't want to blow up the building, though, I want to shore it up and renovate it, make it livable. And like Orwell, I have an innate contempt and horror of "smelly little orthodoxies" that sound good but like cheap toilet paper, fall apart just when you rely on them most.

The Libertarians have never appealed to me in the least as something I could support; yeah I agree most of the time most people should just be left the hell alone, live and let live. But the Libertarians that I've read seem to go way to far with that thought; the stupid notion that if you just take away all the nasty laws, everybody will just naturally do the right thing.

FAIL. That's exactly what the Republicans let Big Business do these last 20-some years, and you see where that has gotten us.

What I do believe is what the ancient Greeks said: excellence is the middle way (the Golden Mean) between excess on either side.

I don't expect any man, woman, party, or government ever to produce Utopia here on earth. It's just not happening; humans are a flawed mixture of both good and evil - me, you, everybody. Anything, anything whatever that we create is also going to be a mixture of good and bad.

But within the confines of the rule of law and the wisdom of the Founding Fathers, I do have a glimmer of a vision of a much more just, more fair, more equal, more compassionate society. Perfection is not to be looked for, but a great improvement certainly can be made.

I'm looking for a party that will seek to make government work for more people's benefit; that is highly tolerant of individual freedoms, and uses the power of government not to run everything in sight, but to wisely regulate the agents of prosperity and well-being.

Well it's too late at night for me to wade further into these philosophical waters, and I know mine is just a lone voice crying into the wind here. But I hope maybe one or two of you who read this will think about a real alternative to the current parties, a workable, embraceable alternative. Read more about the possibilities. Talk about it with a friend or two.

They say a butterfly fluttering its wings in the jungles of Brazil can start a motion that produces a hurricane in the Atlantic, theoretically. At least that's an intriguing theory. So who knows where my little thought my lead, somewhere, sometime.

For a start, look at what the New Democratic Party in Canada stands for, and see if that's more to your liking than what the major parties here are handing out. The NDP has never run the federal government up there, but they do control several provincial legislatures, and they are very gay-friendly, among other things. Think about it:

The NDP grew from populist, agrarian and democratic socialist roots. While the party is secular and pluralistic, it has a longstanding relationship with the Christian left and the Social Gospel movement, particularly the United Church of Canada. However, the federal party has broadened to include concerns of the New Left, which advocates issues such as gay rights, peace, and environmental protection.

New Democrats today advocate, among other things:

- Sweeping environmental protection
- National water safety standards
- Increasing corporate taxes
- Reducing poverty in Canada
- Human rights protection
- Expanded high-quality public transportation
- Public health care including expanded dental and prescription drug coverage,
- Social assistance policies that reflects citizens' needs and assists their re-entry to the work force
- Gender equality and equal rights for gays, lesbians, and minorities
- Abolish the un-elected Senate and ensure more proportional representation
- Workers' rights including raising the minimum wage to at least keep up with the cost of living
- Aboriginal treaty, land, and constitutional rights
- A foreign policy that emphasizes diplomacy, peacekeeping and humanitarian aid instead of offensive military action
- Renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
- One wing is focused on ending the Canadian War on Drugs and legalizing recreational drugs

We don't have to keep the same old two parties in power here. There is an alternative; it's the one we create.

We are the ones we've been waiting for.

The Torture Nation

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping upon a human face - forever.

--George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

Andrew Sullivan - who has long been an outspoken critic of the previous Administration's torture policies - is writing an excellent series of blog posts right now on the torture memos that have just been released to the public. You can read them here; and also the recently leaked International Red Cross report here.

If you haven't read Andrew's posts - like this one, and this one - you should.

If you've never read Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, you should. Click here for the entire book online.

If you think all that the Bush regime did can't happen again - can't happen here - can't happen to you: think again, bub.

Sullivan:

If you want to know how democracies die, read these memos. Read how gifted professionals in the CIA were able to convince experienced doctors that what they were doing was ethical and legal. Read how American psychologists were able to find justifications for the imposition of psychological torture, and were able to analyze its effects without ever stopping and asking: what on earth are we doing?

Read how no one is even close to debating "ticking time bomb" scenarios as they strap people to boards and drown them until they break. Then read how they adjusted the waterboarding, for fear it was too much, for fear that they were actually in danger of suffocating their captives, and then read how they found self-described loopholes in the law to tell themselves that what the US had once prosecuted as torture could not possibly be torture because we're doing it, and we're different from the Viet Cong. We're doing torture right and for the right reasons and with the right motive. Many of the people who did this are mild, kind, courteous, family men and women, who somehow were able to defend slamming human beings against walls in the daytime while watching the Charlie Rose show over a glass of wine at night. We've seen this syndrome before, in other places and at other times. Yes: it can happen here. And imagine how this already functioning torture machine would have operated in the wake of another attack under a president Romney or Giuliani.

It is this professionalism and bureaucratic mastery that chills in the end. Not the brutality of "the program," but the modernity and banality of the apparatus around it. As Orwell predicted, the English language had to disappear first. The president referred to waterboarding prisoners as "asking them questions." Bringing prisoners' temperatures down to hypothermia levels was simply an "alternative set of procedures." The entire process is "enhanced interrogation." Even the press has to find a way to call it merely "harsh", a term now changed to "brutal" in the NYT, even though nothing we found out yesterday was more brutal than anything we knew about before.

Mukasey and Hayden complain that the president has tied the hands of future presidents in this. Yes, he has. What Obama understands is that what is truly vital is that this dark and shameful period not become a workable precedent. It must be repudiated at the very heart of the American political system, and removed like the cancer it is.

The question of prosecution remains. It's a painful decision. My view is that those who pay the legal price should be, first and foremost, those who authorized this at the highest levels. My view is also that it is a travesty that the Abu Ghraib reservists were prosecuted, and yet far, far more culpable people are claiming it would be too divisive to prosecute them. My view is that no one is above the law, and that when a society based on law prosecutes the powerless and excuses the powerful, it is corroding its own soul.

If all this doesn't nauseate you and make you mad as hell - just what kind of person are you, anyway? Where is your humanity? Where is your soul?

Video: pictures of torture committed by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib, 2004. Strictly NSFW. Very gruesome, and very real. That's what I'm talking about: your tax dollars at work.

Orwell was so right

Go read blogger Michael Leddy's very timely application of George Orwell's famous essay, "Politics and the English Language" to the Palin spectacle at Orange Crate Art: "Couric and Palin and Orwell."

I also love the comment that Anonymous posted over there:

My theory is that they've implanted a microchip into Palin's brain intended to prompt her answers from all the crammed together talking points. The chip, developed for Bush and now inserted into McCain, works OK but is misfiring in her female brain thus accounting for all the utterly nonsensical utterances.

Don't laugh. It just might be true.

How the world works now

From Ron Suskind's famous 2004 New York Times Magazine essay, "Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush," emphasis mine:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn’t like about Bush’s former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend—but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism.

He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

If all the soccer moms and baseball dads of this country, with their devout belief in timeless certainties, truly understood the Orwellian nightmare so cavalierly proclaimed here--the utter, arrogant, cold-blooded contempt for constitutional government, democracy, liberty, justice--well, I think we would have already had a new administration in office long before now.

But of course, the faithful just don't get it. Faith can illuminate, to be sure. It can also blind, and tragically so.