hititandquit
Wednesday, September 1, 2021
Tuesday, November 10, 2020
Saturday, September 19, 2020
The Cult of the Supreme Court
Wednesday, August 19, 2020
It is an indication of Andrew Cuomo’s fecklessness, incompetence, and comprehensive lack of talent that he should have come up with so immediately dishwater forgettable a title as American Crisis. When the bookstores reopen, it will be ripe for the remainder tables.Honesty would have recommended, and commercial acuity demanded, that he give his 2024 advertorial a title that yet remains freely available: If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened. An opportunity missed.But if Cuomo were to display true leadership, he would pulp the whole run and convert it to disposable masks.
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Wednesday, August 12, 2020
Kamala, the Amphibrach
- Much has been made of Harris’ offputting personality. We shouldn’t be too quick to think she’s nasty at her core. Kamala is a cop, they say, and her work experiencAe has been as a prosecutor. Her manner in Senate hearings is evidence of déformation professionnelle. Prosecutors, from a perch of immunity, are free to stick it to you--and will relish letting you know that. Whether they will, when they will, how badly, with whatever, if any, justification, all that is, in legal parlance, within the prosecutor’s discretion; in reality, at the prosecutor’s whim. What makes Harris’ Senate performances so ludicrous (apart from the gross transparency of her ambition) is this: The person who sits across from the sneering prosecutor is always vulnerable. The person who sits across from the Senate blowhard... might be anybody, might even be somebody free.
- When Harris announced her Presidential run, I was looking forward to it. Harris is the child of two highly accomplished parents. Her background is one of privilege. Her accession to political office, thanks to skillful networking, was a smooth glide. The advance from local to statewide office was easy-peasy. Getting elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat is, in California, something you can do in your sleep. Oddly, though, the national figure that has emerged, on whom Fortune has so smiled, is a singularly unpleasant presence.
- It was said, in 2012, that a number of strong Republican candidates chose not to run for President because doing so would be signing up for a billion dollars’ worth of abuse thrown at one head. In 2016, the combined force of a billion and a half dollars, the Republican party, the Democratic party, the dominant ideology, the media, show biz, the political police apparatus--they all had the bad luck to bump into Donald Trump. It didn’t go well for them. This year, Trump has lots of money to play with, but that won’t be what matters.
What was true before Harris crashed and burned and abandoned her Presidential campaign remains so today: she don’t know what trouble is.
4. Harris sheds an interesting light on the Obama birther hoopla. That was always nonsense, spiraling into ever more baroque absurdities. What it never was was racist.
Think of black people who have run for President (Chisholm, Booker, Deval Patrick) or even who have been touted as candidates (Colin Powell, Oprah Winfrey). Think even of fringier candidates, like Eldridge Cleaver or Alan Keyes. Nobody ever hinted that they were foreign born. There are many slurs and negative stereotypes that have been thrown at black people. Being from some other country isn’t among them.
What happened, then, with Obama? A more basic question: what is the difference between Barack Obama and Chauncey Gardiner? Answer: Chauncey Gardiner was reared by a black woman, in a black city. When Obama first emerged as a national figure, he was usually described as bi-racial. And that bi- element was his basic shtick: he could bring everybody together because, why, he himself had--you know the thing. Obama was never black, as the term has been understood in an American context. How best to categorize him? Bi-racial is adequate, but it’s an unstable term, and many people consider it a dodge. Black-ish fits, but it doesn’t fit him, only other people’s framing of him. African-American? When John Kerry was running for President--look it up: this really happened--Teresa Heinz (née Maria Teresa Thierstein Simões-Ferreira), born in Mozambique, made a timid effort to present herself as African-American. It went nowhere. It was technically accurate in her case, but that isn’t what the term is understood to mean. Obama is African-American only in Teresa Heinz’s sense, and his claim is far more tenuous. Obama may look black--the pompous thing is to speak of his “phenotype”--but if that proves anything, then Hello, Bob Barr! Welcome, Keith Jarrett! and Bye-bye, Walter Francis White. Until his late adolescence, Obama was culturally as white as anyone in the country. His present speech and mannerisms are late acquisitions--cultural appropriation, if you like that term.
It apparently wasn’t until the 2010 Census that Obama called himself black (He has proven himself over time as a proficient scholar of what he can get away with.) That a Barack Obama could ever be considered anything other than white is a strong argument that there is an enduring racial caste system in the country.
An Obama classic: He’s in the White House, putting Benjamin Netanyahu in his place. Here is Obama, son of two Harvard graduate students, one a high government official, one a doctoral level anthropologist doing field work. He is raised first in the household of a very wealthy oil executive, then in the household of a bank vice-president. He attends the toniest prep school in one state, goes to a pricey college in a second state, finishes at an Ivy League school in a third state, graduates from another Ivy League law school in a fourth state. In 2009, he departs his mansion in one of the richest zip codes in the country and takes up residence in the White House. And now to impress upon Netanyahu the gritty realities he’s lived through, he says, “I’m the African-American son of a single mother.” Who’d’ve guessed? That’s Bigger Thomas sitting at the Resolute desk!
But before Obama started passing himself off as black, he passed himself off as...other, as exotic. Really, there is nothing interesting about Obama. Occasionally, you’ll find an article about Dearborn, MI, with its sizable Arab-American population. There, people with roots in the Middle East become perfect Mid-Westerners. Haroun goes by Harry, Mahmoud by Mac. With Obama, the process is reversed. He grew up as Barry, as familiar a name as you could ask for, nothing worth a second’s thought (like its bearer). Then, in late adolescence, early adulthood, somewhere in there, Barry becomes Barack, although it appears he didn’t settle on a pronunciation or even a spelling right away. He’s eaten dog meat. It wasn’t good, but it has real value: he has eaten it--and you haven’t. His name is...Barack? For you, a hurdle,for him, an edge. If you should mispronounce it, he can, graciously, let it go, honing the condescension that is his signature style. It is around th same time that he started playing up his largely imaginary ties to Kenya. He has exploited this cultivated exoticism, this studied otherness--but only after his first attempt at electoral politics, when he posed as a representative of the community, a pose the community swatted away with contempt. Thereafter, he became the Messiah, the Lightworker, the One, who has brought us out of the darkness and into the light, the supernal Presence. In 2008, he was not initially the preferred candidate among black voters. He pitched his campaign first at upscale whites. He won the Iowa caucuses--questionably--and only then became, arguably, a non-white politician. The Visitor from, almost, another land, and certainly from a whole other plane, posturing has served him well. When it starts to cut against him--and birtherism, ill-reasoned though it is, is an instance of such cutting against--Obama’s acolytes have accusations--notably, racism--lying comfortably to hand.
Some silly arguments have been made about Article II, Section 1 as it pertains to Harris’ parents. But nobody has alleged that she was born elsewhere. Despite the fact that she has two foreign-born parents (to Obama’s one) and spent her high school years in a foreign country (to Obama’s early childhood in a foreign country), she is nowhere regarded as alien. Simple difference from Obama: she never wrapped herself in exoticism, and so never had that price to pay.
Postscript
One of Harris’ ancestors was a major slaveholder in Jamaica named Hamilton Brown. Bob Marley’s “Mr. Brown” might make a nice campaign song for Hamilton's newly famous descendant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3nsefsAk2o
Sunday, August 9, 2020
You can fool some of the people…
Ogn’uom v’è batattier--Inferno, 21.41
“Honest, honest Iago.”
In election season, spam comes fast. Two ads visited on me came from the, wait for it, Lincoln Project. This “project” was new to me. It should have remained so. Fundamentally, it’s a grift. Here are the four faces of the “project” I’m familiar with: John Weaver, George Conway, Steve Schmidt, and Rick Wilson. So, one by one:
--Weaver is a registered foreign agent for a Russian capitalist enterprise closely linked to the Russian state. He is also, like most of his business associates in the “project”, heavily in debt, with, for example, an IRS liability in the six figures. The “project” has as a slogan, Country Before Party, and the party in question is, unambiguously,the Republican Party. It is, seemingly, a forthright declaration. Less forthright, in Weaver’s case, is which country he has in mind.
--Conway didn't use to be famous. He’s famous now, but not for anything he’s accomplished. His wife is not Mrs. George Conway. He is Kellyanne Conway’s marital partner. She, for anyone keeping track of such things, is an historic first female campaign manager for a winning Presidential campaign, and today, she has some influence on national policy. George Conway is known only for being an embarrassment. In the afterlife, Martha Mitchell and Margaret Trudeau will shun him.
--Schmidt, like Wilson, is a former consultant, to Republican political campaigns. Until he landed his two (!) current grifts, he was unemployed and, it seems, unemployable. Schmidt approached Trump for a job. Trump turned him down, discerning correctly that Schmidt was as deficient in morals as in capabilities. Schmidt, again like Wilson, is a paid contributor to CNN/MS-NBC (distinctions not worth making). Anti-Trump networks present a range of opinions. Democrats come on to say how awful Trump is, then Republicans like Nicole Wallace and Ana Navarro say the same thing. For years, MS-NBC paraded the “Republican conservative” Joe Scarborough--Morning Joe to Phil Griffin, president of his network, and Psycho Joe, to Donald Trump, President of his country (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KwLtcOQ9aM&list=RD8KwLtcOQ9aM&start_radio=1)--as evidence that the network was actually in the news business. Schmidt and Wilson are perfect for the scam, and snug as a coupla bugs in a coupla rugs.
--Wilson can present his own calling card.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwOPNncxxNA
Not one, not two--three mighty intellects!
Schoolchildren used to hear stories about Honest Abe Lincoln in his youth trudging through the snow to return a few pennies to somebody. Now try to imagine a Rick Wilson or a Steve Schmidt crossing the street to refund some portion of the fee they charged for some campaign they bungled.
The two ads I was sent were entitled, first, “Names”, and a little later, “Trumpfeld.” Here’s “Names”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vZp3FAQZvU&t=16s
The portentous music and vocal delivery are the cheesy manipulation typical of political ads. What’s unusual here is the fact that the packaging is the least bad part of the presentation. The ad is directed against Republicans in the U. S. Senate. It begins with the assertion that its targets are guilty of “incompetence, cruelty, and corruption.” Now, attack ads are not a good place to go looking for reasoned, good-faith argument. But some kind of argumentation is offered even in the worst ads. The badness of “Names” has little precedent. Take the charge of incompetence. The ad opens with a picture of Yertle the Turtle, Moscow Mitch, Cocaine Mitch, the Rogue Senator. For his detractors, his two greatest offenses are, probably, winning confirmation for so many of Trump’s judicial nominees--especially Gorsuch, and most particularly, Kavanaugh--and his management of the Trump impeachment. First, as to judges, he kept Obama’s nominee off the Supreme Court. It was a move difficult to pull off, and risky besides. He wanted no hearings for Garland, and there were none. And his gamble paid off: Scalia’s replacement was not chosen by Clinton. Threatened with a filibuster on Gorsuch--the wrong threat at the wrong time--he simply did away with the filibuster. And since then, he has churned out confirmations. As to impeachment, the House made a silly attempt to dictate the rules of the Senate trial. The pointless stand-off ended with the House’s complete capitulation. By the end of the trial, public support for removal had evaporated. And the Democratic caucus in the Senate was reduced to saying, with a single voice without a murmur of dissent, that there had been no evidence presented, that there had never been any trial at all; and then, again with a single voice voting to convict.
Incompetence? That’s ruthless efficiency.
And cruelty? It’s a mark of tribalism that no charge needs to be spelled out, let alone documented. The alleged cruelty is, I suppose--unless it was being mean to austere religious scholars and the Elvis of Iran--the kids-in-cages canard. But what does the Senate have to do with that? Certain measures pertain to the Article II power. In a Schmittian sense, cruelty is the proper sphere of the Executive.
And corruption? A serious charge, if true. How much scrutiny will the family of the Lincoln Project’s preferred Presidential candidate bear? How much will Old Joe himself? The Lincoln Project itself is an operation operated by operators. It spends less than 11% of its funds on its purported activity. It is an operation operated by people, as we’ve seen, who got bills.
The “Names” ad then goes on to single out a number of Republican Senators who, they say chose TRUMP over AMERICA. But how Trump-y have Trump’s nominees and legislative proposals been? During the 2016 campaign, it was possible to imagine Scott Baio or Gary Busey being nominated to the Supreme Court. John Roberts is never more mendacious than when he declares that there are no Obama judges or Trump judges: the Federal judiciary is filled with partisan whores. What has happened since 2017 is that a Republican Senate has confirmed Republican nominees. Trump, who isn’t actually a Republican himself, has nevertheless picked people who are dully Republican. One of the Senators “named” in the ad is Susan Collins. Collins is anything but a lock-step Republican, much less a ticket holder on the Trump Train. She is an old school New England Republican, ready to float off into some indeterminate political space. But her Senate seat is vulnerable: and so she must be damned. For the Lincoln Project, there are no competing parties in a two-party system, with competing preferences and policies that may be considered and judged. There’s only TRUMP or AMERICA, absolute evil or absolute good. It’s like that Facebook ad, showing Jesus and the Devil arm-wrestling, the ad that decided the 2016 election, the ad that robbed Madam Secretary and the American People as a whole of their proper victory, the ad that plunged us into our present nightmare. But that ad came from the same place as this musical performance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGFnkDCmsnE
But the grifters who put out this ad are home-grown. What’s wrong with them?
Anything that calls itself a Lincoln project implicitly asks, What would Lincoln do? He might say--though he wouldn’t--that Trump, and Trump alone, must go. He might say, as Peggy Noonan does--though he wouldn’t--that the existing Republican Party must be burned down. He wouldn’t say, as the Lincoln Project effectively does, Douglas in’60! McClellan in’64! Why invoke Lincoln at all, except to purloin somebody else’s reputation for honesty? Why not instead go with the name Copperheads? Wilson and Schmitt already have the shiny pates. Throw in some sinister-looking shades, some neck tattoos, they might even be mistaken for gangstas. They might even pass for someone who’d hold your attention for more than a second.
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The second ad that found its way to me is called “Trumpfeld.” There are videos online that photoshop a politician’s face onto some pre-existing footage, or edit a politician to a music track, or filter a speech through Auto-Tune. These can all be pretty funny, and they don’t depend on whether the politician is viewed favorably. “Trumpfeld” is nothing more than excerpts from an extended interview that Trump sat down for. Over it, a laugh track is played. The ad is malicious, of course, but overwhelmingly, it is lame. But owing, again, to tribalism, there are people who lap this stuff up. One Twitter user exclaimed that the ad was “Brill!”--true enough, in the sense that it isn’t all there. Brace yourself: at the very end of October, the Lincoln Project will unleash their feared Trump-is-a-doodyhead ad.
The serious points addressed in the ad (How’s that again?) are two: first, his electoral prospects and second, his cognitive function test.
In the interview, Trump expresses confidence in re-election. But everybody knows that the Sage of Wilmington enjoys an insuperable lead. Thus, the laugh track. And yet...there are many Trump-Can’t-Win compilations dating from the last election, and Trump supporters have watched them with delight, and often. Arrogance humbled is a sight to see. 2016’s derisive smirks and shrieks of laughter ended in tears. How will today’s laugh track look in a few months’ time? We’ll see what happens, as the President so often says. Till then...what have 2016’s grinning idiots learned in the years since? Only that they were right all along, right about everything.
Trump’s cognitive test, too, gets the laugh track. Looking at the test itself is one thing. Trump’s use of it is another: soon, who’ll be laughing? After all, it’s been a while since there was excited talk of the XXVth Amendment. Nobody was clamoring for Trump to take a cognitive test, and in fact, taking one would raise questions. In the real world, Trump’s intentions are so transparent. Only those who swore four years ago that he wasn’t really running, that it was all a stunt to launch Trump TV, that he would quit before losing to Clinton, that he would quit before inauguration, that he’d be gone in six months, or a year, that the walls were closing in, that Avenatti or Omarosa would finish him for good, only they were capable of missing what Trump was up to. Why, anyone could ace that test! Don Lemon, from CNN, holds up the test mockingly and announces gleefully that anybody can plainly see that that’s a hippo--as he points at a rhinoceros. The 46th President, from his basement in Delaware, says that if Trump can’t distinguish a lion from an elephant, there’s something wrong. Two problems: first, there are different versions of the test in circulation. A lion appears in one, an elephant in another test. So: who is it exactly that can’t tell one animal from another? Second, Trump never said the animal pictures were difficult. He implied the opposite. What he offered as difficult was word retention.
The sequence he offered as an example was person-woman-man-camera-tv. One commentator objected that the five words on test were absolutely, completely different. Didn’t miss a trick, that one,,,but apparently missed the fact that Trump prefaced his five words with the word “like.” Another commentator exploded that there was no trick at all to repeating person-man-woman-canera-tv,,,failing mid-explosion to get the sequence right even once.
Does anybody care about Trump’s test results? He doesn’t. Doesn’t anybody remember Elizabeth Warren’s DNA fiasco? Trump goaded her into taking a test. She finally did, and believing that she had laid her only controversy to rest, she trumpeted the results. In reality, she had laid her Presidential aspirations to rest. So today, we have Trump’s results. But where’re Old Joe’s? Depending on the day, he says he gets himself tested all the time, or he’s snarling at some hophead reporter that he doesn’t need to take any tests. And whether by design or serendipity, Trump’s test serves a further purpose. The Biden operation is trying to weasel out of debates. Pre-conditions are demanded: Trump’s taxes! live fact checks! And beyond pre-conditions: to share a stage with this monster would imply that they shared a moral plane. Therefore, Biden mustn’t debate Trump. But there’s no moral obstacle to a cognitive exam. If Biden fails to take one it is only because...he can’t. And whatever justifications might be thrown out for avoiding debates, the real explanation will be hard to miss: he can’t.
The Lincoln Project’s fans should smile while they may.
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What is the Lincoln Project about, at all? If the object is to affect an electoral outcome, I’d put the odds at zero. But if it’s, well, to take the money and run, then..crime in progress!