A flash of truth cuts through the overheated rhetoric

A Guardian column on "alt-right" celebrity Katie Hopkins' carpetbagging critiques of London stumbles into an important truth. Marina Hyde:

For now, it falls to her [Hopkins] to explain London to the Americans. “Londoners can’t even be honest about these attacks,” she told Fox News. “Because it would mean everything they believed in was false.” >Ah, the false idols of the decadent metropolis! Had Katie spent more than 10 minutes in the World History aisle of Wikipedia, she would know there have always been people who hated cities for what they stood for. The metropolis has at many times served as shorthand for a kind of moral decay and wicked permissiveness that requires (usually forcible) regression.

“This place where monsters lurk and steal lives away in an instant,” thunders Katie of the capital’s wickedness. “For nothing.” Dear, dear – it does all seem rather terminal. I wonder what Katie would do with the failed, corruptive experiment that is London? The Khmer Rouge decided that the only solution was to empty the cities, and send their suspiciously educated denizens to the countryside. Come Katie’s revolution, perhaps Londoners will be forcibly migrated too.

Quite right, Marina. Don't forget that anyone wearing glasses will be labeled as a dangerous intellectual and eliminated.

Leading the way

Not.

From  Gail Collins in the New York Times:  

Next session, women will compose 19.5 percent of Congress. “We went from 104 to 104 — down one in the House, up one in the Senate,” reported Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers. Obviously we could do better, but on the plus side, we’re just a sliver away from passing Equatorial Guinea when it comes to gender diversity in the nation’s legislature.

Of course, we are no longer taken aback by such comparisons.

Revisiting Allen Drury, Advise and Consent, and A Senate Journal

Last month I announced I would occasionally revisit some of my better posts of yore. Well, today I recalled my discussion of a Pulitzer-prize-winning novel and its author, Allen Drury, whose books recall a lost time when FDR was the great villain of American politics -- because he ruled by an expansive interpretation of executive authority. Have a look at thee posts that use the label "Allen Drury," starting with this one.

It is not to laugh

Karl Sharro in Politico says, "America, you look like an Arab country right now." Excerpts:

Dear America,

We have been watching the drama of your presidential elections with much interest and curiosity for some time now. It’s hard not to notice the many similarities between our own countries and yours. From fiery inauguration protests and bitter disputes about crowd size, to the intelligence service’s forays into politics and the rise of right-wing extremists, it appears that you are traveling very much in our direction—and at the same time, like us, becoming a curiosity for foreign correspondents trying to explain what’s happening in your region to the world. You might be distraught about where you are headed, but we aren’t! Perhaps this will be an opportunity to put our differences aside and recognize how similar we are.

Let’s start at the beginning. During the campaign we were surprised to learn of the influence that the head of the American mukhabarat (state security, i.e. your FBI) can wield over the election process, simply by choosing to pursue a certain line of investigation. As you may know, this has been a constant feature of our politics since independence. Our surprise turned to astonishment when we started to witness the blossoming feud between the then-president-elect and the American mukhabarat, another important feature of Arab politics.

On top of that, we started to hear reports of foreign meddling in your elections, which some say may have influenced the result. Of course, we are quite familiar with that situation, too, not least because of the efforts of your own administrations over the decades. Yet it came as a surprise to hear talk of “foreign hands” and “secret agendas” in a country like America. We sympathize.

...

The moment at which we felt real solidarity with the American people, though, was when we started hearing BBC reporters talking to your citizens with the patronizing tone they normally reserve for the Middle East. Correspondents were sent to far-flung corners of the United States to talk to farmers and factory workers to try to understand how they feel and to ask condescending questions. I’m from the British Broadcasting Corporation, are you familiar with the BBC? Where do you get your news from? Do you feel angry? Does religion play a role in how you are voting?. (The only thing missing were pictures of people with blue ink on their thumbs; please consider introducing that practice in the future.)

Some good news on the democracy front!

From Romania!

The largest anti-government crowds since the violent 1989 revolution that toppled dictator Nicolae Ceausescu succeeded Sunday in pressuring Romania’s new government to repeal a hastily adopted decree that would have eased penalties for official corruption.

The law, opposed by the influential Romanian Orthodox Church, would have weakened the country’s emerging anti-corruption effort, which has begun to make progress against a ruling culture accustomed to acting with impunity.

The government backed down Sunday following six days of street protests, but plans to introduce another version of the law in Parliament, where it would be debated and possibly passed.

The late-night introduction last week of an emergency ordinance< to turn a blind eye toward abuse in office by officials if the amount involved was less than about $48,500 provoked a lightning response from Romania’s civil society.

Nightly throngs in Bucharest and other major cities pit angry citizens who believe a modern, pro-European Romania must not condone corruption in high places against a moneyed elite that stands to benefit, if the law eventually passes.

Trump's rhetoric

Using Trump's words against him.

Heather Havrilesky is on to something. If you are entitled to vote in the USA, your opinion means something to your Representative and Senators. Instead of ranting at your friends who already agree with you, and at real Trump supporters, who never will, try this strategy:

In just two short weeks, President Donald Trump has destabilized the globe and quickly eroded even our most trusted alliances. This is exactly what his likely sponsor Putin wants, of course. This is exactly what his white supremacist advisor Bannon wants — he’s said so on the record (“Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too.”). And if sowing fear in the populace offers the GOP an excuse to pump up military spending, so be it. Most Americans, however, prefer to sleep well at night. And if we’re going to take a clear, resounding stand against this unthinkable menace, we have to use his own tricks against him.

For instance:


Think about how you might discuss the head-spinningly bad judgment that led to his first and failed military operation in Yemen. Instead of talking about how all special ops are sticky but President Obama, in spite of his flaws, was incredibly careful about not putting American forces in harm’s way, try this: It was a disaster, a huge disaster, and totally preventable. Trump messed up. Completely incompetent. Or maybe you'd say: Those SEALs went in there, and got torn apart. Nightmare, never should’ve happened. Trump messed up, big league. Completely unstable. Of course, Democrats and progressives are incredibly afraid of using rhetoric of fear, like Trump and Bannon do. But isn’t fear our new reality? Aren’t we scared out of our minds over Trump, a man who has quickly demonstrated that he’s self-obsessed, unthinkably reckless, and utterly incapable of making even the faintest diplomatic sounds come out of his mouth? We can’t sit back and wait, because his mistakes are going to build on each other until they snowball into a global disaster.

Think about how you might discuss the head-spinningly bad judgment that led to his first and failed military operation in Yemen. Instead of talking about how all special ops are sticky but President Obama, in spite of his flaws, was incredibly careful about not putting American forces in harm’s way, try this:

It was a disaster, a huge disaster, and totally preventable. Trump messed up. Completely incompetent.