The (further) Nazification of America

POTUS Trump peppers his gory, threatening inauguration speech with Nazi imagery and makes a neo-Nazi slogan, AMERICA FIRST, his signature, despite the Anti-Defamation League having asked him already in 2016 to reconsider its use.

Trump pretends to disavow neo-Nazi supporters, but installs neo-Nazi Steve Bannon (who, it is speculated, was the one to introduce "America First" to Trump) as his chief "strategist" and adviser.

Steve Bannon just "advised" "humiliated" media to "keep its mouth shut". Or... what?

At the inauguration, beaming to millions around the world--as opposed to in someone's backyard in some godforsaken hole--a burly white Texan in a cowboy hat ushers in the Trump era with a song about rounding up and lynching "bad guys".

Henry Ford, fr. Charles Coughlin and Charles Lindbergh do a happy jig in their graves.

>1 LolaWalser: In response to Steve Bannon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixKTyn9VeRY

Ha! Yes.

>3 LolaWalser: I think Jake Tapper recently decided he was mad as hell and wasn't going to take it anymore.

He really is bent on turning the country into the United States of Assholes. Blocking permanent residents, green card holders from entering the country? Total ban on refugees that were forced out of their countries by American actions in the first place? Blatantly discriminating against Muslims--and oh, not even the Muslims from countries with track record of terrorist actions in the US?

How long before he goes after "undesirable" permanent residents inside the US?

Is there a doctor in the asylum?

Well, there's one...
John D. Gartner

http://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2017-01-27/does-donald-trumps-per...

>5 LolaWalser: First comes the ban, next comes the camps.

RIP due process

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/01/28/trump_has_suspended_due_proces...

>2 sturlington:
This has been taken down from YouTube. Is it up anywhere else?

Bannon, even more than Trump, is the enemy. He's the evil angel sitting on Trump's shoulder, whispering into his ear. It's pretty ironic that he wants to shut down the 'opposition' media, considering that for years he himself was the opposition media with Breitbart. He didn't have a problem with it then...

>9 Crypto-Willobie: Bingo.
http://www.conflictsforum.org/2017/deciphering-steve-bannons-global-revolution/

Bannon is on a mission, but his "cure" is going to be worse than the disease.

It's absolutely atrocious. Every American with a dime's worth of patriotism needs to be in a state of permanent resistance.

I'm hoping something gets institutionalized quickly--for example, the first Saturday of every month being a major, general march against Trump. Occasional efforts focused on this or that topic aren't enough. Everyone who opposes him needs to be involved, and unified in their goal—to deprive him of the popular and political support he needs to govern, and drive him from office.

As luck would have it, someone roped us into helping a Syrian refugee family that only just arrived in the US. (We'll be back in the US this week, after our long Turkish stay.) Fortunate people--there won't be more of them for a while.

>8 Taphophile13: That link is behind a firewall. Could you summarize it?

>12 jjwilson61:
Hmm, I have never seen a firewall or paywall for this site.

An Iraqi was flying to the US to join his wife and children in Texas. The family had been victims of an attempted kidnapping and a car bombing because the wife had worked for a U.S. contractor. When the man arrived in NY, Customs & Border Protection took him into custody and would not let him speak with his attorneys who were waiting for him. Holding someone without due process (respecting their legal rights) presents a Fifth Amendment problem.

I don't know if this particular man has been released or if he had to return to Iraq but U.S. District Judge Ann M. Donnelly has already blocked part of the executive order in response to an ACLU lawsuit.

I'll just post this here for the technically-inclined who may have need. Always walk and talk, but if you can't...

https://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/oottela/
https://github.com/maqp/

Threat model: https://github.com/maqp/tfc/wiki/Threat-model

If you use git, do the world a favor and clone the fucking repo, preferably to write-once media, whether you have any intention or capability of using it or not. (Bonus points: clone the fucking repo on a machine bought secondhand running from a Live CD, with a spoofed MAC address, from a Wifi hotspot that has nothing to do with you.)

And read your Schneier threads. In particular:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/06/comparing_messa.html
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/10/friday_squid_bl_547.html#c6736252
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/10/friday_squid_bl_549.html#c6736742
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/01/friday_squid_bl_561.html#comments
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/01/friday_squid_bl_562.html#comments

Ottela and his collaborators (listed at top --https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/10/friday_squid_bl_549.html#c6736742 ) are about as good as you're gonna get. Follow them, and secondarily follow those they approve: they are world-class security engineers and researchers. The Brit, Clive, may be dyslexic, but he's the granddaddy of them all; NickP, the American, is almost as formidable, and his literature reviews are priceless. And by the way, they'll all tell you not to trust TOR)

You're gonna need a VPN at some point. The grugq would tell you to use this one: https://cryptostorm.is/ , though he previously recommended Mullvad or PRQ (which are probably better choices on balance.)
I don't particularly trust like or trust the grugq, but his expertise is genuine. And I've independently satisfied myself as to the recommendations. In these circumstances, the Cryptostorm project lead's background is an asset. (Do your own research, especially as to whether anything has changed in the past year or so). (ETA Learned more, changed my mind.)

You might consider trying to bootstrap one VPN with another VPN (ETA: Actually, "bootstrapping" here would likely be counterproductive in terms of leaving fingerprints that might trace back to you. But it's fair to say that conducting one's research and signalling for, say, one's underground railroad should probably not be undertaken on the same VPN -- the latter not necessarily on a VPN at all, since that in itself draws attention). Remember: maintaining compartmentation and anonymity is an OPSEC problem first and last. It's also exceedingly difficult to get right, and I'm not your expert. I can point you to people with genuine expertise, but if you can't ultimately figure this out for yourself, you shouldn't try swimming in these waters.

More important than COMSEC is always OPSEC.
https://grugq.tumblr.com/ (lots more noise than there once was, but still worth cherry-picking)
http://grugq.github.io/ (stopped in 2014, before the noise got so bad)

Work out your OPSEC in detail before moving forward in any way. Reading old Schneier threads will help. (Often better than the post is the discussion: e.g. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/04/cell_phone_opse.html) Ideal: scrape the whole site and read locally.

Finally, remember what you're up against.

And why am I posting this with no security measures whatsoever? Because I'm a schlub -- a perceptive schlub who has been paying attention, but ultimately just a schlub nonethless. I'm not the one who needs this information, but I'll happily take the risk of disseminating it. Anyone who might use it (for good, not evil, please) needs to take the grugq's most basic advice and STFU.

Jesus Christ on a pogo stick!
Trump boots top officials — but includes Steve Bannon — in reshuffled National Security Council
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/01/trump-boots-top-officials-but-includes-steve-ba...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/28/lobbying-ban-trump-executive-ord...

http://crooksandliars.com/2017/01/steve-bannon-replaces-dni-and-military

Jeffrey Lewis (FP) 's comparison to Obama's and Bush's NSC PPDs convinces me to take it down a notch. But just a notch.

https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/825738789943336961

Acting Attorney General has been fired for refusing to defend immigration ban:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/01/30/sally_yates_the_acting_head_of...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/us/politics/trump-immigration-ban-memo.html?_...

Google's Yonatan Zunger has some very provocative pieces out that I'm just now reading. I've neither finished nor digested them, but I can already say that they deserve discussion. Stat.

https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/what-things-going-wrong-can-look-like-400f84a0...

...
Now the grimmest part of all: Working through timelines. I’m going to be extremely blunt about this, because measuring these timelines accurately and knowing when to jump is the most basic survival skill I was taught from childhood. While most people who know this skill have the conversation very quietly, late at night, when nobody is around to hear, I also know that this time people are affected who don’t have twenty generations of practicing this behind them, so we need to speak out loud sometimes....

https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/trial-balloon-for-a-coup-e024990891d5#.hx8v6i3...

...
Note also the most frightening escalation last night was that the DHS made it fairly clear that they did not feel bound to obey any court orders. CBP continued to deny all access to counsel, detain people, and deport them in direct contravention to the court’s order, citing “upper management,” and the DHS made a formal (but confusing) statement that they would continue to follow the President’s orders. (See my updates from yesterday, and the various links there, for details) Significant in today’s updates is any lack of suggestion that the courts’ authority played a role in the decision.

That is to say, the administration is testing the extent to which the DHS (and other executive agencies) can act and ignore orders from the other branches of government. This is as serious as it can possibly get: all of the arguments about whether order X or Y is unconstitutional mean nothing if elements of the government are executing them and the courts are being ignored.

Yesterday was the trial balloon for a coup d’état against the United States. It gave them useful information.
...
I am reminded of Trump’s continued operation of a private personal security force, and his deep rift with the intelligence community. Last Sunday, Kellyanne Conway (likely another member of the inner circle) said that “It’s really time for (Trump) to put in his own security and intelligence community,” and this seems likely to be the case.

As per my analysis yesterday, Trump is likely to want his own intelligence service disjoint from existing ones and reporting directly to him; given the current staffing and roles of his inner circle, Bannon is the natural choice for them to report through. (Having neither a large existing staff, nor any Congressional or Constitutional restrictions on his role as most other Cabinet-level appointees do) Keith Schiller would continue to run the personal security force, which would take over an increasing fraction of the Secret Service’s job.

Especially if combined with the DHS and the FBI, which appear to have remained loyal to the President throughout the recent transition, this creates the armature of a shadow government: intelligence and police services which are not accountable through any of the normal means, answerable only to the President.

(Note, incidentally, that the DHS already has police authority within 100 miles of any border of the US; since that includes coastlines, this area includes over 60% of Americans, and eleven entire states. They also have a standing force of over 45,000 officers, and just received authorization to hire 15,000 more on Wednesday.)

Fuck 1984; read this like your lives depended on it. (We still don't know how bad this is going to get. They may.)
Modernity and the Holocaust

One of many excellent reviews on Amazon:
This book is not easy. It must be read slowly and allowed to sink in. There are easier places to start reading ZB (I recommend "Liquid Modernity"). But M&H will go down as a classic, where this wise old refugee from the 20th century pulled the wool off our eyes and gave us a hug. This is not a book about "the Nazis" or other "villains" we love to hate. It is a painfully honest stare at what really happens with "decent" people. The critical social theory is a liberating tool for making the invisible structures we live in visible: so we can see how bureaucratic social orders, market economies, "liberal" value systems, and information age technologies combine to form a system that exploits human nature on an historically unprecedented and massive scale. But there is more than a critical theory at work in this book. There is a compelling humanism and a surprisingly old-fashioned moral theory that is anything but "relativistic." Bauman uses his critical theory to SHOW EXACTLY HOW a basic human moral sense GETS PREEMPTED by the false incentives of a substitute morality that disconnects us from a feeling response to our own humanity, the suffering of other people and the needs of the world around us. ZB does not need to prove his little affective moral theory (he is quite subtle with it actually); all he needs to do is to SHOW EXACTLY HOW basic human moral sentiments GET SHORT CIRCUITED and WHY. The evidence of the crime and the purposes of the villain tell us all we need to know about what it was the victim stood to lose. The critical theory works like a pair of surgeons -- one removing a tumor from the brain so that the patient can think again and the other clearing blockage from peripheral arteries so the heart can function, as it should. This is the most important book I have ever read.

And a piece of another. A key theme of this book is the author's not so subtle suggestion that "crazies" such as the "skinheads" or Ahmadinejad are not the only holocaust deniers. The window that this analysis has opened up so widely to us is that there is yet another even larger group of holocaust deniers, one that just happens to include nearly all the rest of us.

This group includes all of those of us who continue to deny that the holocaust was an organic product of the most sophisticated, advanced, rational and respected representative of Western culture, Germany. And thus that as the flagship of Western culture, values, morality and humanity, far from being an aberration, Germany was more a "moral proxy" for the emerging cultures of the modern world. Moreover, given that nearly a dozen or so holocausts have occurred and then gone virtually unnoticed since World War II, clearly even in retrospect, the European Holocaust can no longer be considered just a Jewish tragedy -- no longer just a private matter between Hitler and the Jews -- but represents a generalized moral failure of the modern world.

Spread widely.
---------------------------------------
Story Time: The above is one of three titles I wrote in the acquisitions request log of my local downtown library during Occupy, at a time when I and my fellow Occupiers were under massive active surveillance. (All else aside, the phalanx of squad cars permanently parked two blocks down the street and the helicopter that followed us around -- yes, we got video; yes, it hovered for a very long time; yes, it hovered over both our rally in the main city park and subsequently over our nearby campsite; no, it was not doing something else -- sort of gave it away. Bog-standard intimidation and harassment.) When I checked back a day or two later, the sequentially-dated page of the request book on which I had written them had been ripped cleanly out, and the librarians started acting weird around me. I wrote all three titles in again.

(Incidentally, the other two titles were: Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes and The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America, by Peter Dale Scott -- which won't touchstone. Tim? You should fix that.)

So, you could say I learned in 2011 not to take anything for granted.

The police stole my laptop, too, presumably in the name of intelligence-gathering. A certain fellow who was later IDed by an associate of an associate as a UC cop living in the next county and reporting far more than a cop's salary on his taxes -- or at least that's the information I got, in more specific fashion -- lured me away on what was in retrospect a transparent ruse, while someone else -- presumably one or more of the CIs in the camp, one of whom was not too bright and later told me he might be able to get me my laptop back, except it would be missing the hard drive -- nicked the thing. (We sent the police unit responsible a nice group photo Christmas card asking for the laptop's return, and I started making loud inquiries seeking a good Fourth Amendment lawyer, but of course that was a bluff as I didn't have court-admissable evidence). That was under Obama.

And please note: I've never been arrested in my life, or psychiatrically diagnosed with anything more serious than (monopolar) depression. Welcome to the club.

It's nice to have an excuse to tell those stories. Usually (as most people with extensive experience with activism will tell you) it's a better idea not to share them. People tend to think you're crazy.

I wish the occasion were happier.

How to Build an Autocracy
The preconditions are present in the U.S. today. Here’s the playbook Donald Trump could use to set the country down a path toward illiberalism.
by David Frum
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/03/how-to-build-an-autocracy/5...

...What has happened in Hungary since 2010 offers an example—and a blueprint for would-be strongmen. Hungary is a member state of the European Union and a signatory of the European Convention on Human Rights. It has elections and uncensored internet. Yet Hungary is ceasing to be a free country.

The transition has been nonviolent, often not even very dramatic. Opponents of the regime are not murdered or imprisoned, although many are harassed with building inspections and tax audits. If they work for the government, or for a company susceptible to government pressure, they risk their jobs by speaking out. Nonetheless, they are free to emigrate anytime they like. Those with money can even take it with them. Day in and day out, the regime works more through inducements than through intimidation. The courts are packed, and forgiving of the regime’s allies. Friends of the government win state contracts at high prices and borrow on easy terms from the central bank. Those on the inside grow rich by favoritism; those on the outside suffer from the general deterioration of the economy. As one shrewd observer told me on a recent visit, “The benefit of controlling a modern state is less the power to persecute the innocent, more the power to protect the guilty.”...

Donald Trump will not set out to build an authoritarian state. His immediate priority seems likely to be to use the presidency to enrich himself. But as he does so, he will need to protect himself from legal risk. Being Trump, he will also inevitably wish to inflict payback on his critics. Construction of an apparatus of impunity and revenge will begin haphazardly and opportunistically. But it will accelerate. It will have to....

Trump is poised to mingle business and government with an audacity and on a scale more reminiscent of a leader in a post-Soviet republic than anything ever before seen in the United States. Glimpses of his family’s wealth-seeking activities will likely emerge during his presidency, as they did during the transition. Trump’s Indian business partners dropped by Trump Tower and posted pictures with the then-president-elect on Facebook, alerting folks back home that they were now powers to be reckoned with. The Argentine media reported that Trump had discussed the progress of a Trump-branded building in Buenos Aires during a congratulatory phone call from the country’s president. (A spokesman for the Argentine president denied that the two men had discussed the building on their call.) Trump’s daughter Ivanka sat in on a meeting with the Japanese prime minister—a useful meeting for her, since a government-owned bank has a large ownership stake in the Japanese company with which she was negotiating a licensing deal...

It is essential to recognize that Trump will use his position not only to enrich himself; he will enrich plenty of other people too, both the powerful and—sometimes, for public consumption—the relatively powerless. Venezuela, a stable democracy from the late 1950s through the 1990s, was corrupted by a politics of personal favoritism, as Hugo Chávez used state resources to bestow gifts on supporters. Venezuelan state TV even aired a regular program to showcase weeping recipients of new houses and free appliances. Americans recently got a preview of their own version of that show as grateful Carrier employees thanked then-President-elect Trump for keeping their jobs in Indiana...

Trump will try hard during his presidency to create an atmosphere of personal munificence, in which graft does not matter, because rules and institutions do not matter. He will want to associate economic benefit with personal favor. He will create personal constituencies, and implicate other people in his corruption. That, over time, is what truly subverts the institutions of democracy and the rule of law. If the public cannot be induced to care, the power of the investigators serving at Trump’s pleasure will be diminished all the more...

Calculated outrage is an old political trick, but nobody in the history of American politics has deployed it as aggressively, as repeatedly, or with such success as Donald Trump...

...I’ve talked with well-funded Trump supporters who speak of recruiting a troll army explicitly modeled on those used by Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russia’s Putin to take control of the social-media space, intimidating some critics and overwhelming others through a blizzard of doubt-casting and misinformation...

...In an online article for The New York Review of Books, the Russian-born journalist Masha Gessen brilliantly noted a commonality between Donald Trump and the man Trump admires so much, Vladimir Putin. “Lying is the message,” she wrote. “It’s not just that both Putin and Trump lie, it is that they lie in the same way and for the same purpose: blatantly, to assert power over truth itself.”...

“Populist-fueled democratic backsliding is difficult to counter,” wrote the political scientists Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Erica Frantz late last year. “Because it is subtle and incremental, there is no single moment that triggers widespread resistance or creates a focal point around which an opposition can coalesce … Piecemeal democratic erosion, therefore, typically provokes only fragmented resistance.” Their observation was rooted in the experiences of countries ranging from the Philippines to Hungary. It could apply here too...

By all early indications, the Trump presidency will corrode public integrity and the rule of law—and also do untold damage to American global leadership, the Western alliance, and democratic norms around the world. The damage has already begun, and it will not be soon or easily undone. Yet exactly how much damage is allowed to be done is an open question—the most important near-term question in American politics. It is also an intensely personal one, for its answer will be determined by the answer to another question: What will you do? And you? And you?...

Get into the habit of telephoning your senators and House member at their local offices, especially if you live in a red state. Press your senators to ensure that prosecutors and judges are chosen for their independence—and that their independence is protected. Support laws to require the Treasury to release presidential tax returns if the president fails to do so voluntarily. Urge new laws to clarify that the Emoluments Clause applies to the president’s immediate family, and that it refers not merely to direct gifts from governments but to payments from government-affiliated enterprises as well. Demand an independent investigation by qualified professionals of the role of foreign intelligence services in the 2016 election—and the contacts, if any, between those services and American citizens. Express your support and sympathy for journalists attacked by social-media trolls, especially women in journalism, so often the preferred targets. Honor civil servants who are fired or forced to resign because they defied improper orders. Keep close watch for signs of the rise of a culture of official impunity, in which friends and supporters of power-holders are allowed to flout rules that bind everyone else.

Those citizens who fantasize about defying tyranny from within fortified compounds have never understood how liberty is actually threatened in a modern bureaucratic state: not by diktat and violence, but by the slow, demoralizing process of corruption and deceit. And the way that liberty must be defended is not with amateur firearms, but with an unwearying insistence upon the honesty, integrity, and professionalism of American institutions and those who lead them. We are living through the most dangerous challenge to the free government of the United States that anyone alive has encountered. What happens next is up to you and me. Don’t be afraid. This moment of danger can also be your finest hour as a citizen and an American.

*******************************************

Much more and audio version (56 min) also available at the website.

David Frum is a senior editor at The Atlantic and the chairman of Policy Exchange. In 2001–02, he was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush.

>20 margd: I'll listen to it, but does the full version address Bannon? Any analysis that fails to account for Bannon falls short. See >10 davidgn:.

>21 davidgn: does the full version address Bannon?

Just once, as example of Republican leaders' avoiding knowledge of worrisome situations, so they don't have to comment:

...A scandal involving the president could likewise wreck everything that Republican congressional leaders have waited years to accomplish. However deftly they manage everything else, they cannot prevent such a scandal. But there is one thing they can do: their utmost not to find out about it.

“Do you have any concerns about Steve Bannon being in the White House?,” CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Ryan in November. “I don’t know Steve Bannon, so I have no concerns,” answered the speaker. “I trust Donald’s judgment.”

Asked on 60 Minutes whether he believed Donald Trump’s claim that “millions” of illegal votes had been cast, Ryan answered: “I don’t know. I’m not really focused on these things.”

What about Trump’s conflicts of interest? “This is not what I’m concerned about in Congress,” Ryan said on CNBC. Trump should handle his conflicts “however he wants to.”

Ryan has learned his prudence the hard way. Following the airing of Trump’s past comments, caught on tape, about his forceful sexual advances on women, Ryan said he’d no longer campaign for Trump. Ryan’s net favorability rating among Republicans dropped by 28 points in less than 10 days. Once unassailable in the party, he suddenly found himself disliked by 45 percent of Republicans.

As Ryan’s cherished plans move closer and closer to presidential signature, Congress’s subservience to the president will likely intensify. Whether it’s allegations of Russian hacks of Democratic Party internal communications, or allegations of self-enrichment by the Trump family, or favorable treatment of Trump business associates, the Republican caucus in Congress will likely find itself conscripted into serving as Donald Trump’s ethical bodyguard...

>17 Taphophile13: Re Acting Attorney General fired for failing to support immigration ban, excerpt from her confirmation hearing way back when:

In her 2015 confirmation hearing, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) demanded to know if Sally Yates would be confident enough to stand up to the president of the United States. At the time the president happened to be Barack Obama, but when given the opportunity, Yates kept her promise and was promptly fired by Donald Trump...

Yates explained to Sessions: “Senator, I believe the Attorney General or the Deputy Attorney General has an obligation to follow the law and the Constitution and to give their independent legal advice to the President.”...

In a statement from the White House, Yates was called “weak” twice in one sentence and chastised for being an Obama appointee. Her replacement was also an Obama hire.

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/01/watch-jeff-sessions-grills-sally-yates-on-saying...

A Cornell political scientist's take on the Zunger piece.

https://tompepinsky.com/2017/01/30/weak-and-incompetent-leaders-act-like-strong-...

An essay by Yonatan Zunger entitled “Trial Balloon for a Coup?” is making the rounds. Such essays are frightening to many. And yet they must be read critically. I am equally taken by the argument that everything that Zunger identifies is evidence not of a deliberate planning by an aspiring authoritarian, but of the exact opposite: the weakness and incoherence of administration by a narcissist.
...
When reading commentary on contemporary U.S. politics, it is best to recognize any attempt to establish a Coherent Theory of the Trump Presidency based on public outputs for the Kremlinology that it is. The hot takes of “I have a theory that makes sense of all of this!” are the qualitative equivalent of curve-fitting. Don’t ignore these hot takes; one of them is probably right, after all. But understand what is missing. From my view, the conclusion to draw from the past ten days is just how little power this president is able to exert over national politics.

The second (concluding) paragraph is what gives me the most hope here, but only a fool would take Trump's weakness and ineffectiveness for granted.

Pepinsky's take is in tension with, though not directly in opposition to, information from other sources regarding the Trump team's goings-on.

e.g. See the section "A Method Behind Madness" in:
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/01/28/deep-state-vs-donald-trump/

The above account may imply that, with Trump, all policy will essentially be determined by the seat of his pants. But if that is what conveyed, it is only half the story. John Maudlin of Maudlin Economics provides this corrective:

“This is going to be a short letter summarizing my impressions from the last few days in Washington talking with Trump’s transition team. I think it might be easiest to present them in the form of a list.

“If you listen to the media you might have the impression that the Trump transition team is in complete disarray. Talking with leaders of the transition team certainly didn’t leave me with that impression. They have broken the transition process down into over 30 departments and have created a ‘landing document’ for each department. The analogy they are using is that this process is like planning an invasion, and they are going to hand the landing document off to the ‘beachhead teams’ who will then execute the plans.

“I was briefly allowed to look at (without actually being able to read) the plan for one cabinet-level department. It appeared to be about 100 pages plus of serious detail as to exactly what executive orders would need to be removed and added, what personnel would have to be replaced (both appointees and regular staff), what policies would need to be changed, and so forth.

“I was told that this level of planning was being done for every department. My impression is that there are a lot of people from various think tanks and others with experience in the presidential transition process who are involved in directing the plan for each department. That level of detailed planning doesn’t happen in less than two months. My guess is that some of that thinking has been going on for years, and now it can be implemented.

“That being said, we know that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy; and it was instructive to sit with Bill Bennett, who talked about his experience in trying to reform the Department of Education under Reagan. They were still dealing with personnel and policy issues a year later, and this was when the department was much smaller than it is today. And that is just one department.

“When I asked a key person how much of the overall plan would likely come to fruition, I got a rueful smile and a shrug. ‘If we even get half of this done in the first few years, that will be major reform’…

“Trump’s management style is going to drive the media (and admittedly, much of the country and the world) nuts. One person who has worked closely with Trump during the transition says it is a lot like the HBO show Entourage and not at all like the British sitcom Yes, Minister. Trump will have people in his entourage competing to give him the pieces of information he needs. In his business organization, he sets the vision and then hires people to execute that vision; and then he goes back to doing what we have seen him do so well, which is to create the brand and image.

“He is bringing in people to execute his vision, and he’s going to expect them to get it done. He will jump in when he thinks he’s needed or when he can add something to the process, but he will mostly be paying attention to his team’s performance.

“One assessment suggests that there is going to be more than the usual amount of personnel turnover in the first six months. The media will be writing about how Trump can’t keep people and about all the chaos in the White House and other parts of government. But from Trump’s perspective, and given his management style, that’s not necessarily bad in terms of his longer-term goal of changing things.

“We have not had a president with this type of management style in my lifetime. Since it’s not something that any of us are going to be familiar with, it is going to make some of us uncomfortable until we get used to it (and some people never will).”

I will repeat once again, however, my contention that Bannon is the wildcard here. The more I learn about him, the more the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. All eyes.
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ETA: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/01/31/bannon-odds-islam-china-decades-us...

In dozens of hours of audio recordings reviewed by USA TODAY of his Breitbart News Daily radio show in 2015 and 2016, Bannon told his listeners that the United States and the Western world are engaged in a “global existential war,” and he entertained claims that a “fifth column” of Islamist sympathizers had infiltrated the U.S. government and news media. Those recordings, preserved online, offer an often unfiltered window into the thinking of Trump’s interview-averse senior adviser.

...
I think those need to be preserved in as many locations as possible.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-steve-bannon-really-as-bad-as-all-tha...

WaPo 11/15/16:

Alt-right “conservatives” and white supremacists are jubilant; the rest of the world, including many Republicans, is nearly apoplectic. Even Glenn Beck, who seems finally to have found the right meds, says Bannon is a “nightmare” and once compared him to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

Beck too, huh?

-------------------------------------------------------------------

"On Sunday, #StopPresidentBannon was trending on Twitter as protests raged at airports across the country in reaction to Friday’s executive order prohibiting Syrian refugees and travelers from seven Muslim countries from entering the United States as well as Bannon’s elevation to the NSC."

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/donald-trump-steve-bannon-234347
"President Bannon" : That seems to be the new meme out of the neocon psywar stable. (Social media analysis could confirm or refute, but when Max Boot headlines with it, that might just be a clue...)

That being said, you know what? Fuck it.

#StopPresidentBannon

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Probably the last for this morning:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-michael-moore-coup...

The US is in the middle of a coup and hasn't realised, according to Michael Moore.

The filmmaker and journalist, who was one of the few famous people to publicly predict that Donald Trump would become President, has warned that the US state is being overthrown by Mr Trump and the people he has appointed to govern alongside him.

Linking to a New York Times piece about the role of senior advisor Steve Bannon, he posted on Twitter: "If you're still trying to convince yourself that a 21st century coup is not underway, please, please snap out of it".

Kellyanne Conway: "You're talking about 300 and some who have been detained or are prevented from gaining access to an aircraft in their home countries.
That's 1 percent. And I think in terms of the upside being greater protection of our borders, of our people, it's a small price to pay."

Here is a sampling of the "small price" that an MD, a six year old boy, a wheelchair-bound accident victim, etc. are paying for Trump's executive order:
13 Legal Actions Challenging Trump's Immigration Executive Order
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/legal-actions-challenging-trumps-immigration-exec...

ETA: Trump’s refugee ban is a matter of life and death for some, including a 1-year-old with cancer
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/trumps-refugee-ban-is-a-matter-of-li...

>25 margd: and another in the life or death category, a four month old can't get her heart surgery now

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/like-a-nightmare-4-month-old-girl-misses-open-he...

Violent White Supremacists, rejoice! Given last couple paragraphs, "Radical Islamic Extremists" may have less to fear as well:

Exclusive: Trump to focus counter-extremism program solely on Islam - sources

The Trump administration wants to revamp and rename a U.S. government program designed to counter all violent ideologies so that it focuses solely on Islamist extremism, five people briefed on the matter told Reuters.

The program, "Countering Violent Extremism," or CVE, would be changed to "Countering Islamic Extremism" or "Countering Radical Islamic Extremism," the sources said, and would no longer target groups such as white supremacists who have also carried out bombings and shootings in the United States.

Such a change would reflect Trump's election campaign rhetoric and criticism of former President Barack Obama for being weak in the fight against Islamic State and for refusing to use the phrase "radical Islam" in describing it. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for attacks on civilians in several countries.

The CVE program aims to deter groups or potential lone attackers through community partnerships and educational programs or counter-messaging campaigns in cooperation with companies such as Google (GOOGL.O) and Facebook (FB.O).

Some proponents of the program fear that rebranding it could make it more difficult for the government to work with Muslims already hesitant to trust the new administration, particularly after Trump issued an executive order last Friday temporarily blocking travel to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

...One grant recipient, Leaders Advancing & Helping Communities, a Michigan-based group led by Lebanese-Americans, has declined a $500,000 DHS grant it had sought, according to an email the group sent that was seen by Reuters. A representative for the group confirmed the grant had been rejected but declined further comment.

"Given the current political climate and cause for concern, LAHC has chosen to decline the award," said the email, which was sent last Thursday, a day before Trump issued his immigration order, which was condemned at home and abroad as discriminating against Muslims while the White House said it was to "to protect the American people from terrorist attacks by foreign nationals."

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN15G5VO?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNew...

ETA: Geez, what an amateur hour!!

‏@DefenseBaron
Spicer just named the Navy SEALs wife on national TV. You might want to send some force protection over there, @DeptofDefense. @CENTCOM

25, 26 "small price to pay", contd. Badly burned Iraqi boy faces surgery (Michigan, Feb 5), without his family, whose visas were revoked.

Immigration order separates badly burned Iraqi boy from family
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/immigration-order-separates-badly-burned-iraqi-boy-f...

Zunger has an update/response to critics:

https://extranewsfeed.com/when-villains-arent-super-f5646d81db6#.6tqnnpmzd

The major villains of movies and TV shows alike are invariably brilliant masterminds. Corrupt politicians protect themselves from justice (and our hero) with ten layers of schemes and twists; murderers use untraceable poisons to avenge long-forgotten insults; ancient treasures are guarded by caves full of perfectly functioning booby-traps.

There’s a good reason for this: brilliant villains make for excellent storytelling. They’re much more interesting than the ones in real life, where crooks are generally looking for the quickest way to get ahead, murders are committed by angry idiots with poor impulse control, and ancient tombs are mostly full of pot-shards.

But when we’re used to evil geniuses on-screen, we start to expect them in real life, too. And this is dangerous, because it can make us not recognize real dangers — like people threatening our democracy without being super-geniuses.

Responses to my essay Trial Balloon for a Coup? have ranged from the thoughtful to the slightly nutty, and if you’ve seen them, you may be wondering what to think: Is this a conspiracy theory? Are our choices limited to “Donald Trump (or maybe Steve Bannon) is a super-villain” or “everything bad happened by accident and Donald Trump is really a nice guy?” Can we ever know enough about people’s motivations to tell malice from incompetence, and if we can’t, does that mean we need to assume the best?

I’d like to spend some time talking about these ideas, and give an explanation for what’s going on in the news (and the ideas raised in Trial Balloon) which don’t require you to believe in super-villains or decide that you have to hold off and not act. I call it: “You can be an idiot, and still be dangerous.”
...
These aren’t the advanced techniques of hyper-chess masters; they’re familiar to every schoolyard bully and gaslighting domestic abuser. They’re also techniques which Trump is famous for in his business dealings; he’s particularly got a reputation for refusing to pay vendors and contractors and seeing if they manage to sue him.

All of which is to say: You don’t need to be brilliant to be a danger to democracy; quite literally, an idiot could do it.

The most important thing you need to do is simply ignore the social norms by which others are playing. If people expect you to talk to the press, ignore the press; if they expect what you say to have meaning, speak nonsense; if they expect you to obey the law, ignore it. Rules are for suckers, the autocrat believes, and power is what you can get away with. (Masha Gessen’s essays on how to survive in an autocracy should be required reading for all Americans)

Note also that (a) Trump was elected (in no small part) on the basis of his pervasive norm-breaking, his refusal to obey any rules set for him, and (b) as noted above, norms are precisely what holds democracy together. The likely result of this is left as an exercise for the reader.
...

>29 davidgn: Good piece, thanks. I'm betting on incompetence or ignorance being a major factor, although I certainly wouldn't rule out malice as a motivator. And it's funny, but I believe the ingrained incompetence of large bureaucratic systems may actually help save us. It's not easy to turn the US government on a dime.

ACTION ALERT: The Senate Committee on Homeland Security is taking calls about Bannon's appointment to the NSC. You can call:
202-224-4751
August McLaughlin @AugstMcLaughlin 10:53 AM - 2 Feb 2017

I'm submitting a comment here for now until I get through:
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/contact
The Happy Feminist ‏@HappyFeminist 15h15 hours ago

>31 margd: Good call.

----------------------------------------------------------

Making the rounds, and rightly so:

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one's prejudgment simply need not be believed--in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical--and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.
If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in particular situations. The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them. We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem. It is a particular form of the impact of historical circumstances on human beings, a psychological concomitant of certain external conditions. Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.

Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person. This state of affairs explains why in such circumstances our attempts to know what "the people" really think are in vain and why, under these circumstances, this question is so irrelevant for the person who is thinking and acting responsibly. The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.

But these thoughts about stupidity also offer consolation in that they utterly forbid us to consider the majority of people to be stupid in every circumstance. It really will depend on whether those in power expect more from peoples' stupidity than from their inner independence and wisdom.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015), 9-11.

25, 26, 28 "small price to pay" contd.

More than 100,000 visas have been revoked since President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration and travel was signed January 27, government lawyers revealed Friday in a court session in Virginia.

The number came in response to a question from the judge about how many people have been affected by this order...

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/03/politics/over-100000-visas-revoked-government-lawy...

ETA: One thing we can do anyway, support refugees where they are: https://donate.unhcr.org/int-en/general/?set_country=INT

The historical Nazi analogy doesn't entirely fit Trump's apparent goal of breaking down the separation of church and state, but given that neo-Nazi Steve Bannon rides under the banner of "Judeo-Christianity", I think we have to accept that American neo-Nazism is and will be in fact prominently, militantly religious, and specifically "Judeo-Christian". (So long, atheistic MRAs, Gamergate wankers, PUA bros and other random angry male unfuckables... The Rump don't need ya no more.)

Trump is so unbearable that he can't rely, not for long anyway, on the support of anyone moderately sane or capable of turning sane. Therefore, he HAS to turn to fanatics. Therefore, he HAS to embrace religious fundamentalists and extremists. There is no other group to supply him with massive staunch popular support.

Forget foreign wars--if Trump is appeased at this stage, the US will have a civil war on its hands.

Donald Trump vows to 'totally destroy' Johnson Amendment that stops churches funding political parties

"I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution, I will do that. Remember."

Re Kellyanne Conway's "Bowling Green Massacre" lie:

"What's the ethical difference between inventing a fake terrorist attack in order to smear refugees and blood libel?"

-Ned Resnikoff ‏@resnikoff 6h6 hours ago

https://www.bowlinggreenmassacrefund.com/

https://www.facebook.com/events/1389109144474469/

https://twitter.com/i/moments/827365144489455616

Meanwhile, Trump is trying to make sure he gets to have his own financial crisis: https://twitter.com/CNBCnow/status/827547220652220416/video/1

>36 sturlington: Staying tuned for tomorrow's scandal...unbelievable, isn't it, how they keep coming? Hopefully, checks and balances and a few sane decision-makers (R or D, doesn't matter) will preserve our Republic, our allies, and the world until relief (R or D, doesn't matter at this point) arrives in 2020. (2018 is too much to hope for?)

I don't think we can assess at this point the long-term damage Trump will do. Even just his pick(s) for the Supreme Court (I've read he could get to fill not one but two seats) would guarantee a certain legislative trend for decades.

As symbols go, this is extremely eloquent:



And it will hit you with delayed effect. Trump destroyed a very old image of America. It will take a long time for this to sink in.

>39 LolaWalser: The Der Spiegel cover is equally apt http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/5894bed26e09a8f2208b4d28-900

>40 theoria:

And probably faster to decode for a Trumpet.

>41 LolaWalser: The NRA might object to his choice of weapon.

Damn, Village magazine goes all out: https://www.thesun.ie/news/527797/anger-after-left-leaning-village-magazine-dona...

One thing about his deliberate creation of rifts and enemies, it's so wide-reaching and indiscriminatory that I'm not afraid that somebody on the left might kill him. The other side has far more killer kooks.

>34 LolaWalser: Donald Trump vows to 'totally destroy' Johnson Amendment that stops churches funding political parties

That stops churches from speaking out on political issues for fear of losing their tax-exempt status. Note that it's all bark and no bite; complaints about the subject go to an unmanned IRS office, that will be looked at if they ever get someone in the position; they haven't bothered filling it for four years. Getting rid of the Johnson Amendment seems more realistic and fair; if churches want to entangle themselves in the political system by explicitly endorsing candidates, it seems they should have the right to do that, and I doubt it will change all that much.

>45 prosfilaes:

At this point I am struck especially by his rhetoric. "I will destroy totally" etc. As to the effect, we'll see--I think the intention, the direction in which he wants his government to be seen moving, is already important. Maybe not as important as the precedent set with the Hobby Lobby ruling, but he's getting somewhere specific with all this. Christian sharia, ironically.

>46 LolaWalser: Yeah. I wish I had a clue what was going in that head of his; I certainly wouldn't have pegged him as moving us towards a Christian dominated government before he got in office.

>47 prosfilaes: I at least saw that part coming. The Christian right really turned out the vote for him, and it expects its due.

>48 davidgn: I was really scared when Reagan won with the strong support of the Christian right but he never really gave them anything substantial.

>49 jjwilson61: Reagan also was in a lot less tenuous of a political position. Trump needs to keep these people on-side. A no-brainer, really: it's not as though he and his rarified and insulated class have to live with the consequences, so the cost is basically zero...

cf. https://www.librarything.com/topic/247464#5914407
and https://www.librarything.com/topic/246793#5904331

>47 prosfilaes:

I really think it's all down to where he can get support. They used the "working class" in the election but given his actions it seems nothing will be done for them except maybe sending them to wars--or walls--it's his rich friends he's tweeting about helping. Anyone who voted for Trump because they sincerely thought he'd bring back the 1950s good secure jobs is likely to be disappointed. So who is left? A bunch of CEOs and billionaires, sure, but they are not mass.

And if he betrays the "working class" and tanks their economy, on what basis except religion can he rally forces?

The Muslim ban is both the beginning of that and an attempt to use external threat as a means of getting people behind him. A war would suit him. Wars made some unpopular leaders temporarily popular--Thatcher comes to mind. Plus, war is good for business. War IS business.

Still, if nobody outside bites, domestic strife will do. Ferret out the non-Christian fifth column, go after gays, women who want abortions--all will be grind to his mill.

25, 26, 28, 33 "small price to pay" contd.

Court rules that Washington and Minnesota have standing to contest travel ban because of "immediate and irreparable" harm to residents, businesses and their education systems.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/feb/3/washington-state-minnesota-seek-t...

Apparently, ban may also affect routine cross-border travel from Canada, which could be huge, economically, for both countries:
Canada looking at legality of enforcing Trump travel ban on Canadian soil
Legal concerns over ban could run up against customs pre-clearance agreement
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pre-clearance-trump-ban-1.3965666

This thread is an example of why Democrats lost and why they will continue to lose. When the words "Nazi" and "fascist" are used so falsely and irresponsibly, the user loses all credibility. Why is Trump president? Because of the kind of people in this thread.

Perhaps liberals mean 'more fascist.'

#53--I'm sorry but by any classical definition of the term Trump does qualify as a fascist. You might not like it when he's called such but that's your problem--that he's currently POTUS is my problem along with a problem for the majority of American voters who voted in this past election who favored another candidate by 2.8 million votes. Funny that somehow that fact doesn't seem to matter to you. Believe me I have no problem referencing him as a fascist as that is exactly how I see him.

Travel ban: small price to pay, contd.

Add to list US retailers just south of Canadian border? They welcome Canadian shoppers and suffer when Cdn dollar is low compared to the US as it is right now. Sometimes retailers consider the loonie at par just to attract Canadian shoppers (particularly during the holidays). Anyways, one of these wouldbe shoppers, a Moroccan-Canadian woman, was turned back after four hours of questioning about her religion, views of Trump, and snooping in her cell phone. (Latter is so dumb--bad guys will surely carry only "clean" devices from now on. Innocents will be turned away by border guards who don't understand foreign languages.) Especially after Quebec mosque bombing, Canadians seem to be feeling protective of their Muslim brothers and sisters, so they may be a little less likely to cross the border to shop, etc.? Especially when their currency is less valuable and they were already more likely to shop at home.

Canadian woman turned away from U.S. border after questions about religion, Trump
'We found videos on your phone that are against us,' Fadwa Alaoui says she was told by a border agent
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/canadian-woman-turned-away-from-u-s-borde...

_______________________________________

ETA: Canada 's concerns about close border ties with US
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38964069

Should you take your phone to the United States?
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39003392

Donald Trump’s Dangerous End Game
Why the president is accusing journalists and judges of enabling terrorists.

...Trump is courting terrorism to gain political power at the expense of his power rivals. He doesn’t need a masterplan or even a high level of consciousness about it for us to recognize that this is what’s happening.

In the absence of a major crisis, this has the effect of pitting his most committed supporters against a broad opposition: The significant majority of Americans, who find his political style unappealing, alarming, or grotesque. Trump cannot render the country’s massive democratic institutions impotent when most Americans will make common cause with them over him. If the attack Trump is courting comes, the ensuing battle for narrative control will determine whether he, or his opposition, is held responsible for it, and thus, how durable the resistance to authoritarianism will be. His opponents will have facts on their side, but he will have the largest bully pulpit and the means of retribution at his disposal. If at some point, without changing tactics, Trump wins over a broader swath of the public, the real damage to democracy will begin.

Brian Beutler is a senior editor at The New Republic. He hosts Primary Concerns, a podcast about politics. @brianbeutler
https://newrepublic.com/article/140461/donald-trumps-dangerous-end-game

>56 margd: Innocents will be turned away by border guards who don't understand foreign languages.

There was a news story about some guy on an airplane getting ready to take off who was talking on the phone to his uncle, in Baghdad, in Arabic. Naturally he missed his flight and had to deal with security, because that's exactly what a terrorist would do, have a nice casual phone conversation in Arabic while the plane was getting ready to take off.

Is this really how fascism takes hold in the US?
When dealing with current politics, we don't want to belittle history, but can't underplay reality either.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/02/fascism-takes-hold-170207142614...

....Two weeks into Donald Trump's presidency, the "fascist" label is invoked more frequently - thereby adding to an already loud debate over the issue during his hyper-nationalist, aggressively nativist election campaign.

Trump's Muslim ban, attacks on a free press, overt lying, purging of the State Department's senior staff, firing of the acting attorney general, undermining of a democratic election process by claiming voter fraud, and attacks on the US judiciary - all evoke fascist hallmarks.

But at the same time, we are still undergoing the same reactions that all those cultural depictions of fascism try to warn us about: paralysis over fascism's sudden, casual entry into the political mainframe, and the inability to recognise it once it takes hold.

Even as these plays, books and films ask us to ponder the question, there can be a neutering, self-protective distance between our full comprehension and the horrifying reality we're asked to consider. We are taught, rightly, that Nazi horrors, while uniquely heinous and specific, are premised on potentially universal causes and processes.

And we know, per English novelist Michael Rosen's poem, that fascism doesn't first arrive in jackboots. But still, there is an assumption that the fact of it happening historically protects against a recurrence, in any format. How could it, when we know what we know? Not now. Certainly not here.

Writers have long described a human impulse to normalise the not normal - perhaps because the alternative is so irrationally horrible that it eludes full description.

As one historian notes, in the 1920s and early 1930s US newspapers were downplaying Hitler, seeing him as a joke, or someone who would be moderated by the system.

In 1922, The New York Times noted reliable sources "confirmed the idea that Hitler's anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded".

It is almost impossible to read this today. And it is unsettling in the context of assurances during Trump's race-baiting campaign - he didn't literally mean a Muslim ban, we were told....

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/10/how-i-know-its-time-to-flee-trumps-americ...

....I’ve been reading Volker Ullrich’s superb biography Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939. Trumpism isn’t Nazism but 20th century fascism provides some useful tips for America’s descent into whatever the hell this psychotic real estate honcho has in store for us.

As Ullrich reminds us, the machinery of state repression moved quickly after Hitler’s 1933 seizure of power. Censorship, then arrests of left-wing politicians were an early canary in the coalmine. This week we watched Trump’s Republicans silence the unfailingly polite Elizabeth Warren on the floor of the U.S. senate. The president himself personally joke-threatened to “destroy” the career of a Texas state senator as a favor to police, because the lawmaker wants to reform civil asset forfeiture (when cops steal your property and never give it back, even when you’re found not guilty of a crime).

Soon after becoming chancellor, the Nazis began insinuating their one-party state into commerce, punishing businesses they deemed insufficiently cooperative. Also this week, Trump went after Nordstrom’s in revenge for the department store chain’s decision to stop carrying his daughter Ivanka’s clothing line. Trump Administration chief propagandist Sean Spicer defended the president’s bizarre comments, declaring Nordstrom’s decision “an attack on his daughter.”

Should I stay or should I go?

Like porn, we’ll know The Moment Everything Changed when we see it.

The arrest of a politician would be such a moment. As would a “temporary” suspension of civil rights, even/especially if it followed the inevitable next terrorist attack.

I don’t have much use for the reliably impotent corporate news media — indeed, Trump’s win is largely their fault — but as a look-out-this-is-getting-really-real moment, Trump’s relentless beating up on the press makes me incredibly nervous. What will this guy do when the new Left gears up with big-ass protests later this year? Isolated from the rallies from whence he drew his strength, Boy Trump in the Beltway Bubble spells trouble; look for The Donald to wallow in paranoia so deep and dark that even Richard Nixon wouldn’t be able to relate. There he’ll be, surrounded by Steve Bannon and his other pet fascists — no one talking stay calm and carry on, everyone around him egging him on as he lashes out.

If you’re not scared, you’re not paying attention. Then again, maybe it’s not as necessary for you to watch the signs as it is for me.

--Ted Rall, syndicated writer and the cartoonist for ANewDomain.net, is the author of the book Snowden, the biography of the NSA whistleblower.

>61 davidgn: Speaking of Evolianism and terrorist attacks...
These are the guys who come to mind most forcefully for me. They sat precisely at that junction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordine_Nuovo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pino_Rauti
ETA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco_Freda

Wow! My understanding is that one need not open door or speak to ICE (other than at border crossing) unless they have a warrant, and citizens, at least, don't have to produce proof of citizenship. (Many of us don't even have birth certificate, certificate of citizenship, or passport--much less carry such papers on a regular basis!) Racial profiling and jackboots are he-ere? Brr! https://www.aclu.org/files/kyr/MKG17-KYR-PoliceImmigrationFBI-OnePager-English-v...

When you read this stuff, remember that employers are almost never prosecuted... Heck, one of them is even nominated Secretary of Labor:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/us/politics/andrew-puzder-labor-trump-undocum...
http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/08/news/kfile-labor-nominee-undocumented-workers/
ETA: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/carls-jr-immigration-audit-andy-puzder_us_58...

*************************************************

Trump’s Deportation Force Begins Raids on Undocumented Immigrants
The White House says it’s business as usual, but critics say ICE’s raids are a major change—and might just be the beginning.

A family member "said she knows of two apartment complexes with high concentrations of Latino residents where ICE officers went door-to-door looking for specific individuals. When people opened their doors, (Sarah Owings, an immigration attorney in Atlanta) said, the ICE officers would ask everyone present to show proof that they were in the United States legally."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/02/11/trump-s-deportation-force-begin...

**************************************************

Federal agents conduct immigration enforcement raids in at least six states

A DHS official confirmed that while immigration agents were targeting criminals, given the broader range defined by Trump’s executive order they also were sweeping up non-criminals in the vicinity who were found to be lacking documentation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/federal-agents-conduct-sweeping-immigrat...

**************************************************

Tom Scocca ‏@tomscocca 8h8 hours ago

Who else is old enough to remember when the idea of stopping you for your papers was popular shorthand for anti-American totalitarianism?

In some cities, activists said that ICE had set up roadside or neighborhood checkpoints, where ICE agents, often in unmarked cars, appeared to be asking people at random for proof of citizenship or identification.

Travel ban: small price to pay, contd. (fingers, hands...)

I once lived on a military base in southern Manitoba that NATO used to simulate Siberia in war games. Tropical people, perhaps not adequately clothed, must be truly desperate (or unaware) to walk into Canada there at this time of year. Frostbite hurts and some of these guys have lost fingers, etc.

(Ditto the frozen St. Lawrence River, also a crossing for illegals, previously at least from Canada to US. Movie "Frozen River" captures it well.)

Desperate Immigrants Risk Perilous Winter Trek to Canada
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/desperate-immigrants-risk-perilous-winter-tr...

I want to report a Nazi--that guy, standing in front of the "White House" sign (what do you call that room, the press room?), and declaring that "the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned". Ah yes. Stephen Miller's the name. Wormy looking creature.

the end
3:01 result of this though is that our
3:03 opponents the media and the whole world
3:06 will soon see as we begin to take
3:09 further actions that the powers of the
3:11 President to protect our country are
3:13 very substantial and will not be
3:15 questioned

The whole world sez "fuck you", Stevie. Bring it on.

56 small price to pay (border-state businesses), contd.

Like 9/11 All Over Again’: Canadians Grow Fearful of Crossing the Border
...Two out of three Canadians live within about 60 miles of the American border...
..."People are not very comfortable with making the trip anymore.”... (Mark High, Canada-US Business Association)
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/13/world/canada/windsor-canada-detroit-border-ap...

Wonder if tourism in places such as Florida will be affected as well as border-state businesses?

"Like 9/11 All Over Again": The difference between now and 9/11, is that back then Canada's sympathy was with the US. Now, I think, leery and incredulous.

(I happened to be at a US-Cdn business meeting (quickly cancelled) in Windsor, Ontario the morning of 9/11. The hotel (Holiday Inn) opened a conference room with TV and refreshments for its American guests, and posted on its outdoor sign the message "Our prayers are with our neighbours". Bridge traffic backed up as it took us hours to clear US Customs before all but one border crossing to the US closed. )

>53 barney67: "When the words "Nazi" and "fascist" are used so falsely and irresponsibly, the user loses all credibility."

Precisely. And not that I want to assist the people in this thread with whom I disagree (generally, anyone who is not simply anti-Trump but hysterically so), it might help them if they:
A) refrain from turning the hyperbole dial to 11 ("Nazi"/"fascist" etc.) every single time they disagree with Trump et al about anything at all, and
B) save their outrage for when Trump does something stronger than exercising a very simple and small Presidential power (immigration actions).

As someone else (I don't have the name close at hand) recently put it: "Donald Trump is such a terrifying fascist dictator that literally no one fears speaking out against him on literally any platform." What's it mean, folks?

But then, they don't see A as hyperbole, and they truly believe that to be born on Earth is to have an inalienable right to cross American borders. Ah, well - if only there were such glasses that allowed me to share the clarity with which I see.

This was a power-to-the-people election, the opposite of fascism. Very Democratic, in fact, if Democrats could see that. In fact, many of them did. Too bad a few angry yahoos on this forum can't see that. Many Republicans didn't vote for Trump while many Democrats did. An odd election that way.

All illegal immigrants vulnerable to deportation. Hispanic congressional representatives barred by Paul Ryan's staff from meeting with ICE. Raids across the country causing fear and panic. Absolutely no empathy or compassion on display for families being separated, for people brought here as children, for people who have been trying to do the right thing. People being picked up at churches, at schools picking up their children. A woman arrested while filing a restraining order against an abusive ex. Just fear and hatred of the other, of anyone who doesn't fit a narrow definition of what a human should be. Meanwhile, my son, who has Hispanic friends, asks me why Mexicans are hated and if Trump will bring back segregation. I'm absolutely disgusted with the party of so-called Christians right now who claim to love the Constitution so much. There is no defense for this.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/lawmakers-ice-says-all-undocumented-immigrant...

>68 sturlington: I don't think that the people following these orders or the people cheering them on put any value on empathy or compassion at all. That Green Card holders and US citizens are also being held, harassed and having their phones taken and searched is at all a concern for them. It couldn't possibly happen to them, of course, since a prejudice against one culture and religion would never circle around to their culture or religion. It's best to ignore the rise in threats and attacks on synagogues and Jewish centers, which is made easier now that a "terrorist" can't be white.

>69 RidgewayGirl: Trump's disgraceful treatment of the Jewish and African American reporters during his insane press conference yesterday is emblematic of this. Everything centers on him. The real fears and threats to other people don't matter. Only his feelings matter. For his supporters it is the same. It is an astonishing level of self-centeredness.

And so yesterday Trump held a "press conference" that, from what I've seen/heard so far, was all kinds of crazy. I think that the most concerning is the following.

Trump dismisses GOP town hall protesters because most of them are Democrats. When asked about the rowdy protesters from constituents that many Republican lawmakers have faced at their town halls, Trump dismissed them and said most of those people weren’t the people who voted for Republicans in the first place, and thus shouldn’t be taken into consideration. “They are not the Republican people that our representatives represent,” the president said of the protesters.

Granted he didn't say it outright, in essence he did say that if you're not a Republican, nothing you have to say matters, and the Republicans in DC don't represent you even if they are your rep in congress, and neither does he for that matter.

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/trump-just-gave-a-weapons-grade-crazy-press-conf...

>71 rastaphrog: Yes, seeing this sentiment more and more. It is highly disturbing. Plays into the narrative that "regular" people, "real americans" support Trump. If you criticize, if you protest, you are also othered, somehow not real. Your concerns can therefore be dismissed as invalid.

>69 RidgewayGirl: good to see something from you again

65 small price to pay, contd. (tourism)

I’m with the banned
International visitors are already turning their back on Trump-era America
The impact of the travel ban has been swift

...Hopper, a market research firm, looked at online searches for flights into America, comparing the final weeks of the Obama administration with the first weeks of Mr Trump’s presidency. It found that these searches had declined by 17%. The overwhelming majority of countries studied showed a drop in interest. The most notable exception was Russia, which has been accused of meddling in November’s presidential election in Mr Trump’s favour and colluding with members of his team. Searches for flights to America from Russia increased by 88%.

...Another study, this time looking specifically at business travel, backs up these findings. The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA), which represents corporate travel managers, found that business travel transactions in America declined by 3.4% over the course of one week following the president’s order. It reckons that a net $185m in business travel bookings was lost. If a 3.4% decline sounds small, consider the group’s assertion that a 1% drop in business travel over the course of a year correlates with a loss of 71,000 American jobs and close to $5bn in gross domestic product (although the extent to which waning business travel helps to cause economic woes, rather than just reflecting them, can be difficult to unpick).

...It is hard to separate the ban completely from other factors currently affecting travel to America. The dollar has strengthened against currencies such as the euro and the yuan since the election, making it more expensive to visit the United States. And, as Mr Trump is broadly unpopular in much of the world, some people were probably already thinking twice about coming to America before the executive order was announced.

Even so, the ban itself seems to be having an effect, and experts think it will continue to do so. Adam Sacks, president of Tourism Economics, a consultancy, told Forbes that the furore will probably “severely damage the US travel sector this year”. He cites the $246bn that international visitors spent in America last year, a figure that vastly exceeds the value of other major American exports such as cars ($152bn), agricultural products ($137bn) and petroleum products ($97bn). Those high stakes explain why travel firms, normally reluctant to annoy customers by taking a political stance, have gone out of their way to condemn Mr Trump.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2017/02/i-m-banned?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/

In Nazi moments of the day... Trump peremptorily telling reporters at a press conference that he called (i.e. people he invited over), "Quiet! Quiet! Quiet!" etc. was equal parts weird and scary.

>72 sturlington: Years ago, then-US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton and his mustache, was interviewed on The Daily Show and made a similar statement - in this case, that Bush was not charged to represent the interests of the people who didn't vote for him. If this is a prevailing belief on the right, it certainly explains why they need to suppress the vote. But frightening and sobering nonetheless. I am careful in my near-daily calls to my rep and senators to not state my political affiliation.

>73 RickHarsch: Thanks, Rick.

>76 RidgewayGirl: I sent a letter to my senator asking him to schedule a town hall. His form response (I know it was a form, because I've received the exact same response to two different letters) gave a lot of reasons that he didn't schedule town halls, including that "organized agitators" would come to disrupt them. I took that to mean that anyone who didn't agree with him was an agitator in his eyes.

Apparently our rep is hosting some kind of phone-in town hall, where we can enjoy his voice, but not that of his questioners--constituents all, I suspect as invites were by recorded phone message, and the "town hall" is not publicized online.

I asked my congressperson when they would be holding a town hall meeting, but have received no reply. I think outside agitator just means someone they disagree with. They're remembering the contentious town hall meetings of 2009, during the ACA debates, and how some of the lawmakers holding those meetings did not keep their seats in later elections.

"All illegal immigrants vulnerable to deportation."

So? Do you have a problem with the word "illegal?"

Why don't you have any sympathy for the hundreds of millions of people in America who obey the law? Are you completely lacking in compassion?

How many illegal immigrants are you personally willing to house and feed? Can they live with you? Next to you? Are you going to take care of them? No? Are you completely lacking in compassion?

It's different when it look at it that way, isn't it?

>80 barney67: No, Barney, it is not. And my answer is that in our 80 square meter apartment, with four people, I would consider taking two, but if a family required it, 3.

Adults live in a world where solutions don't have to be either/or, where nuance can and is possible, and where context is important.

Donald Trump is literally right now calling the free press "the enemy of the American people" on Twitter.

>83 sturlington: Trump is taking his place in the league of dictators (Putin, Jong-un, Mugabe, etc.).

Sean Spicer says this is "100% not true". But I'm a nasty woman and I think the headline should enter the record of headlines generated by the Trump regime.

Donald Trump considers mobilising 100,000 National Guard troops to round up undocumented immigrants

Oh, imagine--it was "an early draft"--all 11 pages of it--and not "seriously" considered.

Like the doodles you make while chatting on the telephone no doubt.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/us/politics/national-guard-illegal-immigrants...

>85 LolaWalser: Canadians aren't nasty though ...

Frankly, Trump had to consider using National Guard troops in order to fulfill his promise to the Deplorables to deport millions of "illegals." Along with the non-existent wall, this is another broken campaign promise.

Top ranking senators meeting with Comey regarding Russia this afternoon: http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/17/politics/comey-russia-senate/index.html?sr=twCNN02...

All of you whiners, if you feel so strongly, why don't you take some of these illegal immigrants into your home and take care of them?

This article by author Timothy Snyder ties in well with this discussion.

http://international.sueddeutsche.de/post/157058066625/we-have-at-most-a-year-to...

What I find interesting are his observations on how little we know of history. That despite the Cold War, we are generally ignorant of what happened and why, especially when it comes to Stalin's Russia.

I found this myself, in the comments of writers living in Germany in the early 1930s. There are parallels between this kleptocratic white nationalist authoritarian tendency and that of the white nationalist authoritarianism rising in the 1930s. He mentions that bringing this up does cause those with a shallow understanding of that era to react with "well, has he killed 6 million Jews? No? Then there's no similarity!"-type arguments. Unfortunately, I can't see people who are unwilling to look further than Fox and Friends for their news and who respond to the many stories of families torn apart and the increasing threats and violence directed toward Muslim, Latino and Jewish communities with a belligerent "what about rules? What about the persecution of white men?" to have the willingness or ability to do some serious reading.

He also ties this directly back to the intentions of the white house:

Now, one reason why we cannot forget the 1930s is that the presidential administration is clearly thinking about them – but in a positive sense. They seem to be after a kind of redo of the 1930s with Roosevelt where the Americans take a different course. where we don’t build a welfare state and don’t intervene in Europe to stop fascism. Lindbergh instead of FDR. That is their notion. Something went wrong with Roosevelt and now they want to go back and reverse it.

Which ties into Phillip Roth's The Plot Against America, a book that seemed to me to be over-blown when it was published, but has resonance today.

Snyder also looks closely at the stated objectives and beliefs of Steve Bannon, which is something we should all be doing.

And, finally, he has this advice, which I have heard elsewhere and I think is solid:

This is part of what contemporary authoritarians do: They overwhelm you with bad news and try to make you depressed and say with resignation: “Well, what can I do?”. I think it is better to limit yourself. Read the news for half an hour a day, but don’t spend the whole day obsessing about it. Americans have to pick one thing to be confident about, and then act on it. If you care about and know about refugees, the press, global warming – choose one and talk with people around you about it. Nobody can do everything but everyone can do a little bit. And people doing their little bit will meet others doing the same, and the depression lifts.

Some history.

On March 23, 1933, the newly elected members of the German Parliament (the Reichstag) met in the Kroll Opera House in Berlin to consider passing Hitler's Enabling Act. It was officially called the 'Law for Removing the Distress of the People and the Reich.' If passed, it would effectively mean the end of democracy in Germany and establish the legal dictatorship of Adolf Hitler.

The 'distress' had been secretly caused by the Nazis themselves in order to create a crisis atmosphere that would make the law seem necessary to restore order. On February 27, 1933, they had burned the Reichstag building, seat of the German government, causing panic and outrage. The Nazis successfully blamed the fire on the Communists and claimed it marked the beginning of a widespread uprising.

On the day of the vote, Nazi storm troopers gathered in a show of force around the opera house chanting, "Full powers - or else! We want the bill - or fire and murder!!" They also stood inside in the hallways, and even lined the aisles where the vote would take place, glaring menacingly at anyone who might oppose Hitler's will.

Just before the vote, Hitler made a speech to the Reichstag in which he pledged to use restraint.

"The government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures...The number of cases in which an internal necessity exists for having recourse to such a law is in itself a limited one." - Hitler told the Reichstag.

He also promised an end to unemployment and pledged to promote peace with France, Great Britain and the Soviet Union. But in order to do all this, Hitler said, he first needed the Enabling Act.

A two thirds majority was needed, since the law would actually alter the German constitution. Hitler needed 31 non-Nazi votes to pass it. He got those votes from the Center Party after making a false promise to restore some basic rights already taken away by decree.

However, one man arose amid the overwhelming might. Otto Wells, leader of the Social Democrats stood up and spoke quietly to Hitler.

"We German Social Democrats pledge ourselves solemnly in this historic hour to the principles of humanity and justice, of freedom and socialism. No enabling act can give you power to destroy ideas which are eternal and indestructible."

This enraged Hitler and he jumped up to respond.

"You are no longer needed! - The star of Germany will rise and yours will sink! Your death knell has sounded!"

The vote was taken - 441 for, only 84, the Social Democrats, against. The Nazis leapt to their feet clapping, stamping and shouting, then broke into the Nazi anthem, the Hörst Wessel song.

They achieved what Hitler had wanted for years - to tear down the German Democratic Republic legally and end democracy, thus paving the way for a complete Nazi takeover of Germany.

From this day on, the Reichstag would be just a sounding board, a cheering section for Hitler's pronouncements.

http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/enabling.htm
and cf. http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm

Full speeches: http://www.worldfuturefund.org/Reports2013/hitlerenablingact.htm

One question is to what degree we have an analogue of the Enabling Act already in place since 9/11.

>91 davidgn: You can see the first steps in that direction - there's the blaming of the judiciary if "something happens" in which any terrorist act will be used by the administration to attack the judiciary and he'll be clear that it was in no way his fault - he'll put the blame on the judiciary, the press and "agitators"* and curtailing the rights of citizens will be presented as necessary to keep us from all being murdered. And it will be accepted by many - if they're fine with US citizens, those who have been accepted as refugees and green card holders being held for long stretches, interrogated and forced to turn over their phones and even deported, why would they object to further erosions of civil liberties?

Not to mention their joy at watching children and women being detained for no better reason that being of the wrong skin color (I see no wide-spread ICE crack-downs on the many Irish and British people who overstay their visas and work here without the requisite paperwork).

* This is already happening with Republican lawmakers refusing to hold the customary town hall meetings because of "outside agitators" - another term for "constituents who disagree with the lawmaker."

Al Jazeera's documentary on the rise of Trumpism is well worth seeing:

The Big Picture: The People vs America, part I

The Big Picture: The People vs America, part II

Al Jazeera. Always the voice of rational, reliable reporting.

The good news is that Trump's Nuremberg rally today was smaller than the one held last year.

>89 barney67:
When the Trump Administration finally manages to eliminate abortion rights will you be opening your home to unwed mothers and their newborn babies?

>96 mikevail: He'll have the room, since he's spending his nights patrolling the border to keep out brown people.

>96 mikevail: You're not responding to an actual policy, act, or opinion. You're reacting to a fear you have of what might happen to people you don't know if Trump says this, and then does that, and then some people say this and do that, and then others, and then others...and then...TOTAL COLLAPSE.

You worry, you fear, you're afraid. You're making a pre-emptive strike against an imaginary boogeyman.

It's v. difficult to reason people out of their fears. Try to reason a person out of fear of heights. It won't work.

You and I are not on the same topic.

Thanks for telling me how I'm feeling. Now can you answer the question?

>98 barney67: Ask someone else to explain my post to you. Then you'll have your answer.

Hmm. You seem to be claiming the moral high ground. I thought you might want an opportunity to defend it. Incidentally, you may want to look up In Vivo Exposure Therapy. It's pretty reasonable.

101> You missed the point.

"When the Trump Administration finally manages to eliminate abortion rights will you be opening your home to unwed mothers and their newborn babies?"

You're assuming that at some point during the president's term abortion will be outlawed. That's an assumption, probably based on fear, but regardless it's an expectation of something that might happen. Expectation, assumption, fear, anxiety – that's what your comment reveals. You're not commenting on fact. Abortion is legal today. Fact. To say that it will become illegal during Trump's term is an opinion and a prediction.

My political views are rooted in fact and reality, not in assumptions and fear. You want me to answer a hypothetical question. Why should I? Your question isn't relevant to my point. That's called a non sequitur – Latin for "it does not follow". I'm talking about one subject and you're talking about another. The two are not connected.

Here's why. Illegal immigration exists today. It's a fact. Your subject, illegal abortion, is not a fact. It doesn't exist. It's a hypothetical, a what if, an "Oh, no, if he gets elected, then he'll do this and then someone will else will do that and abortion will be illegal and women will die and and and...blacks will die and and and dogs and cats liviing together and armageddon..."

That's fiction. Fantasy. You want me to comment on a fantasy world that you have invented. My question was about the world that exists today. I could reply to your paranoid fantasy. I could answer a hypothetical. I could speculate and look into a crystal ball and predict what happens down the road. I could wring my happens and worry about what if. But why? That kind of thing doesn't interest me. I'm more interested in the here and now and to lesser degree the past. I'm more interested in the facts. Let's stay on the ground, OK? And avoid caving in to whatever irrational fears we have about what might happen or what could happen. Let's avoid the hysterics of America is a Nazi country, Trump is crazyracistsexist. You don't do yourself or anyone else any favors by those kinds of outbursts.

>102 barney67:
When you pose the question; "All of you whiners, if you feel so strongly, why don't you take some of these illegal immigrants into your home and take care of them?" its not about political fact, its personal. You're challenging people to take personal responsibility for policies they support. I think its fair to expect you to answer the same challenge.

"Let's avoid hysterics..."
Have re-read your post?

A quick search of LT itself turns up another useful thread...
https://www.librarything.com/topic/139567#3499367

...which provides another excellent primer on Evola and why Bannon's name-dropping him is so remarkable. This piece (perhaps on account of originating in Searchlight) takes the theme of >61 davidgn: into account. It reviews Furlong's Social and Political Thought of Julius Evola (which, sadly, might now be worth reading).

See also my post in the info thread here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/247416#5943500

2/16 show
http://radioopensource.org/the-fog-of-trump/
Guests:
Timothy Snyder
professor of history at Yale and author of Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning
Sally Quinn
Washington Post columnist and moderator of On Faith
Michael Glennon
professor of international law at Tufts and author of National Security and Double Government
Heather Cox Richardson
professor of history at Boston College and author of To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party

Timothy Snyder—eminent historian of the bloody conflicts in Europe—sees authoritarianism rising through the American fog. “The moment you say it couldn’t happen here,” Snyder warns, “is the moment you are ignoring history. And you’re taking a huge risk.” Sally Quinn gives us the inside scoop on Washington’s chattering class, fearing something they’ve never seen before. Michael Glennon, the man who previously warned us about the perils of double government, tells us what happens when the Deep State strikes back. Heather Cox Richardson gives us the historian’s take of Steve Bannon’s worldview.

Well, look, that comment of mine about inviting illegal aliens into your home was personal, which is something I don't usually do. I don't believe that personal and political are always connected. But some people here seem to think they're always connected.

So that reply you refer to, that's personalizing the matter in response to others who have personalized the matter of immigration. I hope you can see by my comment how dumb it really is to view politics in such a personal way.
My point was, since you are already seeing this issue personally, why not take the next logical step and take personal responsibility by taking care of illegal aliens yourself, in your home, instead of volunteering the rest of us to accept the negative consequences of illegal immigration. Which do exist and are very real.

I'm not a do-gooder. If you talk like a do-gooder, then you might as well be one, otherwise you're a fraud and a hypocrite. I can get along with people who disagree with me. Most of the people I've been around in my life don't share my political views. So what?

It's this moralizing of the issues which I find futile. My debates with liberals are rarely debates. The debate rarely gets started because the liberal has already concluded that he is morally superior, that I'm a terrible person, that I'm not even a human being. With that attitude, it's impossible to debate. You can't have a debate between a person and a thing. The latter would be me. You don't have to deal with things. You can dispose of them.

This election might be the first time I've seen political correctness start to run down. Democrats on TV these day are having meltdowns. Chuck Shumer was crying. There are people who really do think the end is near because their candidate lost – and it was such a close race, the loss wasn't even that big.

You can't say, "I believe X because I'm a nice person, but that guy down the street believes not-X and therefore he's a terrible person."

That's the kind of thing that has to stop.

It's likely that Trump said to himself, "So they want to play it that way, huh? They want to play the dirty game and get insulting. Okay. I can do that, too."

>105 barney67: We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

The debate rarely gets started because the liberal has already concluded that he is morally superior, that I'm a terrible person

To be fair, we have read what you have written here, so it's not an unwarranted conclusion.

I've seen a lot of commentary lately about how liberals persecute conservatives and make them feel bad about their choices, as if they are hapless victims. Conservatives have been demonizing liberals all my life while claiming the moral high ground. The words liberal and feminist have become dirty words as a result. Conservatives have fought so-called PC culture so they can tell it like it is, but they think they're being attacked when liberals speak their minds.

Meanwhile, this whole discussion started because some of us expressed compassion for the"illegals". We treated them as if they were human beings and were denigrated as a result.

In the past year, I have seen a shocking resurgence of racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism. If it hurts conservatives' feelings to call them out on their bigotry, too bad. If they want to advance practical ways to solve problems that don't involve categorizing wide swaths of people based on arbitrary criteria like religion or ethnicity, I'd be more than willing to talk.

By the way, I'm more terrified of the angry right winger with a gun than the Syrian refugee. Hate breeds violence, it's inevitable, and that's why it cannot be condoned.

William F Buckley Jr expected conservatives to have brains, not eat them. Today's conservatism is thoroughly debased, reveling in misogyny, racism, homophobia, and anti-semitism as "resistance" to "the Establishment" or as "religious liberty."

"William F Buckley Jr expected conservatives to have brains, not eat them."

That is one hell of a line.

"some of us expressed compassion for the"illegals". We treated them as if they were human beings and were denigrated as a result."

No, you're not treating them at all. You haven't shown compassion. You have an opinion. Having opinions doesn't make you compassionate or uncompassionate. It's how you treat people that determines that. It's an act, not just talk. I have no idea how you treat illegal aliens. You have no idea how I treat them. You haven't even really expressed much of an opinion about the issue of illegal aliens other than something like "We should be nice to them".

The liberal sleight of hand, whether you are aware of it or not, is to believe that the uttering of opinions is identical to action, and if you utter opinions that sound moral, then anyone who disagrees with you must be immoral. The way out of that loop is to think for yourself and study the issue.

The liberal conceals his motives, possibly even from himself, and in criticizing those he disagrees with, he undermines the very values he claims to believe in. Claiming simultaneously to believe in compassion, sympathy, and tolerance while calling people crazy, racist, and sexist.

Fair is foul and foul is fair.

>111 barney67: Codswallop. Publicly opposing a policy of breaking up families and deporting people who have lived in the US all their lives *is* action. It's not a lot of action, protesting against those policies would be more action as would voting against politicians who support those policies, but its not nothing. And denouncing people who support an immoral policy is a moral action.

Racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of blanket discrimination are immoral and should be called out as such. Tolerance should not extend to the intolerant, or the tolerant society is in danger of being destroyed. Hatred always eventually leads to violence.

"This is why I have no patience for liberal talk of reaching out to Trump voters. There is no more a compromise point with those who accept, promote and defend bigotry, misogyny and xenophobia than there is a designation of “almost pregnant.” -- The Death of Compassion https://nyti.ms/2maF3Gn

The death of compassion cont.

ICE removing woman with brain tumor from hospital where she is receiving treatment: http://thehill.com/latino/320755-lawyers-ice-detainee-with-brain-tumor-removed-f...

Rescinding program that prevents spouses and family members of people in the military from being deported: https://twitter.com/dabeard/status/834591921511202817

Is the Trump phenomenon really just about hurt feelings and spite?

It seems perfunctory to point out the hypocrisy of building a movement and a career on the back of insulting people — Muslims, migrants, women, people of color — while nursing a hair-trigger sensitivity to any personal attack you haven’t pre-approved. That hypocrisy, though, does not appear self-evident to anyone within this movement, because a fundamental tenet of far-right pro-trolling is that it’s only other people’s feelings that are frivolous. Their own feelings, by contrast, including the capacity to feel shame when they’re held accountable for their actions, are so momentous that infringing them is tantamount to censure, practically fascism in and of itself. These are men, in short, who have founded an entire movement on the basis of refusing to handle their emotions like adults.

https://psmag.com/on-the-milo-bus-with-the-lost-boys-of-americas-new-right-629a7...

Plenty of people with horrific lives yet somehow manage to be decent human beings who don't rejoice in others' misery, let alone actively promote making others miserable.

In the midst of the humanitarian crises these "lost boys" are creating we should concentrate on helping their victims. As for those monsters who call other people freaks unworthy of living, who bully children and people already most vulnerable, who see nothing wrong in breaking up families and ruining lives, I have simply this to say: may you live to be treated one day as you treat others.

>112 jjwilson61: "Publicly opposing a policy of breaking up families and deporting people who have lived in the US all their lives *is* action"

No, it isn't, leaving aside the distorted way in which you have framed the issue. Expressing an opinion, publicly or privately, isn't action. It's talk. You know the expression: you have to walk the walk if you're gonna talk the talk. Expressing outrage takes no effort. Expressing any opinion takes no effort. You know what they say about opinions. They're like ass*****. Everyone has one.

If you were to talk to people who were directly affected buy illegal immigration, such as those in California, Arizona, and Texas, then you might have a different opinion. At a distance, it means nothing to you. That's why you don't mind telling those people what to think and how to live their lives.

> 116 "Is the Trump phenomenon really just about hurt feelings and spite?"

No, but what the election's losers are doing is, though I prefer the terms panic, meltdown, revenge, sore losers...

> 113 "Racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of blanket discrimination are immoral and should be called out as such."

Why? You've grouped four tems together. I'm not even sure they are immoral. They're not illegal. Or should there now be laws forcing people to be nice? Telling them what to say, what to think, how to feel? I believe in free speech myself.

These words have become powerful, these isms that get tossed off so indiscriminately. Also misleading, distorted, exaggerated, and frequent. Are you positive that you know in every case that your accusations are correct? Your judgments are always correct? What is gained these judgments and name calling? Are you simply using them against people you disagree with or dislike?

If your neighbor makes a joke about the Chinese, does that make him a racist? Are you prepared to put a scarlet R on his chest and "denounce" him? Drive him out of town with pitchforks? Can you be sure that one or two comments -- how many is it? -- determine whether a person is a racist or not? Do you have some kind of special divine light that allows you to see into the dark chambers of the heart?

Are you sure that being unlikable prevents a president from being effective? Are you assuming our past presidents are all saints?

Rolling Stone is reporting that customs agents are asking deplaning passengers from a domestic flight for ID papers at JFK: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/border-patrol-agents-stop-domestic-tra...

Legality of this is questionable, to say the least.

>117 barney67: Expressing an opinion, publicly or privately, isn't action. It's talk.

Why can't it be both? Before political change can happen someone needs to start talking about it.

>120 sturlington: Agents asked for papers on train between Chicago Detroit and Boston DC--and hwys near Mexican border. Apparently legal within X miles of border? Weird thing is that citizens don't need to present papers, so illegals could just lie and say that they are citizens. Very annoying, especially on s hwy where people stopped regularly on their way to work or to store. Grr.

>120 sturlington: >122 margd: Have we forgotten about this?


https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights-governments-100-mile-border-zone-map

https://www.thenation.com/article/66-percent-americans-now-live-constitution-fre...

Apparently Trump has not. And he's going to remind us continually.

So I'm reading William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany right now, because (a) it has been on my TBR shelf for quite a while and (b) it seemed a rather, uh, appropriate time to read it.

In the first chapter, Shirer discusses (among other things) the origins of Hitler's political philosophy. He's talking about Hitler studying the methodology of the Social Democrats (also discussed in >91 davidgn: above), and quotes this passage from Mein Kampf regarding one the lessons he says he has (probably erroneously, in Shirer's opinion) gleaned from them:

I understood the infamous spiritual terror which this movement exerts, particularly on the bourgeoisie, which is neither morally nor mentally equal to such attacks; at a given sign it unleashes a veritable barrage of lies and slanders against whatever adversary seems most dangerous, until the nerves of the attacked persons break down... This is a tactic based on precise calculation of all human weaknesses, and its result will lead to success with almost mathematical certainty...

I achieved an equal understanding of the importance of physical terror toward the individual and the masses... For while in the ranks of their supporters the victory achieved seems a triumph of the justice of their own cause, the defeated adversary in most cases despairs of the success of any further resistance.*

Could this have been cut and pasted directly into to Trump's playbook or what? Chilling.

*Shirer goes on to observe that "{n}o more precise analysis of Nazi tactics, as Hitler was eventually to develop them, was ever written."

I saw this bit of Bannon speaking in video, and you really should HEAR and SEE that moment. He was talking about Priebus and his "tough" job and started saying he makes the trains run on time, but caught himself and cut the phrase short.

In video--starts a beat before:

Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus Interview at CPAC 2017 | ABC News

In the transcript:

But his job is, by far, one of the toughest jobs I've ever seen in my life. To make it run every day, and to make the trains, and you only see the surface.

Stephen Bannon’s nationalist call to arms, annotated

I picture him going eeny-meeny-miney-moe every morning at the altars of Il Duce and Der Führer before choosing whose effigy to slobber up first.

Trump supporters please defend this, if you can--holding a man with a US passport and questioning him about his religion. Not taking into account his famous name, how is this not wrong?

http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/2017/02/24/muhammad-ali-jr-detained-im...

Trump supporters, how do you defend holding and bullying a 70-year-old children's book writer to the point where she never wants to return to the US again? Please explain how this is making America great, or how it's keeping us safe exactly.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/25/australian-childrens-author-mem-...

Back in 2004 Ian McEwan (one of Laura Bush's favorite novelists) was held up from entering the United States from Canada for close to two entire days by Homeland Security. One of the immigration officials interviewing him even asked him whether he wrote fiction or non-fiction novels. I'm not a huge fan but McEwen has won tons of literary prizes and numerous of his works have been put to film almost all of which (books and films) have been well received. I'm sure that a 50+ something year old skinny as fuck novelist with a public school British accent must have seemed real threatening. Which just goes to show you how stupid this Homeland Security shit has always been....and it looks pretty much like we're doubling down on the stupid now.

>128 lriley: My father lived through the transition from INS under DOJ to CBP (merging with Customs, formerly under Treasury) under DHS in the last year or so of his career. Not that there weren't issues beforehand (and plenty), but the experience of working under DHS impelled him to flee at the earliest possible moment he could claim his pension. The merger was rocky as well, to say the least, and accompanied by a massive deskilling and removal of professional discretion on the former INS side. As I understand it, at Logan they even eliminated desks for the erstwhile INS inspectors (at least partly on the grounds that Customs agents had never had them). At one point, as I recall him telling it, my dad had to junk years' worth of research and intelligence files, largely for lack of a place to secure them. I never got details, but my impression was that the daily workflow reverted from an environment which encouraged professionalism and some degree of autonomous discretion in inspectors to a warren of rigid mother-may-I regulation at every step, even for the most senior officers. As you can imagine, morale for the former INS hit rock-bottom and a lot of good people who felt professionally insulted started looking for the exits. And so the baton was passed from men and women like my dad, who took professional pride in being able to do a primary inspection in at least six languages, to Pushbutton Paulie the Cross-Trained Customs Guy. Your tax dollars at work.

cf. http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/one-face-border-it-working if you don't want to take it from me.

Muhammad Ali's Son Detained at Airport ... They Asked 'Are You Muslim?'

Muhammad Ali Jr. was detained for 2 hours at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport ... Ali's 44-year-old son was asked twice if he's Muslim, and also where he got his name. He was traveling on a U.S. Passport.

Ali Jr. is looking into suing the U.S. Treasury and Homeland Security over the incident. (Spokesman) Mancini believes it hints at a larger issue of profiling and discrimination. He's interested in filing the lawsuit as a class action...

http://www.tmz.com/2017/02/24/muhammad-ali-son-detained-airport-muslim/

Experts predict severe drop in foreign travel to the US and consequent losses to the tourism industry. When was the last time tourism increased. You guessed it, under that mess of a president, Obama.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewbender/2017/02/10/trump-travel-ban-experts-pr...

(Potential) actions by Canadian Government could affect US economy, e.g., US tourism on St Lawrence River, cross-border trade, and cross-border investments:

1. Although US boaters upset over Canadian border rules DO have a point, especially in the Thousand Islands where the border zig zags, article has healthy dose of entitlement and irony. (I think Canadian crackdown followed similar intolerance of Cdn boaters on the US side in time of border tightening after 911(?), although more Americans affected by Cdn action due to sheer numbers.) In addition to fishing & boating, lots of smuggling in this area--cigarettes, marijuana (to US), cocaine (to Canada), humans, rum. (Latter not so much these days. :-) I suspect US boaters won't get relief this year?

Bad blood on the water: NY anglers, boaters upset about Canadian border rules
http://www.newyorkupstate.com/outdoors/2017/02/bad_blood_on_the_water_ny_anglers...

2. There's debate whether Canada should even pass pre-clearance bill if Trump actions conflict with guaranteed rights in Canada:

Pre-clearance bill would give U.S. border agents in Canada new powers
Bill to expand border co-operation could also see permanent residents denied re-entry to Canada
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pre-clearance-border-canada-us-1.3976123 .

3. Canada's failure to pay judgment of NAFTA tribunal is unusual and made me wonder if payment is being held up as possible bargaining chip(?)

U.S. company goes to court to enforce $28M damage award for Ontario ban on Great Lakes wind farms
http://www.thewhig.com/2017/02/21/us-company-goes-to-court-to-enforce-28m-damage...

____________________________________________________________

Meanwhile, in Mexico:

Mexico ready to retaliate by hurting American corn farmers
Mexico is ready to hit the U.S. where it hurts: Corn.

Mexico is one of the top buyers of American corn in the world today. And Mexican senator Armando Rios Piter, who leads a congressional committee on foreign relations, says he will introduce a bill this week where Mexico will buy corn from Brazil and Argentina instead of the United States...

...American farmers sent $2.4 billion of corn to Mexico in 2015, the most recent year of available data. In 1995, the year after NAFTA became law, corn exports to Mexico were a mere $391 million.

...Experts say such a bill would be very costly to U.S. farmers.

"If we do indeed see a trade war where Mexico starts buying from Brazil...we're going to see it affect the corn market and ripple out to the rest of the ag economy," says Darin Newsom, senior analyst at DTN, an agricultural management firm...

http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/13/news/economy/mexico-trump-us-corn/

>132 margd: This is all completely unnecessary and ridiculous.This theater to appease the xenophobia of the few is going to end up with significant financial consequences and ruin relationships with neighbors. What is the point of all this?

So we can look forward to a recession, in which the social safety net will simply not be there for many who will need it.

On the other hand, the wealthy will no longer struggle to survive under an oppressive tax burden and Americans will no longer have to worry about the regulation of our drinking water or air quality, so there is a bright side.

#129--many people are always going on about red tape but the solutions that conservative politicians tend to use usually add layers of bureaucratic nonsense and as one can see for instance when someone like Ben Carson is given HUD--something he's in no way qualified to run then they'll circle the wagons around whatever dumb shit he does.

Anyway I worked for the Postal Service--just finished reading Mark Ames Going Postal a couple weeks ago by the way--and as bad as it was in the early 80's when all those shootings were happening in some ways it's much worse now--at least the service part is much worse. In the 80's we used to scour the plant at the end of every night for any letter, postcard, anything at all before the mail was allowed to be dispatched. Everything and I mean everything that had been sent by anybody had to be on its way. An 18 cent letter going from NYS to California was expected to arrive to its recipient in two days and with all the advances in technology and automation and all the streamlining for efficiency since you're doing okay if it gets there in 10 days now and if you have to have it there in two days figure on $30-40. It's a fucking joke and a canard that USPS is better than ever and all this was done on the back of job elimination by a federal and postal bureaucracy that decided the Post Office should be run like a multinational corporation and pretty much never did anything but throw shit against a wall to see if it would stick--they never needed any kind of justification for whatever they did.

So what you say about your dad or mom isn't like a lightning bolt from the sky for me. The thing is there are plenty of govt. departments and programs that were doing fine and did not need fixing and got 'fixed' anyway. And there is graft behind it as well.

131-134, contd. Then there's the auto industry... Although one can see loss in places like Jackson and Flint, MI, with NAFTA (and Asian competitors) the damage may pale by the hit the auto industry (and car-buyers' pocketbooks) could take in a NAFTA war or a US border tariff, e.g.,

..."With respect to ... the auto industry, where the three countries involved with NAFTA, the whole process of automobile production is now so intertwined, that to try to untangle that would be a terrible blow to the industry," said Marina Whitman, former chief economist for GM who now teaches at the University of Michigan...

http://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2017/01/29/auto-parts-suppliers-may-take-n...

I agree that there are parts of NAFTA that could be revisited--environment (that offshore wind farm), labor, some items (Cdn softwood lumber)--but it requires a whole lot more finesse than Trump possesses to do so without unintended consequences. Trump: The Art of the Deal, indeed!

...just to review, it’s not just the genes of your gut that count, but the instincts of your genes, though they alone won’t make you a deal-maker: “Most people who do have the instincts will never recognize that they do, because they don’t have the courage or the good fortune to discover their potential.”

In other words, you need vision in your genes and guts in your instincts, otherwise, your gut may be spineless and where would that leave you?

Not a deal-maker.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/03/an-ethicist-reads-the-art-o...

NYT: What Does Steve Bannon Want?

https://nyti.ms/2mpUIhC

Interesting piece. Very different from my view of Bannon, but interesting nonetheless. It is perhaps worth noting that the documentary Generation Zero from auteur Bannon (move over, Martin Scorsese!) mentioned in this piece is available for free on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/k3SLtP10NQ8

If anybody here watches the film (or has watched it), I'd be obliged if you'd drop me a line about it. I'd check it out myself, but I don't know if I have the stomach for it. :/

>135 lriley: Glad to hear you got around to reading Ames. :-)

>137 artturnerjr: If I get a chance to watch it, I'll let you know.

NYT: Trump Embraces ‘Enemy of the People,’ a Phrase With a Fraught History

https://nyti.ms/2lKd1jv

By using the phrase {"enemy of the people"} and placing himself in such infamous company, at least in his choice of vocabulary to attack his critics, Mr. Trump has demonstrated, {Nina Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev and a professor of international affairs at the New School in New York} said, that the language of “autocracy, of state nationalism is always the same regardless of the country, and no nation is exempt.” She added that, in all likelihood, Mr. Trump had not read Lenin, Stalin or Mao Zedong, but the “formulas of insult, humiliation, domination, branding, enemy-forming and name calling are always the same.”

>138 davidgn:

Thanks!

The Reichstag Warning - Timothy Snyder

As James Madison nicely put it, tyranny arises “on some favorable emergency.”

>140 2wonderY: Very important reading.
I would insist, furthermore, that there are generalizable lessons to be drawn regarding how terrorism and its attribution can be manipulated for political ends. The most important technique for being able to grasp such concepts is to set aside all emotion and moral compunction and try to think like a psychopathic manipulator, and/or the true-believer ideologues upon whom such manipulators depend -- sometimes a very blurry distinction. For these, the emotions and beliefs of the masses are just so much raw material to be toyed with, and the spilling of blood is a small price to pay for monumental ends of burning importance.

Here's a very incisive paper that addresses (among others) the example of political terror carried out principally by Evola-ites, but blamed on others, during what became known as the "Years of Lead" in late 20th century Italy.

https://www.danieleganser.ch/assets/files/Inhalte/Publikationen/Fachzeitschrifte...

Just one more reason why Bannon's "Strategic Initiatives Group" makes me very, very nervous.
cf. https://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/2/3/1629284/-Steve-Bannon-s-New-Think-Tank-I...

>141 davidgn: And I was just starting to relax!

I do recommend Timothy Snyder's Black Earth; particularly the last chapter wherein he looks around at the current world and makes some relevant warnings.

In Move Recalling Nazi-Era Policies, Trump to Create Office to Track Crimes Committed by Immigrants

>143 LolaWalser: Not even bothering to hide the fact that they are cribbing straight from the Nazi playbook.

http://www.thewrap.com/der-sturmer-why-there-are-so-many-pictures-of-the-nazi-ta...

Wow--sell airline and tech stocks!! Not only is international tourism down, but

EU may require visas for Americans
http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2017/03/divided-we-fail?fsrc=scn/fb/te/b...

Americans putting 6-month hold on H1B visa premium processing
https://www.uscis.gov/news/alerts/uscis-will-temporarily-suspend-premium-process...

and The Donald has another travel ban on the way...

Khizr Khan, 30 yr. American citizen and Gold Star parent, cancels talk in Toronto--"his travel privileges are being reviewed."
WTH??? By whom and under what authority???

US Border Guards prevented Cdn citizen from entering US to participate in Women's March--maybe they are using some kind of preclearance in agreement to narrow the Cdn border to harass Khan? Maybe ICE, which can operate 100 miles inside border, warned him that he may be refused re-entry if he went?

(Oh great, I googled for Khan's home state to see if preclearance airport nearby and found this creepy site: http://www.khizr-khan.com/ )

ETA: Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly expected to visit Canada (this Friday?) to discuss flow of refugees into Canada. Could that be a factor in Khan's "travel privileges" being reviewed? I've read Kelly is most interested in learning how some of these refugees entered Canada in the first place. There are reports of US border authorities pursuing refugees right to border where RCMP took the refugees into custody. Trudeau is treading water, not increasing enforcement on Cdn border. However, Canada and US have agreement that refugees must seek asylum in first country they land in, so the water he is treading could get "hot" soon. Especially as the weather warms...

____________________________________________________________________

Khan speech in Canada cancelled amid questions

Gold Star father and outspoken President Trump critic Khizr Khan on Monday canceled a planned speech in Canada as questions about the circumstances swirled.

Ramsay Talks, the organization planning to host Khan Tuesday for his scheduled speech in Toronto, issued the following statement to CTV News, which first reported the story.

“Late Sunday evening Khizr Khan, an American citizen for over 30 years, was notified that his travel privileges are being reviewed. As a consequence, Mr. Khan will not be traveling to Toronto on March 7th to speak about tolerance, understanding, unity and the rule of law. Very regretfully, Ramsay Talks must cancel its luncheon with Mr. Khan. Guests will be given full refunds,” the statement, which was also posted on Facebook, reads.

“Mr. Khan offered his sincere apologies to all those who made plans to attend on March 7th. He said: ‘This turn of events is not just of deep concern to me but to all my fellow Americans who cherish our freedom to travel abroad. I have not been given any reason as to why. I am grateful for your support and look forward to visiting Toronto in the near future.’”...

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/322564-khan-speech-in-canada-cancelle...

What Canadians are reading about crossing US border:

What to expect when you cross the Canada-U.S. border
They can search your phone, delay you for hours or tell you to go back to Canada. Suddenly, the world’s friendliest border doesn’t seem so friendly.
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/washington/what-to-expect-when-you-cross-the-can...

I knew a fellow who, before Obama maybe Bush, got something like a "TEC hit" on his file. Tired, he wasn't suitably subservient to the border guard. For two years both US and Cdn border guards inevitably gave him the "third degree" every time he crossed. Because he had law enforcement credentials and knew folks on both sides of border, he was eventually able to clear the hit. His crime (besides lack of humility?)? He "admitted to taking drugs"--drugs for his HEART CONDITION!

ETA:
Search and interrogate: What you need to know when crossing U.S. border
Be prepared to show evidence that you're not planning on staying in the U.S., lawyer warns
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/border-rights-canada-privacy-1.4013139

A fellow who works as a financial consultant thinks that after long bull market, the US in for a crash after "sugar high" of deregulation, as grand promises (taxes, infrastructure, healthcare reform) fail to be realized and longterm costs of travel ban, border taxes, etc. come due. Below are excerpts from article on how Canada, for one, is positioning itself to attract skilled immigrants who are feeling less welcome in the US:

Federal plan to fast-track foreign talent could capitalize on Trump's crackdown
Global Skills Strategy program to streamline visas, work permits to kick in June 12

The federal government will launch a new program to fast-track "low-risk, high-talent" foreign workers to Canada this June.

The plan sets a two-week turnaround for processing visas and short-term work permits to give startups faster access to highly skilled workers.

...there are still many details to be fleshed out around which companies and workers will qualify as "high skilled" and "in shortage."...

"We have already heard from companies looking to move operations into the country, which means more well-paying jobs for Canadians," (Patrick Snider, director of skills and immigration policy for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce) said.

...Trump has temporarily suspended an expedited visa program that helped foreigners get quicker access to temporary jobs at high-tech U.S. companies. The visa had allowed graduate-level workers in several specialized fields, including information technology, medicine, engineering and mathematics quicker entry, but Trump said it was being exploited by outsourcing companies to bring in low-cost foreign workers.

...While the Global Skills Strategy targets the temporary workers, those who come here through the program can apply to emigrate to Canada on a permanent basis.

"As workers with in-demand skills and Canadian work experience, they will be well-positioned to successfully apply for permanent status through Express Entry if they choose to do so," said Faith St-John, a spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

"With an aging population and a relatively low birth rate, Canada's economy relies on a robust immigration system to help keep our workforce strong."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/global-skills-strategy-business-1.4017920

A Canadian magazine reviews immigration in various countries:

Anxious about immigration? Here’s some food for thought
The OECD compared newcomers in dozens of countries, including Canada, and the findings are fascinating
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/anxious-about-immigration-heres-some-food...
_____________________________________________

Indicators of Immigrant Integration 2015: Settling In
OECD. Published on July 02, 2015

This joint publication by the OECD and the European Commission presents the first broad international comparison across all EU and OECD countries of the outcomes for immigrants and their children, through 27 indicators organised around five areas: Employment, education and skills, social inclusion, civic engagement and social cohesion (Chapters 5 to 12). Three chapters present detailed contextual information (demographic and immigrant-specific) for immigrants and immigrant households (Chapters 2 to 4). Two special chapters are dedicated to specific groups. The first group is that of young people with an immigrant background, whose outcomes are often seen as the benchmark for the success or failure of integration. The second group are third-country nationals in the European Union, who are the target of EU integration policy.

http://www.oecd.org/publications/indicators-of-immigrant-integration-2015-settli...

Is Trump Counterterrorism Aide Sebastian Gorka a Sworn Member of Hungarian Nazi-Allied Group?

The things Trump and his administration are doing to the language--for example, calling the budget that cuts social services and programmes including supplementary meals and education for the elderly and the disadvantaged children "ONE OF THE MOST COMPASSIONATE THINGS THEY CAN DO"--are also, even eminently, Nazi-like.

>151 LolaWalser: They mean it's compassionate because it allows rich people to keep more of their money. I'm serious. This is literally how they mean it.

>152 sturlington:

Oh ye of little, and cynical, faith! Have trust--the example Mick Mulvaney used was "a single mom of two in Detroit". ;)

>153 LolaWalser: Well, he had to say that, didn't he? He had to make at least the tiniest bit of effort to pretend this wasn't all about gutting the poor. He was just too gleeful to pull it off, though.

Another Day, Another Report About Steve Bannon’s Affection for Nazism

Steve Bannon is getting his spies into place at agencies all over the federal government - and no congress approval is required for these temporary positions. Steve Bannon has been planning this for years. Soviet style government coming to US federal government.

https://www.propublica.org/article/meet-hundreds-of-officials-trump-has-quietly-...
https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/beachhead
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/taibbi-on-trump-the-destroyer-w473...

>157 MDGentleReader: from the Taibbi piece: 'In the early days of his administration, while his Democratic opposition was still reeling from November's defeat, Trump managed to stuff the top of his Cabinet with a jaw-dropping collection of perverts, tyrants and imbeciles, the likes of which Washington has never seen.'

>157 MDGentleReader:: Taibbi: 'DeVos stammers a brief response, then freezes. She looks like a duck trying to read a parking meter.'

Husband of Trump voter to be deported... http://indianapublicmedia.org/news/indiana-restaurant-owner-deported-friday-1164...

In related news...

Sean Spicer: Holocaust denier or dumbfuck?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/us/politics/sean-spicer-hitler-gas-holocaust-...

>161 artturnerjr: Why can't he be both? :)

Actually, I find that whole story SO bizarre. You'd think a Press Secretary would be a little more deliberate and careful when he talks to the press. It's like no one in that administration thinks before they open their mouth.

You could say that his tone-deafness is in itself evidence of his Antisemitism.

>162 southernbooklady:

You'd think a Press Secretary would be a little more deliberate and careful when he talks to the press.

You'd think so, if we weren't living on Bizarro World now. You forgot that this is Donald Trump's press secretary. He's exactly the kind of person you'd expect Trump to pick for the job: an ignorant, arrogant bully.

At least he's provided Saturday Night Live with some choice material. The man is comedy gold. :)

Spicer had a long career in the Republican Party before this. Is he worse now under Trump? Or has he always been like this? I can't tell whether Trump is the cause or the effect of Bizarro World.

>164 southernbooklady: I'd have to agree with some of the people who posted comments to the article linked by >161 artturnerjr:. Spicer is the perfect pick for the job in that what he says and how he says it is an accurate representation of current administrations view of the world and their level of understanding of just about anything you would care to name - history, science,etc. I say keep him so that we will never forget what this administration is really about.

>166 LolaWalser: what the hell?

Angels with Badges! Sounds like some bad porn movie.

A number of white Evangelical mega-churches have had an armed presence in their sanctuaries since the Mother Emmanuel shootings. They didn't see racism in Roof's actions (of course they didn't), but rather an attack on Christianity.

So each mega-church having its own police force is just a small step further. That it's endorsed by state lawmakers is troublesome, but hardly surprising.

Well I'm surprised. "Authorizing a police force" sounds like it would have deeper implications and a broader remit than simply hiring security. Suppose a crime is committed on church grounds. Who has jurisdiction to investigate it? Who is accountable to whom?

ETA: As a backdrop, the Alabama Governor just had to resign or face possible impeachment proceedings because, among other things, he was using campaign fund and tax payer money office to conduct an affair with a political aide and intimidate investigators, including the ones his wife was using when filing for divorce.

Blog post from the Anti-Defamation League giving evidence of just how nutty the alt-right actually is (should any be required); seems Trump isn't enough of a Nazi for them:

Explosive Growth of Hateful Memes and Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories Against Jared Kushner

https://www.adl.org/blog/explosive-growth-of-hateful-memes-and-anti-semitic-cons...

>166 LolaWalser:

Wow. I once again have the feeling we are slipping into the world of a dystopian science fiction novel. Scary.

Washington Post: Trump to Erdogan: Congrats on dismantling democracy!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2017/04/18/trump-to-erdoga...

This is in keeping with Trump’s long-standing adoration for strongmen. At various times, he has praised Saddam Hussein, Vladimir Putin, Bashar al-Assad, Moammar Gaddafi, Kim Jong Un and the anti-democracy leaders of China for their strength. In recent state visits to Washington, he showed more affection for Egyptian military dictator Abdel Fatah al-Sissi than for democratic NATO allies Theresa May or Angela Merkel.

This month, Trump seemingly diverged from the norm by launching missiles at Assad and finding harsh words for Kim. Crucially, however, Trump faults both leaders for their fixation on weapons of mass destruction — not their long-standing abuse, torture and killings of their own citizens with conventional weapons. In reading Trump’s public statements, it’s clear that he views dictators and despots as strongmen to be admired — until they cross the line and use chemical weapons or nukes...

It’s unclear whether Trump’s phone call arose because he genuinely believes that strongman rule is worth embracing, or because he is acting to promote the regime that protects Trump Towers Istanbul. But either way, power-hungry aspiring despots around the world got the message: They can let the champagne flow in their palaces as they roll back democracy. The American president doesn’t really care.

Historian, Timothy Snyder, warns “It’s pretty much inevitable” that Trump will try to stage a coup and overthrow democracy.

Trump has threatened violence against his political enemies. He has made clear he does not believe in the norms and traditions of American democracy — unless they serve his interests. Trump and his advisers consider a free press to be enemies of his regime. Trump repeatedly lies and has a profoundly estranged relationship with empirical reality. He uses obvious and naked racism, nativism and bigotry to mobilize his voters and to disparage entire groups of people such as Latinos and Muslims.

Trump is threatening to eliminate an independent judiciary, and wants to punish those judges who dare to stand against his illegal and unconstitutional mandates. In what appears to be a violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, Trump is using the office of the presidency to enrich himself, his family and his inner circle by peddling influence and access to corporations, foreign countries and wealthy individuals. Trump and his representatives also believe that he is above the law and cannot be prosecuted for any crimes while in office.

I've read his Black Earth. Ordering On Tyranny now.

The importance of the difference between "administration" and "regime":

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/05/04/is-it-the-trump-admi...

Daniel W. Drezner

Summon the witchfinders!!!

A Principal Is Accused of Being a Communist, Rattling a Brooklyn School

A JURY JUST CONVICTED A WOMAN FOR LAUGHING AT JEFF SESSIONS

And Putin threw two women into prison for nearly two years for laughing at HIM. I won't ask whether Trump wants to be Putin, I'll ask whether Americans want to live in fucking woman-beating, gay-lynching, shithole Russia.

America's obsession with rooting out communism is making a comeback

How the swastika became a Confederate flag: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/opinion/white-supremacist-confederate-monumen...

>173 2wonderY: You're wasting your time.

Der Führer Big Brother Kim Jong-un President Trump has a magnetic personality and exudes positive energy:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/05/29/a_nutso_white_house_statement_...
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/so-fcking-unhinged-internet-erupts-after-white-...

jfc

President Trump has a magnetic personality and exudes positive energy, which is infectious to those around him. He has an unparalleled ability to communicate with people, whether he is speaking to a room of three or an arena of 30,000. He has built great relationships throughout his life and treats everyone with respect. He is brilliant with a great sense of humor . . . and an amazing ability to make people feel special and aspire to be more than even they thought possible.

Stephen Colbert will have to retire Jill Newslady and Jim Anchorton... Satire Trumped once again.

Comedienne Kathy Griffin holding up the bloodied head of Trump is something supposedly I should be outraged about. But IMO it pales very much in comparison to the evils that Trump is trying to perpetrate for instance with his Muslim ban, his pro DAPL stance, his ACHA, his Syrian murder campaign, to name a few. Kathy's apologizing now but IMO and AFAIC we're cool--no apology necessary.

Attack in Yemen...

>182 lriley: Eh, Trump had Nugent in to the White House to cavort in front of a portrait of Hilary Clinton. It's hard to believe any outrage over Griffin's prank is genuine after that.

#184--the outrage over Griffin's prank is coming from all over including from democrats. All I'm saying is it didn't outrage me at all and that I think I and most other people have better things to be outraged about.

George Orwell Would Weep Dept.:

Congratulations, Trump resisters! You're unpeople!

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/07/politics/eric-trump-hannity-democrats-obstruction/

Chicago Tribune: Trump's 'fake news' crusade is the stuff of dictators

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/huppke/ct-trump-fake-news-cnn-huppke-...

Trusting the Trump administration right now requires a suspension of disbelief. There is no accountability for any lies or fabrications, only finger-pointing and attempts to sow distrust in our democratic institutions.

Journalists, like anyone else, are capable of lying or making stuff up. But when that happens, we wind up out of a job. Quickly.

If you refuse to believe that and prefer Trump's attempt to get you to doubt everything you hear, consider these words from Hannah Arendt, an American political theorist who wrote extensively about totalitarianism:

"A people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please."

That's what Trump wants. He wants to do as he pleases.

Don't let him.　

I agree with the above, but I never would have called Hannah Arendt an 'American'

189: Sure. Fly that xenophobic flag high. It makes you look good.

>190 StormRaven: You realize you're talking to a guy who grew up in Illinois, right?

Wow! Xenophopic? I would have thought at worst pedantic.

Besides, Patagonians are American, so what really does the word mean.

Fly, Raven, fly; fly in the currents of high ignoramia.

>188 artturnerjr: So back to Hannah Arendt. I associate her with two things, her complicated relationship with Heidegger and her persecution--her persecution I believe is a large part of what led to her most widely known book, The Origins of Totalitarianism. All of this is European. She fled to the US at about the mid-point of her life, in 1941, but not until making a very serious attempt to stay in Europe. I think seeking refuge in the US was far from her ideal move. I associate her with Marxist politics, various important thinkers (Walter Benjamin is usually mentioned but I don't think she knew him all that well). I think the next political biography I read should be about her.
And to cut to one important point, her writings about Eichmann are very much from a European point of view. She became a US citizen, but she was, Stormy, a cut above.

>193 RickHarsch:

I scored a cheap Kindle copy of The Origins of Totalitarianism when it was on sale at Amazon recently (they were probably trying to cash in on the recent resurgence of interest in it in the wake of Timothy Snyder's excellent 20 Lessons from the 20th Century on How to Survive in Trump’s America*). Don't know when I'll get to it, though - I'm currently (still!) wrestling with another popular work on totalitarianism (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany).

* http://inthesetimes.com/article/19658/20-lessons-from-the-20th-century-on-how-to...

Wow.

Trump wrestling body-slam tweet 'encourages violence against reporters', CNN says

...the president tweeted a video of himself, starring at a pro wrestling event, body-slamming to the floor a man with a CNN logo for a head. ...

And wow times infinite.

The president’s tweet was issued on Sunday morning, hours after Trump used a speech honouring veterans in Washington to say: “The fake media tried to stop us from going to the White House. But I’m president, and they’re not.”

Congrats, America. Three decades and counting of watching Middle Eastern and Balkan swinishness such as I thought unmatchable in developed world... but YOUR pig takes ALL the cakes.

>195 LolaWalser: Is that room in your basement still available?

>196 theoria:

For you--upgrade to the den! :)

But please don't think we're feeling smug up here... increasingly it feels like we're sitting on top of a powder keg.

>197 LolaWalser: I've been upgraded! Seriously though, I have a feeling that Trump will be removed before he has a chance to blow things up.

Trump from same mold as Duterte. Constrained a bit by PC, but just a bit! (ETA: Give 'em the Freddie-Gray treatment??)

Trump’s speech encouraging police to be ‘rough,’ annotated
Philip Bump | July 28, 2017

...you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon — you just see them thrown in, rough — I said, please don’t be too nice. (Laughter.) Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over? Like, don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody — don’t hit their head. I said, you can take the hand away, okay? (Laughter and applause.)...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/07/28/trumps-speech-encoura...
____________________________________

Fact-checking Donald Trump's Long Island speech to law enforcement
John Kruzel, Aaron Sharockman, Manuela Tobias | July 28th, 2017

"The previous administration enacted an open-door policy to illegal immigrants from Central America. Welcome in. Come in, please."

"We have trade deficits with almost every country."

"I said from the beginning, let Obamacare implode, and then do it. I turned out to be right. Let Obamacare implode."

"GDP is up double from what it was in the first quarter. 2.6 percent."

"Trump doesn't win, your Second Amendment is gone."

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/jul/28/fact-checking-donald...

199 contd. Blue pushback to the orange one

U.S. police chiefs blast Trump for endorsing ‘police brutality’
Cleve R. Wootson Jr. and Mark Berman | July 29, 2017

...Across the country, police department leaders said the president’s words didn’t reflect their views.

...Trump’s comments also drew a rebuke from the International Association of Chiefs of Police. In a statement Friday, the group did not specifically mention Trump by name but appeared to respond to his speech by stressing the importance of treating all people, including suspects, with respect...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/07/29/u-s-police-chiefs-...

>200 margd: The "leaders" of various police departments and organizations can "speak out" against what Trump said all they want. The fact still remains that officers present at his talk cheered when he made the comments, signifying to me that quite likely those officers wish they COULD do just what Trump suggested.

Yeah, the same with those cheering masses of boy scouts. So many nasty little pigs in the making.