Monthly Archives: July 2016

07.18.16
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1968 and 2016: Convention Violence and Anger in America

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Peshtigo, 1871.

Politico

For the GOP insiders most concerned about violence in Cleveland, many cited protest groups tied to liberal causes, like the Black Lives Matter movement. Nearly a half-dozen Republicans mentioned the Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros, who is a prolific donor to liberal causes. But few thought violence would ensue from an effort to fight Trump’s nomination on the convention floor. “It’s simply too big of a target for the malcontents and violent left to miss,” said an Iowa Republican. “George Soros’ money will pay for thousands of disaffected screaming thugs. Think Seattle [1999], Chicago 1968. Riots and looting. They are the tools of the liberal left.” “I say this with no joy whatsoever,” a Republican in the host state of Ohio added, “but the far-left agitators in Cleveland will make the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago look like a fourth-grade slap fight.

Now, I don’t expect an “Iowa Republican” who thinks that George Soros is bussing anarchists to Cleveland to understand this, or for that matter an Ohio Republican, but it is worth noting that the violence in the 1968 convention did not come from the far-left. It came from the cops. There was provocation, sure, but it was the police that were rioting. As the Walker Report indicated, the refusal to allow permits, the wish to cordon American citizens away from where the powerful were meeting, led directly to the bloodshed.

I would hope that when covering the protests this week, the media remember that. There will almost certainly be Seattle-type violence (and that is the actual far left), but chances are high a lot of the violence will be coming directly from those sanctioned by the state to levy it, and who should take the responsibility seriously.

Or hell, it might come from all the armed lunatics gathering in an open carry state, many of whom feel that these far-left weirdoes and blacks are threatening America and conspiring to ruin Donald Trump’s chances. Would you be surprised if these patriots opened fire? If they saw, incredibly, an anarchist of a Black Panther with a gun, and had to protect themselves? Does any of this seem implausible? A firefight between on-edge police, right-wing militia types, angry protestors, and lone gunmen types like in Dallas and Baton Rouge?  This is Peshtigo in the hot summer of 1871. The sawdust is baking in the heat, and the firestorms are being born.

Cleveland is on Lake Erie, but the closet analogy is up the Great Lakes system, up Michigan, near Green Bay. This is Peshtigo in the hot summer of 1871. We’re on the edge on conflagration. Little fires burst every day. The skies are increasingly choked with soot. The sawdust is baking in the heat, and the devouring and murderous firestorms are being born.

07.18.16
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Michael Hayden Tells His Side

Penguin Press

In the August/September issue of Reason, Brett Max Kaufman of the ACLU (and of the most alternately triumphant and nervous fanbase in sports) reviews Playing to the Edge, Michael Hayden’s apologia for the post-9/11 security state, and why he would do everything he was able to do to protect us.

But it is not a good sign when your memoir’s central metaphor breaks down in the foreword. Hayden’s conceit is that those who run intelligence have a duty to “us[e] all the tools and all the authorities available, much like how a good athlete takes advantage of the entire playing field right up to the sideline markers and endlines”—the edge. As he’s said elsewhere (he’s been on this kick for nearly a decade), “Playing back from the line protected me but didn’t protect America. I made it clear I would always play in fair territory, but that there would be chalk dust on my cleats.”

The first problem is that if you get chalk on your cleats, it means you’re out of bounds. (Or at least you are in football, Hayden’s obvious inspiration.) That this has apparently gone unremarked to Hayden over the years—even by Dan Rooney, the owner of Hayden’s hometown Pittsburgh Steelers and Hayden’s high school football coach, with whom he watches too many Super Bowls in this book to count—is notable in itself. That it goes entirely unexamined in the book’s numerous invocations of the image is, alas, characteristic.

Worse still is that “taking advantage of the entire playing field” is a pretty odd way to describe the main thing that good athletes do. Of course, spraying one down the right-field line or throwing it deep and wide can sometimes help the team. But they are hardly required to win the game. Hayden never bothers to explain why pushing it to the edge is a main point of his duty as a public servant. Like so much in the book, it is simply assumed that people of good faith will agree.

That’s sort of the whole ballgame: we know what’s best, and you don’t. There is a “trust” factor in intelligence that assumes a one-way relationship. While no state wants entirely transparent intelligence, it is assumed that America should have the same level of secrecy, and the same dom-sub relationship with our intelligence forces, as the most fly-bitten police state in the world. It’s an argument that sounds persuasive on the surface, but can and should be taken easily apart.

Brett, who is one of the best at crafting an argument that is both forceful and legally exacting (sort of a hyperlogical polemicist, employing the best of both world), is the right man to tear it apart.

07.18.16
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After Weeks of Violence, What Is Legitimate Protest In The Age of Trump?

 

Oh beautiful, for spacious skies…

 

Sunday struggled awake to the news of another mass, targeted killing of police by a lone gunman, trained by the military and motivated by racial, anti-police anger. This time it was in Baton Rouge, one of those American cities that is a simmering racial flashpoint, as we’ve all learned in these last few hot, tense weeks.  It already feels like we’re living in a documentary about that terrible year, 2016, where everything sped up, where the divisions between white and black, between those who believed in the police and those who believed the police were just a tool of oppression, boiled over. Where economic anger, racial hatred, xenophobia, and several strands of populism

It already feels like we’re living in a documentary about that terrible year, 2016, where everything sped up, where the divisions between white and black, between those who believed in the police and those who believed the police were just a tool of oppression, boiled over. Where economic anger, racial hatred, xenophobia, and several strands of populism distorted our politics. Reading the news has the uneasy feeling of watching that documentary, that every day is part of the central montage of an uneasy summer. We’re watching the flash points scroll by in real time, all leading up to that violent week in Cleveland, where the least-qualified and most dangerous candidate in American history grabbed his nomination, against a backdrop of horrible violence.

Obviously, as Sunday gave way to Monday, that hasn’t happened yet. But everyone believes it is going to. The Cleveland police certainly do, as Reason reports. 

To prepare for that, Cleveland has reportedly purchased over three miles of “Blockader” steel barricades, plus over 3,000 feet worth of six foot-high barricades, over 2,000 sets of riot gear, and 10,000 sets of plastic handcuffs.

Almost half of downtown Cleveland, roughly 1.7 square miles, will be under major restrictions as the designated “event zone.” Within that area, according to the New York Times, everything from glass bottles and tennis balls to “large bags and backpacks, mace, loudspeakers, tents, coolers and canned goods” will be prohibited. The Washington Postnotes that it has provided a “standard kit” to its staff attending the RNC, including “helmets, gas masks and flak jackets,” but gas masks are among the items banned from the event zone.

That is, simply put, a police state. And maybe it is needed. There is no doubt that this year is a far angrier one than 2012, or even 2008, when the world was collapsing. We say every four years “this is the worst”, but things are qualitatively different this year. For one thing, you no longer have Barack Obama. For another, you have Donald Trump, and that leads to the question: what is legitimate protests in the face of a quasi-fascist, white nationalist campaign?

For many people, the only good form of protest is peaceful, maybe marching in the designated areas, maybe giving a speech to fellow freaks at some kind of jazz club, but preferably at home. Anything else — anything that smacks of violence, or even without humble acqueisence to the men in the riot gear, pushing back with their truncheons — is beyond the pale of reasonable discourse. This year, after the killings, the desire by the media and all the establishment for absolute calm will be even more severe. We’re too divided and too on edge, and the natural deference toward law and order will be a full-throated scream.

Even anti-Trump Democrats and liberals are hoping for nothing distracting in the streets, nothing to take away from the spectacle of watching Donald Trump become the candidate, hoping that the mere sight of that will jar people into awareness that this is really happening. And I’m in that camp as well. I’m hoping that the focus will be on the surreal nightmare that is the Trump candidacy, and not on juvenile anarchists thinking that smashing up a Starbucks is a counterstrike against Trump, or really against Trumpism (neither, by the way, is the naked woman protest, as the libertine Trump won’t exactly be scandalized. Still, highlighting female autonomy to the GOP is always a good idea).

But then, what is? This is a completely different candidacy than we’ve ever had, one that is explicitly trying to divide the nation into “us vs. them”, with “them” being everyone who isn’t white, Christian, and already a Trump voter. I don’t feel like we have a duty to treat this as politics as normal, to respect the process, and to assume that this convention is, well, conventional. I feel that the media, and the protestors, should do everything they can to highlight the grotesque nature of what is happening, and just how dangerous it is.

To me, I think that means following the letter of the rules, but not the spirit. Don’t bring in any restricted items, and don’t throw down the barricades, but protest everywhere. Make it so that people can’t go anywhere without seeing protestors, being strong and forceful, though not violent. Make every street corner an area for speeches. Make all of Cleveland one big bughouse square. Drown out the lunacy inside Quicken. Hold a mirror to the wild madness inside.

Because, to be clear, the violence that is spreading in America is reflected in the gaping, stupid mouth of Donald Trump. Elections matter, and he’s legitimized the howl. He’s the candidate of the authoritarian right. He’s the candidate of having armed goons and rabbled supporters brutalize anyone who dares question him. He’s the candidate of the truncheon and the flak jacket, of the newly-deputized posse, of the flurry of arms and legs pummeling the prone and terrified outsiders. He’s cranking the wheel on the projector, speeding up this documentary, to where all the images blur together. The people marching in the center of the frame move toward a lockstep while around them the film burns att he edges. It is his carnival, and the only response seems to be just as mad.

There are smart responses to Trumpism, and intelligent, helpful ways to protest this week. There are ways that can make everything worse, and heighten this unbearable tension. There are ways that can empower the candidate of “law and order” (his law, and his order). But when it comes down to it, there are no illegitmate ways to protest this candidacy. Its very existence is already a protest against reason and decency. It’s a savage axe-blow to the heart of the American experiment, and any reaction pouring from that supperating wound is justified.

07.15.16
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Well, Newt, You Gave It Your Best Shot!

 

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Pictured: the face of a man who isn’t going to get to be the leader (possibly) of the civilizing forces. (Screengrab from TPM)

 

This is a man who isn’t getting the VP nod.

“A great deal of the coverage of what I said on Fox last night has been distorted,” Gingrich said. “The news media went into a hysteria overnight trying to over-exaggerate what I was saying. This is not about targeting a religion.”

“This is about looking for certain characteristics that painfully, we have learned time after time, involve killing people,” he elaborated.

But he seemed to take a different tack while discussing how to deal with a pattern of terrorist activity from American citizens, saying that it would be “impossible” to deport them.

“With an American citizen, deportation is impossible,” he said. “It’s not appropriate under the Constitution and there, historically we’ve always said, if you fought against the United States, that the correct answer were basically jail as opposed to deportation. I think we have to talk through what should be the right way of handling people who are here, but are not citizens.

And this was the man who still thought he had a chance.

“Western civilization is in a war. We should frankly test every person here who is of a Muslim background and if they believe in sharia they should be deported,” Gingrich told Fox News’ Sean Hannity.

Or, in the words of Hollywood Mark Perrone, “Once again the liberal media’s unabridged replay of the video of everything I said on a national broadcast just last night is dividing this nation.”

It’s a testament to Newt’s incredible mendacity and absolute lack of principle’s that he’s willing to disagree with his 12-hours-ago-self once he realized that being hatefully anti-American and totally fascistic wasn’t enough to get him a job he wanted. But he sure gave it the ol’ college try, if the college is the University of East Berlin. The man needs a team of Sherpas just to reach the moral basement.

07.15.16
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Guys, I Don’t Think Trump Knows What He’s Doing

 

Pictured: Trump HQ

 

Here’s what you do when you’re running a con: delay, delay, delay. When the weight of your own failure (to build an actual campaign, to attract any potential partners worth a good goddamn, to actually think about the magnitude of what you are trying to do, to engage in even a second of reflection and realize that your life is a cruel karmic joke played upon the American people as revenge for our greed and inability to pay attention) catches up with you, you have to flailingly hope something better comes along. And hope that the people you pay to make you look good spin it as deliberate wisdom.

“I think that Mr. Trump has reached a decision, but he hasn’t — he isn’t prepared to announce it yet,” Paul Manafort told “Fox & Friends.” “Until he announces it, there’s no formal nominee.”

I don’t think he’s made a decision. I think he assumes that if he delays and says he’s going to have the greatest VP pick ever, something good will happen. I’m sure at some point between now and Monday they’ll make an announcement and say it’s what they were thinking all along, but I doubt there is any semblance of an actual campaign, an actual strategy. It’s all nonsense and misdirection. They can’t even get Tim Tebow to commit. He was their star!

The thing is, the terrorist attack in Nice is a reason not to announce, but does anyone believe that a delay wouldn’t have happened anyway? This isn’t a serious operation. It’s a family business in a business where the family has literally no experience. The kids probably settled on Pence because Ivanka read “most of an article” in National Review that said he was a smart choice.

This isn’t the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. This is the gang with fingers in their jackets telling you they have a tank, ok?

Although even throughout this, Manafort’s a pro.

“And you’re not worried about compromising Mike Pence’s opportunity to run for governor?” asked “New Day” host Chris Cuomo.

“Donald Trump, whoever he selects, and whoever he says is the selection, will honor his word,” Manafort responded. “That’s who he is.”

The fun of screwing over Pence aside, can you even imagine being able to say that with a straight face? Remarkable!

Update: It’s Pence. But come on: do you really think this was part of the plan, or any plan at all? Let’s have our top surrogate come out on Friday and say he has no idea what I’m doing and then an hour later tweet out a major announcement. Because that’s the smart way smart and successful businesspeople and serious politicians do stuff!

I still hold out some hope that next Wednesday Pence is going to stand up there and then a giant hook will yank him away and Sarah Palin will walk out. That “it’s a long flight” thing seems suspicious, doesn’t it?  I’d give eight dollars to see that.

07.15.16
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How Not To Keep A Free Society: Newt Gingrich Edition

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“I’m a really deep thinker, frankly.”

In the last post, we talked about how the kind of mutating terrorist attacks like we saw in Nice will happen in a free society. Newt Gingrich, whose VP dreams have yet to be crushed, eschews all talk of free society.

“Western civilization is in a war. We should frankly test every person here who is of a Muslim background and if they believe in sharia they should be deported,” Gingrich told Fox News’ Sean Hannity.

“Sharia is incompatible with western civilization. Modern Muslims who have given up sharia, glad to have them as citizens. Perfectly happy to have them next door,” he added.

There’s no real need to point out everything that is wrong with this, right? Forget how hideously unconstitutional and un-American it is to have everyone of a single faith line up for loyalty testing. That’s standard Newt: he knows it is what Trump wants to hear, so he’ll say it. (Bonus Newtism: he always says “frankly” when he’s about to say something really dumb, because he feels it gives it intellectual heft. Once you notice that, you’ll see it is always true.)   Let’s also forget for the moment that believing in Sharia is not, in and of itself, against the law. There are a lot of people who don’t believe in the Constit

Let’s also forget for the moment that believing in Sharia is not, in and of itself, against the law. There are a lot of people who don’t believe in the Constitutional order, and as long as they aren’t acting on it, that’s ok. Let’s also ignore the insanity of someone saying that a belief is “incompatible with western civilization” when he’s literally proposing mass expulsion based on a religious-based ideological litmus test, which seems pretty goddam incompatible with Western civilization, to me.

No, what’s really stupid– what makes Newt so world-historic dumb at times — is that he proposes this as the realistic and tough-guy way of dealing with a threat. Tthe attacks at Nice were the “fault of Western elites who lack the guts to do what is right, to do what is necessary,” he told Hannity, and between the two, the perfumed machismo must have been through the roof.  This is, frankly, incredible. How exactly does he imagine this is going to go down? Does he actually think that people dedicated to the destruction of America and the death of all its citizens are also incapable of lying? That after waiting in line for hours, after the Muslim Registration Act, which won’t do much to change their attitude toward the US, they won’t be able to plot a complicated web of deceit, i.e., saying “no” when asked if they are a terrorist?

The most charitable interpretation of this is that Newt actually believes this will work, and that it will allow good Muslims to stay in the US and have everyone be happy. It’s barking madness, of course, and deeply antithetical to the kind of free society that is at the end the final bulwark against radicalism. But if he believed this would work, or was a good idea, at least you could argue from there.

But he probably doesn’t, at least not in any way that doesn’t require the cognitive dissonance that is the heart of the modern right wing. He decided this sounded good, and would appeal to Trump, who appeals to millions and millions of voters. They want the tough guy who will trample our values, because it feels good. In less than a week the GOP is going to nominate someone who brags about his willingness to employ torture. They are appealing because their idea of America is one of soil and blood and steel, and not the actual values that make this country great. They have the same boot-stomping atavistic lure of LePen and Orban and the Brexiters.

ISIS and al-Qaeda want a civilizational clash. They are experts at provoking one. It’s their great good fortune that they have enemies who want to give it to them. What Newt said wasn’t in a vacuum. It’s the direction in which the whole world is lurching.

07.15.16
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Nice, The New Terrorism, And The Limits of Freedom

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Image from NYTimes

As of this writing, no jihadist organization has taken credit for the horrific attacks in France last night, when a petty criminal with no known ties to any group plowed a truck through a mile of death during a celebration of freedom. It doesn’t mark a new chapter in terrorism, but it does make everyone aware that we are firmly in that chapter, that the pages have turned around us, and we’re stuck in a new plot.

My initial instinct is that this will be the plot of a small, independent cell, possibly with some training behind them, but more than likely not. If it wasn’t coordinated with any central ISIS/Qaeda group (as seems to be the case), it also wasn’t entirely unsophisticated, despite the bluntness of the attack. The right street was picked for maximum efficacy, and the presence of weapons in the truck showed the ability to acquire the tools of war.

All that said, it wasn’t very sophisticated, and indeed was taken right out of the pages of Inspire, as well as a few smaller-scale attacks. This is the new kind of terrorism: as what ISIS actually is changes over the next few months, there will be more of these attacks, both coordinated by the remnants of the caliphate or their affiliates, or from independent groups/actors who might pledge allegiance to ISIS but in an essentially meaningless way, tactically.

That it is meaningless doesn’t really matter, though, especially to the dead. These small cells usually wind up shooting themselves in the ass, but they can sometimes be successful, especially if they keep things very simple. One of the main dangers, as I see it, is that as ISIS starts to create a vacuum, there will be more room for a) affiliated terrorist organizations to try to take the leadership mantle with coordinated, large-scale attacks; and b) unaffiliated-but-inspired groups to try to step up with attacks like these, which can be large-scale by dint of simplicity and luck.

The former can potentially be slowed down (if not stopped) by intelligence, and also luck. The latter might not be as spectacularly successful, but they can be extremely dangerous, and potentially do more to unravel the fabric of free society than larger groups. It makes everyone with a grudge, some sociopathic tendencies, and the “right” sort of inspiration (jihad, rather than The Matrix or whatever), a potential terrorist.

The problem is that a free society won’t really be able to stop these attacks until the fervor of jihad runs its course, which it will, at some point, though possibly not in the lifetime of anyone reading this. As the Middle East convulses, and as Europe tries to handle the expansion of superstates, the reaction of nationalists, and the influx of the stateless, emotions and politics on personal and international levels will be subject to huge changes and dangerous trends. We’re at the beginning of it now. The end is nowhere in sight.

The key is not to give up on the idea of a free society. Bastille Day was the right day to pick for this, for maximum symbolism. It is a celebration of freedom. Of course, the French Revolution became a horrible Goya flipbook of bloodlust and revenge, and ended in Empire, but through fits and starts, it became France. It has its problems with assimilation, but has strong democratic values.

As a free society, that’s the sort of timeline we have to look at when dealing with the mutating scourge of jihad. One day, it will be history. The question is if we’ll be reading that history in a free society, or if we’ll be looking at it through the gray-barred schoolhouse of a modern police state.

07.14.16
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What’s Next For ISIS?

 

 

Going my way?

 

As we talked about last week, ISIS is clearly entering a new phase as they lose territory in the Caliphate. I said that they might transform into a “carnage-based idea”, but of course that is pretty vague, and not really informative. I had meant to bring up this piece in War on the Rocks by Clint Watts, who goes into great detail about the three different types of ISIS affiliates: Statelets (as in Yemen, Libya), Insurgency (like Boko Haram) and Terrorist Organization (Saudi Arabia).

Watts discusses foreign fighters, trained in the caliphate, who will be unable to return to their actual homes after ISIS collapses in Syria and Iraq. They are the ones to watch to see the strength of the movement. “The most indicative data will come from the roughly 15% of Islamic State foreign fighter survivors I estimate will be unable or unwilling to return home. These “floating” fighters lacking roots to a homeland affiliate will be inclined to choose the most promising global affiliates for safe havens.”

I think this is very true. Over the last 25+ years, we’ve seen increasingly-sophisticated foreign fighters find the group that best represents both their ideology, and, more important, the desire for successful jihad. It’s why AQAP was so powerful; it was the most far-reaching and far-sighted AQ affiliate out there. But now we see even AQAP struggling to reach an even newer and less-patient generation, losing fighters to ISIS. As they increasingly clash, though, I’d put my money on AQAP.

And that’s the big question, for me. ISIS was extremely bold in declaring a caliphate, knowing that the aura of success (and their actual battlefield success) would draw in more foreign fighters, and more money. As they begin to lose on that battlefield, will ISIS central still have much control? Will the ISIS brand, to use an awful term, still mean much? That is, when shifting toward affiliate-based statelets and insurgencies, will they still be ISIS in any recongnizeable way, or just groups with a shared heritage but different, more localized goals?

That to me is key. In the same article, Watts mentions how Central Asian fighters might “choose to resettle with an Asian group known for attracting foreign fighters, such as the Khorasan wilayat or possibly more likely the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).” The IMU has been around for a long time. It’s been both a generator and absorber of jihadists. It has long-term and essentially-localized goals. I think that a lot of groups, no matter their worldly ambitions, eventually get settled into what is happening around them. What made ISIS different, even more so than their lust for carnage and media sophistication, is that it pretended otherwise. But even with the spate of attacks, even with the “inspired” killers in cities around the world, they spent far more time fighting  the near enemy.

So then, as they change, as lose that idea of the caliphate, will ISIS really mean anything? Or will they be just a blip? An important one, one that changed the game, for sure. But in the end, will it just be a splintered movement, a period of consolidation followed by fracturing, before the next consolidation? I tend to think so. I think their “affiliates” will be even less affiliated than AQ. That might make whatever they are, in however many forms they are, even more dangerous, though, as everyone will have to up their game to get recruits.

Would be interested to know how I am misreading this, of course.

07.14.16
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Tim Tebow, Dana White, And More Trump Convention Madness

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The electrocution of Topsy was called an “actuality” film by Edison, less a documentary than what we would now call a reality show, given that it was staged. Seem about right.

Hey, remember in 2012, when the RNC scrambled to build an entire night out of a ripped-from-context and intentionally dishonest interpretation of “you didn’t build that”? They had signs and decorations and chants, and a whole lineup of speakers assuring the American public that there was no such thing as the communitarian spirit in American history, and every success story was entirely individualistic. I thought it was the most absurd thing I’ve ever seen in politics.

Well…

There are plans to emphasize different themes each night of the convention. Mr. Trump wants to touch on a few of his favorite hot-button issues, like the 2012 attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, former President Clinton’s infidelities and border security.

“Border security” is a thing, of course. I think an overblown thing, and an issue which Trump reduces to vile caricatures and demagogic European-style race-hatred, but at least it’s an issue. Clinton’s infidelities? Does he really think that’s going to help him capture any more voters? I know that the yapping and erect idiots in Cleveland will be salivating at the scandal, a chance to chap up and groove back into their salacious 90s heyday, but everyone else? They know this was a losing bet, right?

Also, is marital infidelity really the card Trump wants to play?

And the less said about Benghazi the better. The Republicans love it, because then the party of the Iraq war can pretend they care about Americans dying in the Middle East.

OK, but: the lineup. Peter Theil! It’ll be exciting hearing him tell the crowd that he, as a rich person, has the right to destroy any media he doesn’t care for. Tim Tebow, who, I guess, is a good guy, really. And it’s in theory good to expand the rostrum away from politicians. And maybe a guy with such a squeaky clean and evangelically-loved image as Tebow might help soften Trump’s image, but I doubt it. It’ll allow the already-convinced to rationalize their vote, and maybe that’s good enough.

THe best might be Day 2, with it’s Focus On The Economy. The first listen speaker is Dana White, the President of the UFC. You might think, well, that’s ridiculous. What does he know about the economy? He’s actually perfect. The UFC is an organization known for hardballing its workers and punishing any employees who stray. It has a slavish devotion to wringing out maximum profits from its soon-to-be-broken fighters, demanding complete and total subservience, and then casting them aside the moment they stop being useful. It’s why the model is breaking, as fighters like Conor McGregor try to leverage their own power. But really, it’s the Republican economic apotheosis. Just as you can say that boxing/MMA is sport at its most basic, the UFC is capitalism at its finest: workers should have no rights, should be bled dry, and then discarded, all in the name of huge profits. Don’t be surprised if Dana White is named Secretary of Labor in a Trump administration.

Also, Night 3 is going to have both Newt (scheduled, so if he’s VP he’ll speak anyway) and Ted Cruz. Do you think that Cleveland can handle such collective self-regard? Such faux-intellectual preening and self-righteous anger on cue. I am glad I have softball on Wednesday nights. I don’t know if I could handle the two back-to-back. Although Cruz’s speech might be a masterpiece of self-regard and self-interest. There’s no doubt he sees his speech as nothing more than a launch for 2020. It’s going to be maddening and fantastic.

Oh! And did you think there wouldn’t be diversity? There is, you idiot. There is. “There are a few African-Americans, like Jamiel Shaw Sr., who became an outspoken advocate for tougher immigration laws after his son was killed in 2008 by an undocumented immigrant…” See? Trump knows he needs minority outreach. So let’s get a black guy who hates Mexicans!

(That isn’t totally fair. This man suffered a hideous tragedy. But still: reducing immigration to a series of bloody handbills is dangerous nonsense, and Trump’s idea of minority outreach is pitting them against each other.)

I’ll give Trump credit. He seems to have backed off on his “loud people that everyone hates” strategy, as Don King and Sarah Palin seem to be off, and there’s no Mike Tyson, either. But still. This is going to swing between surreal lunacy and scratchy, hateful, pseudo-tough chest-thumping anger. They’ll denounce the lies of Hillary and how she, and she alone, is responsible for Americans dying in the Middle East. We’ll hear about how Bill once had sex about a million times. It’ll be a carnival of juvenalia, projected paranoia, fear-mongering, race-baiting, and hate. It’s a nightmare vision of a broken America, beaming from a possible future, coming at you in primetime, four days next week.

Stock up on a good bourbon and a lot of cheap beer, America. It’s gonna be ugly.

07.13.16
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Karen’s Greenberg’s “Rogue Justice” Review

The fine folks at Just Security were kind enough to ask me to review Karen Greenberg’s excellent Rogue Justice, about how we transformed into a security state following 9/11. It’s a great read, and persuasively argued (the book, not my review). One of her key insights, beside the great reporting, is that the decisions made after the attacks fundmentally changed our relationship with the government, in ways we didn’t realize, and that I think will affect the national character for decades.

I’ll have more on the book later on, a few longer essays on some of the themes. In the meantime, here’s the review. Thanks to Just Security, especially for keeping the Huck Finn theme throughout.

 

This complicity came from careerists worried about rocking the boat, politicians in both parties worried about being painted as weak on terror (with notable and noble exceptions), and to an uncomfortable extent, the general public. The terrorist attacks in 2001 made everyone realize that anyone could be a target, but we didn’t see — or didn’t want to see — that in a very real way, we also became a target of the government. Many of the policies enacted in the wake of 9/11 made everyone a suspect as much as a target. Through official secrecy aided by general indifference, we allowed ourselves to be passively dragooned into being on both sides of a war.