If establishment Republicans do indeed, after all, support an independent or (capitalist) Libertarian Party candidate, my expectation would be that the presumptive Democratic Party nominee, Hillary Clinton, will win. A smarter strategy, anathema to Washington, D.C., Republicans, would be to support Ted Cruz.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times confounds the capitalist libertarians who have provided financing for the authoritarian populist “Tea Party” with authoritarian populism itself. Read the story and notice exactly who is upset by the prospect of Donald Trump winning the nomination—it isn’t the authoritarian populist “base,” but rather the capitalist libertarians who have sought to exploit the “Tea Party.”
From what I can see, while many conservatives, especially authoritarian populists, expect that Hillary Clinton will be indicted for mishandling classified information, virtually no one else does. If the conservatives are right, this could come to a head in May.
The phone number change I previously promised is now in effect. I am back to using +1-707-824-1194. As always, contact information is available here. +1-707-572-0136 has been suspended and should soon be deactivated.
I now have an old LG G2 smartphone available if anybody wants it. It was no longer doing data over the cellular network but I had also rooted it (this is now undone because I have reset the device) and it might be possible to upgrade the software (there are known security issues, so do this if you can). I do not know if it will now suddenly start doing cellular data again. It was doing calls just fine and data worked well over WiFi.
Apple’s engineers would be completely right to resist a court order to break into or in any way facilitate breaking into the San Bernardino killer’s iPhone. I was never a member of the Association of Computing Machinery, but I am very glad to learn that this is in their ethical code. It was certainly part of my ethical training when I was last in high tech. We took this so seriously that even on systems where we had root (superuser) access, when a user was typing in their password, we would avert our eyes reflexively—a habit I retain. We not only had no need but no desire to know users’ passwords and the message we meant to convey was of utmost respect for their privacy. Yes, by the way, on company-owned equipment.
Updated for a critique of Hillary Clinton’s alleged feminism in the New York Review of Books and an assessment of the Republican strategy of obstructing President Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court by Josh Marshall in Talking Points Memo.
Greg Sargent floats a scenario in which Barack Obama withdraws his nomination in the event that Hillary Clinton wins the general election, on the theory that if indeed voters should have a say, she should be permitted to (assuming she would) nominate someone more liberal.[1] I think how plausible this is depends on your view of how ‘liberal’ Clinton is. The Political Compass pegs her in 2016 as even farther to the economic right than Obama in 2012 (figure 1) albeit not so authoritarian.[2] I perceive her as neoconservative and probably, in actuality, even farther to the authoritarian right (along both axes) than Obama. She would be less authoritarian than Republicans on abortion, but in accepting “a late pregnancy regulation that would have exceptions for the life and health of the mother,”.[3] and otherwise being beholden to Wall Street,[4] really only marginally so. Either way, I think she would be completely comfortable with Merrick Garland.
Fig. 1. Overlay of political compass charts from 2012 and 2016. Original images from Political Compass, as of January 27, 2016, combined by David Benfell, fair use.
Meanwhile, Josh Marshall, the editor at Talking Points Memo, thinks that
the need to block an Obama appointment was seen as having such total importance that something that to be tried. And this was the best, though not very good, plan. Also, Republican partisans and operatives push for this seemed impossible to resist. Who knows how it plays out? But at this point, just one day in it’s not holding up well at all.”[5]
Emails have come to light which further illuminate Hillary Clinton’s situation with regard to her email server. It seems that these messages “show a 2009 request to issue a secure government smartphone to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was denied by the National Security Agency.”[6] The NSA denied the request because “[t]he current state of the art is not too user friendly, has no infrastructure at State, and is very expensive.”[7] “‘These documents show that Hillary Clinton knew her BlackBerry wasn’t secure,’ Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, said Wednesday. ‘The FBI and prosecutors ought to be very interested in these new materials.’”[8] But, to be fair, such infrastructure was made available to Barack Obama and was apparently deemed a lower priority at the State Department. Clinton was, apparently, “relian[t] on her BlackBerry for email and keeping track of her calendar . . . [and] chose not to use a laptop or desktop computer that could have provided her access to email in her office.”[9] The NSA’s response was, itself, not very user-friendly and, I think, damning. It hardly seems fair to deny her this request and then blame her for dealing with email in a way she found comfortable. On the other hand, as Jonathan Turley has written repeatedly, information coming out of her office should presumptively have been considered classified and that does mean living with some restrictions.[10] I’m not a lawyer but I’m guessing the way this would be interpreted legally is that the government’s failure to accommodate Clinton’s request means that it is jointly negligent with her and that she is no less negligent for handling her email the way she did.
Meanwhile, Douglas Schoen served in Bill Clinton’s administration so his comment on Hillary’s problem with likely voter participation might be a bit more interesting than the usual Wall Street Journal strongly Republican functionalist conservative bias. Here’s the money line: “According to the latest WSJ/NBC News poll, . . . 56% [of registered voters] said they could not see themselves supporting her in the general election.” Despite this, Schoen thinks “Mrs. Clinton remains the favorite to win in November,”[11] which is pretty much now the standard pundit reading given Donald Trump as the Republican nominee.
But there’s a huge difference between the Clinton and Trump candidacies. Clinton runs on entitlement, panders to progressives in a bid for trust, and is ludicrous in imagining that as a woman, the neoconservative former First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State can’t be an establishment figure. Trump, on the other hand, earns trust from authoritarian populists and some social conservatives by bashing the establishment, appealing to the paleoconservative tendency, and generally being “politically incorrect.” People may not like him and he may not deserve trust, but he wins that trust anyway while Clinton reinforces her untrustworthy image through “triangulation.” As Schoen puts it, “Mr. Trump will have the advantage of a candidacy with clear themes, fueled by a deep-seated anger with Washington and party elites. By contrast, Mrs. Clinton hasn’t put forward a compelling rationale for her candidacy or a coherent message.” Schoen acknowledges that “given how unpredictable Mr. Trump’s fortunes have been in the primary season, there is no telling how a general-election campaign might play out.”[12]
Trump thus not only exploits a longer-term widespread and widening distrust of Democrats but reinforces a sense that while he may be evil, at least with a Republican, voters “know” what they are getting.
Zoë Heller, “Hillary & Women,” review of Broad Influence: How Women Are Changing the Way America Works, by Jay Newton-Small, and My Turn: Hillary Clinton Targets the Presidency, by Doug Henwood, New York Review of Books, April 7, 2016, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/04/07/hillary-women/
Here is someone else who thinks what I think about what will happen when (if) the Republican Party indeed nominates Donald Trump for president: “‘They’re all going to get behind Donald Trump,’ [Rudy] Giuliani said. ‘Here’s one thing we’re united about — we do not want Hillary Clinton as president of the United States.’”[13] But I do think Giuliani exaggerates about Republicans being all united about this. From what I can see, some neoconservatives might well cross party lines to support the neoconservative Hillary Clinton. Will such neoconservative resistance make a difference? I suspect not; I think neoconservatives are most numerous within the military-industrial complex and intelligence community—this kind of influence is disproportionate to their share of the voting population and may not amount to much in the general election.
Meanwhile, once again, Jonathan Turley chooses alleged freedom of speech over any kind of sensitivity to subaltern concerns. Here, he continues his theme on “the increasing intolerance on the left for conservative and controversial speech” in which Adrienne Foster, the director of the Kansas Hispanic and Latino American Affairs Commission apparently supports Donald Trump and some (rare) Democratic Kansas legislators have called for her resignation.[14] Turley writes that he
can well understand such feelings but it is shocking to see lawmakers seeking to punish someone for her political views. People can disagree about Trump, even with the hispanic community. I do not believe that different political views diminish an organization but rather shows its strength and diversity. I cannot imagine that these legislators would want such a political litmus test applied to them in participating in commissions or groups.[15]
Turley acknowledges the Kansas legislators’ (accurate) statement that “Donald Trump has described Latin American immigrants as being killers, criminals, drug dealers and rapists, has called for the building of a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and has even praised the beating of a Latin American man by his supporters”[16] but refuses to understand that Foster’s support for Trump clearly demonstrates her unsuitability to represent Hispanic interests on a commission that at face value, appears intended to do just that.
Fig. 2. Adrienne Foster, via Jonathan Turley, March 17, 2016, fair use.
My guess is that Foster’s job is, in any event, safe in Kansas, the subject of Thomas Frank’s now-classic exploration of authoritarian populism and its relationship with functionalist conservatism.[17] From her photograph (figure 2), it’s reasonable to suspect that Foster is another example of a member of a subaltern group who gains and enjoys privilege by supporting wealthy white patriarchy. I’ve noticed this more often with Blacks, such as Barack Obama, Condoleezza Rice, Clarence Thomas, Ben Carson, Herman Cain, and Bill Cosby, but it should not be surprising in other groups as well. Certainly, this pattern applies as well to Hillary Clinton, the neoconservative establishment candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for the presidency. Such people should be regarded as traitors; they undermine not only their own groups’ interests, but the interests of all subaltern groups.
At some point, a candidate needs to stop being optimistic about winning more states in the future, and actually start winning them. But in the campaign thus far, Bernie Sanders has won only a few of the states he “needed” to win. And there’s just no reason short of a Hillary Clinton indictment to believe he’ll do better overall in future primaries.
Meanwhile, “[Ted] Cruz . . . will need to win about 80 percent of the remaining GOP delegates to get the 1,237 needed for nomination. [Donald] Trump . . . needs to get only about 60 percent.”[1] Which is both why Trump is the likely Republican nominee and why the establishment hopes to stop him short of that 1,237.
I doubt that Justin Smith’s argument will indeed save the humanities from pernicious neoliberalism, but it suggests a necessary broader and more contextual view which is part of human science.
Updated for some primary results, including Marco Rubio’s withdrawal.
When a candidate runs for office on the basis of her or his experience, it would help if that experience included actual accomplishments that made the world a better rather than a worse place. And I suppose Hillary Clinton might be said to have done that, if by that she would mean that what’s good for Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, and former colonial empires is good for the U.S. and the world.
Marco Rubio was the last certain neoconservative in the race. Both Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are authoritarian populist, though Cruz does a better job of appealing to the social conservative vote. I haven’t paid enough attention to John Kasich to be sure which tendency he might align with.
Updated for another analysis of how, if nominated, Hillary Clinton will provoke a right-wing shitstorm and an analysis of Putin’s suddenly announced partial withdrawal from Syria.
Important: Phone number change
New business card (not yet printed)Some time last year, I started having problems with my cell phone that would not be covered by warranty. The phone was still under a two-year contract so I got a second one and I’ve been using a new phone number since. I’m getting close to a point where I should be able to drop the old phone and move its number onto the new phone. So please make a note of the correct phone number: +1-707-824-1194. For now, it remains forwarded to +1-707-572-0136, but I will be dropping the latter number and reverting to +1-707-824-1194 no later than the end of June. As always, contact information is maintained here.
Donald Trump clearly has a talent for keeping himself controversial. Is he a fascist or “proto-fascist?” I don’t know, but I don’t see a consensus on a definition for these terms, so labeling him as such may add more heat than light. But it’s still a fair question what authoritarian populists who form the core of Trump’s support will think of all this. Has Trump finally crossed a line in an campaign where there have seemed to be no lines?
One thing to note is that where the New York Times claims that “the security guards have seemed to try defusing tense situations instead of inflaming them,”[1] Patricia Murphy reports instances where the opposite have occurred. Noting Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric, however, she also writes that “[t]he most dangerous person at any Trump event is Donald Trump.”[2]
Wesley Pruden’s op-ed is the first I’ve heard of a rumored potential pardon for Hillary Clinton. There are a couple things I should say here: First, many conservatives are convinced that Clinton will be indicted for mishandling classified information on her email server. To be fair, some Democrats worry about this possibility as well. Second, this is the Washington Times, which is occasionally good for news but whose editorial page veers toward the kooky end of conservatism (I haven’t looked at it enough to decide which tendency). All that said, Pruden’s comparison of Clinton with Richard Nixon is at least amusing.
Not being a member of any group highly impacted by HIV, I’m not the one to say when an apology is adequate, but I’m guessing that a proper apology would correct the error, acknowledging not merely “a mistake,” but saying explicitly that through their years-long silence, the Reagans were complicit in the stigmatization of AIDS as a “gay disease.”[1] Here’s what Clinton says:
When many in positions of power turned a blind eye, it was groups like ACT UP, Gay Men’s Health Crisis and others that came forward to shatter the silence — because as they reminded us again and again, Silence = Death. They organized and marched, held die-ins on the steps of city halls and vigils in the streets. They fought alongside a few courageous voices in Washington, like U.S. Representative Henry Waxman, who spoke out from the floor of Congress.[2]
She does not name the Reagans as having been most prominent amongst those “many in positions of power [who] turned a blind eye.” And among the activists she names who did speak up, she includes ACT UP! This group vociferously denied on the streets of San Francisco that HIV causes AIDS and denied that condoms might be effective in limiting the spread of the disease. She also mentions the progress that has been made since the 1980s, and promises to do more.[3]
When I think of right-wing violence among tendencies of conservatism, I think of paleoconservatives. Paleoconservatives are supporting Donald Trump, but I do not know whether they are behind any of this violence.
For some, Clinton’s apology for claiming that the Reagans started a national conversation on AIDS is not enough. Thousands of people died while Nancy Reagan focused on her “just say no” campaign against drugs. Meanwhile, bell hooks, who might not be so well known outside academic, literary, and critical theory circles, but is huge within them, has come out in opposition to Clinton.
Updated for stories on Cliven Bundy in federal court, refusing to enter a plea, and on Harbin Hot Springs, a local landmark, being slated to reopen later this year.
Lisa Benson, Washington Post, January 21, 2016, via the Weekly Standard, fair use.
She still doesn’t have a convincing answer on her email server. In last night’s debate,
[Jorge Ramos] fired off a multipronged question, asking Clinton about the 104 emails she wrote that the government now says contained classified information.
He added that Clinton’s email arrangement appears to contradict a memo she sent to her employees at the time directing them to use official email “precisely because of security concerns.”
“So it seems that you issued one set of rules for yourself and a different set of rules for the rest of the State Department,” Ramos said. “So who specifically gave you permission to operate your email system as you did. Was it President Obama?”
While saying the use of a private server “wasn’t the best choice,” Clinton replied that she didn’t need permission. Her predecessors had done the same thing, she said.[1]
The point of this is that Clinton had issued a directive intended to protect confidentiality which she herself did not follow in an administration that, even as of its third year, had prosecuted more whistle-blowers than all of its predecessors combined.[2]
“I think this administration, like every other administration, is driven to distraction by leaking,” [Steven Aftergood, head of the project on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists] said. “And Congress wants a few scalps, too. On a bipartisan basis, they want these prosecutions to proceed.”[3]
So the question here, as any neoconservative will ask is, does this administration give a damn about protecting government secrets or not? And for the rest of us, what sort of hypocrisy lets Hillary Clinton skate free, possibly into the presidency, while potentially prosecuting Edward Snowden and Julian Assange?
