Sinema, again: Who will rid us of this small-minded pol who lives among the platitudes in her own fantasies? Arizonans, probably, in 2024.
I know you're tired of her; I am too.
Kyrsten Sinema wants her constituents to believe that getting rid of the filibuster or even carving it out for emergencies, such as protecting the right to vote in America, is a bad idea.
She made an impassioned plea to that effect in the well of the Senate before her president had a chance to speak to all 50 Democratic senators at a Thursday luncheon about the existential importance of passing laws to protect voting rights.
Upstaging a sitting president in your own party is usually not a good move, and wasn’t yesterday, as it showed a hardheadedness and ham-handedness we’ve come to associate with the senior senator from Arizona.
Sinema remains a deadly influence on her country and her party. Her defiance now opens a clear path for Republican vote stealing in the 2022 and 2024 elections, the possible (not inevitable, yet) dissolution of Democratic majority status in both houses in Congress, and the installation of the GOP as the only party that can win elections, both because 20 states are passing anti-democratic legislation and then sending corrupt politicians to Washington through the corrupt system they’ve created…to wreak havoc on presidential vote-certification.
GOP federal congressional representatives from those states can continue to remake electoral standards for counting and certifying the presidential vote—a “soft coup” based on the same beliefs that triggered the violent hard coup attempt of Jan. 6 2021.
And yet, Sinema, tragically, stands stubbornly steadfast without offering any material justification that makes even the slightest amount of sense.
Sinema’s hole-filled logic
So let’s first look at Sinema’s reasons, as put forth in her emotional, pre-Biden luncheon speech yesterday in the Senate. She began with this passage:
“Is my job secure? Can I expand my business? Can we afford college? What about health care? When can I retire? Is my community safe?
Meanwhile, much of Washington’s focus is on a Senate rule requiring 60 votes to advance most legislation.
Arizonans expect me to do what I promised when I ran for the House and the Senate: to be independent — like Arizona — and to work with anyone to achieve lasting results.
Lasting results — rather than temporary victories, destined to be reversed, undermining the certainty that America’s families and employers depend on.
The best way to achieve durable, lasting results? Bipartisan
cooperation,” she said.
TRG v. KS
As usual, The Resistant Grandmother wouldn’t be writing about Sinema if I agreed with her. And following is my response to the sun-stroked
sunbelt senator.
Concerns about jobs, business expansion, affording college, health care, retirement, and safe communities are all important. But more important is protecting the fundamental right to vote.
These 20 primarily red or swing state legislatures, including Arizona’s, have in the last year passed or are passing laws that will destroy each stage of the voting process as we know it. Many have gerrymandered voting districts that render Democrats from winning elections in the state virtually impossible, except in urban areas. The voting process itself is now subject to the kind of restrictions that we thought we got rid of in the passage of the voting rights acts of 1964-65. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, a list of these voting restrictions includes:
*creating fewer precincts in areas with a majority of brown and black voters, guaranteeing long lines at the polls, making voting impossible for some voters
*making it illegal to stay in lines by providing water or other humane assistance throughout, and because of, the voting ordeal
*assisting voters, like the elderly in nursing homes, from casting their ballots
*shortening the window to apply for a mail-in ballot
*shortening deadlines to deliver ballots
*making it harder to remain on absentee voting lists
*eliminating sending mail-in ballots to voters to encourage voting participation
*restricting assisting in returning mail-in ballots–such as picking them up
from boxes on Native American reservation sites
*limiting down to one or two mail ballot drop boxes in urban areas, such as
Houston’s Harris County with its more than two and a half million
registered voters
*imposing harsher voter ID requirements
*eliminating election day registration
*increasing the number of voters per precinct, guaranteeing long lines at
the polls
*limiting early voting days or hours
A list of GOP vote-stealing measures as far as the eye can see…
Additionally, as in Texas, it’s now illegal for voting officials to object to harassment from so-called voting watchdogs, nothing but hired guns paid for by big Republican donors to intimidate vote counters and certifiers at any point along the process.
Most important, however are the voter nullification laws that remove vote count verification and certification from the hands of elected secretaries of state, like Brad Raffensperger of Georgia, who famously refused Donald Trump’s request he “find” just enough votes to switch Georgia’s electoral counts from Biden to Trump in the 2020 election. Instead, the new laws hand off that responsibility to GOP-appointed election officials reporting to Republican-dominated state legislatures, essentially legalizing election-stealing in those states.
Sinema’s naivete to the contrary, if you cannot, for all intents and purposes, cast your ballot due to a host of impediments created by state legislatures that discourage or not allow you to do so, you have destroyed the very essence of democracy in the United States.
An even worse pack of faux-“elected” scoundrels awaits their chariots
Sinema’s concern about passing laws on college affordability, helping small businesses, etc. means nothing if Republicans in Congress get their jobs via undemocratic methods.
Election systems that remove or disable candidates from fairly getting elected will pollute the representational system with the kind of con men, sharks, and charlatans who worm their way through a corrupt system to get in. These people will then proceed to create laws about jobs, small businesses, college “affordability,” etc. from now on.
Democracy-killing laws could be rendered illegal through the passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act that make voting rules that discriminate on the basis of race, language, or ethnicity, again, illegal after the new conservative Supreme Court did away voting protections in the 1964 Voting Act, believing they were no longer needed.
And the Freedom to Vote Act (S. 2747), currently in the Senate, but held up due to the filibuster, would solidify voter protections such as a minimum of 15 days for early voting, mail-in ballots, and making Election Day a national holiday to encourage voter participation.
The bill would set up national standards for voter identification and protect election officials against intimidation and partisan interference. It would require states to use voting systems with a verifiable paper trail and establish national standards for voter ID.
A poll conducted by Data for Progress broke down results across party affiliation and found that both a majority, as high as 64 percent in some polls, of both Republicans’ and Democrats’ support such legislation that cannot be voted on because the minority party refuses to allow it to be brought up for
a vote.
OK with Sinema: vote-stealing in perpetuity
To Republicans, using the filibuster to ensure their candidates always get elected has the extended effect of ensuring they can block any legislation that comes up before them in perpetuity.
Sinema’s fealty to the filibuster is even more strange since the Senate is the only Congressional body to retain the 200-year-old procedure. The U.S. House of Representatives led by the razor-thin Republican Party majority in 1891 got rid of it so it could pass the most sweeping democracy reforms since the Civil War, including protections for Black voters. And ever since, legislation from both parties has made its way through that chamber, just fine.
Sinema: no modifications need apply
And Sinema has not only said “no” to getting rid of the filibuster altogether, but also any modifications that would merely make it more difficult for minority party senators to use it, such as requiring they defend their positions publicly in the chamber instead of just saying “no.”
Another modification she’s rejected is keeping the filibuster but granting an exception for this important reason—saving democracy. An exception was invoked on Dec. 14, 2021 to raise the debt ceiling, and as both parties have done 161 times from 1969 to 2014 and many times in the eight years
since then.
But Sinema and Manchin said no to these reasonable compromises, as well.
You have to wonder, who or what is driving Sinema’s stubborn loyalty to a procedure in our current political situation that promises to wreak havoc on democracy? The wealthy donors she’s courted since her very first days in the Senate? Certainly not Democrats in her state who enabled her 2018 election to the Senate. Now, however, as evidenced by her low 26 percent approval rating dropping steadily over the last year because of this issue, the majority of Arizona Democrats want Sinema out of the job.
Republicans and“bipartisanship” in the era of Trump’s iron grip
At the center of Sinema’s stance is her belief in working across the aisle, a value she latched on to as a member of the minority Democratic Party in Arizona in the early 2000s, a time when bipartisanship remained possible not only in Arizona but in Washington.
But the Republican Party now remains in the iron grip of Donald Trump. Trump sees free and fair voting as a roadblock to his ability to again ascend to the presidency. And so Republicans are doubling down on making sure voting legislation doesn’t even come up for a vote as free elections would threaten Trump’s goal.
That’s because Trump and Republicans have learned their voter base is shrinking, as older white voters are slowly dying out, as are those encouraged not to protect themselves from Covid. Also the U.S. white population is not growing as quickly as other, browner population groups who traditionally opt to join the Democratic party over the GOP.
According to a report from the prestigious Cook Partisan Voting Index of December 2020, 49 percent of registered voters identify themselves as Democrats, with only 36 percent describing themselves as Republicans—only one percentage point higher than those who describe themselves as Independents at 35 percent.
A dying GOP’s last gasps: voter suppression
Republicans know it’s getting harder to win elections fairly, so are creating the vast network of anti-voting legislation that declares election winners based simply on GOP party or, more specifically, Trump affiliation.
And Sinema’s stubborn loyalty to the filibuster puts her on their side.
What’s the reason—IQ or $$$?
Since Sinema’s reasons make no sense, we can only assume the Senator may be in the pocket of her big monied donors, an opinion becoming more widely believed in her home state and beyond.
Another option: Sinema’s not bright—which, despite the senator’s years of formal education at Brigham Young (B.A.) and Arizona State (M.A.) universities, The Resistant Grandmother is inclined to believe.
The gas station effect?
Included in a person’s intelligence quotient are his or her emotional sensibilities. Many of us know the Senator had a difficult childhood as her parents went through a messy divorce, followed soon after by her mother’s remarriage and the family’s moving about 1500 miles from Tucson, Arizona to DeFuniak Springs, Florida, a town today with a population of about 6,000. It’s the community from which Sinema’s new stepfather, Andy Howard, a computer teacher, moved to Arizona. And now having married Sinema’s recently divorced mother, Howard was moving his new family back to his
home town.
But with a promised job in Florida falling through shortly after their arrival, Sinema and her family lived for three years in an abandoned gas station on the Howard family’s property. It’s easy to imagine the cruel playground teasing those living conditions may have inspired–the kind of mocking that may have motivated Sinema to become a good student. And she earned co-valedictorian status in her small town high school graduation class.
But I believe these challenges also hardened and twisted Sinema, creating someone without the sensitivity to know—or care—that it’s not a good idea to violate social protocols, like upstaging her president on an important day in his presidency. They may too have seeded a desire for wealth and the power, security, and comfort that goes with it, with Sinema’s succumbing to its influence over time, but especially since she became U.S. Senator.
We may never know.
Bottom line: The Resistant Grandmother is tired of Sinema, having now written five columns exclusively or largely devoted to trying to figure her out and/or change her mind. I’ve also written to her and called her office multiple times, never receiving an acknowledgement. I talked once, politely enough, to a staff member who took my call, but then hung up on me
before I could say goodbye.
It’s been a total waste, just like all of the time Democrats have invested in trying to talk some sense into her. Sinema remains so far removed from what the vast majority of Americans and Democrats want there appears to be no common ground to get through to her…The walls are just too thick.
Sinema remains an enigma when the current state of our nation calls for just the opposite: a strong, clear-voiced patriot ready to take on all comers to save democracy.
Instead, we have an addled young woman with neither common sense, nor a sense of history who shouldn’t be within ten feet of her current job.
Having researched and written about Sinema over the last six months, I’ve concluded she’s in the wrong business. To The Resistant Grandmother, Sinema would be better off working in the banking industry, running a fitness center, or holding down a job as a functionary in an autocracy where she need not answer or listen to anything or anyone except her own adolescent fantasies. And her warped, terrible, horrible, wrong-headed choices may offer a major impetus to bring that about.
Julia Ioffe serves up the GOP's latest authoritarian tropes in a recent "The Beat" TV appearance. Don't buy into them.
She should have read my Jan. 7 posting! Tsk tsk...
Early this week, while indulging my usual habit of watching MSNBC’S “The Beat” with host Ari Melber, I sat rigidly upright in rapt attention. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing from one of the guests.
Reporter Julia Ioffe seemed to buy into the recent spate of Republican propaganda and was spouting it as gospel–the kind of outright surrender I called out in “Exposing Trump speech for signs of a dictator-led America,” my most recent posting (Jan. 7) on this platform.
The Jan. 7 post revealed how authoritarians speak in ways that demean institutions and people who dare go up against them. Dictator speech is riddled with grandiose statements devoid of evidence and full of dire “fait accompli”-like predictions designed to create a sense of doom and inevitability–that nothing can be done to thwart their diabolical strong-man aims. The posting suggested ways not to buy in and fall into their traps. To me, this was exactly what Ioffe did.
At issue on “The Beat” was Congressman Jim Jordan’s refusal to honor a subpoena issued by the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection and the involvement of Trump, cabinet officials, and others in government like Jordan in planning and carrying out the coup.
First up was Michael Steele, a former head of the Republican Party and “Beat” regular, and next was Ioffe, a writer at various times for The New Republic, The New Yorker, theAtlantic magazine, and Politico with a special concentration on Russian-American issues. She now writes for Puck News.
Borrowings from the authoritarian playbook
Ioffe’s tone was dour as she said the work of the committee would soon be rendered meaningless. Her sources were Republicans who were looking forward to a midterm victory of “historical proportions.” And the outcome would essentially end what the select committee has accomplished between July 1, 2021 and for the next 11 months.
Ioffe went on to say Americans “don’t really know about or care” about the investigation. She offered no independent evidence, but referred again only to what her Republican sources were saying. And she volunteered no counterclaims that might challenge the GOP’s version of events.
Following is an account on the Melber/Ioffe back and forth:
Melber began with Michael Steele whose part of the Q and A focused on what difference Jordan’s stonewalling would or not make for the committee,
and him.
Then Melber led into Ioffe with visuals on the so-called “cable cabinet” of Fox prime time hosts who texted Trump before and during the insurrection. Melber asked Ioffe, broadly, what Ioffe made of the Fox involvement. Ioffe responded by first making a joke, asking Melber, “When are we going to find your text messages?” and then said, vaguely, that “she agreed with Michael,” but then quickly pivoted to a bulleted list of three items intended to provide a framework for her response. These served to drag down the meat of her answer more than if she had delivered a crisp, clear summary of her three points, and so immediately cast an overall, forlorn nature to her remarks.
Plodding start
IOFFE: The answer to that question involves three meta questions that have to do with what this investigation is for.
One, does it have a political purpose–to gain a political edge for the midterms or 2024?
Two, to get consequences for people in the (House) chamber who helped foment the insurrection?
Three, to set down a(n) historical marker and put down a first brick of a historical narrative that gets filled out over time? I think it’s that.
If it’s for the political one, does it really matter in a country where such a significant part doesn’t really know or care about what the committee is doing? Or if they do know, they’ll explain it away somehow or they believe the January 6 protestors were just defiant in their cause or just peaceful
freedom fighters?
Backbone rejoinder
MELBER: I see your three meta questions and raise you a fourth. Can this co-equal branch of government calcify the backbones of our democracy and body politic so as to prevent the next coup?
IOFFE: Hmmm…I don’t think so because it (the committee) doesn’t exist in a vacuum. And even if it did, they (sic) have a razor-thin majority that is about to go away in less than a year. Um, in fact, in 11 months.
Every Republican I’m speaking to in Washington is counting on not just flipping the House but getting a historical majority the likes of which (haven’t been seen) in a generation of two. And then, what happens to
this investigation?
What does that matter if the voters of this country don’t even punish this party for trying to overturn a free and fair election but, instead, reward them handsomely for it? Um, this investigation kind of feels like a bandaid on a hole in the dike.
MELBER: (ending the segment) I appreciate that. We’ve gone from idealism (of Steele) to informed skepticism, which is sort of the role of a
journalist, sometimes.
Melber chose not to challenge Ioffe further, perhaps sensitive to her famously uncomfortable 2013 appearance on MSNBC’s “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell,” after which Ioffe accused O’Donnell of “mansplaining” and constantly interrupting her.
Not having The Last Word…
Ioffe got into trouble with O’Donnell in their discussion about Russia’s involvement with the asylum arrangements of Edward Snowden, the NSA analyst who as a contractor there in 2013 leaked a trove of classified documents on U.S.-allied global surveillance programs.
O’Donnell believed Russia was an active player in Snowden’s escape and eventual asylum in that country, while Ioffe argued Russia was merely a passive participant in Snowden’s scheme, allowing him to land and stay in Russia out of a concern, in her words, for sending Snowden back to the U.S. to face harsh punishment, like the death penalty, in the U.S. Justice system.
O’DONNELL: You aren’t seriously suggesting that the Russian government didn’t have total control of that (Snowden’s plane being allowed to land at Moscow’s airport)? Or that Putin doesn't have complete power over his (Snowden’s) every breath? They control that airport. They could have sent him on his way. Russia controls that airport completely.
IOFFE (interrupts): Not every second…
O’DONNELL: So they could not violate the trope (about the death penalty) that they created.
IOFFE: No, the Kremlin owns them (the media), but we can’t say that Putin whispers in their ear (sic). He (Snowden) would face the death penalty in
the U.S…
O’DONNELL: So you’re saying that, within the shape of Russia’s own propaganda, the propaganda myth they created, that Putin chose to create…
IOFFE: (Interrupting) I don’t think Putin is the one creating that. Putin doesn’t sit there, you know, and write the scripts for the news anchors. Putin sends a certain signal, that the system then interprets, as it does. Just like Obama doesn’t control everything in the U.S., Putin doesn’t control everything
in Russia.
O'DONNELL: (clearly exasperated) Very different….Putin does indeed control news anchors.
IOFFE: Does he? Have you ever reported from Russia? No, the Kremlin controls….
O'DONNELL: (raises hands to head) No, the Kremlin owns them, owns
them, Julia. We’re getting absurd, now….(Cuts the interview short)
Forced apology
In October 2019, Ioffe got into trouble on CNN when, appearing as a panelist on Jake Tapper’s Sunday program “The Lead,” Ioffe claimed Trump had been responsible for “more anti-semitic incidents than ISIS.”
In light of Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 insurrection, tiffs about the degree of Trump’s anti-semiticism seem almost quaint by today’s standards, given what Trump would do to harm not just Jewish citizens, but all Americans by triggering a coup against the United States.
Two panelists, one a Republican strategist and another a moderate, lobbied Tapper during the break for an apology. Ioffe complied, citing emotional stress for being Jewish and suffering anti-semitic threats that had grown under Trump.
Fired for the f word
And then there was Politico’s firing Ioffe in December 2016 just before the start of Trump’s presidency. Following the November election Trump announced he was hiring his daughter Ivanka as a top adviser and, rumor had it, would offer the entire east wing (traditionally reserved for the First Lady’s staff) as her office space. Ioffe Tweeted:
“Either Trump is f***ing his daughter or he’s shirking nepotism laws.
Which is worse?”
Perhaps Ioffe should have thought better of using the F word in a Tweet, especially having just started a new, high-profile job as a Washington journalist. But the incidents illustrate a recurring pattern: Ioffe sometimes playing a bit too fast and loose with the facts and not consistently living up to a journalist’s responsibilities–for seriousness, scholarship (for lack of a better term), and credibility. To me, equating Obama and the free and independent news media in this country with Putin and the state-controlled media in Russia, for example, is especially troubling and makes me wonder where she’s coming from.
Reality, and expectations
To be fair, it’s not like any of us haven’t heard dire election forecasts before from a variety of sources. But the expectation is that they be qualified as Republican beliefs, and early predictions, etc. as a signal to their audience to take them for what they’re worth and not as gospel, just yet. After all, we’re 10 months away, and circumstances can change and things happen. Just ask Presidents Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, or Jeb Bush if expectations are not capable of changing within the course of a year.
The other thing that bothers me is Ioffe’s bleak assessment of the work of the Jan. 6 committee as unpopular, not of interest, and likely to fall down into the black hole of history. And that assessment appears to be flat out wrong based on data that Ioffe failed to mention in her dispiriting appearance on “The Beat.”
According to Ioffe’s former employer, Politico, the committee’s work is popular across the political spectrum, although more so with Democrats and Independents. A Jan. 2, 2022 Politico report based on polling done in concert with Morning Consult said that, although House Republicans, the source of Ioffe’s prophecies of despair, overwhelmingly opposed the select committee, GOP voters are more supportive than are their Congressional representatives of the committee's work:
According to the Politico-Morning Consult poll 40 percent of Republicans said they either strongly support or somewhat support the Jan. 6 select committee. Another 44 percent said they oppose the committee to some degree while the remaining 16 percent said they had no opinion on it.
Among Democrats, 82 percent said they supported the committee, 12 percent said the opposed it and 6 percent had no opinion. A majority of independents also said they supported the Jan. 6 panel, with 58 percent supporting and 27 percent opposing the commission.
Ioffe also implied that the Jan. 6 insurrection and Trump’s, and by extension, the GOP’S role, in fomenting it was fading from American concern and consciousness, which would also help Republicans. But the Politico/Morning Consult research says the Jan. 6 insurrection is still very much top-of-mind for the vast majority of voters.
“A solid majority of all voters — 62 percent — characterized those who stormed the Capitol as supporters of then-President Donald Trump, although only 43 percent of Republican-identified voters expressed that belief.”
A recent ABC News say its recent polling places blame squarely on Trump’s shoulders—not Antifa or any other group, as Fox pundits have posited.
”Overall, in this poll, 58% of Americans think Trump bears a ‘great deal’ or a ‘good amount’ of responsibility for the events, unchanged from an ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted on Jan. 13, 2021, in which 57% of Americans said he was responsible.
The reason why the especially high and ongoing Democratic and Independent interest in the insurrection and the committee matters in the midterms is that Democrats are by far the largest political party in the U.S. and Independents come in a close third to Republicans, translating into a larger pool of potential voters than the GOP can muster on its own.
Rosy GOP prognostications must be tempered by the reality that Republicans enjoy a smaller share of the electorate, barely ranking in the number 2 spot.
Us v. them
According to the highly regarded Cook Partisan Voting Index of December 2020, 49 million registered voters identified themselves as Democrats. Republicans came in a distant second with 36 million, barely surpassing Independents with their 35 million registered voters.
Democrats’ edge is what’s making the GOP increasingly terrified about future prospects, which functions as the impetus for 20 primarily red state legislatures either having passed or in the process of passing laws to suppress and nullify (decide for themselves who’s the winner) all aspects of the voting process, thus essentially ending American democracy.
Additionally, if GOP House and Senate members are relying on voters to forget about the insurrection by the time of the November elections (and the early voting that begins weeks to months earlier) the committee plans to hold televised prime-time sessions where key players testify in dramatic and disgusting detail about the extent of Trump’s involvement in planning, carrying out, and lying about who won the election along with the other Republican officials who abetted him. Such hearings can be tremendously impactful to voter decisions, as the Watergate and Iron-Contra hearings were, despite their likely being ignored by Fox News and its ilk.
But Ioffe conveniently failed to mention any of these exigencies–the bare minimum of which even the lamest of journalists should be prepared to include in their on-air appearances as knowledgeable sources.
Julia downer
My last criticism concerns the dour, detached mien Ioffe brings to her reporting–one that suggests she’s not particularly enamored with of or even respectful of America, her adopted country where she earned a college education at Princeton and succeeded in making a name for herself, although one that seems vulnerable to self-inflicted wounds.
In a Jan. 19, 2017 article written in theAtlantic magazine, Ioffe describes coming to this country with her family as a 7-year-old girl from her native Russia where Jews suffered a litany of persecutions in employment, education, and civic life. It’s a heartbreaking story with very few victories until the end when she talks about her parents’ ultimately successful struggle to re-educate themselves, as her mother did to become a doctor here, or become a valued employee as her father worked at his government computer job and seemed to not find ready recognition for his contributions or his patriotism, as Ioffe describes:
These people do not see that, if maybe I am a worthless journalist, my father’s work building databases for the Social Security Administration makes sure they get their very non-abstract checks on time, that he has made going to disability court easier and smoother, that he has helped the U.S. government find deadbeat dads and make them provide for their kids, and that, for him, paying his taxes is a moment of civic pride.
As I read on, I also sensed resentment over how earlier immigrants to America had it easier than her family, who arrived in an age when their immigrant status stood out more, and from a country that is, to many, the biggest enemy of the U.S. I didn’t get the sense Ioffe buys into the “romance of democracy,” as former George W. Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson described America’s special appeal, until Trump, here and around the world.
Bleak House
For Ioffe, America has been an imperfect obstacle to be overcome, not a haven or refuge, as this gloomy passage from her Jan. 29, 2017 biography story in theAtlantic suggests as she compares her immigrant experiences to
earlier ones.
“Most were not vetted, not extremely, not at all. But they do not see it, because their family lore is an abstraction too, and these ancestors, who were once tangible humans, have become their own abstractions of patriotism that makes everyone different an abstraction, because abstractions are not human, and cannot suffer. But abstractions have a way of coalescing into symbols, into piles of shoes and toddlers dead on the beach, symbols that will haunt your good name, no matter how much you rant in self-righteous justification. They will hang over you, for everyone to see, finally.
Ioffe’s bleak assessments of America’s past, present, and future may be rooted in the darkness of her own arrival, and all the disappointment that seemed to go with it as witnessed in a young Russian girl’s eyes. Maybe Republican strong man assurances offer a strangely familiar and reassuring brand of political attachment, who knows?
At least, do this
Nevertheless, The Resistant Grandmother believes that, as a journalist, Ioffe should report the facts from a variety of sources–not just GOPers salivating at the thought of taking over the government they don’t deserve. And at least be fair, if being on Team U.S.A. is too big a stretch.
Coming by end of this week: antidotes to the Prophet of Doom heard last night on MSNBC's "The Beat."
Looking for a recipe for disaster? Buy-in to that cr*p.
Not Ari Melber, but one of his guests who seemed to have bought into GOP expectations of a total political blow-out in 2022—claims she seems to believe only 11 days into the start of the new year.
She apparently did not read The Resistant Grandmother’s Jan. 7 post, describing how it’s part of the GOP game plan, too often aided and abetted by members of the news media, to stamp out all vestiges of hope in their political opponents early and often.
In a few days, my new post will explain why prophesies of the Democrats’ impending electoral death are greatly exaggerated, as Mark Twain famously quipped to a newspaper reporter who asked Twain about reports he was dying: “Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated,” Twain said on June 2, 1897. Twain (Samuel Clemens) went on to live another 13 years.
Stay tuned.
Exposing Trump speech for signs of a dictator-led America.
What to look for as Trump spews lies and despair in 2022...
This week Trump issued several statements all designed to make Americans not believe in traditional institutions such as the Congress or the press as related to ceremonies commemorating the tragedy of the January 6 insurrection.
In a lengthy one issued Friday following the ceremonies, Trump played to his grievance-focused base, casting Democrats and the media as a sinister force that had “driven our country into the ground.”
Here are Trump’s statements as taken from a report in the Jan. 7 The Hill, a Washington news publication.
Statement 1: “These radical leftists in Washington care NOTHING for American Democracy,” Trump said. “All they care about is control over you, and wealth and riches for themselves”…while they and the “media are driving our country into the ground.”
Statement 2: “But they are failing. No one believes them anymore.”
Statement 3: “And the day is quickly coming when they will be overwhelmingly voted out of power.”
Throughout 2022, Trump’s words will become a drumbeat for the midterm elections. So it’s important to possess the tools to translate “Trump speech” and understand the game he’ll be playing. Trump’s tropes are all for the purpose of deflating hope, trust, and respect for the constructs of a free society and for stoking belief in the authoritarian politics he represents.
The most helpful thing to do when listening to or reading Trump is to approach his uttering with the understanding that he speaks in a language straight out of the authoritarian playbook.
https://protectdemocracy.org/the-authoritarian-playbook/
Authoritarians must disparage everything free societies value–checks and balances on authority, a free press to shine a light on government abuses, and the expertise of governmental or independent entities whose purpose is to work in truth-based environments where facts are pre-eminent. Dictators neither like truth nor facts, as they challenge one-man rule.
Lastly, dictators will always be about depressing hope–that life can some day return to normal or that the dictator will eventually no longer be in power. Dictators must convince audiences that such hopeful thoughts are a fool's errand. The fix will always be in, and so will he or people just like him.
So, let’s dissect Trump’s statement from Friday for clues of Trump’s dictator mindset. In doing so, it’s easy to admire Trump’s ability to lie as easily as breathing. It’s a gift, an evil one, but a talent not everyone possesses.
Thank God.
But we also see his comments as those of an unprincipled man taking his cues from despots down through the ages–and probably, from his multiple calls and meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin while Trump was president, all on our dime.
First statement: Trump’s casting the “media establishment” as a sinister force that has “driven our country into the ground.”
Translation of Trump’s “dictatorese”: Authoritarian leaders cannot abide an independent news media because it can expose their abuses of power. That’s why a free press is always the first to be destroyed and outlawed in authoritarian societies as it was in Nazi Germany, Stalin’s U.S.S.R., and
Putin’s Russia.
Also, notice how Trump gives no evidence of “how the media establishment has driven our country to the ground.” Dictators do not believe in facts to back up their statements, as they do not respect the need for their audience to make decisions based on factual truth.
So they make grandiose statements and trust listeners or readers will be gullible enough to believe them on their face, or not care whether they’re factual or not. Which many Trump followers do not.“They’ll swallow anything,” is where Trump and his dictator ilk are coming from. So if you like to be dismissed as non-important, vote for Trump.
Also, The Resistant Grandmother wonders how, if Trump’s contention is accurate—that the media is driving America into the ground—the United States ever became the most powerful nation on earth with the inclusion of a free press protected by the First Amendment? Absent a free press, history shows the genius in a society that’s cultivated by such freedoms will die out along with the freedom to speak, write, and report the truth. But with a free press, societies likely will sparkle and flourish, as has ours.
Second Statement: “These radical leftists in Washington care NOTHING for American Democracy,” Trump said. “All they care about is control over you, and wealth and riches for themselves.”
Translation of Trump’s “dictatorese”: The first dictator “tell”--the use of all caps. That’s a no-no in emails and texting because it mimics a kind of screaming at your audience. Dictators like to scream.
Additionally, dictators thrive on trashing other governmental or independent entities that can challenge their authority. Ergo, Trump demeans the ceremonies marking the insurrection and the people who care about it as a way to minimize the importance of the Democratic Congress, the body that challenged Trump throughout his presidency; the electoral vote count after the insurrection which secured Biden’s victory; and Mike Pence, the toady vice president who drew a line in the sand and did the right thing on Jan. 6. Any person or entity that challenges a dictator’s total control and power is, by definition, an enemy and must be demeaned.
By extension, if the GOP wins back both houses of Congress and Trump again were president, he would likely render the legislative branch impotent. In a scenario where Kevin McCarthy were House Speaker, Trump could not allow him to function independently, as that would offer too strong a challenge to Trump’s absolute power. Such friction reportedly was factored into Paul Ryan’s decision to leave the job.
Mitch McConnell has earned a more independent stance through his years on the job and track-record. But if he were to be replaced with someone else, such as Ted Cruz, the errand-boy expectations would apply to him, too.
A subservient stance is not in keeping with the independent nature of the U.S. Congress as a separate branch of government—an expectation in free societies that construct governance systems with a checks and balances component. But it would likely become the new normal if both or either of the Legislative branch houses were to fall into the hands of Trump’s GOP.
Also, dictators are ironic, even though they may not be smart enough to know what irony is, let alone if they’re using it. Trump’s accusations, “They don’t care about democracy” and “All they care about is control over you, and wealth and riches for themselves,” are ironic on their face because the truth is just the opposite—it is Trump of course who wants to destroy democracy and cares only about control, wealth, and riches.
Dictators will often falsely claim others are doing what they’re actually doing. The result: a despot’s accusing others of what are, in fact, his own transgressions muddies up the topic. It makes listeners so confused they won’t pay much attention to either claim, rendering criticism directed at
him, moot.
And we know that it is Trump who is all about control, as dictators are, as he famously controlled, or tried to, every aspect of the Executive branch, including its vaunted agencies (DOJ, CDC, EPA, etc.). Trump’s iron grip prevented them from speaking the truth to the American people, destroying public trust during his tenure–just what dictators want.
And Trump’s nonstop acquisition of wealth and riches continued full-throttle, even as president as he made money from using or trying to use his properties around the globe for governmental purposes. (See stories on Trump’s expensive but largely vacant Scottish golf club housing military personnel at the taxpayer’s expense and his unsuccessful attempt to use his otherwise failing Doral golf resort for the G-7, the in-person version of which was eventually cancelled, helpfully, because of Covid).
Third Statement: “But they are failing. No one believes them anymore,” he added. “And the day is quickly coming when they will be overwhelmingly voted out of power.”
Translation of Trump’s “dictatorese”: This is Trump’s attempt to deflate hope in anyone who opposes him. The message is, it’s useless to believe you may prevent me and my people from taking over the government. We will defeat you, pure and simple.
This reminds me of a close-to-home example of “Oh, Ye who hath hope need not enter here!” approach to deflate the opposition. On its face the following example may seem insignificant, but it’s reflective of the deflate-hope strategy on any scale.
During the 2020 campaign season, residents of my suburban Illinois town posted “vote for Biden” yard signs up and down the block. The Trump organization at night sent people to steal the yard signs, so the suddenly empty front yards greeted us one morning as if to say, “You are up against a more powerful force than your own that will not allow for either your yard signs or your intention of voting for anyone other than Trump to exist.”
But the GOP must have been disappointed when, to a person, each resident replaced the Biden signs, in some cases, several times, until Trump’s thugs finally gave up. They gave up. Remember, Trump defeats can happen, as occurred, importantly, in 2020 on November 3.
Bottom line: Whatever Trump says must be translated within the context of the dictator’s playbook. Authoritarian leaders must destroy hope that anything can change or that an opposition can prevail. That also goes for their need to trash any respect for people, entities, or institutions who/that can challenge their authority. Getting you to lose confidence in yourself, organizations, or other people except him keeps the dictator in power.
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