Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Recently I've written several blog entries about Kevin McCarthy's quest to become Speaker of the House. His election, which he won only after 15 highly contentious rounds of voting, isn't the only historic thing that happened this weekend in Congress. Democrats selected Hakeem Jeffries as House Minority Leader. Rep. Jeffries is the first Black person to serve as leader of any major party in Congress. But it's not just who Jeffries is that's newsworthy (besides, his party selected him for this role 6 weeks ago) it's what he did as his first act in the new Congress.

After McCarthy won the 15th round of voting, Jeffries handed him the ceremonial gavel of the Speaker of the House. Jeffries did that because he took it from former speaker Nancy Pelosi, when she stepped down as party leader. And before he handed over the gavel, Jeffries gave a speech. A stirring speech.

The most memorable part of Jeffries's speech employed a rhetorical technique of using the alphabet. Going from the letter A to Z, Jeffries enumerated the important American values the Democrat Party stands for.

“House Democrats will always put American values over autocracy, benevolence over bigotry, the Constitution over the cult, democracy over demagogues … freedom over fascism, governing over gaslighting, hopefulness over hatred. … maturity over Mar-a-Lago ... quality of life issues over QAnon, reason over racism, substance over slander, triumph over tyranny, understanding over ugliness, voting rights over voter suppression ... zealous representation over zero-sum confrontation."

That was Jeffries's first official act in the new session of Congress.

McCarthy's first official act? He thanked President Trump. Former President Trump, though he didn't say former. Upon this graceful transition of power he invoked Trump, the leader who personifies the opposite of graceful transition of power. Trump, who still claims that he rightfully won the 2020 election and should be installed into office 2 years later by the Supreme Court— or the military. Trump, who revved up an armed mob to attack the Capitol building on January 6, 2020. The evidence for his responsibility there was laid out in clear detail by a House committee investigation that finished just days ago. And, of course, McCarthy even stated that responsibility in the days immediately following Jan. 6— until he backtracked days later upon realizing that Trump would remain kingmaker in the Republican Party. So here we are just over 2 years later, with the new Speaker giving a bow to the utterly corrupt kingmaker.

What a sad state of affairs, rendered in such stark contrast by these two leaders' speeches.

In my previous blog about the HBO series Chernobyl I wrote about "The Cost of Lies, The Futility of Truth". Scientist Valery Legasov led the Soviet delegation at a UN IAEA conference held in Vienna in August 1986. As I noted previously Legasov shaded the truth. He not only left out of his report the fact of design flaws in the design of the Soviet RBMK 1000 reactor, of which there were at least a dozen other copies still running, but denied it repeatedly when asked by international scientists and journalists. When the facts of this came out a few years later the IAEA rewrote its report, holding design flaws rather than operator error the chief cause of the explosion. Yet despite his dishonesty he was lauded as a hero at the time by the world.

How was it that he was praised so much while misleading the world?



Understand that expectations for honesty from the USSR were low. Remember, the Soviets weren't even going to admit the reactor blew up in the first place. It was spewing as much radiation as the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki every 12 hours, and they didn't want to tell anyone. They only admitted it 2½ days later after a nuclear power plant in Sweden over 600 miles away detected the radiation.

Interesting aside: As I understand it, an alarm at the Swedish Forsmark plant was triggered when radiation was detected on a plant employee's shoe. The employee was arriving at the plant, though; so authorities knew the radiation source was outside the plant.

And even once the Soviets admitted something happened at Chernobyl they downplayed it. They said only that "an accident occurred" that "damaged" one of the reactors. The rest of the world only understood how bad it was from measuring the radioactive fallout across Western and Northern Europe and from observing the site & activity around it through spy satellites and other forms of secret intelligence.

Plus, when the Soviets did acknowledge a problem at Chernobyl, they followed their brief & vague description with a whataboutism screed criticizing Three Mile Island and other nuclear accidents in Western countries. This approach of deny, distract, counterattack was a standard technique of Soviet propaganda. Back in the late '80s and early 90s books on communication styles referred to them as "Soviet-style negotiation". If these techniques seem familiar now it's because Donald Trump has used them publicly pretty much every day since he announced his first run for the presidency in 2015.

So yeah, Legasov was more forthcoming than expected at Vienna— but still didn't say anything other countries hadn't already figured out. Western European nations were measuring radiation in their own countries. Scientists could extrapolate from that how bad the situation must be. And spy satellites confirmed additional details. Legasov's presentation was remarkable primarily that he didn't deny the obvious facts. But still it made him unpopular with many of his peers & many government officials back home.

People who remember that era in Soviet relations might say, "Well, wasn't there Glasnost going on?" Although General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev mentioned glasnost (literally, "openness") when he became chief executive in 1985 it wasn't until 1986— specifically after August 1986— that he spoke of it as actual policy direction. It's believed that it was through seeing the handling of the Chernobyl cleanup and communication with the world community that Gorbachev recognized it was crucial to do to preserve the country's remaining power.

"Florida Man [Does Crazy Thing]" is a common headline not just in Florida but around the US. "Florida Man" has been a meme for 10+ years, with various websites and social media feeds portraying the stories as if they're the act of an individual person, perhaps the world's worst superhero[1].

The New York Post satirically used this meme in covering former president Donald Trump's Nov. 15 announcement that he's running for president again. Yes, just 7 days after Election Day 2022, and 720 days before Election Day 2024, Trump announced his candidacy. ...Which the Post covered with the headline "FLORIDA MAN MAKES ANNOUNCEMENT" at the bottom of its front page, pointing to a barb-filled story buried on page 26.

It's notable that the New York Post satirized Trump's announcement. The Post is part of Rupert Murdoch's media empire, which for the past many years has served as a propaganda engine for extreme right politics and leaders such as Trump. Now instead of publishing a constant stream of distortions and outright lies to support Trump, the paper is going against him. Other Murdoch properties, such the Wall Street Journal have, too. Even Fox News cut away from live TV coverage of Trump's rambling pep rally as even its rabid fan base found it too dull for prime time.

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1. Many writers have attributed the frequency of "Florida Man" news stories to Florida's open public records laws. Police are required to publish reports on all arrests; lazy journalists then have a ready source for colorful headlines. Other factors have been noted, too, such as in this 2019 article published by CNN.com. The state is populous, culturally diverse, and— sadly— has the lowest funding for mental health problems, which are a factor in many of the strange events.

Today is the anniversary of an attempted coup against the U.S. government and its Constitution. On Jan. 6, 2021 a mob of thousands of people, some of them armed, swarmed the U.S. Capitol building with the intent of disrupting a vote to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. Members of the mob fought with police, killing one and injuring over 100 officers. Members of the House and Senate were either evacuated from the building or barricaded themselves behind cover, in fear for their lives. This is the first time ever in the history of the United States that an attack penetrated the Capitol.

What drove the coup attempt was the lie repeated daily for weeks by then-President Donald Trump, and amplified by propaganda outlets such as the Fox News Network, that Trump rightfully won the 2020 election. In fact President Joe Biden won, by more than 7 million popular votes and an Electoral College vote of 306 to 232. Trump and allied propagandists have steadily claimed, with zero actual evidence, that Biden's margin of victory is due to widespread vote fraud.

"So what. The coup was defeated," some might say. "It was only a few thousand people. Out of, what, 330 million in the U.S.?" The thing is, the thousands of rioters who mobbed the Capitol are only a tiny fraction of an ongoing coup that's been happening in plain sight. Consider these facts:

• On January 6, 2020, after the storming of the Capitol whipped up by the totally fake argument of widespread vote fraud, still several senators and over 100 representatives voted against accepting the Electoral College tallies. Their attempts to nullify the fair vote were also supported by the governors of 20 states. When the violent insurrection failed, these political leaders attempted a palace coup by using the processes of the government against itself.
• It's not just a few thousand rioters or a few hundred politicians. Still today, a year later, 75% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters believe Joe Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 election. (Example source: CNN.com article, 10 Dec 2021)
• Numerous states have enacted voting restriction laws. Even though every legal argument that widespread vote fraud occurred has been debunked and rejected by courts, politicians still take it as an article of faith to clamp down on voting rights. Of course, these clampdowns are proven not to impact voting fraud— because there is hardly any to start with— but do suppress the turnout of ethnic minorities and the poor and working classes.

So while the riotous coup one year ago today failed, there has been an ongoing coup continuing in plain sight. If Joe Biden or another Democrat elected in 2024, there could be a full scale insurrection. By then the political right will have had 4 years, not just 8 weeks, to feed its own lies and plan its next attack.

President Biden is not bidin' his time. Immediately after yesterday's inauguration ceremony he went to work in the White House, signing a slew of executive orders.


Among the orders President Biden signed on Day One— not even his first full day in office yet— are:

• Stopping construction of the border wall on the US-Mexico border
• Requiring mask wearing on all federal property (offices, courthouses, national parks, etc.) and encouraging states and localities to do the same
• Rejoining the Paris Agreement on climate change

...and a whole raft of others. See, for example, this Newsweek article (updated 21 Jan 2021).

After a busy Day One, President Biden is not jetting off to his golf course to relax or hiding in his residence watching opinion shows on Fox and tweeting their phony conspiracy theories. Day Two is more work for Biden. A lot more of it. As he and his team dig deeper into establishing a better Covid-19 plan, news coming out is that they're finding there isn't even a plan today. Twelve months Trump has known about Covid... 6 months he's been telling us a vaccine is right around the corner... over a month since vaccines have actually come out... all while the US death toll climbed past 400,000... and Trump and his administration did basically nothing to get ready for it.

After the violent anti-democracy riot at the US Capitol last Wednesday, Twitter, Facebook, and a few other social media companies booted President Trump off their platforms for violating their terms of service against inciting and glorifying violence.

"We'll just go to Parler," a lot of people said. Parler is an alternative social media platform that has billed itself for months now as the last bastion of free speech— speech free of restrictions against planning violence and crime, that is. It's been gathering a base of politically conservative users who enjoy being able to share violent content & threats without fear of having their accounts suspended or terminated. On Thursday, when Twitter and Facebook booted Trump, Parler's free app was the #1 most downloaded app on Apple's iTunes store.

Parler's popularity surge didn't last long, though. On Friday Google removed the app from its Google Play store for violating its policy against encouraging violence. On Saturday Apple did the same with its iTunes store. Sunday Amazon announced that at 11:59pm it would shut down Parler's servers in its AWS hosting service. Amazon carried through on that threat, and since 12:00am Monday morning Parler has been completely offline. The company currently has no credible plan for restoring its service.

Since the mob attack on the US Capitol Wednesday a handful of cabinet and White House staff members have submitted their resignations in protest of President Donald Trump, who not only incited the act of insurrection and domestic terrorism but also praised the mob in statements released to major media afterwards. The highest profile officials to resign have been Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who's also the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. More names can be found in recent coverage such as this article from The New York Times and this article from WGN TV in Chicago, both published 8 Jan 2021. While resigning from a hopeless corrupt and lawless administration might seem like the noble thing to do, these resignations are the cowards' way out.

Why is it a coward's way out? First, none of what happened this week is a surprise. Trump set the false expectation of election tampering starting months before the election, and since the election on November 6 he has taken to social media and friendly TV news every single day to spread false, zero-evidence claims of election fraud. He has encouraged his supporters to "defend" the US against this vast but unspecified conspiracy that is "stealing" the election from voters. There can be no surprise that it came to violence. Anyone who wanted to protest the damage Trump was wreaking should've acted weeks ago. By staying this long they are actively complicit.

Second, resigning now absolves these officials of responsibility for acting to limit further damage. There are numerous, serious calls for Vice President Pence and cabinet members to exercise a provision in the 25th Amendment to the Constitution that allow for an unfit president to be removed from power. Cabinet members resigning now are dodging their responsibility to make a clear, yes-no decision on this important matter. In fact, each resignation is further complicity in enabling Trump's continued coup against the US government as it makes it that much harder to reach the threshold required to force Trump's removal. Make no mistake, these cowardly cabinet members are resigning to protect their own reputations from having to decide one way or the other. Instead they let the monster continue tearing apart the United States.