Powerless
Lights out
Amidst the Stormy Daniels mess, the Mueller probe, the likely firing of the national security adviser, a looming trade war and other major news, a story that should prompt banner headlines has passed relatively unnoticed: Russia can control our power plants.
The news first broke yesterday. Here’s the opening paragraph from today’s New York Times:
The Trump administration accused Russia on Thursday of engineering a series of cyberattacks that targeted American and European nuclear power plants and water and electric systems, and could have sabotaged or shut power plants off at will.
Gun Culture: We’re #1. Look Who’s #2
Look what we have in common.
Courtesy of a 1995 consultancy, I visited Yemen back when it was a peaceful place relative to its devastation today. I recall a fascinating society, considerable poverty, a lively souk in the capital of Sanaa, very nice folks, beautiful mountain landscapes, a temperate climate compared to most of the Middle East, a government largely absent from much of the country, and a heavily armed tribal culture.
Thanks to the New York Times, here’s a handy comparison of “How to Buy a Gun in 15 Countries,” including Yemen. The article lists each country’s requirements. As points of comparison, I just provide those for Australia and Yemen. Here are a few key bullet points:
How Democracies Die
Democracies die not with a bang, but with a slowly unfolding whimper.
That’s the crux of the book How Democracies Die, by political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, which Ezra Klein very usefully summarizes today at Vox. Klein’s account actually isn’t nearly as chilling as it could or should be. He only implies what certain bipartisan analysts have been asserting for years: that “The Republicans are the problem.” And he ignores such outrages as Republican voter suppression and Trump’s anti-immigrant fear-mongering.
The Mueller Probe is a Distraction
BIGGER THAN WATERGATE
The Russia-Trump probe led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller is the most important criminal inquiry in our country’s history. It’s even bigger than the Watergate investigation, which was prompted by bungling burglars breaking into an office in 1972. In contrast, Mueller is scrutinizing a hostile foreign power breaking into our democracy in 2016.
And yet, the probe is a distraction from something even more significant.
“NEVER BEFORE”
Here’s what’s more significant, as indicated by the title of this January 10 Washington Post op-ed by Maryland Senator Ben Cardin: “Never before has a president ignored such a clear national security threat” – that is, Donald Trump is ignoring Vladimir Putin’s current threat to democracy. The piece is based on a Senate Foreign Relations Committee minority (Democratic) staff report. Though the report focuses on Russia and Europe, it warns that our own democracy is in grave danger.
Our Year of Living Dangerously
HOW DEMOCRACIES DIE
The Year of Living Dangerously is a 1982 film set in Indonesia in 1965, during the lead-up to a violent military coup. It stars Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver,
Welcome to 2018 and our democracy’s own, very different year of living dangerously. Congressional Republicans increasingly cave to Donald Trump, in ways political scientists identify with how democracies die. Our creeping institutional decay includes moves to potentially prosecute the president’s perceived enemies: the Clintons over a matter for which they were already exonerated and a respected former British intelligence officer who wrote a damaging dossier about Trump.
Learning from Japan: Guns, Kids and the Price of Freedom
Now, from the Wishful Thinking Department: In the wake of the Las Vegas massacre, a great Washington Post piece on the four-month process for getting a gun in Japan. It details the many steps designed to weed out loons and irresponsible louts from wielding lethal weapons. One upshot? “In 2015, there were more than 13,000 non-suicide gun deaths in the United States; in Japan, there was only one.”
Of course, it would be ludicrous to propose that process in the United States, given our vast political, historical and cultural differences. To cite just one, so many kids grow up with guns in America – though, then again, so many never get to grow up as they kill themselves or other kids along the way.
We’re Sitting Ducks: Learning from Europe About Electoral Integrity
WORSE THAN WE’D THOUGHT
As reported in today’s New York Times, Putin’s 2016 election interference may have been even more pernicious than previously reported. Even short of intentionally causing miscounts, electronic shenanigans could have made it tougher for voters to vote, forcing many to turn away on Election Day. The problems in parts of North Carolina and other states might simply have been software glitches. But as the article emphasizes, the news emerges against a backdrop of troubling inattention by local, state and federal officials to the issue – and in fact, their resistance to addressing it at all.
Pardon Me
THE PRESIDENT AT WAR
My first take on the president’s pardon for Joe Arpaio was that it was unnecessary, even by his cellar-dwelling standards. Sure, it reflects Trump’s portrait of an America besieged by job-stealing criminals from south of the border, with the former sheriff as a bulwark of our defense. But Trump supporters who admire Arpaio’s bigotry already saw the president as their leader in the war to keep America white. So the pardon seemed to be a hateful but gratuitous slap at Hispanics and Trump’s opponents.
From Ford to Trump: Which Ship is Sinking?
At a Norfolk, Virginia ceremony today, President Trump commissioned the new aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford.
There are manifold ironies afoot here.
One ship sets sail as another conceivably sinks. Is that sinking ship the Trump presidency or our American democracy?
We have a naval vessel, honoring an honorable public servant, launched by someone who’s something less than that.
At the ceremony, Trump declares that the warship will cause America’s enemies to “shake with fear,” even as he confoundingly cozies up to arguably our main adversary, Vladimir Putin.
Pardon Me
On some level, we all saw it coming. Courtesy of The Washington Post, today’s Trump scandal news is that the president’s attorneys are exploring pardons for his family, aides and even himself. What’s more, they’re looking for ways of discrediting Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russia’s disrupting our democracy.
A key passage from the story:
[Trump] has told aides he was especially disturbed after learning Mueller would be able to access several years of his tax returns…
Trumps and Sharks: Consider the Sources
You’ve probably read about Donald Trump Jr.’s June 9, 2016 meeting to discuss Russian orphans sanctions collusion with his dad’s campaign. If you want a good summary of why this is so important, see this Nicholas Kristof column.
Here’s one aspect that could become increasingly crucial: Consider the sources.
As Josh Marshall points out at his superb Talking Points Memo mega-blog, the New York Times cited five White House advisers – not law enforcement officials or other outside actors – as sources for its groundbreaking article on the meeting. He accordingly wonders whether the leaks for the story spring from the many splits within President Trump’s inner circle. The Washington Post points out that Trump aides are themselves pondering that possibility:
Trump Junior, A Tangled Web and A Crumbling Wall
A FIRST
According to this New York Times story, last June Donald Trump Jr., presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner and then-campaign chair Paul Manafort met with a Kremlin-linked Russian lawyer who claimed to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton. The key take-away from the article: “The accounts of the meeting represent the first public indication that at least some in the campaign were willing to accept Russian help.”
A TANGLED WEB
The article and related reporting goes on to make matters murkier and potentially more incriminating. Trump Jr.’s inconsistent responses have flowed from first insisting that the meeting was mainly about adoptions to later, after the Times story appeared, asserting that he was fooled into seeing the lawyer because she claimed she had dirt on the Democrats and Hillary. According to Junior, that claim was a Russian ruse, for after briefly offering some nonsensical accusations against Clinton, she moved on to her real agenda: lobbying against a U.S. law that blacklists certain corrupt Russian officials implicated in human rights abuses, a law that has triggered Putin’s retaliation of barring Americans from adopting Russian kids.
The Best of Us
A Lesson from a Tragedy
With so much nasty stuff dominating the headlines, it’s hard to find some solace in the news. But one very sad story has a sort of silver lining.
It’s this article, about the seven sailors who died Saturday when their Navy destroyer collided with a container ship off the shores of Japan. Amidst this tragedy, one salient aspect is how diverse and inspiring their backgrounds were, including “an immigrant from the Philippines whose father served in the Navy before him; a poor teenager whose Guatemalan family came north eager for opportunity; a native of Vietnam hoping to help his family; a firefighter’s son from a rural crossroads in the rolling green fields of Virginia.”
Me on Indian TV on Trump’s First 100 Days
Here’s my Indian TV interview from Friday, on Trump’s first 100 days in office. This was not the first time the Gravitas program had interviewed me, but it was the first time I’d subsequently seen how I was framing both my skype video and remarks. So lots of room for improvement, I know. My part starts at 2:15.
I found the lead-in pretty illuminating, in terms of one Indian media outlet’s take on Trump. And check out the way the segment closes with a big bang, commencing at 7:40, via a video of a North Korean military/propaganda drill.