Back to Dwelling on The Awfulness

 I skipped some writing days, ignoring the inner voice last night that said I really needed to write something. But here I am now, writing, so.

I suppose I should compose another letter to my GOP senators. The SAVE act, which threatens to add enormous hurdles to voting in this country, has narrowly passed the House. The Senate is likely to pass it. It's depressing. 

The stock market rallied yesterday in reaction to Trump's "pause" on tariffs (which really wasn't a complete pause, just a reduction of all of them to 10%--still an unimaginable high). Today's stock market erased those gains as people realized, variously, (1) the US/China trade war is still very much on; (2) Trump appears to decide day-to-day or moment-to-moment about tariff policy; (3) the US is unreliable as a trade partner since it seems happy to elect Trump and allow him his whimsy; and (4) there is no plan.

That was Isaac Saul's takeaway from Trump's backing down on tariffs:

I wanted to understand the Trump administration’s grand plan, and it turns out they didn’t have one. When they said they were rolling out global tariffs to negotiate new trade deals but also said the tariff rates weren’t a negotiation tactic, that wasn’t 4D chess. It was a lack of a plan. When they said the plan was to end up with zero tariffs and total free trade and also said they wanted to raise tax revenue, that wasn’t 4D chess. It was a lack of a plan. When they warned about the need to be “tough” and “take our medicine” and promised that under no circumstances would they back down, and then backed down, that wasn’t 4D chess. It was a lack of a plan.

There is no plan, no master strategy, no "art of the deal" genius. There's only Trump's ego, according to Jamelle Bouie:

The fundamental truth of Donald Trump is that he apparently cannot conceive of any relationship between individuals, peoples or states as anything other than a status game, a competition for dominance. His long history of scams and hostile litigation — not to mention his frequent refusal to pay contractors, lawyers, brokers and other people who were working for him — is evidence enough of the reality that a deal with Trump is less an agreement between equals than an opportunity for Trump to abuse and exploit the other party for his own benefit. For Trump, there is no such thing as a mutually beneficial relationship or a positive-sum outcome. In every interaction, no matter how trivial or insignificant, someone has to win, and someone has to lose. And Trump, as we all know, is a winner.

Other countries must pay us tariffs (as Bouie notes, Trump "genuinely seems to think of tariffs as fees that foreign countries pay to the United States") because that proves we're dominating them. Anything else is us being dominated, which is inconceivable. That his take on tariffs--and international trade--is so ludicrously, maladaptively wrong is, well, just our problem to deal with. I cannot blame the rest of the world for giving up on us.

It is disappointing that so many Republican voters seem ardently to believe exactly what Trump, Fox, and rightwing radio/web tell them: that these tariffs are a tax cut for Americans, that they'll bring back good times (i.e., times good for stable bluecollar jobs and secure retirements for white, straight, cis, conservative Christian, patriarchal people).

It's especially disappointing that so many politicians and justices who could check Trump seem completely unwilling to do so. The House just passed a measure preventing its members from challenging Trump's expansive tariff prerogatives. House and Senate majorities seem committed to passing Trump's budget, which adds to the debt via tax cuts for billionaires while repealing the ACA. There is no replacement, of course. That's been the M.O. for most Trump II "reforms"--get rid of vital services. Replace with nothing, or at best "concepts of a plan."

Sigh. 

I'm just not sure what comes next. 

Uring No Votes from Other States' Senators

 I just emailed three senators from states other than my own. All are Democrats who have signaled their willingness to support the continuing resolution narrowly passed by the house. The CR advances Trump's plans to consolidate sweeping power into the executive branch. It supports DOGE's charade of cost-cutting while increasing the overall budget.

Here's the email I wrote:

I live in Louisiana. Neither of my two senators represents my interests. Both are voting for a stopgap budget we know to be a dereliction of duty by the legislative branch. The executive branch needs reining in. There is no long-term up-side to supporting the continuing resolution in the face of President Trump's authoritarian overreach.

I know the arguments for not playing into Trump's hands, for keeping your powder dry, and for preventing the pain of a shutdown. But we're in pain already. Passing the CR is exactly what Trump wants, and the chances to stop him dwindle as he gains more power.

I beg you, as someone who can be my senator when Louisiana's senators won't: please stop this budget.

Thank you.

At least I spelled reining correctly. (I spelled it reigning in a different email to my own senators.) 

It looks like just enough Democratic senators will vote along with the Republicans to keep the government open. The decision is partly tactical (Trump would benefit from a shutdown that he could blame on Democrats), partly ethical (it'll be harmful to shut down the government, including harm to ongoing judicial checks against Trump), and partly--well--it's hard for many Democrats to set a firm boundary. I get it. I don't like setting boundaries myself, and I'm constitutionally skeptical of government shutdowns as political messaging.

But I'm swayed by arguments like those of the Federal Workers Union, which points out that we're already in the middle of a de facto shutdown via Trump's executive orders. Isaac Saul's Tangle, my go-to for a taste of what the other side thinks (Saul samples all sides), lambasted the CR, a highly unusual move for an outlet that relies on credibility with conservatives as well as liberals. "I don’t just think Trump’s plan is bad in the immediate term," he writes, "I think it will do lasting damage to our government by becoming a blueprint for how a president can wrest control of spending from the legislative branch."

The chances that my little emails--as a non-constituent--move the needle at all are minuscule. But I'm taking a page from my partner's survival advice and making my voice heard, even a little bit.

Title IX Purges

 I met my institution's new official in charge of Title IX things. I inquired about how the bios of all confidential supporters had been purged from the website (since confidential support falls under his purview). [In case you don't know, confidential supporters undergo special training in university systems related to matters of sexual assault and abuse. Most faculty and staff are mandatory reporters; if a student tells them they were sexually assaulted, the employee must report that to the nearest Title IX representative. Confidential supporters are exempted from mandatory reporting for the most part. Students can come to us for advice about what to do next without fear that they'll be forced into a process that may not respect their anonymity.]

The guy had just started in January, and I knew I was pitching him a bit of a difficult scenario. A colleague on zoom (bless her) backed me up, pointing out that the bios serve an important purpose. Students may want to know who among us confidential supporters are queer, Christian, feminist, etc. Removing our bios removes helpful information from students. 

I suppose I expected him to sigh, shake his head, talk about how that decision was out of his hands, and perhaps promise to help us put up some bios that would still inform students about each of us while still passing anti-DEI muster. 

Instead, the official averred that the site was changed to better reflect the aims of Title IX and the confidential supporter system. Since you're all confidential supporters, he said (basically), we decided that having just your names, contact info, and pictures was best so that students know they can go to each of you. I griped a bit at that. How would that rationale justify removing our bios? I asked. The status quo ante fulfilled that goal just as well. What was wrong with our bios? My colleague on zoom concurred.

The man basically repeated the same line, suggesting that this was not sudden, ignoring the rest of the purge, and omitting the elephant-in-the-room reason: the "dear colleagues" letter. 

Then he left.

As I mentioned to the staff that remained after the workshop, the official's dissembling bothered me almost more than the removal did. It signaled clearly whose side he was on: not ours, not the students', and not the goals of diversity, equity, or inclusion. 

I don't know the guy's heart. Perhaps he is, behind the scenes, engaged in elaborate strategies to preserve systems of justice and equity, and his public support of the purge (not just support but whitewashing) is a necessary maneuver in that larger war. I don't know.

But that's not the impression I got.

It's What the People Want

Ah, so hopeful for a second yesterday. And then today. A step outside of my usual Bluesky-colored glass house to folks at RedState, Fox, National Review, Federalist--and their comment threads (where available)--and I see the world through their lenses. DOGE is doing great. Trump and Musk are real men who only get tougher the more hysterical Dems shriek. Trump's approval rating is higher than his disapproval rating (true). An Axios focus group with Arizona swing voters suggests most people want more and more of what Musk/Trump are doing. 

Meanwhile, the CDC has lost its "disease detective" taskforce, the folk who in those realistic pandemic movies swoop in to do first-level assessments. RFK has been affirmed as HHS Secretary and has--as expected--set his sights on the last 150 years of germ theory. Bird flu is spreading still. Tuberculosis cases have spread from Kansas to Ohio even as USAID funding to tuberculosis treatments worldwide have been cut off. 

And most people love it.

A problem with me, and with lots of left-leaning folk, is that it's hard for me to get past what seems like plain evidence of Trump's corruption, incompetence, deceptiveness, ignorance, and authoritarianism. Again, the most bare-bones rendering of even one day's worth of his administration's actions reads like a pilot episode of It Can't Happen Here. I've been so convinced of the plain illegality of his executive orders and the manifest amorality of his cronyism (witness prosecutor resignations in response to dropping charges on NYC mayor Eric Adams) that it's still hard for me to think that anyone can spin these as positives. 

Yet people--a plurality, at least--do. 

Back in the Bluesky bubble, the folk I follow are (1) bitterly blaming Dems for not doing anything effective to stop Trump legislatively or win support electorally and/or (2) declaring this round fully lost and thinking that maybe, just maybe, we might be able to win enough to start the decades-long task of repairing what Trump has already shattered. From that perspective, the asteroid has already hit, and we're in the obliteration wave, waiting to see who survives. The only useful conversation now concerns post-apocalyptic rebuilding strategies. The lively debate resulting from that focuses on whether such winning or repair is even possible at this point. 

Right at this moment? I'm not hopeful. 

I can't help but expect that the massive and indiscriminate (and utterly corrupt/Musk-serving) cuts and modifications to federal agencies will result in several preventable disasters--a recession, a pandemic, the collapse of trustworthy air travel, etc. Yesterday I had some hope that these multiple failures would turn popular opinion against Trump, blemishing the image of him (and maybe Musk) as top-notch organizers and leaders. 

Now I think it'll just make the angry-reactionary part of the electorate (the ones who brought Trump into power) even angrier and more reactionary. Trump, like most successful authoritarian leaders, has proven adept at redirecting such anger at his ever-growing list of enemies. I expect a lot of violence against, well, anyone who isn't white cis-het Christian male.

And even if there isn't violence, even if the system somehow limps along, I no longer expect Trump to lose support. I no longer expect Trumpism to die with the man himself. It's just too popular, its appeal too enduring. 

I'll get to some better place on this. But for right now...bleah. 

Bishop Budde's Plea

 I've been thinking a lot about the minor kerfuffle that's emerged around the sermon delivered during the Inaugural Prayer Service at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, Jan 12. The Episcopal Bishop of Washington, the Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, delivered the message. She gave a brief, less-than-15-minute homily about unity, perfectly generic and tuned to the event's ecumenical vibe. 

She made news, though, for her final bit:

"Let me make one final plea, Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you. As you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families, some who fear for their lives. And the people, the people who who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes, and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurdwara, and temples. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and the courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one other in love, and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people in this nation and the world."

Various news outlets have characterized the sermon as "confronting" or "calling out" Trump. Spokespeople for the new President's administration have lambasted Budde for injecting politics into the event, making the service political. Trump himself went on Truth Social to gripe about the "so-called Bishop" who was a "Trump hater": "She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way. She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart." Other of his supporters have suggested that she (or the Episcopal Church) owes him an apology. GOP Congressman Mike Collins (Georgia) tweeted, "The person giving this sermon should be added to the deportation list."

In subsequent interviews, Budde has declined to comment on Trump's reaction, reinforcing that she does not hate Trump and that she simply plead with him. "I don't feel there's a need to apologize for a request for mercy," she told NPR. 

Now, it is true the Budde has in the past made news criticizing Mr. Trump. In 2020, after his staged photo op in front of the National Cathedral where he infamously held a Bible upside down, she spoke out against him. Yet, according to Religion News Service, Budde was among those defending the National Cathedral's decision to host Trump's first Prayer Service back in 2017. RNS quotes her from then saying that she was "trying to create a church where we actually speak to people who see the world differently than we do."

On Bluesky and other lefty places, of course, Budde is being hailed as speaking truth to power. In an era that seems to have lost its taste for the large-scale left-progressive protests of the first Trump administration, say many skeeters, it falls to those people with platforms like Budde to voice the concerns of those whose pleas go unheard.

Alongside from the familiar not-surprised-but-still-disappointed feeling, I admit a grim curiosity about exactly how pro-Trump Christianity (especially evangelicalism) will spin this. I mean, I expect the typical double standard: right-wing, white-nationalist Christianity is just normal, but any talk about mercy or consideration for those on the margins qualifies as inappropriate politicking. The new elements I'm seeing include a few truly creative takes on the Good Samaritan parable and the command to "love your enemy" quoted on Bluesky and elsewhere. Such interpreters craft twisted takeaways that exempt Christians from having to love as the good Samaritan did (e.g., See, the Good Samaritan is Jesus, not humans, right? No human could be expected to do what the Samaritan in the story did.).

Bishop Budde is correct: a plea for mercy--especially a plea to a leader who campaigned on mercilessness--is bog-standard Christianity. If the Trump administration doesn't want those kind of messages, perhaps they should stop going to Christian services. 

The Fragility of Outrage and the Necessity of Attention and Joy

 It's the day before the presidential inauguration. The left-progressive sites and thinkers I follow brim today with advice for those of us dreading the next four years. Most of it boils down to "don't give in to despair" and "make a joyful practice part of your daily life." 

The Guardian featured advice from various folk. Ece Temelkuran (a veteran of Erdogan's takeover in Turkey) urges vigilance: This time around, she writes,

you’ll notice that the new morality created in the White House trickles down to the people. The fundamental moral values you assumed were non-negotiable will be debated shamelessly. They will not right away cancel women’s rights, but they will begin to float questions about those rights. They will not destroy the rule of law tomorrow afternoon, but you’ll hear Trump’s pundits say how courts are slowing down the process of “making America great again”. Trump will not walk into the White House with military boots, but here and there, you’ll see more police violence on campuses and hear people saying, “Well, the protesters were crossing the line anyway.” The political debate will be turned into such a mess that you’ll forget that in the 21st century, fascism comes to power not with goose steps but through elaborate dance moves.

This echoes counsel from the last round in 2017: Keep insisting, This is not normal. One of the hard lessons I learned from the last four years relates to the fragility of moral shock and outrage. So many of us thought that January 6, 2021, signaled the End of Trump as a serious player in US politics. The white supremacist fascist undercurrents so many of us saw in his MAGA populism finally breached the surface, breaking windows, beating up security personnel, and claiming the rotunda for themselves. He can't come back from that, surely. 

Oh, but he could. Oh, but he did. The Orwellian rewrite of Jan 6 and of Trump/MAGA demonstrates how weak even the hottest outrage is given time. Trump will be sworn in in the same rotunda that the Q-Anon Shaman occupied four years ago. 

And I get that we have to balance This is not normal! with a serenity-prayer awareness of those things that are not in our control. I don't say we should accept this shift, but we at least must endure it, adapt to it.

Temelkuran again:

Meanwhile, in about one or two years, you will have shouted “No” so often and against so many things that you will be exhausted. Many will ask again, “So, where is hope?” However, you’ll realise that this time, it is not hope but something more essential that is lost: faith – in politics and your people. And that is the loss that will turn you into a neutral element, a zero in the political equation.

So, this is a friendly warning to stop the emotional spiralling in its early stages. Try to put self-sabotaging emotions in the freezer for four years. Your job is not to have quarrels with Trump supporters now or get pissed off with your side. If I may, your job is to replace your anger with attention. Trump surely will drive you crazy every day with new outlandish stuff, but that is only showmanship. The dangerous bit happens through the change in the institutions. Keep your eye on the institutions.

Loss of faith, she says, is somehow worse even than loss of hope. It reminds me of my psychotherapist sister's distinction between burnout (you're working to hard/doing too much) and demoralization (you no longer believe in the worth or goodness of the thing/institution you work for). Demoralization strikes harder, deeper, she says, because we can't self-care our way out of this loss of faith. 

"Replace anger with attention." I think of my favorite quote from Dorothy Parker: "The cure for boredom is curiosity." Brady Whitton (pastor at First UMC in Baton Rouge) calls curiosity--focused, open attention--one of the few things that can get us out of the armadillo-ball defensive curl caused by fear, hate, anomie, and acedia.

Attention taxes energy reserves, though. I can't keep my sensors fully open all the time, not when a proven tactic of Trump, Inc. involves broadcasting polluted messaging. By design, the firehose of falsehoods where truth gets mixed up with nonsense chaff and toxicity, attempts to burn out our capacity for attention and curiosity. The defense here involves cultivating protective respite. We require joy-causing (non-useful! non-productive!) practices not as some kind of luxurious self care but as essential spiritual nutrition. 

I'm gonna try to get some of that in today and tomorrow, letting myself think on better things (MLK's legacy, for instance) than the coming freeze.

Epistemic Crises on the Run

I ignored an inner voice of conscience today. Prepping to run around the lake today (about four miles, which has been my plateau/limit for a while), I was trying to choose between things to listen to. I could continue the "Christmas Present" playlist I've been using for running workouts. Or I could hear the latest episode of On the Media, which promised a dire report on the "epistemic crisis" we face.

My inner voice groaned at the thought of the media show. Don't you know pretty much everything they'll say already? Do you really need this hit to your sense of hope and well-being? Can't we just enjoy some more Christmas music?

I chose the show, ignoring my inner voice.

And yeah, it's depressing. The episode's title says it all: "The Disagreement is the Point." The first segment, featuring Vox writer David Roberts hits a lot of the points I've been making about the impeachment hearings. It seems obvious to me and to many within the "legacy media" (neat term, better than "mainstream media," perhaps) that Trump has done exactly what he's been accused of. Heck, he and his staff have admitted it, reveled in it.

Every witness, even those that were expected to be amiable to the President, supported the same story: Trump, via Giuliani, was pursuing his on shadow diplomacy and intelligence-gathering with and in Ukraine, efforts that had as their goal not national interests but Trump's personal need to embarrass his political enemies. He delayed military aid approved by Congress to Ukraine with the understanding that this would pressure Ukraine into opening investigations into the Bidens and into (again, multiply debunked conspiracy theories about) Democratic servers. He only ended the delay and (in a call with Sondland) cried "no quid pro quo" when it became clear that the gig was up.

I find it necessary to reiterate this narrative, even if only for myself, because it seems like the facts involved just aren't apparent to everyone.

The GOP response has been largely one of obfuscation, throwing up disinformational chaff in the form of multiple (and multiply debunked) conspiracy theories about how Ukraine, not Russia, was behind the 2016 election meddling. Or that Joe Biden, not Trump, is the person who really deserves investigation (amazing how this became a pressing issue only as Biden emerges as a front-runner in the Democratic presidential primaries).

The problem here, Roberts stresses in the On the Media interview, isn't that Republicans make different conclusions based on the facts. It's that they operate from a completely different basis, a Trumpian basis, for what kinds of information should be valued. The show quotes Rep. Devin Nunes crowing that the impeachment hearings are a failure for Democrats because their ratings aren't very high. In any sane world, Roberts notes, the question of how entertaining an investigation like this would be ridiculous. Are these facts true? Did the President and the President's operatives do these things, and why?

But whether an allegation is true seems to have taken a back seat to the question of whether an allegation is damaging to my team. It's a "tribal epistemology," says Roberts. We decide ahead of time which side we're on and then represent or evaluate facts on that basis.

The Republicans don't have facts on their side here (as even many conservative writers not supporting impeachment concede). The best they can do, then, is make the process of fact-finding seem boring, overly complex, or purely partisan. They want people who aren't especially engaged with the facts of this case to dismiss the entire thing as Democratic pique. They want people to get angry at and tired of the process, the very question of whether Trump did something wrong.

And it looks like they might be succeeding.

Senator John Kennedy (Louisiana, alas), this morning asserted that "no one can know" for sure who was behind the 2016 election interference. It's the "you can't prove it's not [Ukraine]" defense beloved of people arguing for indefensible positions.

My question, aside from how to sustain some kind of hope amidst this epistemic divide, is whether I reach out to my representatives, of whom Kennedy is one. Is it worthwhile to call and leave a message? Is there any chance whatsoever that they'd listen?

Would I be "entertaining" enough to be heard?

Game Overs

I should be used to it now.

Every day of this impeachment inquiry, it seems like the witness utters something that to my eyes seems utterly damning to the President. I mean Well, that's the game. Time for Republicans to float Trump's resignation-level damning information comes out.

Vox agrees. "Gordon Sondland's Opening Testimony is the Ballgame," writes Zach Beauchamp. Was there quid pro quo? said Sondland, The answer is yes. I read that in Sondland's opening statement this morning and thought, surely, this is the tipping point. (I mean, even Ken Starr on Fox was wavering at one point.) Surely this is it.

But no.

Fox News quoted GOP Representative Mark Meadows that, in his view, today's testimony was "Game over" for the Democrats' impeachment hopes. Asked whether Trump ever explicitly told Sondland to withhold Ukraine funding in exchange for political favors (investigating Burisma), Sondland said no. That, Fox News suggests, was the real bombshell. No explicit request equals no wrongdoing. Game over, libs. (Not that these kind of quid pro quos ever operate explicitly, but whatevs.)

The real surprise is how surprised I am, even now. All political news is a shibboleth now. Your take on it, your conclusion about whose game is over, signals your membership in team red or team blue. Nuance isn't critical thinking or taking your time; it's disloyalty.

This shibboleth factor feels to me stronger within the right-wing media world. There's quite a bit of nuance and wiggle room, for instance, in NPR's overview today. Yeah, Sondland said there was quid pro quo, but yeah, Sondland also said he came to that conclusion gradually. It took him a while, he said, for him to get that "Burisma" was essentially code for "Biden." NPR also acknowledges some credibility problems with Sondland, problems for which he was dinged by both Republicans and Democrats. He's changed or updated his testimony three times now. He "doesn't keep notes," so his memory is iffy.

This performance contrasts with that of career diplomats, professionals at protocol and record-keeping. The diplomats were much more immediately keen to detect irregularities in Trump/Guliani's backdoor Ukraine politics. Sondland is out of his element, a hotelier and rich guy appointed to his position by Trump thanks to his million-dollar donation to Trump. In a way, Sondland's muddy testimony is proof of what you get when you kick out the experts and bring in laypeople.

I guess he's what Trump's supporters mean when they insist that he's "draining the swamp." To me, it seems more like a hospital firing all its experienced, credentialed doctors, PAs, and nurses in favor of country club socialites who've consulted Web MD--and then being shocked, shocked! when patients start dying in droves.

But I'm just screaming into the echo chamber. Politico reported this morning that, so far as its contacts among House Republicans can see, not a single GOP member will vote for impeachment, no matter what. There's just no incentive for them to do so when Trump has a stranglehold on their constituents' support.

That's sad, really. Rod Dreher said he voted for John Bel Edwards because, though Edwards is a Democrat, he's a pro-life one. It doesn't feel like betrayal to vote for him. There's no one like that among the Democratic presidential candidates. And Trump has effectively negated everyone to his own left within the Republican party.

For Republicans, Trump is the only game in town. No wonder, then, that they're loath to declare that game over.

Unswayable

Public impeachment hearings continue this week. I caught just a bit of them this morning while on some errands, specifically the end of Rep. Jim Jordan's diatribe about this being a coup to undermine the will of the people. Real Americans, Rep. Jordan assured everyone, know that this is a sham; they see President Trump did no wrong.

The polls I see indicate that 70% of USAmericans believe that what Trump did is improper. A smaller number, however, report supporting impeachment and removal from office.

I'm more interested/disturbed, however, by a poll out from NPR/Marist. Asked whether they could imagine anything from the impeachment inquiry that would change their view on whether or not Trump should be impeached, 65% said no. Nothing would sway them.

I just wrote last week that, although I'm not especially moveable on this issue (I think he's guilty as sin of an impeachable offense), I could imagine something that might sway me. But then, maybe I just have a good imagination.

There's also the fact that, for many people, poll questions like this aren't so much about reporting one's nuanced beliefs as they are about registering sides. People know, generally, how survey results can be mobilized in favor of one or another narrative. Were I dead-set against impeachment, I'd likely say that nothing could sway me. Whether something actually could is another issue.

Were evidence to emerge, for instance, that Trump had perjured himself regarding the Russia investigation, it may become more difficult to resist impeachment--though not removal.

At least, I'd like to think so. The glass-half-empty takeaway from the NPR/Marist poll would be that people are intractably polarized on this essential issue. They live within entirely different epistemological and ideological universes where it's obvious--how can you not see this??--that they are right and the other side is wrong.

Such polarization has roots within the separate media ecosystems of the right and the left. Consider, for instance, the top headline right now on Fox News: "Morrison, Volker undercut claims of 'quid pro quo,' 'bribery,' and 'cover-up' on pivotal day of testimony." Contrast that with one of the top stories on CNN: "How Republicans' star impeachment witness turned on them."

I tend to think that the weight of evidence is stacking up against Trump here. But I can see how, if Fox and such were the only trusted sources I consulted, I'd probably double down on my resistance to impeachment. The Fox story is spiced with slights against Democrats (ex: Democrats are using "bribery" as a charge only because it's "poll-tested"), full of choice quotes from Republicans, and quite selective (judging from the fuller accounts from other news sources) in presenting what Morrison and Volker said. Integral to the Fox News journalistic ethos is not merely reportage (Here's what happened) but perspective (Here's how the other side is acting in bad faith). Well-poisoning is part of the narrative strategy.

Of course, they'd likely say the same about the main stream media (i.e., everyone beyond the Foxsphere).

Perhaps they're right, at least in part. It's not like I'm inclined to read Fox News generously. But I'd like to think that part of my reading involves looking for elements that trouble my own preconceptions. (How would I know? How would I judge this for myself?) I'm not sure that's part of the Fox's assumptions for their readers.

Inertia is a powerful drug, ideological inertia even more so.

Hard times ahead.

Magic Viral Impeachment Moments

I've been avoiding a live engagement with the public impeachment inquiry hearings ("history being made" declare the news stories). I think the inquiry is immensely important. based on the summary transcript he provided as well as all the corroborating evidence from testimonies so far, I believe the President attempted to strong-arm a foreign government into digging up dirt on his political enemies. I also know, though, from reading a range of right-wing sources that a significant chunk of the country simply believes otherwise. Either Trump did no wrong, or he did something that was wrong but not illegal, or he never intended to do something illegal. In any case, impeachment is a slow coup attempt by disgruntled Democrats who have always wanted to take the President down and overturn the will of the people.

"History is unfolding before us," says Axios, "but due to the splintering of modern media, expect people to walk away with very different impressions of what they're seeing — depending on where they see it." Kevin Drum quotes the Washington Post, which declares that "Democrats need a viral moment" from the hearings, some OMG surprise that's easily communicated and not easily spun. "If it's not viral," Drum gloomily concludes, "it didn't happen."

I'm not sure, in other words, that there's much hope even for the public impeachment inquiry to produce a change of minds in many people. Most have already decided what they think about this situation and aren't especially open to change.

I mean, I'm not especially open to being convinced that Trump is unimpeachable, honestly.

I like to think that, were many of the witnesses so far somehow to be shown to have been lying or fabricating evidence, that'd be a thing. If I were somehow convinced that the multiply debunked conspiracy theories that Ukraine rather than Russia was behind election tampering, then I might rethink. If I were convinced that Trump via Guliani were somehow neutrally interested in quashing corruption abroad everywhere and not merely in countries where his main political rival could be embarrassed, then I'd be more amenable to arguments that his "perfect phone call" had innocent undertones. Heck, if Trump just out and said that this was an imperfect call, that he made a misstep in asking about this, and that thank goodness his trusted staff ensured that Ukraine got the money anyway--well, I'd still be upset, but I could see a way out of impeachment.

None of that seems likely.

I wonder if there's anything that could convince pro-Trumpers that in fact what Trump did was (1) wrong; and (2) illegal.

The "viral moment" the Post article imagines would perhaps provide such a breakthrough. It'd be like the "smoking gun" tape of Nixon that finally flipped Republicans to support impeachment. They just couldn't deny or spin it.

I'm not sure there's any such viral moment or smoking gun that would convince Trump's base to turn against him. I can't imagine anything that isn't spinnable. Whether the spin is denial (It didn't happen), blame the messenger (The whistleblower just hates Trump), tu quoque (You think Obama and Hillary didn't do the same or worse?), or just leaning into it (Yeah, he did it! And he'd do it again!), spin there will be. The incentives for sticking with or against Trump are just too great for those in either group to put the matter up for factual debate.

Again, I think that I'm both in the anti-Trump/never-Trump crowd and that the evidence clearly shows that Trump is guilty as all get-out. But I have no way to convince someone utterly convinced of the opposite that I'm right.

So we're stuck with each other, my Trump-supportive neighbors and I.  I don't think any magic viral impeachment moment can mitigate that situation. What now?

Ramble-Grumbles about Trumpian Intractability

Despite a pretty good day, my general funk deepens.

Impeachment seems destined to become a tribal identity contest. Those of us convinced the president is guilty gesture repeatedly, exasperatedly at the evidence and wonder how anyone could think Trump innocent of corruption and incompetence. Trump's defenders may have retreated from "no quid pro quo" to "yeah, quid pro quo, but everyone does it!", but they remain constant in their insistence that the impeachment inquiries are a coup. The Senate GOP's latest anti-impeachment resolution, symbolic though it may be, signals what everyone already knows: impeachment will die a quick death in the Senate, no matter what. The DOJ's opening of a criminal investigation into the origins of the Muller probe promise to throw enough chaff into the air to confuse anyone not already engaged and committed.

It'll be red versus blue, not Trump versus evidence. Even Trump's red-leaning critics are, by and large, still "Yeah, but he's better than a Democrat."

I can't deny a lot of my animosity toward Trump is rooted in red/blue, them/us dynamics.

But the reality of motivated reasoning isn't the only thing going on here. Trump is really, truly, objectively operating out of the normal range of any president in living memory. There's just no legitimate comparison with Obama or Bush or Clinton. Even Nixon managed to govern without daily public, narcissistic rants. Nor did Nixon comport himself internationally as an ill-educated boob. I mean, the White House had to confirm that the Erdogan letter wasn't a parody. They had to de-satire-ize the president's own letter!

The rational defense of Trump--behind the distraction, he's giving us what we want--doesn't quite work with me. Sure--you get your judges and justices appointed, and that's not nothing. But in other arenas of governance he's a disaster! International relations? The long-term economy? And just plain character, a model for our children to look up to. There's no sense of the right calling Trump out for the kind of mean, petty, and deeply irresponsible discourse that makes up his whole rhetorical style. Trump himself won't stand for it. His rants aim at his critics. He talks like a cartoon supervillain--but not the scary kind, the sadly inept kind. I mean, that's the best defense The Wall Street Journal can summon: he's too inept to impeach.

But none of that matters. The base supports Trump for reasons that aren't rational. His combativeness is for them a signal of strength. He's saying what they've wanted to say to all those people who call them stupid or bigoted for denying climate change, wondering why white men are so put upon, or hating taxes.

Actually, I get at least two strands from the comment threads I read. On one hand, Trump is seen just as he sells himself: a kind of outsider/house cleaner, clearing out the festering wound that is "government" and replacing it with American Greatness. Trump isn't just pragmatically right; he's a good man unfairly smeared by people who hate goodness. Others, though, readily admit that Trump is an agent of chaos, that he's rude and unrefined and even a bit willfully ignorant. He's less a cleansing treatment and more like chemotherapy. He'll burn out the badness of Washington. And if he burns the place down while re-arranging the furniture? Well, all the better. It needs to go.

"Savior" and "agent of destruction" aren't obvious bedfellows--except in certain forms of American evangelicalism. I'm not sure that a wedge strategy to split the salvationists from the nihilists would actually work.

Hm. Gotta think more on that.

Funk out!