Sturm und drang, presidential debate edition.

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Let's just start off with the obvious, shall we? The debate Thursday night between President Joe Biden and former president and convicted felon Donald Trump was, for anyone with a grain of sensitivity, painful to watch. Biden was off his game, for whatever reason (I've seen several theories, ranging from "he's 81 and tired" to "he has a cold" to "maybe the Trump team slipped him a mickey" -- yes, I really did see that one, although not in exactly those words). Biden dropped the rhetorical ball a couple of times. His "I can't believe the bullshit coming out of this guy's mouth" expression -- I assume that's what he was going for -- came off as slack-jawed, but not in a good way. 

About an hour after it was over, when I finally shook off my shock and disbelief, all I could say to myself was: "That was bad."

Indeed, the performance handed all the pundits who have never liked Biden the ammunition they've been looking for. He's lost it, they said, some muttering amongst themselves and some aloud; he should step aside and let somebody else run, they said. The New York Times editorial board agreed, and went so far as to publish it.* 

Never mind how something like that would throw the electoral process into chaos. What about all the voters who have already cast their primary ballots for Biden? Wouldn't that disenfranchise us?

And never mind how things turned out when President Lyndon Johnson pulled out of his primary race for a second term in 1968. Chaos ensued. The Democratic Party ended up nominating Johnson's vice president, Hubert Humphrey -- who lost to Richard Nixon.

Historian Allan Lichtman has correctly predicted the winner of nine out of the past ten presidential elections.** He has no time for the pundits who want to kick Biden to the curb right now; debates don't matter, he told CNN. Lichtman has developed 13 keys to determine which candidate will win, and even after Thursday's debate, his system is still leaning toward a Biden win in the fall.

Another historian, Heather Cox Richardson, who blogs at Substack, has pointed out that Trump used a technique called a Gish gallop during the debate: "It's a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them. Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they don't know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them. It is a form of gaslighting, and it is especially effective on someone with a stutter, as Biden has."

The editorial board of the Philadelphia Inquirer saw through Trump's bullshit. In an editorial this weekend, the board said it was Trump who should drop out of the race. The editorial recapped Trump's greatest hits, among them his 31 felony convictions and three additional felony trials to come, and his bombastic rhetoric about how awful everything in America is: "Throughout the debate, Trump repeatedly said we are a 'failing' country. He called the United States a 'third world nation.' He said, 'we're living in hell' and 'very close to World War III.'

"'People are dying all over the place,' Trump said, later adding 'we're literally an uncivilized country now.'" Trump, the editorial goes on to note, told 30 lies during the 90-minute debate. There's more -- read it yourself at the link -- but it wraps up with, "There was only one person at the debate who does not deserve to be running for president. The sooner Trump exits the stage, the better off the country will be."

I could not agree more. 

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*That editorial was the last straw for me. I've finally canceled my NYT subscription.

**The only election out of the past ten that Lichtman's system didn't get right is Bush vs. Gore in 2000. He said Gore would win. Given that the Supreme Court had to decide the winner, I think we can give him a pass on that one.

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These moments of decisive blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Get out and vote!

How to get rid of a boss: a case study.

So let's say that at your latest staff meeting at work, the Big Boss tells everybody on your team that you're getting a new supervisor. Oh, and by the way, your old supervisor was offered a brand-new position in the organization, but instead of taking it, she quit.

Now, you and your colleagues have heard some things about this new supervisor, none of them good. He has some sketchy behavior in his past -- unethical and possibly even illegal. You also know that he's a crony of the Big Boss, and that B.B. has been padding the C-suite with several of his cronies over the past few months -- in an effort, B.B. says, to make the company more profitable. But your company is no stranger to putting principles ahead of money; that's the way it has done business over many decades. And you and your colleagues sure as hell don't want to work for this sketchy new supervisor. So what do you do?

Welp, if you're the Washington Post newsroom, you assign an investigative team to run a bunch of stories about the shenanigans in your new supervisor's past so that he'll quit before he even starts the job. 

And it worked! On Friday, it was announced that Robert Winnett would not be joining the Post as its executive editor, after all. 

As a former journalist, I've been bemused by watching this unfold. Winnett was hired away from the London Daily Telegram by the Post's new chief executive officer and publisher, William Lewis. Both Lewis and Winnett are British. Both are White. They had worked together in the past, at the London Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times.

But British newspapers have been known to play fast-and-loose with certain practices that are considered highly unethical to American journalists. From the link above, here, in a nutshell, is the dirt on these two guys:

A Post investigation published Sunday revealed Winnett's connections to a confessed con artist turned whistleblower who has admitted to using illegal methods to gain information for stories in Britain's Sunday Times...

The New York Times also reported that Winnett and Lewis had based some stories on stolen records, and raised new questions about a payment made to obtain information that led to a 2009 investigation into government corruption, which shook the British political establishment and led to several officials' resignations.

The Post story goes on to note, "Paying sources for information is considered unethical in most American newsrooms. So is representing oneself as anything other than a journalist to gain confidential information as part of newsgathering..."  

The way Winnett's predecessor was shown the door also rankled among the newsroom staff. Sally Buzbee was the first woman hired as executive editor at the paper, which won three Pulitzer Prizes this year. But Lewis decided she had to go anyway. He offered her a position heading up a brand-new division at the Post covering service news and social media -- which, to be honest, sounds a lot like kicking the little lady out of a man's job and sending her back to editing the women's page. Instead, she quit. 

And now Winnett isn't coming. But it's okay -- Winnett wasn't supposed to transition into the job until after the election this fall, anyway. In the interim, Lewis had hired Matt Murray, a former Wall Street Journal editor, to run the newsroom, and then helm the new division when Winnett came on board. Now I guess Murray will be the executive editor for the forseeable future. 

But never mind that. Don't you wish you had the power at your job to publicly embarrass your incoming supervisor and his boss by publicizing their sketchy pasts?

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These moments of bloggy just deserts have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

Jimmy Mender: the denouement.

Back in February, I wrote a post about a friend and fellow indie author, Leland Dirks, who had died shortly before. Leland was a special guy. He lived in southeastern Colorado, way out in the sticks, with an assortment of dogs in a house he built himself. He was also gay. And he made no secret of it -- not in his public persona and not in his writings. Everyone who knew him, loved him.

But there's a dark undercurrent running through Leland's work. He talked about growing up in a fundamendalist Christian family where he was not accepted for who he was. During Pride Month 2017, he wrote this on his Facebook page. I'm not going to include a link to his page, for reasons that I'll address below.

What I am proud of first is that I have survived. I did not kill myself, as far too many young people have. Which is not to say that I did not try.... 

I am proud that in the face of hatred and purposeful misunderstanding, even by close family members, I did not deny or lie about a part of who I am.

I am proud that I, like many young boys and girls, survived sexual abuse. I am proud that I sought help in overcoming the damage that left behind. 

Not long after Leland died, I ran across a Facebook post by one of his nephews, announcing his death. On that post, his brother commented with a hateful screed laced with biblical references, condemning Leland's "lifestyle". I don't think he explicitly said that he believed Leland would go to hell, but for sure that was the implication. The nephew claimed the brother's comments were made "out of love." 

I kept my mouth shut. But what I wanted to say was, "If that's what passes for love in your family, no wonder your uncle moved to the back of beyond."

Shortly after that, the brother got into Leland's Kindle Direct Publishing account and rewrote his About section. Here's a link. You can read it yourself, if you have the stomach for it. 

All of Leland's Kindle titles have been unpublished. His paperbacks are still listed, but most are "currently unavailable". His YouTube channel is void of content. His Facebook and Twitter accounts are gone. Someone else is using his Tumblr account. The only place online where I could still find his writing is his author page on Facebook, which I am not going to link to because I don't want his family to be aware of its existence.

I try really, really, really hard to avoid trashing other people's religions. But I cannot understand how followers of a religion that preaches love and forgiveness can sit in righteous judgment of their fellow humans. Isn't that the job of their god? And if Jehovah made everyone in his image, as they claim to believe, then how can they condemn any part of his creation? "Hate the sin but love the sinner" just doesn't cut it for me; it strikes me as mental gymnastics to justify the treatment of other people as less than human.

In that 2017 post, Leland also wrote:

I am proud that I read the book that people used to tell me that I was going to hell and found instead the story of David and Jonathan, the story of the Centurion who asked Jesus to heal the young man he loved, the story of Ruth and Naomi, whose words are often used in many weddings of all sorts.

He got it. I'm sad that his brother hasn't. 

To that man, the brother who is intent on trashing Leland's legacy to "save souls", I say this: I hope that when you get to the afterlife and see Leland again, you will realize the error of your ways. May he be kinder to you than you have been to him. 

Netrun78 | Deposit Photos

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Several years ago, Leland messaged a few of his indie author friends, including me, and suggested that we promise each other to be the protectors of each other's writings. We all agreed. But as far as I know, when Leland knew he was dying, he never followed up with any of us. 

Creative friends, consider this a cautionary tale. If you have an inkling that your heirs will not respect and protect your work after you're gone, please, please make provisions to hand over the reins to someone who will. Do it today.

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These moments of sad and angry blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Happy Pride Month, y'all, and remember: LOVE WINS.

 

All the sides of Trump's felony convictions.

 

Tribaliumivanka | Deposit Photos

In last week's post, I made note of the fact that the 45th president of the United States is now a convicted felon. 

Imagine my consternation on Thursday, when the Washington Post ran an op-ed by Carroll Bogert, president of the Marshall Project, asking the media not to use the term in referring to Donald Trump.

According to Bogert's short bio that accompanied the column, the Marshall Project is a nonprofit online news organization dedicated to covering criminal justice. Bogert believes that "journalism can make our legal system more fair, effective, transparent and humane", and the way to begin to do that is to watch our language. 

"Felon", Bogert says, is pejorative. She writes, "Surely part of the impetus behind the sudden widespread use of the word 'felon' is to take Trump down a peg, to label him as no better than a common criminal. And that is the problem." She notes that people convicted of felonies are often from the margins of society. Calling them "felons" dehumanizes them -- it reduces them to nothing but their crime -- and, among other things, it makes it more difficult for them to pick up the pieces of their lives when they have served their time.

She acknowledges that Trump does not inhabit the margins of society. He is wealthy, privileged, and powerful. And "felon" is a wonderfully clear word -- the kind that journalists usually love to use. Besides, it's the truth: if you're convicted of committing a felony, you're a felon. 

But, she maintains, people convicted of felonies are people first. She compares "felon" to the term "person with a disability", which has been slowly gaining ground on "disabled person"; the idea is that the person needs to be front and center, not the disability. In emphasizing Trump's convictions by calling him a felon, she says, we run the risk of losing the humanity that other people convicted of felonies have begun to regain.

I am of two minds about this.

It should be a no-brainer for me. I'm the person who decreed, as the managing editor at Zapnews thirty-odd years ago, that we would not use the terms "pro-life" and "pro-choice" in news copy because they were political positions, not really descriptive of the two sides' stances. (I'm pretty sure I said we should use "anti-abortion" instead of "pro-life". I don't remember what I said to use instead of "pro-choice", and I'm really hoping it wasn't "pro-abortion"; if I did, I hereby apologize.)

Moreover, as alert hearth/myth readers know, I'm an animist. I've explained how I believe it's not just human people who have personhood and deserve respect. Animals and plants have ways of communicating with us and with one another, and even physical features of our world such as mountains, rivers, and rocks may have ways of thinking and feeling that we can't understand. Just because we can't perceive their language, it doesn't mean they don't have one.

I've also talked here about how it's wrong for humans to dehumanize one another; for centuries, that's how we justified slavery and genocide.

And yet. 

And yet, it feels so delicious to dehumanize Trump. I do want to knock him down a peg. I do want to see him treated as any other criminal would be treated.* And "felon" is a clear word. A truthful word.

And given the way his first presidency degraded the nation, and given what he and those close to him intend to do if he's elected again, I could make a strong case for using almost any language to emphasize the clear and present danger he presents to the nation.

And yet.

Is it right to hurt people just to score points against Trump?

I'm feeling a little like Tevye here: "On the other hand...."

I can't promise that I'll never refer to Trump as a convicted felon again. But I promise that I'll pause and think about it. 

Even if only for a nanosecond.

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*His pre-sentencing conference is tomorrow. But just like the perp walk we never got to see, he's not going to get the full treatment this time, either. He'll be answering the probation officer's questions by video conference from Mar-a-Lago, with his attorney at his side. The official line is that having him report to the probation office, with his usual entourage of Secret Service agents and members of the media in tow, would be disruptive to the whole office and would complicate the lives of other people who are there to meet with their own probation officers.

Sentencing is set for July 11th. The Republican National Convention starts just four days later.

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These moments of indecisive blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

Rich person, poor person, convicted person.

I have an iPhone (go ahead, say it: "OK, Boomer!"). One nice thing about it is that for ten bucks a month, I get access to stories from a whole lot of publications that I'd otherwise have to pay big money for.

Take, for instance, the Wall Street Journal. I had an introductory subscription for a while, but when that ran its course, the price jumped to the usual $36.99 a month -- which didn't work for me, but totally makes sense for the kinds of readers they're trying to attract (i.e., bankers, stock traders, hedge fund operators, and other finance types).

The WSJ's news coverage reflects who they see as their ideal audience. Take, for example, this story from this week. I've included the link in case you have a WSJ subscription, which I realize is pretty unlikely, so here's the gist of the story: A couple of Nobel laureates decided in 2010 that $75,000 a year ($110,000 a year in 2024 dollars) was the peak salary for happiness; after that, if your salary went up, you'd be no happier. Researchers today are having a hard time replicating their work. From the story: "More recent research suggests that there may be no household income at which happiness peaks, and that our money might influence our emotions well beyond that threshold." As a general rule, though, people who make higher incomes tend to be happier. 

ra2studio | Deposit Photos

To paraphrase something that a fellow I once worked with used to say: Every obvious fact will someday be confirmed by an academic study. 

One obvious fact is mostly left out of the story, although one of the researchers does mention it obliquely: "It isn't what the money buys, but the choices it affords." Or in other words, the less money you make, the fewer options you have. 

And of course poor people have the fewest options of all. Oh, the government has programs to help the poor, but this article in The Atlantic this week paints a less-than-rosy view of that assistance. (You should be able to get to the article from that link -- I got a come-on to subscribe, but I wasn't blocked me outright.) Here's a summary, from the article:

Beginning in the 1980s, the U.S. government aggressively pursued the privatization of many government functions under the theory that businesses would compete to deliver these services more cheaply and effectively than a bunch of lazy bureaucrats. The result is a lucrative and politically powerful set of industries that are fueled by government anti-poverty programs and thus depend on poverty for their business model. These entities often take advantage of the very people they ostensibly serve.

From Medicaid programs to state welfare systems to job-training programs, management of government programs to help the poor climb out of poverty has been turned over to private enterprise -- which of course has a vested interest in perpetuating the cycle, so these private companies can keep as much government money as possible for themselves. 

Note the date in the quote, by the way. Who was president during the 1980s? Why, it was Ronald Reagan, whose "Morning in America" brought us trickle-down economics, weakened labor unions, and more -- ideas that, in the 40 years since, have gutted the American middle class and sent nearly all of the country's economic growth to the top. To the kind of people the Wall Street Journal would love to have as subscribers.

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Speaking of (supposedly) rich people: We've all heard the news by now that as of Thursday, former president Donald Trump is a convicted felon. A grand jury in New York City brought 34 felony counts against him for fraud in furtherance of another crime, and this week, a jury of twelve ordinary New Yorkers convicted him on every count.

Yes, it's likely he will never see the inside of a prison cell -- at least, not for long. And yes, the Republican Party is unlikely to nominate somebody (anybody!) else for president later this summer. But even if all he gets is probation, he'll have to check in with a probation officer on a regular basis. His travel schedule will have to be okayed by his probation officer in advance. And if he violates his probation, he could still be sent to jail. Quite a comedown for the guy with a gilded toilet.

Plus there's a whole list of countries that won't allow in a convicted felon, which could make diplomatic travel dicey for him if he's elected again.

Although it doesn't mean he won't be. The one thing we can all do to prevent that is to make sure we get out and vote in November.

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These moments of happy blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!