The "Shake It Off!" Edition
Feeling a bit weary coming into election year? Fall in behind Taylor and Travis and defend the Four Freedoms!
Editorial Note: A few of you have been so kind recently as to pledge money to MSU. That’s very good of you and I’m quite grateful, but MSU is and will remain a non-profit operation. For one thing, if I accepted money for publishing it, I’d have to clear all my writing with my employer—whom my views certainly do not represent. That is not the way to run a newsletter based on current events! So please don’t pledge, and if you have, please cancel, or at least don’t wait to see the pledge clear. Thanks again!
Happy New Year! I hope you all had a restful and enjoyable holiday season, the kind that readies you to enter the most important year in your civic life. No pressure!
As I write, Trump has locked up the Maga nomination as everyone expected him to – though Nikki Haley’s performance in New Hampshire shows some serious potential softness in Trump’s support base. Biden may be starting to see some economic wind in his sails, though I still worry about what harm his Mideast policy might have on Muslim, Arab, and young Americans’ support for him. I hate to say it, but if their staying home costs Biden the election, you needn’t bother looking for me at anti-deportation rallies in the Second Trump Administration.
But I may be selling Biden short. It’s easy to see how Trump’s victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, actually are underperformances, but I think people are missing Biden’s New Hampshire performance. He wasn’t even on the ballot, and he crushed Dean Phillips, who’d been campaigning all over New Hampshire and whose Democratic votes won’t even count because they’ve defied the party’s decision to let South Carolina go first. It’s not just that Biden did better against Phillips than Trump did against Haley on a ballot Biden wasn’t even on; it’s that so many people turned out to demonstrate support for him when there was absolutely no reason to. Senile old Uncle Joe has more support than we realize, while Trump is melting down as his court cases keep closing in on him. Oh, and of course the Magas are going to invest great effort in attacking… Taylor Swift. This actually is helpful because it will demonstrate Maga’s craziness to normal people who don’t follow politics as much as you wackos do.
What worries me most this month is Ukraine. They cannot continue their fight without external support. Europe is struggling mightily to provide what aid it can, but at the end of the day Europe is the Gun Shop of Democracy, not the Arsenal. Without America, it just won’t be enough.
What is happening? The decision to link border funding and Ukraine funding in the same spending package may have been a mistake, but it’s also possible we’d see the same problem anyway if they were two separate bills. The media has demonstrated quite clearly that the Magas are refusing to make a deal on the border precisely because they value the border as a political controversy to attack Biden with more than they value actually helping the situation at the border. But the media largely is erring in portraying Ukraine funding as an innocent casualty of the border debate. That’s just not true.
The Magas want Russia to win. Trump always has been pro-Putin. He got impeached for trying to shake down Zelensky. Maga politicians and influencers like Ted Cruz were positively salivating at aggressive Russian military messaging before the invasion, saying the hardened, manly Russian military could crush our own “woke army.” Ukraine’s successful improvised defense by diverse citizen-soldiers led by a young Jewish comedian (and they care about the Jewish part!) didn’t just defy them, it humiliated them. They’re not blocking Ukraine aid out of concerns of how it’s being spent or as a bargaining chip for their own priorities; they’re blocking it because one of their priorities is crushing Ukraine.
Russia and Ukraine will keep fighting through 2024, and I’m reasonably optimistic Ukraine can hold on. But both sides know the decisive battle of their war will be fought in the U.S. in November. Will we fail Ukraine?
The Big Idea
So we all know the stakes this year. What do we do?
First, we have to look to ourselves and our families. 2024 will be violent. Remember, Trump will end 2024 as President-Elect or as a convicted felon—no one dodges 91 felony counts in four jurisdictions. He has absolutely nothing to lose, and a bunch of followers who will murder for him. Rallies will be attacked, or canceled because of the threat of attack. Candidates, poll workers, and polling stations will be threatened. State capitols will see armed mobs, as many did between November 2020 and January 2021. And there will be natural disasters, as affected most of the U.S. last year.
Make sure you and your loved ones are able to function independently for 72-120 hours, in case state and municipal resources aren’t available for whatever reason. See how many of your neighbors have the same priorities, and whom you can help or get help from. Real “survival” isn’t about being “off the grid,” it’s about having a resilient community.
Have a plan to get somewhere else if where you live becomes unsafe. What would it take to enable you to up and move at 24 hours’ notice? How would you do it? Where would you go, and how would you stay?
If you feel in any way marginalized or unsafe in your community, it’s past time for you to arm up, train to use your weapons safely and accurately, and find anyone around you thinking the same. Unless you trust all your neighbors—your physical and your online neighbors—you should assume people who might want to hurt people like you will be able to find you. Do not bring weapons to a political event unless asked to by the organizers. Do not believe that a gun makes you Jason Bourne, or plan to “stand your ground” with one—at least for long. Calculate the ways in which having a gun may create more dangers for you. But there definitely are scenarios where guns will be the difference between you getting to safety or not.
Now you’ve secured yourself, which should take 25-30 percent of your available brainpower and resources. But that’s all defensive. How do we go on offense and win?
The best bang for your buck is to donate your bucks. Professional politicos can do a lot more with your money than you can. I’m subject to the Hatch Act, so I will not make particular recommendations about donations. I will instead refer you to this article about considering donations—even though it’s written from a Liberal/Left perspective, I think a Conservative/Rightist among you could apply it to their own choices. I will say, a lot of people donate a lot of money to candidates who have a really appealing ad or story, or are running against a particularly gross incumbent, but who simply don’t have a chance of victory. Don’t make that mistake.
The next best thing to donate is your time. Come to the big rallies, but remember the big rallies mostly preach to the converted. Their best use is for making connections. Sign up for door-knocking, phone-banking, text-messaging, or whatever you can. Licking envelopes helps. Obviously, it’s better if you can do this in battleground states, or the more contested parts of your own states, but anything done anywhere helps.
Lastly, vote! And help others vote. Help with registration. Volunteer to be a poll worker if your community needs it. We don’t just need our side to be strongest, we need the system we campaign in to stay strong as well.
So that ‘s what we commoners should do. What should our political leaders be doing?
More than they’re doing now. Biden’s campaign is doing well at highlighting the dangers of a Trump victory, and at getting under Trump’s skin, which is easy and helpful. But if the danger to democracy is as serious as we think it is, we need to think bigger and more aggressively. We’re not talking about suspending habeas corpus as Lincoln did, or interning American citizens as FDR did. Some measures could include:
· Standing up a Political Violence Task Force in the Justice Department to chase down and prosecute individuals credibly threatening violence against candidates, campaigns, and poll workers, with their work heavily publicized both for deterrence and transparency. Justice traditionally has a practice of being very close-mouthed about their operations, but that’s not a suitable approach for the moment we are in;
· Federalizing the Texas National Guard and sending it home, to thwart Governor Greg Abbott’s illegal use of the Guard to attempt to close Texas’s border with Mexico, something even the Supreme Court has opposed;
· Taking war munitions directly from the stocks of the U.S. military, sending those munitions to Ukraine, and daring Congress to not resupply our own military.
On this latter: one thing not repeated enough is that “Ukraine aid” overwhelmingly goes to American workers. We’re sending stocks of existing war materiel—often stuff we consider relatively obsolete—while paying U.S. factories and their workers to replenish those stocks. We leave intact our war stocks—the munitions our forces would need immediately if a war broke out. But what war are we fighting that’s half as effective against our enemies as the war Ukraine is waging? Congress can rant and rave, but they can’t stop Biden as commander-in-chief from disposing of military property as he sees fit. If Congress wants to leave American soldiers bereft of tanks, artillery, and ammunition, that’s their choice to explain to the American people.
Beyond this, the Biden Campaign needs a unifying message for Americans beyond “Trump is a threat to democracy.” It’s true, but insufficient. Biden has a good economy going for him, but we still need a positive vision to advance.
I’d propose Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms—Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Fear, and Freedom from Want—are as good for fighting fascism today as they were in 1941:
· Of Speech: to say what we want to say, or argue what we want to argue, about our country’s past and its possible futures, good and bad alike, and acknowledge that people have the right to disagree and act (peacefully) on their disagreement;
· Of Worship: to say our faith, or lack thereof, permits women to control their own bodies, permits people to love whom they want, and be who they want, because your faith guides your actions, not mine;
· From Fear: to say we have a right not to fear mass death in civil society, or hateful attacks from random madmen, relying on easy access to firearms;
· From Want: to expect that a job—any job—should be able to pay for shelter and health care, and that a “living wage” is more than a “survival wage.”
The Magas oppose every single one of these principles, and we can beat them hard on it, because they’re appealing to the overwhelming mass of Americans.
So make your plans, and move forward. Trump may be loudest and stealing the most attention, but flailing isn’t the same as being on offense. We have the initiative, and the advantage, if only we recognize it and act on it.
Lincoln Project’s Reed Galen imagines what transpires on the first week of a Trump presidency in January 2025. “If Trump was willing to watch Mike Pence hang, what’s he willing to do to you?”
Hey, guess who won’t promise not to overthrow the U.S. government!
Security Sector Reform
Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware are counterterrorism specialists who have turned their knowledge on the U.S. with “Guns, God, and Sedition,” an examination of right-wing extremists. This U.S. News article focuses on the risks of extremist infiltration in the military, something I think about a lot. They also illustrate how the individual mass shooter has become their tactic of choice.
It turns out “if you see something, say something” really works!
A decade-long longitudinal study in Canada found no correlation between crime rates and spending on police forces. Basically, no one knows what makes crime go up or down.
Chris Mirasola examines the planning considerations for a potential violent response to a Supreme Court determination that Trump is ineligible under the 14th Amendment. What’s most important about it is seeing that the same considerations apply if Trump loses the election fair and square.
Terrorism expert Robert Pape notes how Trump retains a hold over a powerful base of supporters primed to violence. Most importantly, they aren’t just the Proud Boys and Oathkeepers and other oafs; most in fact are very comfortable and established citizens. They may be among you.
Political violence and the threat thereof are on the rise—it’s most dangerous among Republicans.
Civilian police oversight boards are pretty toothless, but that’s not enough for Florida, which wants to ban them completely. Accountability is overrated!
Good Reads
I really hope a distributor picks up this documentary, “War Game,” running a simulation of possible events on January 6, 2025. And this is the good scenario!
Protect Democracy recently put out this playbook for protecting democracy this year and in a possible Trump Administration in 2025. I don’t see much here you haven’t heard from me, but they go into lots of good detail.
Roge Karma has a great take on how over the past year, we seem to have beaten both inflation and the 2020 crime wave, without either starting a recession or adopting harsher police tactics with larger forces. The good news is, this is good news! The bad news is, a) these improvements aren’t redounding to Biden’s benefit (yet), and b) if we can’t explain them, we don’t know how to sustain or replicate them.
A lot of people spend a lot of time worrying that the Supreme Judicial Council will arrogate great government powers to themselves by abolishing the Chevron doctrine of deferring to Executive Branch expertise on technical questions of implementing legislation. I’ve gotta say, I’m “meh” about this. The courts have had this power since Marshall asserted judicial review, they’ve just chosen not to use it since Chevron. And it wouldn’t be bad for the humility of the Court and Congress, or for the separation of powers, if a few more hot potatoes got tossed in their laps. What does stand out here is that Justice Gorsuch should recuse—his mother was central to the Chevron case.
Michael Kazin reminds us that Democrats and The Left need a symbiotic relationship for either to get anywhere. My simple catchphrase these days is: it’s Biden or fascism.
It’s been said before that the United States is the “Sick Man” of global affairs; Politico’s foreign correspondent Nahal Toosi shows how foreign diplomats are reacting to our dysfunction.
Trump’s media supporters already are saying the 2024 election will be rigged. This doesn’t seem smart to me: why would someone bother voting if they expect their vote won’t matter?
Vox’s Bryan Walsh reminds us that democracy is at stake in elections around the world in 2024.
We all know Biden is protecting our democracy from Trump, but just what is our “democracy,” anyway? David Dayen has a really deep dive on the structural flaws of our system that we eventually will have to deal with.
Finally, Paul Waldman boils all the “civil war” talk down to its essence: Magas are threatening to kill the rest of us if they don’t get what they want. A disturbing number are looking forward to it.
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I don't understand how anyone could still be threatened by these demonstrable cowards. They thought J6 was the Alamo, and yet they brought none of the arsenals they've spent so much of their income on. Why? Because they are, by and large, not ready to step up the violence into the real world where they WILL get hurt, ie. Ashley Babbitt. They WORSHIP their weapons, and yet, the "strike" teams and even street fighters kept their arms in hotel rooms, unwilling to take the big step that would actually be needed to take control in that scenario. They had all the benefits an opposing force could give, mostly due to that white skin privilege that had shielded them from actual repercussions.
Will they scare liberals? Absolutely. Will they terrorize marginalized groups? Only if the rest of us allow that to happen. What happens when they actually try rolling through major metropolitan areas with strong gang influence? THEY ALL DIE. Not metaphoric or hyperbole, they all get absolutely smoked. So long as they don't still have prominent support from LE in the area (likely sheriff's departments will be hubs for racist state support), these call of duty clown ass white boys will face actual soldiers, thoroughly accustomed to violence, brought by the state. When liberals think "only the right has guns", I don't think they understand just how much gun culture, use, and stockpiling goes on in communities not primarily redneck MAGA.
As far as the stockpiles these right wing nut bags have, most people have a good idea of who,in their town, has a house full. Those homes are much more accessible than any armory, and far less secure. Just saying..
These newly emboldened bigots aren't the big bad they've tried to portray, but liberal media is doing a great job of building them up, smashing them when possible is vital to keep their delusions of grandeur curtailed.