Trump's unhinged rant on Fox

 Pressured speech:  

     "Pressured speech is speech at an accelerated or frenetic pace that conveys urgency seemingly inappropriate to the situation. It is often difficult for listeners to interrupt pressured speech. It is often a sign of mania, often linked to bipolar disease or psychosis. In psychosis symptoms may include thought disorder, fear, auditory hallucinations."

Maria Bartiromo let Trump talk. Trump sounds unwell to me. Decide for yourself.

No one needs to listen to all 46 minutes of the interview. Any two-or-three minute segment taken at random will tell the story. 

Click: YouTube copy of Fox Interview

Trump describes a massive, systemic fraud carried out in multiple states, involving hundreds of County Clerks and Secretaries of State, both Democratic and Republican. It required software he says was designed by and for communist and socialist dictators. It required the connivance of Republican officials in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. It required neglect and malfeasance in office by the Republican director of cyber security to oversee the election, a person he appointed. It required the legal errors of judges he and other Republican presidents appointed. The conspiracy required the failure of his own FBI and Department of Justice to investigate and find the massive fraud and election theft, a failure both of the top people he appointed to run those agencies and the career people who serve under both Republican and Democratic presidents. He is angry with the Trump-supporting Republican Secretary of State and Governor of Georgia who oversaw a hand audit of the paper ballot receipts of the machine vote, an audit that confirmed the accuracies of the election.

Listen to Trump. He seems frantic; he jumps around; he makes extravagant claims. Everyone is wrong but him. He just knows there is fraud and that he won, big, overwhelmingly. He can tell he won; it was obvious to anyone. Surely no one voted for Joe Biden. Trump sounds manic and psychotic to me. 

Trump appears detached from the simple reality that in an election that was generally very good for Republicans nationwide, there was one, very intuitive and predictable standout result: The American public had had enough of him personally.  The election was a referendum on him and the job he has done. Voters didn't give a mandate to Democrats. In Senate, Congressional, and state races in close contests they supported Republicans. The same ballots that counted votes for Biden counted them for Republicans down-ballot. 

He was intentionally polarizing as a president, and it worked spectacularly to turn out votes both for and against. More were against, just as polls have consistently shown. Simple as that.

Trump's current behavior has long-lasting implications. The most serious is the potential normalization of losing candidates--especially presidents--discrediting elections as a credible expression of the public will and using the power of their office to influence others to go along. Without elections there can be government, but not democracy. 

A president who rejects an election result has now firmly entered the "Overton Window," those political ideas which sometimes move from crazy-impossible into plausible-but-extreme into mainstream. A president said aloud, without sharp contradiction by people in his party, that state legislatures could, if they chose, ignore the popular vote and award their electors to him. Trump says it is the right thing to do. They should do it. In states with a legislature that favors a party other than the one that won the vote, there is an opportunity. If there is opportunity, opportunity can become necessity.

 

GOP officeholders are in a wait-and-see mode right now. So far, most of them--like Maria Bartiromo in this interview--are not openly disagreeing with Trump or saying the idea of rejecting the vote is shameful, only that it is unlikely to work. It is a technical problem--lack of the right kind of evidence--not a moral one involving respect for democratic government. Trump's problem is that the potential electoral failure he claims did not take place. County clerks were ready. There weren't power outages on election day. The computers worked. There were no endless lines. Republican County Clerks and Secretaries of State are not inclined to say their elections failed. The public did not see failure. 

This could work next time, especially for a candidate with the likely partisan array as we see now, i.e. close votes in crossover states with Republican legislatures. All that is necessary is clearer evidence of problems on election day, perhaps some civil disturbances by people that interfere with same-day voting. Such disturbances could easily give cover to say the election result unfairly harmed a Republican candidate. These disturbances could happen organically, or they could be nudged into being.

The pieces are in place for legislatures to choose the electors. The Constitution allows it. Trump has called for it. GOP leaders don't disagree. Legislatures in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia are gerrymandered to elect Republican legislatures, and the strong vote for down-ballot Republicans this year will perpetuate and maybe increase that power. The Supreme Court was OK with it and with the addition of Barrett, even more OK.

A Pennsylvania Legislative District

Gerrymandered legislative districts are common; it is easy to do. Democratic voters tend to cluster in the urban and suburban areas. A well-drawn partisan Republican map can concentrate  Democratic voters into a few super-blue districts, thus "wasting" votes, and then leave the majority of legislative districts reddish-pink, with the result that a state which might be essentially 50-50 in overall vote swing and have 60% majorities in the legislative bodies. Districts like the one shown here accomplish that.

Who would do this kind of partisan gerrymandering? Every state that can. 

There is little political cost to legislators in partisan districts to support a gerrymandered map. In the event of an election in which Trump--or some more broadly acceptable Republican candidate--has a close election, a state legislator in a solidly partisan district pays little price for joining colleagues in taking charge of the allocation of electors to the Republican candidate. The legislator only needs the political cover of saying the election is undetermined. Trump is showing, right now, that such cover is readily available, if only there were some evidence. 

That risk is for next cycle, not this one. Trump will not succeed in getting legislators in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan to make the switch. Trump himself is now part of the problem. He doesn't present to the public as the sound, legitimate leader of anything, and the secure hands into which to hand a muddled election. 

He sounds like a kook.

Let the religious win a few

Amy Coney Barrett switched the Supreme Court. The secular left is dismayed. It shouldn't be. 

Long term, this will help the secular left. 

Religion is hugely meaningful to many Americans. Unchurched, secular people--a growing group in this country--have a hard time remembering and respecting this. This country managed to unite and stay together because it prohibited the establishment of religion while allowing its “free exercise.” It made toleration the law. The heirs of Puritans in Massachusetts had to tolerate the disgusting papacy of the Catholics of Maryland, who had to tolerate the Quaker heretics in Pennsylvania. The Constitution prohibited religious triumphalism.

The First Amendment did not end religious prejudice, but it did disempower the "My God's better than your God" rivalry that is the typical behavior of political and military victors. The winning tribe demonstrates its power and ongoing legitimacy by showing that the god of their faction favored them above others. Muslims put a mosque on Temple Mount. Trump marched a Bible across a public park and held it up. Religious triumphalism is a game of King of the Mountain. Trump plays it well and his team wants it played.

Muslim shrine, placed atop holiest Jewish spot

Amy Coney Barrett switched the Court majority this week by allowing greater space for the “free exercise of religion.” The Court's majority decision did not claim that government had no power to regulate the size of religious gatherings. With Barrett changing the majority, though, the Court ruled that New York State's plan went too far and was unfair by regulating religious gatherings more strictly than other, non-religious incidents of contact the Court said were equivalent. The opinions in the majority cited grocery stores, hardware stores, liquor stores, bicycle repair stores. What about them?  

At bottom, the decision came down to the Supreme Court deciding that rather than give government a free hand to manage a pandemic, religious institutions had special status when judging whether they would be treated fairly; this was a shutdown plan, not an operation in effect. The Supreme Court could have said they don't comment on hypotheticals and potentials, only real disputes. They didn't. They sent a signal that there is a new majority in town. Religious groups have more privilege than before, to be independent of government regulation.

Some people on the left are dismayed. I am not. 

The secular left's effort to separate Church and State created the impression in the minds of a great many people of faith that “free exercise” was under attack. Evangelical Christians in particular got it in their minds that they were not King of the Mountain and they were being displaced by non-religious secularism. In the game of King of the Mountain triumphalism, someone is always a winner, and if it isn't you then it is someone else.

It is the winning that is important

The left had been winning pyrrhic victories in Court. They were scaring people so badly that people of faith were supporting Trump—Trump!-- because even though he was obviously not a person of faith himself--Lord knows--he fought the war on behalf of Christian triumphalism. 

The left fought to say a small-town cake decorator couldn’t refuse to create a gay-themed wedding cake, thus protecting the sensibilities of gay people. It was a victory for non-discrimination against gay weddings, but it came at the price of it being a defeat for free speech and freedom of conscience, a different liberal value. I can imagine myself owning a bakery and being asked to create a Confederate Flag Celebration cake and wanting to tell the customer to take his business elsewhere. 

The secular left was not side-stepping those battles; it was joining and winning most of them. The secular left was being triumphalist. The religious right closed ranks in resistance, and it won elections.

If religious people demand to get together in large groups and give each other COVID--for which there are multiple incidents, including a nationally famous one in LaGrande, Oregon--I think they are acting dangerously and selfishly, but they have the First Amendment that gives them more space to be anti-social than hardware stores would have. But what about the innocent people who later share a subway or produce aisle with an infected church goer?  What about public health? Democrats should have thought about that when they did not complain about COVID spread in the George Floyd protests. The conservative media is full of "But what about. . . ." What-about was the basis for the Court decision. Democrats lost their credibility on this issue. It is the problem of being the spokesman for virtue. Inconsistency is understood as hypocrisy.

Religious liberty has an Amendment memorializing the "free exercise" privilege, just as the non-religious have the Amendment protection of "no establishment." It is a balance assuring no triumph. The Bill of Rights creates multiple areas where freedom is inconvenient and vexing. Free speech is special, so if Rudy Giuliani wants to make dangerous statements at a press conference, or dance naked on stage, he can; it's free speech. Not having to testify against oneself is special. Not having your house randomly searched is special. Guns have special rights. The Bill of Rights is part of the American deal, complications and all. That’s the price we pay for freedom.

Click: Cruz ad. Triumph

Possibly if people of faith win a few of these court cases the public perception of religion being under attack will change and we will see a different conflict, one that will better serve the secular left. Ted Cruz's 2016 ad begins, "When atheists sued to tear down a cross meant to honor the sacrifice. . . . " He was pitting the secular left against the religious. Perhaps lawsuits over religious practice will be better brought by the varieties of Muslims, Jews, Christians and others who fight among themselves in court to keep rival sects from claiming primacy. Let Muslims demand the right to put up a Crescent in the Town Square, or on the hill overlooking national cemeteries, and let the Courts sort that out. There will inevitably be competition among religious groups for recognition, but the left would be better off if they were less central to that fight. The net result might be religious tolerance, a liberal value.

The Supreme Court just changed. My sense is that it didn’t spell the end for the values of the secular left. Quite the opposite.  It will save the left from the mistake of over-reach, a mistake that is costing them elections they should win. 

Red states are COVID hotspots

The more Republican the state, the more COVID cases and deaths.

Correlation is not causation, but the correlation is there to see.

Perhaps the correlation can be explained by a deep conspiracy of Satanists and pedophiles to profit by killing off patriotic Trump-supporting Americans. I think it is because leaders of red states, and their citizens, are making a choice.

Americans have sorted themselves out into geographical communities of similar mindset. Of course, there are Republicans in California and Democrats in the Dakotas, conservatives in college towns, liberals in farm zones, but the election results confirm what is obvious on the ground. Majorities of people in different areas have different values and politics. It shows up in attitudes toward COVID and what, if anything, we should do to slow the spread. 

Rising GOP star

The Republican South Dakota governor proudly says we don't require masks nor restrict businesses in her state, and she gets interviewed on Fox and praised at home. The Republican North Dakota governor said the same thing until his state's case count got so high he had to relent, but at least he sent a clear message to his constituents that he held out until the death count became truly desperate. His heart was on the right side. Live free.

It is a premise of the public health community is COVID spread is a largely matter of human choice, modeled by political leaders and carried out by individuals. Simply put, if people are carefree about COVID, they spread it. Masks and social distancing work. Imperfectly, yes, but they help, and if people do the right things they can sharply reduce the spread. 

Not everyone agrees. Conservative cable and social media sites are rife with assertions that masks are worthless or perhaps dangerous, that the virus is largely a media hoax, that what causes the virus to spread is unknown. Trump himself models the behavior that COVID is out there in the air that everyone shares, but that getting or not getting it is only loosely related to behavior, and in any case it isn't that big a deal unless you are already on death's door. People who share that orientation behave differently than do people who accept an Anthony-Fauci-view of the world, that the virus is dangerous and that people should social distance now to protect the health of themselves, others, and the economy generally.

CNN reports on a community in Kansas now experiencing major outbreaks in a nearby prison and in a local assisted living community where 22 people died in short order. The state and county had specifically forbidden mask mandates.  CNN quotes a resident who moved to California, where he says masks are universal, but contrasts it with Norton, Kansas. "If you were to admit that you thought wearing a mask was a good thing, you would be a suspected Democrat. If you ever tried to say, 'I believe in science so I think we need to treat this like a communicable disease, and whether I like Trump or not, I think we should be wearing masks,' you would be ostracized. You either fit in or you're heavily branded the unusual person."

Something is at work to create the disparity in case and death counts among the various states. The color coding is for strongly Democratic dark blue, weakly Democratic light blue, and on to beige, then pink, and then strongly Republican dark red. Blue states started as the place with the highest case counts and death, but that has changed.

The high COVID areas are Trump country. This isn't a close call. 

Here is a chart of the states with the highest case count, coded for partisanship 

Click: animation of states from June to present

And here is a similar chart, by states with the highest death count.

Click: animation of deaths from June to present

The first outbreaks were in the blue states, but now the cases and deaths are taking place in states that resisted COVID control measures. So, obviously, red state behavior isn't working, isn't popular, and is sure to change, right?

Not necessarily. If one starts with the premise that the virus is out there and lots of people will inevitably get it, then taking action to stop it is pointless tyranny. "The virus is real," South Dakota Kristi Noem said, "but the science tells us we cannot stop the virus." Virus spread is inevitable, she says; protect yourself. Don't look to others to do it for you.

What about deaths? Aren't they unquestionably bad? Again, under the premise that nearly all the people who die are old and sick, or as in the case of the Dakotas, either Native Americans or new immigrants working in dangerously close quarters in slaughterhouses, then the deaths are concentrated among the "other," people outside the team of "normal Americans." Their deaths are tragic but not unexpected. 

These cases and deaths numbers did not emerge suddenly. People in the red states were experiencing rapidly rising numbers of cases and deaths on election day, when they voted in person. People in red states are not choosing to get sick and die disproportionately, but these cases and deaths are a choice a free people are making with their eyes open.

They are choosing their leaders and they are choosing how to live.

COVID: Put seniors on the ice to die

     "The deaths included three men, ages 91, 89 and 86, and four women, ages 74, 77, 94 and 81. The 91-year-old man and the 74-year-old woman had underlying medical conditions. It was not yet known whether the other five had underlying health problems."

      Newspaper report on recent COVID deaths

American seniors are being put out on the ice to die.

The Inuits really did this. At a time of famine or when the burden of caring for a person was too great, sometimes they abandoned the frail on the ice or in the wilderness, presumably to die. They stopped doing it under pressure from White missionaries, who found the custom objectionable.

Above I quote from a story in the Medford Mail Tribune, but I could have chosen other media reports from local TV stations' news departments, or news stories from any other media market in the country. There is a standard format we see everywhere: Announce the COVID death by reporting the age and presence of "underlying morbidities."

There is a message imbedded in the message. We are reminded that it is killing a subset of Americans: old people, sick people, and in some areas of the country Black, Hispanic, and Native American people. The unsaid message: COVID is killing them, not us. Or maybe some very unlucky, rare number of us, but mostly people who are other, distinguished by their being off the team, usually by being aged out. There are a lot of people over 65--the heightened danger range--and overweight people, and people with diabetes and heart problems and other "co-morbidities" among America's top policymakers and officeholders. People will die, they assume, but someone else. They will be like Trump, maybe, sick for a day or two, then bounce back fine. Or maybe like Boris Johnson who went to the ICU but was OK, after all. Or like Baron Trump, barely sick at all. People in power have great medical care.

It isn't just policymakers who think in terms of it being the person off the team who does the dying. It is a great swath of American voters.

We have enough experience with COVID reporting to believe that people who are at risk of the ICU and death are already on death's door. The unsaid part of it is that these people are dispensable, and certainly not worth destroying the economy and the lives of the young and healthy 90% in order to protect them. After all, they were already old and sick. Their age and health status were the story.

American voters are making a choice with their votes and their behaviors, deciding that old people need to get out of the way. The election gave tough news for Democrats who hoped rejection of Trump personally would pull down Trump-ism and its policies toward the vulnerable along with him. It didn't happen. Democrats lost House seats. State legislatures grew more Republican. In polls Americans said they agreed with Fauci overwhelmingly. In the election, though--and in the Thanksgiving travel and in personal behavior generally--people are showing that they are long past being tired of COVID social distancing rules and want to live their lives, risk be darned. 

That is the Trump position. Let's go back to work, America. If a few old folks die, well, OK. Policymakers are not saying the "OK-death" part aloud. Indeed, they deny it, save every life, blah-blah, sure. No news story says that it is OK that people age 85 are dying, but they mention the age and co-morbidity in the report. People "get it." It is embedded like a silent letter. "A Medford woman, age 91, died at a nursing facility. She had co-morbidities."

A house-cleaning is taking place. The country's policies have been skewed toward seniors (who get benefits) and against working people (who pay for them but get fewer of them) and it is being adjusted right now by off-loading people too expensive to support. COVID does in two weeks for Medicare costs what cancer, heart disease, and kidney failure take years to do. Social Security pays pensions--and Medicaid pays for nursing home care--perhaps for decades--until COVID cuts short the costs. Public Employee Retirement pension systems nationwide underestimated longevity and overestimated investment returns, but COVID re-adjusted mortality tables back down, for the first time in a century. COVID is doing the work elected officials and policymakers cannot dare vote to do: Rebalance the cost of senior benefits.

I urge readers not to mis-interpret this observation. I am not happy about COVID, nor am I praising it or its effects. I am 71, and vulnerable. My own politics lean toward protecting the vulnerable, even though it is expensive, which I acknowledge squarely. Describing effects is not wishing them. I am attempting to understand and describe what is happening. People who consciously voted to protect the unborn simultaneously voted--perhaps with less mental acknowledgement, but just as certainly--for policies that endanger and will kill tens of thousands of living seniors.

America put seniors on the ice. We became too big a burden.

"I will not turn in my neighbors"

    Pleading wasn't enough. Now it's fines and jail.

     "For the last eight months I have been asking Oregonians to follow the letter and spirit of the law, and we have not chosen to engage law enforcement. At this point in time, unfortunately, we have no other option."

           Oregon Governor Kate Brown

Sign in front of a home near mine

She pleaded, sympathized, and said she hated to do this. But enforcement and penalties are a matter of life and death, she said.  

"I know Oregonians have made tremendous sacrifices throughout this pandemic and that these new, temporary restrictions may seem daunting. But, we are at a breaking point. If we don't take further action, we risk continued alarming spikes in infections and hospitalizations, and we risk the lives of our neighbors and loved ones."

In Oregon, the rules on in-home social distancing for Thanksgiving went from an advisory to an order: No more than 6 people from no more than two households. Violators face fines of up to $1,250 and up to 30 days in jail.

This order gets predictable pushback. Ohio congressman Jim Jordan commented on Oregon in a tweet, picked up by Fox News: "In Oregon you can be jailed for having too many people over for Thanksgiving. But if you want to riot and loot in Portland, no sweat!"

People who consider COVID overblown think efforts by governors to limit in-home activities as invasions of privacy. A newly elected county commissioner in the Portland suburbs defiantly and proudly announced she would have a large number of friends and family over for Thanksgiving. She was interviewed on Fox News and said Governor Brown "wants to arrest law abiding citizens in their homes for eating dinner." 

If it were a gathering of people firing guns into the air, with bullets coming down randomly into the surrounding neighborhood, presumably that gathering would be considered dangerous and criminal, not law abiding. But if COVID is an overblown hoax designed by Democrats and the media to damage Trump and kill freedom, then the gathering of whatever size is, indeed, the reasonable behavior of the law-abiding, or would be if the Governor had not overstepped and made it illegal.

Americans disagree on just how dangerous COVID is. People are dying, but maybe no one you know, and maybe people who would die soon anyway, and maybe they should have protected themselves if they were so worried about getting sick. This is how a lot of people consider the disease, possibly a majority of Americans. The cure is worse than the disease.

Click: 30 second twitter ad

Efforts to stop the rapidly expanding case count run into the "what-about-them" problem. To the person or business being injured, the actual operation of a shutdown gives lots of opportunity to feel aggrieved. As Jim Jordan and Fox point out, if Oregon is so worried about COVID spread, why didn't leaders do more to shut down Portland protests? If eating Thanksgiving with relatives is so bad, why is it OK to shop for food next to strangers? If seven for dinner is bad, why is six OK? Gym owners complain, why us and not dentists? Why do church schools have in-person classes but public schools not? 

"Choice." There is the big switch on the language of privacy and autonomy. Democrats are the party that argues for personal body autonomy on contraception and abortion: "My body, my choice." Now Democrats are saying government can and must regulate personal space and behavior for the protection of the innocent; wear a mask, social distance. What irony, in both directions. COVID skeptics throw the language of choice back at Democrats, "My face, my choice, mind your own business." 

For pro-reproductive-rights Democrats the issues are different, a risk of harm to real living people versus leaving uncreated something that has not yet happened. But there is the quiet pleasure in hearing Republicans acknowledge body autonomy. For anti-abortion Republicans, it is pleasant to use their argument against Democrats, and it is a winning one in their minds, pitting the remote chance of injury due to a virus whose danger they question, versus the certain death of a human life and soul through an abortion.

COVID cases and deaths keep rising. My little portion of the state of Oregon had 89 new known cases yesterday and 2 more deaths. We are in the "extreme freeze" group of counties, with the highest incidences of the virus. 

The mental framework that defined the politics of COVID has been muddled. As President, Trump carried some political responsibility for the virus, and his administration's virus experts urged controlling the spread, even as he took the position that the cure was worse than the disease.

With Trump on his way out, the messaging and battle lines become simpler. The political costs of virus control are solely the responsibility of Biden and the public health nannies, mostly Democratic governors but some reluctant Republican ones as well. Trump is already claiming the responsibility and political benefit of the coming vaccines. He did it, brought to America at warp speed by him, his baby. His message is that everything else--businesses shut, unemployment, Thanksgiving intrusions, schools closed, and shortly the complications and controversies over the distribution of the vaccine--those are on the governors, especially Democratic ones.

The politics of this are difficult for governors. Closures and Thanksgiving regulations are unpopular. The virus got away from us here in the United States and we are paying the price. We chose this path, by whom we elected as president and how we like to live our lives. Our bodies belong to us, not society. Choice is popular. People need their jobs to pay bills. We aren't our brother's keeper, not unless we agree to it voluntarily. America will soldier on during a frustrating and contentious period, as COVID spreads, as unpopular controls work poorly, and as we await the vaccines. Governors will do what they must and be disliked for it. 

Biden and Governors would be well advised to associate themselves with the vaccines and try to muscle Trump out of claiming sole credit, although he will resist that mightily. There may be something they can point to that Trump did that slowed the vaccines. They should find and share that message. Biden got us the vaccine; Trump slowed it down. Repeat that. The Biden vaccine, the Trump delay. Again. 

The vaccine distribution under Democratic governors needs to go better than did the ACA rollout or the distribution of unemployment benefits. Democrats have a challenge and an opportunity. They better not screw this up.

Let Worshipers spread the virus

     "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . . ." 

A modest proposal: let faith-based groups do what they want. Yes, they will spread the disease. They have the right. Anyhow, they do already.

COVID cases are up again. Hospitalizations are up. Deaths are up. 

A lot of people don't think COVID danger is real, and even if it is real, darned if they want some governor telling them what to do.

Governors, both Democratic and Republican,  have been issuing executive orders to save lives and protect the economy, enforce "pauses," "freezes" and "shutdowns."  They are urging people not to travel and to limit the size of gatherings for Thanksgiving.

Some people are complying. A lot of people are not. The airports are busy and people who want to get together are doing so. Fox and social media are circulating the idea that the government cannot tell them what to do for Thanksgiving. They are right; Thanksgiving dinners are not going to be subject to meaningful law enforcement.  Thanksgiving is personal. It defines and unites a family. People are going to do what they want.

Governors are fighting tradition and sentiment. This year they are also fighting political partisanship. Democrats are on the side of prudence and sacrifice.  Republicans are COVID skeptics and resist what they consider un-Constitutional government over-reach. 

All over the country--and all over Oregon--county commissioners and sheriffs are saying they won't enforce the shutdowns. They know when a law is unpopular, and if COVID spreads and people die, they won't be blamed. Democrats will blame Trump; Republicans will blame China or the Democratic governor. 

Readers old enough to remember the era of the 55-mile-per-hour speed limit to save gasoline, will see the parallel. An unpopular law makes heroes of outlaws who mock and resist the law.  

Governors include faith-based gatherings in their shutdown orders. Oregon's governor limits church gatherings to 25 people. On the surface it makes sense. Churches are classic super-spreader venues. There is good anecdotal evidence of COVID spread from weddings, church services, and funerals. It appears to be a straightforward obligation for an officeholder with the duty of public safety. 

There is a problem. It fails to meet the test of the "consent of the governed. It was not inevitable that COVID skepticism and resistance would be partisan, but Trump wanted it so. Once that happened, the various Governors' attempts to limit church services became defined as an attack on religion, not COVID. Democrats had an opportunity to change that message but were slow to understand how partisan the issue had become and how badly the messaging would break for them.  Democrats were accused of being against God.

55 MPH outlaw hero

What they could have done is say that legitimate faith-based groups are exempt from the regulation. Say religion has an amendment and gets special treatment, whether people like it or not. Public health people would have howled in objection, as would the non-religious. That opposition would have proven their bone fides as defenders of the rights of the religious.

After all, people in churches can handle snakes if they want; let them risk getting COVID. Their call.

Such a stance would be consistent with a defense of other Constitutional rights that have troubling consequences. The Second Amendment allows people who behave dangerously with guns to have guns.  The First Amendment's freedom of speech allows people to say nonsense and dance naked in public. Troubling cases are how we keep freedom. And how Democrats show they are not anti-God.

There is a powerful potential objection to this modest proposal: the church services will endanger and kill people. What about public safety? People will die anyway and are now. Faith-based groups are getting together. New York investigating an Orthodox Jewish wedding with 7,000 guests! People in those groups who feel under attack are doing their own private behavior. No one can tell them how to worship or have Thanksgiving or anything else. There is a lot of backlash, much of it unseen.

Democrats' inclusion of churches immediately raises the question why grocery stores and BLM protest marches and bars and gyms might be open, but churches be closed. It fed the meme of faith institutions and people of faith being disrespected. It slowed buy-in on social distancing and mask-wearing. Americans are accustomed to more personal space and freedom than are people in our peer countries. President Trump led the opposition, made it a contest of freedom vs. regulatory over-reach, and Democrats fell into the trap. 

One thing is evident: based on COVID spread and deaths-per-100,000 people, the USA is an outlier in its failure. Whatever we did, it did not work.

The fact that church and choir gatherings killed people was no secret. Some church leaders would no doubt have done stupid things, certain that God would protect His worshipers. People would have noticed the results, and perhaps defined it as a hostile, immoral act. 

As it is, a great many people perceive restrictions on churches as the hostile, immoral act. The response was to scoff and protest against the big, bad sheriff. 

COVID: My body. My choice.

"Stuff the mandate!"  "Mask = muzzle"  "We will not comply."

     "I choose not to wear a mask. I'm a hugger. I'm at rallies all the time. If this so-called virus was a bad as they say it was, don't you think I would have gotten it by now?"

        Geena Shipman, a protest organizer

COVID cases hit new record highs. Oregon Governor Kate Brown calls for a "two-week freeze" that prohibits indoor and outdoor dining in restaurants. The Oregon Restaurant & Lodging Association asked a federal judge to block the freeze, saying it will have devastating effects for its members and their employees.

The Governor's freeze includes a prohibition on Thanksgiving gatherings of more than six people.

Around the country Democratic governors have been announcing restrictions along the lines of this one announced by Governor Kate Brown. Some Republican governors have refused to do so, saying that mask-wearing and social distancing should be a matter of personal choice. A great many county sheriffs have said they won't attempt enforcement of masks, distancing, or limits on gathering size, saying it was unenforceable or wrong on principle.

Meanwhile COVID cases are hitting new record highs. There are 1,174 new cases in Oregon, 6 new deaths. In my small corner of the state, with about 6% of the Oregon's total population, we have 80 new cases today and 1017 cases in the past two weeks and 32 related deaths, so far. The most recent one was a man in his fifties. 

Last week, prior to the freeze, customers had been crowding back into bars and restaurants, maskless, doing what free humans do, enjoying social interactions. The more and closer the interactions, the faster the virus spreads, and that is exactly what is happening. The spike in cases mostly involve young people, who generally appear to survive, and then it spreads to older people, some of whom are hospitalized and some of them die. Hospitals are announcing that they are almost at capacity. Elective surgeries are being delayed to save room for COVID patients in Intensive Care unit. 

By now we have figured out what is causing the virus to spread, and even though the cure is politically unpopular, Democratic--and some Republican--governors are taking action. 

Since they are making rules and positioned as the enforcer of virtuous behaviors in the public interest, they are held to a high standard. We live in a world of cameras in phones and a phone on every person. California Governor Gavin Newsom was photographed maskless at a table at a Napa, California restaurant. This image has circulated widely on conservative broadcast and social media. As this blog has noted, people who are advocates for freedom and rule-breaking are not hypocritical when they break rules. Anti-maskers need not wear masks. Trump need not be virtuous in his behavior because being a cynical salesman and fighter is his brand. But people asserting and enforcing virtuous behavior must be consistently virtuous. Look at Newsom at the expensive restaurant and Nancy Pelosi maskless getting her hair done, the hypocrites! The liberal elitists! Why should we sacrifice if they don't?

I asked one owner of a fine-dining restaurant what he thought Oregon's governor should do. His restaurant is again fully closed for this "freeze." Being closed is very expensive for him, but he said he thought she had no choice but to do it. Restaurants, he said he realized, are a place where COVID spreads easily. Customers are maskless while eating. They supposedly can have distance between tables but as a practical matter this cannot be maintained. They face one another while talking. They interact with servers. Servers, cooks, and dishwashing staff work in close quarters. Sit-down restaurants and bars have all the attributes of spreader sites. 

In actual operation, rules will seem somewhat arbitrary and unequal and will be more burdensome for some than others. Grocery stores are open because people need to buy food, and theoretically people can be at a distance, although that is hard to maintain. Yet restaurants must be closed: that seems to restaurants like an unfair distinction. 

People can meet at the home of a friend for a party, a meal,  or any other reason, be as close as they want and wear what they want and spread the virus, and go home to spread it some more. If a governor ignores that home-based social interaction, it causes restaurants to wonder why they are picked on. If a governor presumes to tell people what they can do in their own homes, it's an invasion of privacy and tyranny. It is a can't-win proposition.

The loudest voices are voices of protest against restrictions.  People inclined to support the governors' actions and be happy that grocery stores require masks and that spreader-sites are closed  understand it to be a "necessary evil" and nothing to be thrilled about. But there is a perspective, voiced in this letter to the editor, that asserts that we all have an interest in the sanitation of others. Freedom to choose?  Really? We do want our restaurant servers to wash their hands after using the toilet, don't we?  What if they prefer not to? 

Here's the letter:  FREEDOM TO NOT WEAR A MASK

                       "Welcome to the Freedom Cafe!   

      We trust you to make your own choices if you want to wear a face mask. And, in the same spirit of individual liberty, we allow our staff to make their own choices about the safety procedures they prefer to follow as they prepare and serve your food.  

      We encourage employees to wash their hands after using the bathroom, but understand that some people may be allergic to certain soaps or may simply prefer not to wash their hands. It is not our place to tell them what to do. . . . "

 

Trump is losing Fox

      "I think Rupert Murdoch--more than anyone else--holds the fate of this country in his hand. An Australian."

           Bill Mahar, HBO, Real Time, November 20, 2020

Fox News was an information silo of alternative facts. It was a comfortable place for its viewers, nearly watertight in sharing Trump's message. Then it got leaky. 

The trickle is turning into a flood. They are abandoning Trump.

I watch enough Fox News to see some of what Fox News viewers see. Readers who avoid Fox are missing a key element of Trump's appeal. He has a media organ with a vast audience that echoes and cherishes him. Fox "gets" its audience. Trump "gets" them, too. They were a team. 

Fox morning and evening opinion hosts are in nonstop outrage at the contempt they feel is hurled themselves, the patriotic, religious, All-American, police-and-troops-supporting viewers. Trump shares and amplifies the resentment people feel when they are picked on by snobs and interlopers. The snobs are people with political or cultural power: Democratic politicians, educated "experts," "mainstream media," Hollywood actors with liberal opinions, technology companies that label tweets, PC academics and their "cancel culture." The snobs don't care about their jobs. The interlopers are the subaltern: Immigrants, people of color, Muslims, criminals, troublemaking protesters. They are the grabby, ungrateful people who sponge off the taxes paid by good people, who take their jobs, who disrespect their flag and their God.

Sandwiched in the middle of the day, and intermittently in the early evening, were bits of straight news. The weather and sports were reported as straight news. Celebrity stories feature country music conservatives doing wholesome things like eating barbecue and speaking up for patriotic, Christian America.

The problem came from reporting political news. Shepard Smith played it straight. He fact-checked Trump. He left. The audience was leaving him and the situation was too uncomfortable. Chris Wallace picked up where Smith left off, becoming the face of straight news. On his Sunday show this weekend he repeatedly referred to Biden as "President Elect Biden." He did not sneer or sound sarcastic as he said it. Election night reporting described "apparent Biden leads" and "Biden victories." This morning, on the news cutaways from Fox & Friends, the news was straight, describing Biden's vote audit in Georgia, his transition planning, and lawyer Sidney Powell's being kicked off the Trump legal team for having said things Chris Christie called "outrageous," her claim that the election was tainted by a worldwide communist conspiracy. They are sharing a reality that is not vastly different from the reality of CNN or the New York Times.

The Fox evening hosts are behind the curve, still presenting the view the audience welcomes, that Trump has a big chance of victory, that he is a victim of a massive fraud, that he won, of course he won because decent people love him.

As Mahar observed, "It looks like Murdoch is . . . throwing his lot in with reality for a change.” The reality that is leaking into the Fox world is that Trump lost his election. The new reality is that some of what Trump and his agents are saying about the election is too fanciful to believe.  Fox is becoming Trump apostate, more frequently describing Trump neutrally rather than as a cheerleader. 

The broadcast tone of Fox News has always been different from the internet version of Fox. In broadcast, a host can sneer when saying "Chuck Schumer" or "Joe Biden." The notion of sleepy and incompetent can be voiced into the pronunciation of Biden's name. In print, that inflection is gone. So the screen print below exaggerates slightly the point of today's post. This is the landing site for the Fox News website Sunday evening: 

All five stories contradict the notion of Trump victory. 

Shortly after screen-printing this the page was updated to deal with the Trump campaign's jettisoning of Sidney Powell, whose comments expressing the Trump position, some made while standing next to Rudy Giuliani, have become an embarrassment. Powell had said she was going to "blow up" Georgia. She attacked the Republican Secretary of State and Governor of Georgia saying "they're in on the Dominion scam." She said the Dominion software "can set and run an algorithm that probably ran all over the country to take a certain percentage of votes from President Trump and flip them to President Biden." She said Trump "won in a landslide."

Trump's campaign said she was on her own, not actually on the Trump legal team. The Fox story fact checked and contradicted Trump, quoting directly from Trump's own tweets which included Powell as one of the people representing Trump. 

Until recently Fox would simply have quoted the new Trump version of reality, that Powell was on her own, don't blame Trump. Now they looked back and pointed out the contradiction. There was a reality based on documentation, not on what Trump just asserted.

Does any of this matter? I think it does. Fox has been the primary validator of Trump's view of reality. 

It is as simple as this: They are choosing Chris Wallace's understanding of the world rather than Trump's. There are facts independent of what Trump says.

This change may open minds. It will allow space for different GOP leaders to define reality and some will disagree with Trump. That may link "reality" back to facts that can be shared and agreed to across the political spectrum. 

It likely will not make politics any easier for Biden, though.  Fox needs to scramble to ward off competition to its right from Newsmax and One America Network, and if they don't do it by cheerleading Trump, they need to prove their bone fides by being more critical than ever of Biden. That is easy and safe for them. The organizing principle and energy of the GOP is resentment and opposition. Trump's election defeat won't change that.

The story line is already in place: everything Biden will attempt to do will be bad, very bad. 

USA: Banana Republic

President Trump said it in all caps: "THE WORLD IS WATCHING.

     "The entire election, frankly, in all the swing states should be overturned. And the legislatures should make sure that the electors are selected for Trump."

         Sidney Powell, attorney for President Trump


     "[COVID] case numbers are spiking across most of the United States, leading to dire warnings about full hospitals, exhausted health care workers and expanding lockdowns."

         New York Times, Nov. 22, 2020


     "After a brief appearance at the G20’s virtual leadership summit on Saturday morning, President Donald Trump departed the White House for his golf resort in Virginia as the summit held a meeting focused on the coronavirus pandemic."

         Forbes, November 21, 2020

There is a lesson here, if we pay attention.

The 2020 election should disabuse Democrats of the notion that Donald Trump was just a populist demagogue with a niche audience. Sure, the story went, he could fill arenas with an entertaining schtick and excite some guys with banners, flags, and rifles, but these visible fans are a minority, brainwashed by an echo chamber of Fox News' alternative facts. There was talk among pundits about Trump's "low ceiling" premised on the idea that Trump's support always polled below 50% and that therefore he personally, and his brand of politics, never really had full popular support.  After all, he lost the popular vote in 2016, and the victory over Hillary was drawing to an inside straight.

No. Trump isn't "just" anything. The 2020 election confirmed Trump's power, not his weakness. He lost the election, barely, but his movement won. Trump's style of slash and burn won. Ted Cruz has already adopted the style. Don Junior is working with it. Lindsay Graham discovered that anger--at the Kavanaugh hearing and later in support of Trump--brought home the GOP vote. Fox News hosts who stay angry have kept their audience. The ones who attempt to "play it straight" are in trouble.

Trump-ism is real. It is a tone and style: Strong man demagogue. A lot of people like it, demand it. It took COVID, coming in from out of nowhere, to defeat him in this election. Trump leads a movement. The movement is bigger than the normal GOP electorate, bringing out over ten million additional votes over 2016. Americans watched him in office for four years. It was an informed vote. Lock people up. Pardon your friends. Fire dissenters. 

Trump operates with the consent of the voters and officeholders in his Party, even when he says things that are bluntly, proudly undemocratic. The last few days--in the face of the reality of Biden's victory--a few Republican officeholders have tip-toed saying, maybe, possibly, Trump should at least let Biden get intelligence briefings, just in case your lawsuits lose. Their circumspection and limited criticism are the important thing to notice. It isn't the strong-man demagoguery; it's how he does it. 

Meanwhile, Democrats and the serious voices of political punditry are missing the big picture and are voicing their comfort with the idea that Biden will actually be inaugurated, concluding that American institutions are robust and secure. See? The system works.

No it does not. 

The system only "worked" because of a couple of flukes and lucky breaks. Trump's tweets, narcissism, dishonesty, wild accusations, and all around craziness were not enough to sink him. Trump's open contempt for the upcoming election did not sink him, nor is his current open effort to hold office notwithstanding the election. It took the fact that Biden had multiple paths to 270 votes and a hopeless legal case to frustrate his plan. Had there been some semi-plausible basis, this could have worked.

We are Number One.

Meanwhile, in an updated version of Nero and Rome, in the face of skyrocketing COVID cases he conspicuously loses interest in the job, and leaves a meeting to play golf. Trump doesn't even pretend to be a serious president. Yet, still, he retains support.

The power and ambition of others' ambition are supposed to be the Constitutional checks on the executive. Ignoring elections and refusing to cede power is what happens in places Americans refer to as "Banana Republics." We send election monitors. We observe they are not yet mature democracies, like us. They are not yet accustomed to the orderly transfer of power. Their judicial system is partisan. We feel so superior.

There are cracks in Trump's wall but the bigger picture is that the wall of consent continues.  Except for Romney and now GOP House leader Liz Cheney, GOP officeholders don't condemn Trump for his announced strategy: Discard the election and retain him in office. The people with credibility to say NO are leaders in his own Party. There is a simple reason for their reluctance. Trump told us in advance his plan, and 73 million people voted for him anyway. Trump voters are OK with what he is doing.

This is an important moment in American history and those of us watching it should recognize that it can happen here. It is happening here. 

We will get through this this time. It isn't that we are good or our democracy strong. We got lucky.

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