Trump, Pelosi and The House Speakership as Political Strategy

As a result of the recent midterm elections, the Democrats have regained control of the House of Representatives. This means their members now head committees that can initiate investigations and do actual oversight (in sharp contrast to GOP House leadership in the era of Trump). This also means the next Speaker of the House will come from Democratic ranks. This is where a problem could arise.

As you are no doubt aware, there is a civil war of sorts within the Democratic party, between the corporate wing (who disingenuously paint themselves as ‘moderate, centrist, pragmatic’ etc) and the progressive wing (the Bernie wing who ran on Medicare for All, getting money out of politics etc – you know the platform well by now). This conflict for the ‘soul’ of the Democratic party has greater significance now that the party is in a position of serious political power. Mrs. Pelosi, a corporatist, was Speaker from 2006 to 2010 and has been Minority Leader since, and so would, on the face of it, be the natural choice for Speaker. Unfortunately for Mrs. Pelosi, she is about as popular among the Democratic base as a shovel to the back of the head.

But then a curious thing happened: of all people, President Trump came out and endorsed Mrs. Pelosi for Speaker, even saying that he would help her generate the necessary votes with GOP representatives if she was not able to get enough Democratic support. Indeed, Trump said he believed he could work with Mrs. Pelosi to get things done. This was correctly assessed by comedian Jimmy Dore as ‘yeah. Horrible things’. But you may be asking yourself why. Why does a GOP President care who the Democrats choose as Speaker of the House? There are two main issues here, and I want to deal with each in turn.

First is Mr. Trump’s comment on ‘getting things done’ with Mrs. Pelosi as Speaker. This phrase, along with its parallel ‘bipartisanship’ usually means passing legislation to the benefit of the donor class, corporations and the rich at the expense of everyone else. As Secular Talk’s Kyle Kulinski astutely noted, bipartisanship is touted as great by its very nature. The essence of the compromise is usually not mentioned because it would not be popular. So when Mr. Trump says he can get things done with Mrs. Pelosi as Speaker, he means to say that she is as corrupt as he is, serves the same donors and this gives them common ground.

The second, and perhaps more fascinating, of the two points is the potential strategic brilliance on display here from Mr. Trump. This man is not known for his political acumen (indeed he is the single least competent politician I believe I have ever seen) but like the proverbial broken clock, Mr. Trump is right twice a day. He knows how utterly unpopular Mrs. Pelosi is, and is turning that to his advantage. Republicans already despite her; indeed they ran ads against her in districts other than her own. Many GOP House races were run not against the Democrat actually running for the seat, but against would-be Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That fact speaks volumes about how unpopular this woman is. So Republicans already despise her and used her as a foil against her fellow Democrats. But there is another side to Mr. Trump seemingly making friends with Mrs. Pelosi.

This is Trump effectively backing one side in the Democratic civil war as a means to split the party. It is true he backed the corporate candidate, the one who aligns more with his own views, but it still serves to split the Democratic caucus between the progressives and the corporatists. Mr. Trump has also possibly read the Democratic base and decided that their hatred for him and those associated with him is so rank that they would quite happily shoot themselves in the foot (vote against Pelosi and the Democrats who worked with Trump) to potentially cost the Democrats control of the House in 2020. Think about it: the Republicans already hate her, and by associating her with himself, the Democratic base (who would never have voted for him anyway, so he suffers no political loss) will turn on her as one who worked closely with Trump on his monstrous agenda. Mr Trump seemingly cannot lose.

This is somewhat a ‘long bow’ I admit, but there is a political instinct to Trump that I think goes under appreciated. It may not come out very often, and many of his moves have a tendency to blow up in his face, but this move to back Mrs. Pelosi as Speaker, and its implications and consequences, I think is being overlooked.

Trump may not be that bright, but he can certainly read a crowd and act accordingly.

Time will tell

CA

Subjectivity: The Last Refuge of The Intellectually Damned

You may have noticed over the last ten years that whenever a politician (typically, but not exclusively of the right) is simply wrong on as issue of fact, they retreat to what they think is an unassailable fallback position of ‘that’s your opinion’, the idea being that the issue (whatever it is) is subjective. This application of subjectivity, so they think, creates a situation where one cannot be wrong since there is no ‘correct’ information. They believe such subjectivity allows them to add their objectively incorrect talking points into a ‘debate’ as ‘just another opinion’. Further, they believe this tactic allows them to paint anyone with the temerity to confront them with the facts that expose them as, to say it again, simply wrong, as being intellectual fascists who do not support a marketplace of ideas. This creates a false equivalence between what Bill Maher called ‘the facts and the anti-facts’.

As dishonest and ridiculous as this tactic is, it must be said that it has worked. To this day, there continue to be creation-evolution ‘debates’, climate science ‘debates’ as well as other ‘debates’ on issues where one side is objectively correct and the other side, to quote Maher again ‘is a load of crap’. The incorrect position is just that: incorrect. But it is given equal credence by being put on the same stage with the correct position. This must stop. Let the people holding what is, I say for a third time, the objectively wrong position scream about being excluded from the debate and how the people who are objectively correct not being willing to ‘have an honest debate’ and any other pseudo-arguments they wish to make.

Let them get it out of their system and allow those who are objectively and empirically correct to solve the policy issues of the day: climate science – real, anthropogenic, serious danger which must be acted upon right now. This means a transition away from fossil fuels toward green, renewable sources of energy such as solar, wind, geothermal, hydro-electric and so on. Evolution – the correct model for explaining life on earth to be taught in all classrooms to the exclusion of everything else. So-called supply-side economics, which hollows out the middle class by distributing all the wealth to the top and generating an oligarchy, set aside in favour of treating the more prosperous members of society like everyone else instead of creating laws to their benefit. Let them contribute according to their means to the society that made them what they are. This will pave the way for the next generation to have similar opportunities to those who came before. Societies are self-perpetuating provided they invest in themselves.

All of the ideas in the aforementioned paragraph are not matters of opinion, despite those on the objectively wrong side creating a false equivalence between their views, which typically resound to their own benefit, and the correct position (or screaming socialism – given what capitalism has become I would keep silent on the use of that word, but I digress).

You may see in the most recent posts on this blog a seeming hardening of the left-wing policies previously expressed. For this there will be no apology: there is no equivalence between the objectively correct left-wing position (which has been there a long time but has been shouted down by the monied interests on the other side) and the increasingly incorrect right-wing position. On the issues of science and the economy (among others) the right-wing is simply incorrect. I therefore reject compromise with those who are not interested in what is objectively correct based on the data.

As humans, we are capable of rejecting views that are simply incorrect; or at least we were. The idea of the earth being the centre of the universe, a stationary focal point about which other heavenly bodies rotated, was once widely held, but once evidence to the contrary came forth, it was rejected, even if the rejection took a while. The original view was held by no less a medieval authority than the catholic church. It was literal heresy to challenge this view, but Galileo did it anyway because that was what the evidence said. He observed the heavens, noted what he saw and formed a new model, going against the church and its orthodoxy (which, it would be noted, was based on a text from the 2nd century AD – there’s up to date science for you). His evidence-based inquiry led to the changing of the European world view.

For all of humanity’s progress since the early modern period, has there actually been intellectual regression?

CA

The Fourth Estate as the Fourth Branch of Government: The Decline of US Mainstream Media

The purpose of the media in any functioning democracy is to be a check on the government. They should hold them to account. An informed electorate will make informed decisions, and the media is designed to the chief source for that information. The vast majority of the electorate does not have the time to read the scores of articles published every day, and so they rely on the media to, in the words of Keith Olbermann ‘analyse, unscramble, assess’ the myriad of details that compose the political narrative.

The media is by no means perfect: run by fallible humans, it has its biases. That said, it should never have gotten to the point where, as the title of this piece suggests, what was previously the fourth estate has now become the fourth branch of government. I want to run down the problems with the media and use these to explain how we got to this point.  This piece will mainly focus on America, and we will take the networks in turn.

Fox so-called News, as Thom Hartmann likes to call them, is the propaganda wing of the Republican party. For eight solid years they mindlessly bashed former President Obama, for everything from wearing a tanned suit (true) to having mustard on a cheese burger. On the rare occasions when policy was discussed at all, it was the usual ‘socialist’ (code for he’s black) and other strawmen that the right often make of the left. But the propaganda was also more subtle. This network is owned by Australia’s Rupert Murdoch, who also owns the Sun newspaper in Britain. Comedian Bel Elton once remarked of the Sun ‘here’s a pair of t*ts, unions bad’ and this certainly applies to Fox so-called News. Indeed, female employees are banned from wearing pants and must wear skirts, the closer to their waistline the better. To borrow from Mr. Olbermann again, referring to male viewers of Fox so-called News, ‘it’s the closest their old lady will allow them to get to porn‘; and he has a point. Soft-faced news actresses telling old, white men what they want to hear about the ‘loss’ of ‘their’ country, best understood as women, blacks and gays exist and have the same rights as straight, white men. Such an echo-chamber is not conducive to the electorate being given the facts.

This network, then, has a pro-conservative-establishment bias. Since Fox so-called News is corporate owned, it also has a corporate bias well and so is unlikely to challenge the narrative of ongoing war, deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy. This bias, too, is not conducive to the creation of an informed electorate. And why not? Oligarchs don’t need informed voters.

Turning now to CNN, it too has a corporate and establishment bias, but it also has the more insidious neutrality bias. As I said in the last post, neutrality is not objectivity. CNN’s approach is to have Republicans and Democrats on at the same time, let them duke it out and let the viewer decide. A classic case of reporting what is true (each side presumably represents its own viewpoint accurately) rather than what is factual (comparing the spiel given by each side to the facts and forming a judgement). The great fear on CNN (and other mainstream outlets) is that to form an opinion will be construed as bias. To insert a little opinion here, this conservative tactic is a tacit admission that they are simply wrong on the issues. If they could successfully defend their positions they would not need to attack the media. This comes across as so much theatre, since both this network and the conservative politicians serve the same corporate power structure. On that topic, CNN provides the example par excellence of the corporate bias.

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) was on with human robot Wolf Blitzer and he attacked the passive involvement of the US in the war in Yemen being waged by Saudi Arabia. The US arms the Saudis to the tune of millions of dollars. Blitzer’s response was to say ‘What about the jobs? What about the profits of the defence contractors?’ So, according to Blitzer, the wars can never stop because profit (which doesn’t even necessarily lead to jobs). General Butler would like a word with you, Wolf.

Finally, we turn to MSNBC. In the past, this network was the home of effective news coverage (the aforementioned Mr. Olbermann, the early days of Dr. Rachel Maddow), particularly in opposition to President Bush (43). Once Mr. Obama was elected, Keith was fired for, among other things, not towing the company line and going after Democrats. MSNBC has evolved over the last few years, but particularly since talk of the 2016 Presidential campaign arose, into the propaganda wing of the (Corporate) Democrats. The network is not on the left; it is as corporate as the others, and thus supports the so-called resistance to President Trump, based mostly on tone policing interspersed with the occasional policy critique (maybe). Rachel’s coverage of the voter suppression efforts by Republicans leading up to the 2018 midterms has been admirable, but does not cancel out her obsession (and that is the correct term) with the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. This story was covered to the exclusion of everything else, including the real issues of the day such as campaign finance reform (the network is owned by GE and so has no interest in that), health care (other than to praise the ACA because it was from their side of the aisle) and others, which again does not lead to an informed electorate.

It would be a false equivalence to say that MSNBC and Fox so-called News are the same, even though I called both propaganda channels (which they are). Fox stokes more outrage and just outright makes things up more than MSNBC does. The so-called ‘war on christmas’, which is essentially pseudo-intellectual cannon fodder for persecuted christians complaining about how they no longer have a social and religious monopoly in a pluralistic society, is a regular series of manufactured segments on Fox ever year. There is no equivalent on MSNBC. For all the outrage, tone policing and pearl clutching, MSNBC deals in a lot more facts in a given day that Fox so-called news does in a year.

Regardless of the minor differences between them, the networks all share the establishment, corporate bias which prevents them from doing objective reporting. This forces them to go aesthetic in their approach; look at the shiny thing. Russia, the military, the war on christmas. The networks are prevented, by biases and corporate influence, from doing their jobs and so their ‘reporting’ is superficial at best, outright propaganda at worst.

It is for this reason that what was the Fourth Estate is now the Fourth Branch of Government

CA