The Danger of a Government That “Fears” Its People

 Fear and loathing

One of the primary justifications for a completely unfettered Second Amendment that I see on the Right is some version of the statement “We need to be armed so that we can make the government fear us, rather than us fear the government.” 

This is complete and total idiocy.

For a moment, let’s sidestep the fact that this is an explicit call to revolution in the United States, or at least a constant threat of potential revolution, and let’s examine what happens when a country “fears” its people.  (Spoiler alert: really bad things.)  Countries that fear their people are NOT bastions of democracy, they are lands of oppression, and places where the government’s fear of the people results in a reciprocal imposition of fear and an imperative to make the people fear their government.

Let’s break down why this is. 

First, a government that fears its people has to impose limits on the people so that they are not toppled.  These limits generally include:

• Strict limitations on what people can say in public, or sometimes even in private, because you might speak against the rulers.
• Establishment of a state religion (or lack thereof) to ensure that religious fervor is directed exactly where the state wants it to be, because priests and preachers have always been a thorn in the side of power
• Control of the media to make sure that no opposing views are delivered to the masses, and now, this includes restricting or completely cutting off access to the World Wide Web and social media, so that people have no frame of reference to see what is actually happening.
•  Bans on assembling in large groups for anything other than a state sponsored event, because lots of people in one place ramps up possibility that those people might try to stage a revolution
• Prohibitions against the people airing their grievances to the government itself, preventing citizens from contacting them to tell them how much they dislike what they are doing.

In case you haven’t realized it, these things happen to be the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment, which illustrates which of the freedoms in the Bill of Rights are actually the most important.

This leads to the second part of the oppression, in order to eliminate the freedoms listed above, you need to have a pretty draconian police state to stamp these out, including:

• Constant surveillance of the population through the use of informants and secret police, so that they ensure that no one trusts anyone enough to talk freely.
•  Suppression of all “non-approved” faiths to ensure that no one gets any idea that a Deity might want a system different than what they have imposed.
• Establishment of a state-run media system that pumps out propaganda constantly telling the people how great they have it compared to everyone else in the world, and then blocking access to any source that might show this to be false
• Bans on congregating in groups larger than a small handful of people, so that any time people start coming together, the police and the military have latitude to just start arresting, or even massacring them.
• Blocking all channels of access into the inner workings of the government, which prevents many of the officials from knowing what is actually going on, because the rulers can never be absolutely sure that all of the people who work for them are totally onboard with what the regime is doing.

Now, let’s (briefly) look at a few places in the news where the government is actively afraid of the people.

First, we have Iran, where there has been a slow-moving revolution going on since September.  While the protesters have won a tiny, almost symbolic victory, with the elimination of the morality police, nothing has actually changed, as the laws they enforced are still on the books, and the regular police can still enforce them.  But these protests mostly haven’t frightened the government into reform, they have frightened it into incredible oppression.  The rulers are engaging in mass arrests, televised executions, and in a few cases, large scale massacres to frighten the population into surrender.  However, at this point, many people feel like they have nothing to actually lose, so this makes the government even more afraid, and increases both oppression and the possibility of astounding atrocities to bring the protesters to heel.  The more success they have, the more dangerous the situation becomes.  (It should be noted that I fully support the protesters, and hope they continue, I am just realistic about how far the government will likely go to remain in power.)

The second place to look at is China, where we have seen brutal suppression of the Uighurs, the people of Hong Kong, and even Chinese citizens living outside of the borders of the country. The Uighurs are being thrown into literal concentration camps and forced to renounce their Islamic Faith.  The Tibetans must accept Lamas chosen by the central government, rather than their own tradition, and when the Dalai Lama dies, they have said in no uncertain terms, they will dictate who will become the reincarnation of that leader.  The citizens of Hong Kong have been placed under a security regime that outlaws protests, or even large assemblies.  They have the power and authority to even dictate what Hollywood movies show, to ensure that these films conform to “Chinese Values.”  Worst of all, and beyond what most totalitarian governments impose, they even pursue Chinese Nationals who have left the country, through a system of secret police and police stations that can arrest and charge people in other countries, as seen by the arrest of five Chinese protesters by diplomatic security forces in Manchester.  To a large part, however, China masks its iron fist with a velvet glove, to try to conceal the actual brutality of the regime.

Finally, we will look at a country that fears only a portion of its populace, which is Israel.  Israel doesn’t fear everyone in the country, although they are starting to question the loyalty of the Liberal-minded Jews, they fear the “Palestinians,” a collection of indigenous Christian and Muslim residents of the country.  This example shows how a country that fears part of its citizenry can surgically remove rights from one group, while maintaining a veneer that those rights exist for everyone else.  The Palestinians have absolutely no right to free speech, free press, or free assembly, and their petitions for redress are completely ignored and even ridiculed.  While they ostensibly can practice their religion, their holy places, including the Dome of the Rock, are under constant threat of destruction, and their religious leaders are under constant surveillance.

But foreign countries are not the only places that have feared their people.  The United States at a few points in its history has as well, and these have not been bright points for Liberty.  First, we have the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which were a response to the undeclared war with France at the same time.  At this point in US history, the Constitution was still very new, the government was not particularly stable, and the great powers in Europe were still looking to squash the new nation.  Several prominent politicians and press people were arrested and prosecuted under these acts.

Next, we have the period of the Civil War, when Lincoln was afraid that Rebel sympathizers in the North might work to undermine the Union forces.  To prevent the dissolution of the United States, he unilaterally chose to go to war, to prevent the people from questioning this, he suspended the writ of habeas corpus, detaining thousands for years without trial, to prevent this from gaining widespread knowledge, he shut down newspapers critical of him, and blocked others from being able to be distributed via the Post Office.  While these actions were understandable, and probably even necessary, when examined through the lens of the Civil War, they still were profoundly un-Constitutional, and they were still the acts of a man who was afraid of the general populace of the country.

After this, we have the Espionage and Sedition acts of 1917 and 1918, which were responses to the government’s decision to enter World War 1 on the side of Britain and France.  This decision was not particularly popular in America, which had a very large German population with large swaths of the country where the first language was actually German rather than English.  This suppression of speech and the media was in response to the real danger that civic unrest over the war would undermine the United States participation in it.

Next, we have the utterly abhorrent imprisonment of the Japanese in concentration camps during World War 2, alongside the Alien Registration Act of 1940, which regulated speech of so-called “extremist” organizations.  Again, these acts were in response to fear of the population overthrowing the government on behalf of the Axis, which wasn’t an unreasonable fear, given the Business Plot of 1933, which planned on overthrowing the US government and replacing it with a fascist dictatorship in the mold of Mussolini’s Italy.  It should be noted that the Alien Registration Act was the instrument used by McCarthy at the beginning of the Red Scare and was later enhanced by the MCCarran Internal Security Act of 1950.

To put this all together, through both international in domestic examples, we can see the response that governments have when they “fear” their citizens.  Fear of the populace inevitably leads to authoritarianism, if not outright dictatorship.  And given that a government will always be able to have superior weaponry, this renders the Second Amendment moot, at least for the point the absolutists tend to put forward.  A government that fears people will increase surveillance, limit freedoms, control the populace, and ultimately oppress the masses to remain in power.

So, what should we want, if we don’t want a government that fears, and consequently, oppresses us?

We want a government that respects us.  Respect is not the same as fear, and in fact, is functionally the opposite, as people rarely respect someone they are afraid of.  We should demand that the government treats us like adults: tell us the truth, no matter how unpleasant it is; allow every single citizen to vote in every election, and in fact encourage that, trusting that the people are smart enough to select leaders to guide the country; listen to us when we say that something is not right, rather than come up with insults to belittle us and minimize our ideals; and finally, try, as much as possible, to craft solutions that make everyone a little pleased, rather than perpetuate the concept that a compromise should make everyone a little angry.

And guess what, if we knew we had a government that respected the citizens, all this idiocy about why we need guns would evaporate overnight.

The Right To Choose Applies to Nations As Well

National self-determination. 

I’m getting extremely tired of listening to the Left try to blame the entire Ukraine crisis on the West. They always start out with a version of the same line, “Of course Putin is a monster, but he was pushed into a corner by the West, the Clintons, NATO, etc., and additionally Ukraine is also corrupt and evil and no better than Russia at its core.” While these people acknowledge that Russia is currently committing atrocities, they engage in three lines of thinking that are straight out of the Putin propaganda farm. 

 The first is the classic “whataboutism” that Putin loves so much. Basically this says that we cannot legitimately be outraged about Ukraine because we have been silent in Palestine, silent in Rwanda, silent in Kurdistan, silent in Myanmar. Basically, the core of this is that if we are now upset about Ukraine, we are just showing how racist we are. While we do need to acknowledge we have dropped the ball here, there is also a magnitude of difference at play here. Not to minimize the other atrocities, but here you have a nuclear armed global power invading a recognized sovereign nation with the deliberate attempt to subjugate it. All of these other cases are much muddier, and to be very honest, a lot less clear cut. They are also atrocities that are impacting hundreds of thousands, whereas Ukraine is currently affecting millions, and may spill out into the tens or even hundreds of millions. Additionally, we cannot forget the Holodomor, which was a genocide on par with, or possibly even worse than the Holocaust. (While the consensus seems to be about 3.9 million deaths, some scholars put it as high as 12 million.) The magnitude of this crisis pushes it into the center of conversation. 

The second line of thinking is about the Ukraine being corrupt, as if that makes this more legitimate, or at least means we shouldn’t get involved or be that upset. I have some bad news for you all, EVERY government is corrupt. ALL of them. This does not render a country unworthy of aid or consideration, nor does it give any sort of cover to a military invasion, because at the end of the day, it is the people who suffer. And further, in this particular case, the more we allow this to continue, the LESS likely it is that Ukraine will clean up its act. The oligarchs have fled the country, and properly supported, the citizens of Ukraine can possibly try to make sure they don’t come back. But that will take OUR support. 

But the final thing, and the part that most upsets me, is the argument that really, the West caused this: that years ago, NATO should have refused to let the Baltics, or other Eastern European Nations, join. This is Colonialism at its worst, because Colonialism isn’t just about using the might of empire to control territory, it is about the patronizing attitude of a greater power towards a lesser power regarding their own agency. Colonialism is about deciding what is best for a country or a group of people, rather than listening to what those people actually want. 

So, to illustrate this, and to show the inherent cruelty of what many pundits on the Left are saying, I would like to create a little analogy. This analogy casts countries as a group of people: we have three sisters, Estelle, Livia, and Leitha; we have their friends Paula and Bella; an old man, Russ Sr., his son Sven, and grandson Russ Jr.; a neighbor, Nate, and then Nate’s Uncle Sam. Let's begin the illustrative story. 

Many years ago, three sisters, Estelle, Livia, and Leitha, were taken in by an old man named Russ Sr. He took them in to, in theory, protect them, but actually, he exploited them, making them work for him. This sad situation existed for many years, until Russ Sr. died unexpectedly. The three sisters escaped, along with a friend, Bella, they had made while living in Russ’ house. For a few years, everything was going OK for the sisters, even though their friend Bella decided to move in with Russ’ son Sven.

Unfortunately, after a few years, Sven made a deal with a bunch of other people in the neighborhood and forced the three sisters to move back to the old house, and serve him the same way they served his father, except he was even more cruel, forcing them to stop speaking their own languages, stop them from celebrating their own heritage, and making them conform to exactly everything Sven wanted them to do. Sven also was especially cruel, making some of their other friends, like Paula, live the way he wanted them to live, and forcing them to cut ties with all of the friends Sven didn’t approve of. Even though he didn’t make these friends move fully into his house, he made them live in his fenced compound. Eventually though, Sven also got sick and died, leaving HIS son, Russ Jr. in charge. 

As before, the sisters, their friend Paula, and some of their other friends got out in the chaos surrounding Sven’s death. Bella moved out of the house as well, but she decided that she wanted to stay in the fenced compound, even though her family and friends tried to help her to leave. However, this time, the sisters wanted to ensure that they were never forced to go back to Russ Jr.’s house, so along with their friend Paula, they approached their neighbor, Nate, and asked him to keep them safe from Russ. 

Now, the sisters knew that Nate wasn’t necessarily a great guy, he could be a bit violent himself, and his Uncle Sam was really problematic, but they knew that Nate would keep them all safe, because they were certain that Russ was afraid of Nate, or at least knew that it wasn’t wise to piss Nate off. Once they got protection, the sisters and their friends started to thrive. They threw off all of the old rules that Sven required, they started speaking their own languages and started to really live their best lives free from the abuse they had been suffering. 

When looked at as if these countries were people, we see that the Soviet Union and Russia’s treatment of a number of countries in Eastern Europe was very abusive, and these countries wanted to ensure that they were not abused again. This meant that they had to find something to protect them, otherwise, they would eventually be reabsorbed, as had happened twice in their history. They were asserting their own right to self-governance, just like a person fleeing an abusive situation has the right to seek protection. 

And this is the core of why this statement that the West should never have allowed these former Eastern Block countries to join NATO is so problematic. If converted to people, it is saying that a person who escapes a brutal, non-consensual, and abusive relationship is not allowed to seek any protection to remain safe. They need to continue to allow their abuser to have access to them, just to ensure that abuser doesn’t start beating up everyone in the neighborhood. It means that we are happier for someone to be abused, than to confront the abuser and try to make them stop. 

And yes, countries are not people, but sovereign nations have the same right of self determination that a person does. 

This is where colonialism comes into play. These pundits are saying that they know better than people and the governments of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Ukraine. They are willing to sacrifice the independence of sovereign nations to appease a dictator. We saw this happen when Neville Chamberlain allowed Austria, Czechoslovakia, and other regions to be captured by Hitler in the interest of peace. Like Putin, Hitler originally stated that the countries he was conquering were simply to reunite parts of Germany, with German people and German Culture, into one country. Putin makes the same statements about Ukraine today. 

And through it all, the pundits on multiple sides of the political sphere still blame the West for this situation. They have effectively refuted the right of these countries to have their own self-determination, and the ability for them to choose who they wish to align to. No one in NATO, or the EU, forced these countries into membership, they freely and democratically, chose this path. For the West to have refused this right of self-determination is fundamentally no different than Putin trying to force Ukraine in to alliance with the Russian Federation at literal gunpoint. 

Nations have a right to choose their own path, this is fundamental. If these choices upset their neighbors, they still have that right. Russia could have made joining its federation enticing, made a better offer to these countries to induce alliances. They did not, and now they are reaping the consequences. 

Where this will end, I do not know. However, I do know that these countries had a right to choose their own paths, whether it angered Putin or not. And as the side that is supposed to be about individual rights, we should be standing with Ukraine, not blaming this on the West.

The Political Drowning Pool

 

Asphyxiation

In medicine, there is a condition called “delayed drowning.”  It happens when a person inhales water but seems to be “fine” until suddenly they aren’t.  Delayed drowning typically occurs about 24 hours after the initial event, when the trachea spasms and shuts down, killing the person.

Democracy in the United States at this moment is very likely facing a delayed drowning event, where it seems to have recovered from the events of 1/6, but will probably drop dead, seemingly without warning, in 4 years’ time.  This is because the Republicans have set up a probable no-win scenario that will end the very idea of any sort of majority rule for the selection of the President.

Part of this stems from the Constitution, and the fact that the framers had literally no intention of ever allowing the majority to truly select the president.  They set up a complex system of allowing the states to determine how the Electors were determined, and then established the Electoral College to give significantly more power to small states than large ones.  In total, they set up a system where “the people” had a very limited say in who became the Head of both the State and the Government.  The fact that for most of the last century, the President was the winner of both the popular vote, and the REAL vote, is actually more of an accident than any deliberate intent.  And this is exactly what the Founding Fathers intended.  They never really wanted the unwashed masses to be able to choose the president in the first place, a fact demonstrated by the lack of inclusion of the right to vote anywhere in either the original document or in the Bill of Rights.  Under their ideals and intent, both Bush’s and Trump’s victories would be proof that their system worked, rather than failures of that same system.  To the Founders, it would show that the Electoral College served the stated purpose of tempering the masses and avoiding what Jefferson explicitly called “mob rule.”

This is the core of the argument behind much of what is going on in the States today.  While there might be other motives at work, and we can certainly speculate what they could be, the general principles that the Republicans argue are based in the foundational documents of the country, which sadly do support their side more than they do the points of view of the Democrats.  We can see this in play every time a Republican (correctly) argues that the United States is not a Democracy, it is a Republic.  It is also shown by the Federalist Society’s insistence on judges that are “strict constructionists,” who believe that the Constitution must be read according to the specific intent of the Framers.

However, two and a half centuries have passed since those documents were written, and it is certainly legitimate to question the wisdom of people who lived in a completely different society, and whether those antiquated views have a place in a modern Democracy.  This is the view of those who consider the Constitution to be a “living document,” and that we need to adhere to the spirit of the Constitution rather than the explicit text.  This is how modern jurists can “discover” rights, such as the Right to Privacy, that were never explicitly spelled out.  It also allows judges to sanction things that were inconceivable in the early days of the country.

We can also say that while the Founders may have intended a true Republic, the current understanding is that the U.S. is, at most, a Democratic Republic, where it is “One Person, One Vote.”  We can reject the Founder’s views, and not undermine what they built.  We can say the “arc of history bends toward justice,” and validate what the country stands for now.  We can stand firm and say, “yes, they had an idea of what the country should look like, but we have moved on form that, and we want to evolve into a more democratic (with a little “d”) nation, where we all have an equal say in how the country is governed.

However, this is increasingly improbable, and we are quite likely on an irreversible road, because the “checks and balances” in the Constitution are not just there to check the powers of each branch of government, they are there, more importantly in the Founders’ views, to check the power of the people.  And because of this fact, majority rule in the country is probably going to have a delayed drowning, that will all be perfectly legal, constitutional, and utterly horrific.

Before I explain this, I need to say something about strategy.  Democrats are generally “reaction based,” something happens, and they react to it.  They generally reel from situation to situation without much, if any, long-term planning.  They deal with things when  they become urgent, and because of that, there is generally not an examination of long term consequences, nor is there a coherent strategy behind their actions.  Democrats are generally expert in crisis management, and good at responding at immediate needs, but there isn’t a far reaching plan involved, and they typically have no idea on how to weave a larger narrative out of these short term fixes. 

Republicans, as befits a pro-military organization, strategize, and plan battles far in advance.  They plan for contingencies, lay traps, advance and retreat, without ever losing sight of the big picture.  While they may sometimes not seem disciplined on the surface, every single thing they do advances a larger strategy.  Because of this, they are conversely terrible at addressing the unexpected, sudden and surprising, and consequently frequently botch response to hurricanes, economic crises, and black swan events.  That said, they are very good at incorporating those events into their larger, long term strategy.

As my father, who was a career military officer said, “a battle is won or lost before the first shot is fired.  If you don’t know who is going to win before you take the field, you will not be the winner.”  And the Republicans know they ultimately, they WILL be the winners.  There is always the chance that the Democrats could luck out, that an unexpected event will change the battlefield, but in general, the better strategy almost always wins.

And this leads to why the America we currently know is in its final months.  To explain why they will win; they have set up a literal no win scenario for the Democrats, whether it is by brute force, or by hanging the country on the structure of the Constitution, they are likely going to be victorious.

The brute force option is the simplest course, but certainly the hardest and the one most likely to end in total violence.  For this scenario, we can posit in 2024, a Republican candidate, probably Trump, declares victory, and his supporters take over the Congress and force the issue, staging a successful version of the trial run of 2021 coup attempt.

However, this probably will not pass even a very compliant Supreme Court, and consequently, this is not the likely route unless they are absolutely certain that they will succeed.  It will also likely kick off an actual Civil War, which again, they will probably not want unless they can be absolutely sure that large parts of the military, and the billionaire set, will support them.  However, the advantage of this path for them is that if they win, they will know that they will have permanent power, and can abandon even a pretense of democracy.  Many pundits fear this happening, and it is getting a lot of press, which is overall a good thing, but it is ignoring the much more realistic course of action for the Republicans.    

The long game that they are establishing now is the more likely path.  Although this will lack the “drama” that Trump seems to love, nor will it be as overtly decisive in completely establishing a new order, it will be completely legal, and probably be easily ratified by 6 Supreme Court Justices.  For the “Law and Order” party, this fact will be very important.  The fact that it is also completely legal will likely cause most Democrats to roll over and accept it.   

Buried in many of these “election security” bills passing in Red States, and in states with enough of a majority in the Assemblies to override gubernatorial vetoes, are clauses that will allow the states to override the results of the popular vote and select the electors themselves.  Again, this is perfectly Constitutional, and the Supreme Court recently reinforced that States have absolute authority to determine the election rules.  And, as stated before, there is no requirement in the Constitution that electors must be selected by popular vote in a state, and in a Republic, it is certainly possible to claim that the vote for a state legislator fits within the system of representation; the state elects an Assembly, which then, “in their wisdom of what they were elected to do” can select the electors for President.  This was the original system to select US Senators and is fully compliant with the intent of the Founding Fathers.  It also fits neatly in the Federalist Papers, and most of the other writings around the formation of our government. 

With these laws in place, it is only a matter of a completing the process, again, completely compliant with the Constitution.  Step one is that the States will ratify electors for the Republican, again probably, but not certainly, Trump.  This will give that candidate an Electoral College victory, regardless of the popular vote.  They may claim that the vote was corrupted, or that they have evidence of fraud, or they might just say that they are acting in the “best interests of their constituents” as a justification, but in any case, they will send Republican electors to vote in the ACTUAL election.  Despite the weight the population of the country puts on it, the General Election, at least for President, is literally just an opinion poll that everyone can participate in.  The ONLY actual election occurs when the Electoral College meets.

But the plan doesn’t, and can’t, end there.  In theory, if the Democrats controlled one or both Houses of the Congress, they could refuse to certify.  Now, given their outrage over Republicans pulling this in 2021, they will be extremely unlikely to do so, because the accusation of “hypocrite” hurts Democrats disproportionally more severely than Republicans.  However, if they did this, which they can under the Constitution, then the next stage of the Republican’s plan kicks in.  By the Constitution, a contested election is settled by the House. 

In theory, if the Democrats held the House, you would think the outcome is certain, and they would elect the Democrat.  But again, the Founders had NO interest in Majoritarianism, and in that election, it is based on one vote per state, where the majority of Representatives in THAT state decide on their vote.  In this system, Wyoming has exactly the same power as California, which is a greater distortion of power than even the Electoral College.  The Constitutional backup to the Electoral College is even less majoritarian than the College itself.  Every step in the process makes the will of the masses less important, which again can be used to validate minority rule in America.  As the Republicans, structurally, will almost certainly dominate more states, the House vote will deliver a Republican President.  The Supreme Court will not interfere with this, as this has all been done perfectly Constitutionally, and further, will meet all of the tests of a Strict Constructionist judiciary.

Then we enter the crazy phase.  If this were to happen, it is likely that the Democrats will do exactly what the Trump supporters did in 2021, and engage in large scale, sustained violence, leaving Biden the responsibility of either putting down the insurrection, and allowing a completely legal usurpation of power to occur, or to throw in with the revolutionaries and tear down the country.

This brings us full circle to the title of this post, “the Political Drowning Pool.”  A drowning pool is created when water flows over a shallow structure, creating an almost invisible, but virtually inescapable, current that sucks a person down.  The states are building a shallow structure designed to create inescapable political currents that will ultimately drown the United States.

The only way to escape a drowning pool is to not get into it in the first place.  The only way to escape this trap in 2024, is to change the course of the political river in 2022.  This is NOT winning the US House and Senate.  Doing that will do nothing to escape the inexorable trap that is being built.  What we HAVE to do is win state legislatures and governorships all across the United States.  If we do not take back enough states to have complete control of 271 Electoral College votes, Democracy will fall, legally, and exactly as the Founding Fathers intended.  After all, this is a Republic.

No One Understands the Game

Poker

So, Trump reversed the internment of children, and everyone thinks the good guys won. I'm sorry to break it to you, but we didn't win. It wasn't a fight we could win, because we didn't know the game being played.

I've said this before, and I will say it again, the American Media, and the American People for that matter, continue to believe Trump is playing Chess. He isn't. He's playing Poker, or maybe more specifically, he's playing Poker on a Chessboard.

I understand this, as I also play (the real game) Chess as Poker. I don't play the game as a series of strategic moves on the board, I play the person, and because of that, I very frequently win games, even ones against much more skilled players. (But I can't beat a computer, because this technique doesn't work against them, cold rational and unflappable bastards that they are.)

I find out what a person depends on in Chess, then I go after it. If their strategy is to use their Queen a lot, I make sure to get her off the table. I play specifically to keep my opponent off balance, wondering what the hell I'm doing and trying to figure out my strategy. I confuse.  I bluff and deceive. Sometimes I will lose a game to lull them into a sense of security.  I watch for signs of stress, and then exploit them.  I depend on luck even.  I look like I am insane or a really bad player.  But the end, they lose, because my strategy is specifically to get them so off balance they make mistakes and I exploit their mistakes.   

On the whole this is what Trump is doing.

He isn’t playing the game by the rules, and often he isn’t even playing the game they think he is.  And because the entire political establishment is operating under a set of expectations of what he is doing, and are viewing his actions under that set of expectations, the completely miss what is happening.

America has a long history of political Poker playing.  It’s how we won the Revolution for example; the British Empire couldn’t handle our unorthodox techniques or the asymmetric nature of the rebellion.  (Any yes, Poker was very popular in the US prior to the Revolution)  Andrew Jackson, the president who probably most closely resembles Trump, also played political poker.  Since Jackson, a lot of our general political strategies were based on bluffs, gambles, and intimidations.

But with the advent of the Cold War, we needed to play the Soviet game, which was chess.  The stakes were too high to continue playing Poker or any other game of chance; when a mistake could obliterate the Earth, a game dependent on an aggregation of small wins, and that accepted losses was no longer tolerable.   

The solidifying point was probably the Cuban Missile Crisis, where we were playing a Chess game for infinite stakes.  Had JFK depended on chance, he would have lost and so the game was set and rules were codified.  After that, American Presidents needed to be Chess Grandmasters, or at least surround themselves with people who were.  And the American media got used to politics as Chess, and in fact facilitated the system by reporting things a strategic maneuvers, gambits, and so on. 

The height of the Chess game came when Gorbachev and Bush Sr. played the game to complete stalemate, causing Gorbachev to knock over his own king in 1989 and walk away from the game by calling the first free election since 1917.  George Bush became the global Bobby Fischer.  Even though history seems to credit Regan with the end of the Soviet threat, it was actually Bush who finally got the game to end.

But even though the reason that American politicians learned Chess in the first place was gone, the game continued on with new opponents: the other party; the other end of the ideological spectrum; the United Nations; China and the Middle East, neither of which play Chess; and basically any group that the party in power opposed.

The fact we continued to play Chess put us in the same position as the British in 1776, we could no longer defeat enemies that weren’t playing our game, especially in the Middle East.  We “won” concessions in Iran where Chess (Shah) originated, but that was the only even remote victory in that region, and we only got it after being outplayed by Iranian masters over and over since the Iranian Revolution. 

We applied Chess to Korea and got a stalemate, as Go (which the Chinese played) and Chess are similar enough that we could get to a draw, even if neither side could win.  But we lost against every country that wasn’t playing the game by our rules, we lost Vietnam, and bogged down into ceaseless quagmires in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.  And because modern warfare is asymmetric, we likely will continue to lose as long as we think of it as Chess on the battlefield.

But Trump is different.  He isn’t playing Chess.  He has neither the temperament nor long term planning abilities to play the game.  He sees a big picture, however, not through the lens of a grand strategy but through the lens of a bunch of short hands that can change fortunes in an instant.  The goal is still to win it all, but the way to get there isn’t necessarily dependent on past victories.  The “wins” are only important in terms of filling his coffers for the next round.  A lost hand, or three, doesn’t matter, as long as his losses are relatively minimal and don’t reduce his basic bankroll, which in the case of politics is the support of the base.

As long as he keeps his 35% absolutely in the bank, he will have the ability to fund losing hands, and when he wins, he will increase his reserve.  He might give some of it back on some hands, but slowly, steadily, he is growing his bankroll of political capital.  Currently, his approval rating is at its highest mark since inauguration.  He hasn’t done this through a grand outmaneuvering of the Democrats, he’s done this by winning hand after hand, laying traps that the Dems walk into, bluffing his way, and folding when it is necessary.    

Which leads us to the current situation.  From a Chess standpoint, it was insane.  He exposed many pieces to being taken out by the other side, risked being put in Check, and not gaining any board advantage.  As a Chess Gambit, it actually showed weakness because there wasn’t anything to gain, and a lot to lose.

But if you look at it as a Poker hand, the whole play changes.

As a round of Poker, the Kid Internment mess was done for two reasons. First, it was to shore up his base, for whom any cruelty or viciousness towards brown people is better than sex. He has to throw them brown meat every so often so they don't get pissed at him, just like a good poker player has to lose some hands so the rest of the table doesn't walk off in anger.  Again, as long as he keeps his 35% bankroll of absolute loyalty, he can continue to play. 

The second reason was much, much more devious and evil, and talks to the larger poker game.  He was proving a point. He was showing America that he has no concern about the rule of law, proving he will act on a whim, and telling them locking people up in Concentration Camps is something he will be OK with.  This is a classic intimidation move, because it has raised questions among the opposition, myself included, as to what the threshold for future incarceration might be.  Today, it is an activity that is at best a civil offense, not a criminal one.  In the case of refugees applying for asylum, it isn’t even a civil offense, it is the actual legal process, so he has shown that even obeying the law and following exactly proper protocol can risk being locked up.

BUT, he had to end it fairly quickly, which is why he reversed it.  He won the hand and needed to take his winnings.  The reason?  There were court challenges coming, court challenges he might lose at this stage. He needed to make sure that didn't happen this time, as he needed to not have this a settled matter.

Because of his executive order, it is likely the lawsuits will be thrown out; the policy has changed and the courts don't like to adjudicate speculations. Their response to "he might do it again" would probably be "If he does it again, file another case and we will judge that one." He gets to walk away with the ability to do this left intact, even though right now he isn't doing it any more.

But all of America now knows that he could do it again. And that will make them either hesitate out of fear, or it will ramp up hatred against him. In the first case, he wins because he has further cowed the American Public into submission. In the second case he still wins because his supporters will be pissed that liberal crybabies are still whining about the kid thing, when he very clearly ended it, and should be considered the hero of the day. Further, it will fuel his narrative that the Left is attempting a slow motion coup, and will fit into his narrative on that. This then leads back to the mass incarceration in concentration camps which he hasn't gotten any ruling against.

Until people realize he isn't playing Chess, we will keep getting played, and he will keep winning. Remember, despite all of this horror, his approval ratings have hit their highest point since he entered office, and the midterms are not looking nearly as good for Democrats as they did a few months ago.

As of this moment, Donald Trump IS winning, and it is up to each and every one of us to do something about it.

Cut the Conspiracies

Tragedy

Another 9/11, and like clockwork we have another round of conspiracy theories about it being an "inside job" or "deep state action." I cannot begin to tell you how much this bullshit pisses me off. I worked on the rebuilding of Ground Zero. I was in New York working on the plans for rebuilding when the pits were still burning with the fires of Hell itself. I saw that same Hell in the eyes of the people I was working with, listening to their stories, stories that even now, I can’t repeat without coming apart myself.

I was in New York to see the walls of posters desperately pleading for someone, anyone to have news of the missing.  Every day, I walked past the makeshift shrines and candles lit as prayers and beacons of hope.  I saw the despair, and I saw the love, the love of survivors gathering together, holding on to what little pieces of hope they could grasp.

And it is because of the people I knew, especially the original project engineer, that I came to understand why the buildings fell the way they did.  Of course the collapses looked like an implosion, because, if you were going to implode them, you would blow the same members that melted in the fire.  Members, which by the way were nothing more than standard open web joists, that were not designed to be exposed to flame the way they were on 9/11.

Further, as a person who was there in the immediate aftermath, the statements of the buildings “falling straight down” are laughable, as the giant gashes in the sides of surrounding buildings show.  The zone of total destruction in New York City was as large as most cities entire Downtown.  Of course there were odd survivors in the cityscape.  Just like the devastation caused by a hurricane, some buildings are almost unscathed when others are obliterated.

These so called “facts” that prove it was an inside job piss me off.  Not only because of how ridiculous they are, but for how much pain they inflict on the survivors and those who lost loved ones.  Spreading the 9/11 conspiracies inflicts exactly as much harm and chaos on them as the conspiracies on Sandy Hook cause agony in the parents of the dead children.  There are real people being hurt every day by this crap.  

But most of all, the conspiracy theories piss me off because they suck all the oxygen out of the room for the REAL scandals and REAL evils that happened both before and during the events of that tragic day.

Evils like the fact that EVERY SINGLE PERSON who breathed the air in Lower Manhattan that day literally was inhaling steel shards and pulverized concrete. That was not smoke or even a benign dust that people were breathing, it was a toxic soup of lung shredding fibers of a collapsed building. Forget the asbestos, most of those who were caught in the toxic cloud will die from silicosis and emphysema long before the mesothelioma will get them.  And worse, no one on the news, or in city government warned any of New Yorkers about this.  They let them continue to breathe in this debris for days without protection.  There was no evacuation of people downwind, no general distribution of gas masks.  Nothing.  They just let them breathe unprotected.

Evils like the fact that that SEVENTY PERCENT of first responders from 9/11 have some sort of illness, that can be directly tied to the events of 9/11.  Even if the city didn’t warn the citizens, you would think they would want to protect the people in their direct employment.  But they didn’t, they let them stand unprotected in billowing clouds of some of the most deadly particulates ever inhaled by humans.

Evils like the fact that our Congress COULDN’T EVEN AGREE on an aid package to help those who sacrificed their health to save a small handful of lives.  It literally took almost 10 years to pass a bill that provided lifetime care for those who were on scene working to save lives.  And in that 10 years, many of the emergency personnel died or went bankrupt while waiting for the government to finally do the right thing.  Even then, it took Jon Stewart, a comedian, to finally shame the Congress into acting.

Evils like the fact the Rudy Giuliani DELIBERATELY GROUNDED the rescue helicopters on 9/11 because he was more concerned about how much they might cost to replace if they were damaged than the lives of the over 2000 people he doomed with that decision.  When the buildings were designed, evacuation above a fire was supposed to occur from the rooftop assisted by special rescue helicopters owned by the city.  That’s why there were helipads up there.  But Giuliani’s decision prevented the evacuation of thousands, all because he was more worried about the replacement costs of helicopters than human life.

Evils like the fact that the World Trade Center, being a government project, was LARGELY EXEMPTED from building code.  The stairs were narrow, few in number, and sheathed in nothing but drywall.  This meant that when the planes hit, the lifeline of every person above the fire was instantly severed.  Even though many people on the upper floors were not hurt in the attack, they were still doomed because there was no way out.

Evils like the fact that in World Trade Center 7, so many safety measures were SCALED BACK or eliminated that the building collapsed after only 8 hours of being on fire.  Yes, it suffered severe damage from the collapse of WTC 1 and 2, but it shouldn’t have fallen, except that the fireproofing was “too costly” and less expensive solutions needed to be found.  Those less expensive solutions depended heavily on a wet fire suppression system that got severed along with all of the water lines in the area when the towers came down.  As a point of fact, 90 West Street, built just after the turn of the 20^th century, and grossly over-engineered, because they were new at high rise construction, burned for 2 full days without any structural failure.  In fact, the floors that didn’t catch fire from the flaming debris falling off the Twin Towers were virtually undamaged.  This doesn’t prove conspiracy to destroy WTC 7, it shows how much more we value money than life.

Evils like the fact that Larry Silverstein fought tooth and nail to BLOCK ANY memorial on the World Trade Center Site because of the amount of revenue it would take out of his pockets.  He said repeatedly that, in his opinion, the greatest memorial that could ever exist for 9/11 would be rebuilding the towers exactly as they were before, and not “wasting space for people to go cry.”  He said that at a conference I attended on the reconstruction.  He followed that up with saying, “people can cry in the cemetery or in their homes, they don’t need to do it on my property.”  As a side note, he held a long term lease on the World Trade Center, but the property belongs to the citizens of New York and New Jersey. 

There is no reason to go around talking about fictional evils when the REAL ones are so horrifying and heartbreaking. If there is a conspiracy, it is to spread fake conspiracies so that no one pays attention to the actual evil, and no one tries to do anything to correct the actual wrongs.  It is to keep people from suing the former mayor for his rapacious decision to not risk his helicopters, to keep people from demanding tall buildings have extreme safety measures to protect the inhabitants, to force the government to actually pay for the health care needed by probably a million or more people exposed to toxic clouds.  The conspiracies keep people focused of fake evil so that they won’t demand real, and expensive, solutions to actual evil.

If you are so concerned about 9/11, stop spreading false narratives and start demanding that people actually DO SOMETHING, DO ANYTHING to help those who still, 16 years later, suffer daily from the attack. Tell you Congressional delegation to approve help for ALL those who were caught in the debris.  Tell the building departments that we must have REAL safety for tall buildings, not just in case of attack, but for any disaster, natural or manmade, that might occur.  Demand that PEOPL start to be valued above profit for shareholders.  Demand REAL change.

Stop tearing out the hearts of those who lost people by telling them their own government killed their loved ones.  Stop spreading a narrative that gives a pass to the real evil in the world.  Do something that will make a difference.  It’s been almost a generation since 9/11, but we can still use it as a catalyst to make the world better, more human, more loving.  

An Open Letter to Trump Snowflakes

Outrage

I have had many people bitch me out because I say I don't respect Donald Trump. They say things like "we endured 8 years of Obama, suck it up buttercup." My response to that. FUCK YOU. Period. This man-child in the White House does not deserve my respect, and he will never get it. This is not a normal president. We have a proto-dictator in the White House, and those of us who see it CANNOT remain silent. Just a short list of his high crimes and misdemeanors"

He colluded with Russia, whether he was successful or not does not matter. He may very well have failed at that jut like he fails at every single thing he does. That does not matter, intent to betray is as much a crime as success in the act. He actively worked with a known adversary of the United States to try to swing an election, asking Russia, on primetime TV to hack his opponent and spread information.

Since then, he has ripped into our traditional allies and NATO, while embracing Putin. He has waffled on mutual defense agreements that date back 70 years. He has turned his back on the countries that have stood by us for decades, and even centuries for some. I was raised in a military family, I have had generation after generation, all the way back to the American Revolution, fight, and sometimes die, for this country. This action is no less than treason, a treason for which he should be hung by the neck until dead, as American Law dictates. I'm surprised Ronald Reagan hasn't risen from the grave over this one.

But that isn't it. He treats women like the only asset they have is beauty. He publicly degrades women, insults them openly. Thanks to his behavior, sexual discrimination against women has risen dramatically. He has publicly tried to shame women with the most vile insults I have ever seen, literally suggesting the reason one anchor was hard on him was because she was on her period, and claiming another was "bleeding badly from a face lift." This sort of behavior is revolting in any context, let alone coming from our supposed president.

He is openly racist. He calls Hispanics "Rapists." He calls for complete bans on Muslims. (Except for ones in countries that he does business in, those are OK, even if they did actually fund terrorism, unlike the countries affected by the travel ban.) He has created an environment in this country where little children are TERRIFIED of their government, and terrified that at any moment their parents could be taken away from them. Hate crimes in this country are exploding. White supremacists are openly marching, and claiming that their day has finally arrived. Blacks are being told by elected leaders to "go back to Africa."

But even the naked racism, sexism and treason isn't enough. He trashes the Constitution, a document which, by that way, one of my ancestors SIGNED. He runs roughshod over checks and balances, referring to the Judiciary as "so called judges." He tells the Senate to end the Filibuster, which is an essential tool to help preserve the rights of the minority against the will of the majority. (And remember, not that long ago, the Republicans WERE that minority being protected.)

But worse, he is treating this country like his own personal wealth machine. He has refused to divest from his companies, refused to distance himself from the day to day running of his companies, refused to stop promoting the "Trump Brand." He is treating the presidency as a money making opportunity, and inspiring others in the government to do much the same. This violation of the Emoluments Clause will complete the transition of our country to a kleptocracy.

He has eviscerated government, handing vast power to his children, people who we didn't elect or confirm through the Senate. Almost all functions of the State Department are now being handled by his children, which is what occurs in banana republics. He has shut down the war crimes office, which sends a signal that the United States is no longer interested in prosecuting those crimes on the world stage. I find it funny that just a decade ago, we started a war in the Middle East because of supposed war crimes, but now can't even be bothered to have an office to investigate them.

He has eliminated the FBI investigation department tasked with looking at Right Wing Terrorists, a group which, according to the FBI itself, has had far more success in attacking Americans than Muslim Terror Groups collectively, and which have killed, in the last 50 years, more people than died on 9/11.

In six short months, he has taken a wrecking ball to this country. Every day, the news is more and more like a reality TV show. Every day, he becomes more and more unhinged, attacking any organization or any person that doesn't kowtow to him. He treats his administration like it is some sort of ratings game. He has even had the audacity to suggest he should be put on Mount Rushmore. I will blow the fucking mountain up myself before allowing that atrocity to happen.

So no, I am not going to treat him with respect. And if you don't like that, you can go fuck yourself. Just like Trump is fucking the country I love.

The Caesar of American Democracy Recast as Kitty Genovese

Endings

Democracy in the United States is either dead or very close to it, bleeding out in a gutter outside the stage door.  That is an inflammatory statement that I’m sure will send many of you sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming “LA LA LA,” probably because of the Cassandra effect.  No one wants to hear this sort of thing, because we are so certain the American system will protect us.

Unfortunately, that is a dangerous denialism, and one that is contributing to our inevitable doom.

And before I get started, I want to clear the air, this is not specifically an anti-Trump piece; Trump is a symptom, not the direct cause.  At best he will simply, as Morris Berman puts it, greatly hasten our end.  The forces at play are significantly larger than one man.  That said, because Trump is so overtly autocratic and dictatorial, these forces that have been hiding beneath the surface of the swamp are now rising like methane gas on a hot summer day.

First, let’s start with the background.  The beginnings of end of democracy in America can be traced back to the tenure of Ronald Reagan, and especially the economic policies he put into operation.  Reagan presided over the first of the great upward wealth redistributions through regressive taxation policy. 

Regressive taxation is defined as taxes that more heavily impact the poor than the wealthy.  A good example of this sort of taxation is the sales tax where a $7.00 tax on a $100.00 purchase is much harder on a poor person than on someone who is wealthy.  The opposite policy, progressive taxation, is exemplified by Income Tax, which increases its rate as the income brackets go up. 

Ronald Reagan slashed the upper tax brackets tax percentage, which under Eisenhower actually approached 90% at the highest levels, while leaving the lower tax rates substantially unchanged.  This meant the Reagan Tax Cut was heavily skewed towards helping the rich, and it can be argued, by hurting the poor.  This single act started tilting the balance of power in America towards the wealthy, and also started us down the road of the massive disparity in net worth at the ends of the spectrum. 

But, it wasn’t the only thing that set the stage.  Reagan eviscerated Unions, which provided a strong counterbalance to management.  He demonized the poor, through the new myth of the “Welfare Queen,” which he used to roll back civil rights, reversing some, but not all, of the gains of the 60s.  More importantly, he solidified the Republican Party into a majority White and Christian party, which set the stage for one party to consistently oppose any real social progress.  And, as we will see later, he reenergized the power of the shadow side of the government that came close to extinction during Watergate.  Iran/Contra was a full fledged rebirth of the so called “deep state,” which most presidents since have nurtured and grown.

The Democrats, however, are not blameless in this subversion of democracy.  In fact, after Reagan, Bill Clinton is the person most responsible for the decline of the American Concept.  Clinton, not Reagan, deregulated the banks and set the stage for the bubble/burst cycle of Shock Economics that left the middle class barely hanging on for dear life.   He finished off, for all intents and purposes, the social safety net that had been established in the 30’s, “ending welfare as we know it.”  He cut the deficit, which is arguably a good thing, but he did it by cutting programs that help people rather than by cutting a bloated and at point, largely unnecessary, Defense Department.

However, these things, at least on the surface, do not demonstrate the end of Democracy.   They show warped priorities, bad ideas, and poor policy decisions.  But if you look behind the curtain you begin to see the actual stabbing of democracy, the Ides of March of the American Ideal, because the murder didn’t occur in the public forum, it happened off stage, and people only have hinted that it even happened at all.

But every murderer leaves behind traces of what they have done, and in this case, the visible knife is the 2016 election.  And don’t misunderstand, the victim probably wouldn’t be any less dead had Hillary won, we simply wouldn’t be seeing the blood dripping off of her hands like we do Trump’s.

In this case, the indicator of the murder can be found in coalitions.

Political science defines the coalition size as one of the markers between “democracies” (including republics and parliamentary systems with a constitutional monarch) and “autocracies” (including oligarchies, dictatorships and theocracies)

In a democracy, the rulers keep power by giving benefits to large segments of the population.  In fact this is a necessity of any government; you need to “reward” your supporters with gifts.  However, to be elected, you need at least a plurality of votes, if not an outright majority.  This means that the giveaways cannot be personally benefiting to the voters, at least not directly.  You need to reward your coalition with policies that please them, be it social programs, stronger militaries, or heavy infrastructure investment.  Usually, the winning coalition is promised a mix of rewards in all three arenas. 

Additionally, it is critical to deliver broad prosperity to your country to remain in power.   The best rewards are meaningless in democracies if they are not paired with a general sense of well-being, or at least an idea that there is hope of things getting better.  This is the message that swept Obama into office in 2008, the idea that he could “fix things.”  Even though things still weren’t great in 2012, he still could offer the promise that things were actually getting better.  In short, he won and remained in office because of the power of a large coalition.

On the other hand, autocracies do not depend on a large coalition, they depend on a small group of the “elect” who help them maintain their power.  Because this group is small, the rewards are much more personal, and generally are in the form of financial remuneration for support.  The larger population is meaningless, at least in terms of maintaining power, as they have no actual say in the government.  In an autocracy, the masses are either distracted through forms of the Roman “bread and circuses” or though such profound oppression that they dare not speak out.  And in a successful autocracy, it is usually a combination of distraction and oppression that mitigate the threat the masses might otherwise pose to the regime.

Putin is a perfect example of this.  The Russian oligarchs have become fabulously rich in his regime, while the masses have been marginalized.  But Putin, unlike Stalin, mixes circuses in with outright threats.  He makes sure the masses are relatively comfortable and well fed, with many of the trappings that they didn’t have during the Soviet rule.  But he also jails (or often kills) opponents with enough regularity that people understand that opposing his rule is a quick way to end up in a modern gulag or dead.

And this sets us up to examine the rapidly expiring body of American Democracy.

While we do not have overt oligarchs (yet) or obvious small coalition policies, if you look at the legislative agenda of the Republican Party, you can see that the large coalition (most of us) being sacrificed for the sake of the small coalition.  Every major piece of Republican legislation benefits a very small group of Americans, generally at the expense of the masses.

First, lets examine the attempt to repeal Obamacare.  While this law did not have majority support until recently, it was a good example of “large coalition” policy.  Although it could have actually gone further, and had fewer rewards for large national corporations, it was audacious in its attempt to provide affordable health care to the majority of Americans.  This is the type of thing a “democratic” leader needs to do to remain in power, give rewards to large swaths of the population.

However, “Trumpcare” does the exact opposite.  Despite the spin that the Republican Party is trying to spread, the ACHA bill does not help large segments of the population.  In fact, according to the CBO, it will cause 24 million people to lose access to insurance.  That is not smart “large coalition” policy, because all of the spin in the world will not matter when stories start to circulate about people dying or going bankrupt from illnesses that Obamacare would have treated.

However, the ACHA does profoundly benefit one group of people, the wealthy, especially the extremely wealthy; basically the people who compose approximately one percent of our population.  That certainly looks like “small coalition” politics.  When Grandma dies despite an early diagnosis of breast cancer or the baby bankrupts his parents because of his childhood leukemia, people are going to get angry.  And as the 24 million people who are going to be hurt the most live in “red states” this SHOULD be electoral suicide for them, and should make most of them run screaming from the bill

But it’s not and they are not.  This is because the large coalition no longer figures into their calculus. 

And all the policies are this way.  The EPA, school lunches, Medicare, Climate Change, National Parks, bank regulation and many other things targeted by the Trump Administration have deep support across the country, and ending them should be completely off the table in a large coalition situation.

However, there is one group that is generally against all of these things, the neo-oligarchs who form the new coalition.  These billionaires throw gouts of money into elections, facilitate the spread of outright lies, and manipulate the rules through gerrymandering and other nefarious techniques to circumvent the will of the people.

And they write articles like this one, which is in the “Liberal” Huffington Post, which claims democracy is not necessarily the best form of government. 

And through these examples, we can see how democracy is being killed.  The large coalition that drove American politics for the last century is rapidly being replaced by the small.

However, it is not entirely hopeless, and there is still a chance that massive blood transfusions can still save the patient.  We were in much the same position at the end of the Gilded Age, when J.P. Morgan felt that he could personally call the shots in this country.  Teddy Roosevelt showed him the truth, that a powerful president, with a broad base of support across the country, could reign in the small coalition that had become convinced that the United States was their personal playground.  A lesson that his nephew, Franklin, also taught to Morgan’s ideological successors, ushering in the largest coalition democracy the world had ever seen via his “New Deal.”

But absent the large coalition of Americans, from both parties, uniting against the real enemy of the neo-oligarchs, democracy, in this country and likely most of the world, is bleeding to death unseen behind the forum.  And at this point, people are watching, and possibly recording the death on their phones, but not actually trying to save her.