The Reality-Based Community

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

Winston Churchill on Senator Cruz’s endorsement of Donald Trump

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Senator Cruz has announced that he will vote for the man who had, as the New York Times‘ Matt Flegenheimer noted,

…questioned Mr. Cruz’s eligibility for the presidency, citing his birth in Canada; seemed to disparage the appearance of Mr. Cruz’s wife, Heidi, in a Twitter post; and insinuated that Mr. Cruz’s father, Rafael, was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Then there was the Trump-branded nickname: “Lyin’ Ted.”

As it happens, Winston Churchill offered a cogent analysis of Senator Cruz’s announcement many years ago:

I remember when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum’s Circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit on the programme which I most desired to see was the one described as “The Boneless Wonder”. My parents judged that the spectacle would be too demoralising and revolting for my youthful eye and I have waited fifty years, to see the The Boneless Wonder…..

I have similarly seen the boneless wonder today. To coin a phrase, it’s sad to see someone–even Senator Cruz–debase himself in this way. I hope and expect that public figures who support Donald Trump will be remembered the way we remember public figures who supported segregation or Joseph McCarthy.

Trump’s Kremlin connection: the other shoe(s) drop

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Mike Isikoff is about as far from being a Clinton-lover as it’s possible to be on an outpatient basis: he was last seen chasing down a semen-stained dress. But today he broke a blockbuster story: tracing the activities in Moscow of Carter Page, an otherwise utterly obscure person who was nonetheless one of the five people Donald Trump listed as “foreign policy advisers” to his campaign.

It appears that, after Trump named him as an adviser and just before the Republican convention, Page met in Moscow not only with an oligarch on the sanctions list but also with the official apparently in charge of Russian efforts to interfere in U.S. elections, including both the activities of the RT and Sputnik News and the hackers who broke into the DNC emails and released the results to WikiLeaks timed to create maximum heartache for Clinton.

Also today, ABC blew a major hole in Trump’s denial of major economic ties to Russia: his estimated take was in the “hundreds of millions of dollars,” some of it from the Russian mafia. His proposal to put his assets in a “blind trust” run by his children doesn’t pass the giggle test:  that trust wouldn’t even need glasses.

Add these to the list: Trump’s threat to renege on our NATO treaty commitments and not support our allies in the face of Russian aggression; Trump’s expressed admiration for Putin as “a stronger leader” than Obama;  hiring Paul Manafort, who worked to elect Putin’s puppet Yanukovych as President of Ukraine; his having foreign policy advisers like Gen. Michael Flynn, who takes money to go on Russian propaganda channel RT and compares it to CNN; Trump’s invitation to Putin to hack Clinton’s emails; and Trump’s astounding assurance that Putin wasn’t “going into Ukraine” two years after Russia had annexed Crimea and while Russian troops (under thin disguise as “volunteers”) were still shooting up the Donbass; and Trump’s promise to “look at” lifting the economic sanctions imposed on Russia after the annexation of Crimea.

Since the United States is not at war with Russia, what Trump is up to does not meet the Constitutional definition of “treason.” But since U.S. and Russian interests directly conflict, and since the Russian military has engaged in risky provocations such as buzzing U.S. Navy vessels in the Baltic, there is no reason not to call what Trump is doing – most of all, his invitation to an adversary to intervene on his behalf in our elections – disloyal. That’s the first time in U.S. history (unless you want to count George McClellan in 1864) that such a word could be  accurately used about a major-party candidate for President of the United States.

And yet the Republican Party – including legitimate war heroes such as Bob Dole and John McCain – is unifying behind a man not just obviously unfit to lead this country but not even loyal to it. That should give you some idea how deep the rot goes.

Footnotes

  1. With his usual impeccable timing, Ted Cruz chose today to endorse the man he previously said was unfit to be President.
  2. In related news, the Russian newspaper Kommersant reports that former KGB Col. Putin plans to reanimate his old outfit by recombining foreign and domestic intelligence agencies. Instead of doing so under the KGB name, however, Putin proposes to revert to name the outfit carried when Lavrenti Beria ran it for Stalin: the Ministry of State Security, or MGB. No word yet on plans to re-open “mental hospitals” in which to torture dissidents. But have patience.

Black lives …

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Headline:

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– Washington Post, September 12 [the incident dates to May 6]

I’m too flabbergasted to comment intelligently. Can readers help me understand wtf is going on? By “going on”, I mean the clear pattern of American police shooting African-American men and boys who do not in fact pose a significant threat to their lives or those of third parties. Not bad judgement calls, but massive and egregious errors. The police chief’s firing of Steven Mader implies that killing armed African-American men is his firm SOP, whether or not they represent a deadly threat.

European cops kill people by mistake too. London cops killed the harmless Brazilian turnstile-jumper de Menezes in the panicky aftermath of the bus bombings. French cops have been known to shoot young Arabs who don’t stop at roadside checkpoints, and suspects “fleeing the scene of the crime”. British cops run over pedestrians in high-speed car chases. These bavures (French: “droolings”) are not regarded as SOP and get investigated.

A suggestion for Barack Obama. The fired officer in West Virginia, ex-Marine Steven Mader, read a dangerous situation correctly – Ronald Williams had a gun at his side which was in fact unloaded. (He was sadly killed by the backup officers who followed Mader to the scene). He looks the kind of level-headed person the Secret Service or FBI could use. A phone call would send a good message.

Help me out here.

[Note: an earlier version of this post included a second headline claiming police shot a young black mother in Atlanta in an altercation over her breastfeeding her baby. This story, according to Snopes, is a fabrication. I thank my commenter to letting me know, and apologise for my credulity. This is also shocking in a different way. Made-up stories apparently reinforcing a true narrative tend to discredit it, and objectively reinforce denial. The truth is quite bad enough.]

Weekend Film Recommendation: Point Blank

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I am giving some lectures in London this week, so I am re-running my 2013 recommendation of one of my favorite of the films I have reviewed here at RBC.

lee-marvin-in-point-blank22 At the right is one of the many memorable shots (accompanied by even more memorable sound!) in this week’s film recommendation, Director John Boorman’s outstanding 1967 US debut film: Point Blank. Point Blank weds the style and techniques of 1960s experimentalism with the traditional gangster/crime melodrama, with unique and unforgettable results.

The film begins with a literal bang, pulling us into a world of brutality and revenge. And then a strange, almost unbelievable story begins as a criminal named Walker who by all rights should be dead (Lee Marvin, in a powerhouse performance) somehow overcomes his fate and launches a ferocious, violence-filled pursuit of his faithless wife (Sharon Acker, also very good) and a former navy buddy (John Vernon, in a strong cinema debut) who betrayed him during a stick-up. He is aided by the mysterious Mr. Yost (Keenan Wynn) who appears at odd moments to provide advice, speaking to no one but Walker. Is Yost a ghost? Is what we are seeing all the fantasy of a dying man, or is it real? I’ve seen this film multiple times and I still can’t decide; I also can’t stop re-watching this magnetic piece of cinematic art.

1280_point-blankAdding to the atmosphere is radical use of color that recalls Red Desert. Watch carefully the progression of monochromatic scenes in this film (at left is one of the “yellow” scenes with screen siren Angie Dickinson playing Walker’s sister-in-law), which resonate with Walker’s emotions and the state of his quest. Distorted microphone effects, camera shots and the like are also used to tremendous effect, as are dreamlike scenes without any dialogue (or in one case, only half of a conversation, an amazing improvisation by Marvin). Phillip Lathrop contributes many moody, lonely camera shots that further accentuate the film’s tone. The story, which was based on a Donald Westlake novel, also pushes the boundaries of the period, with graphic violence and the strong suggestion of a sexual link between the two male leads.

The studio executives hated the movie that their young director had created, but Lee Marvin used his enormous star power to ram it down their throats as is. There was clearly more to the man than his drunken brawler image. I can’t say enough good things about what he and Boorman created…don’t miss this one, and have fun analyzing it afterwards!

p.s. Intriguing interview with Boorman about his career available here.

Helping those affected by community violence

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I attended a lovely event for Bright Star Community Outreach last night. The event commemorates the launch of a new Turn Center to provide trauma-informed services. Congratulations to Pastor Chris Harris and his colleagues in this important effort. Congratulations also to my University of Chicago Medical Center and Northwestern Hospital colleagues who have taken lead roles in this partnership, particularly my SSA colleague Deborah Gorman Smith and her team, who lead the effort in our school.

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The event was held at Martin Luther King College Prep at 45th St. and South Drexel Boulevard in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood. Bronzeville is by no means Chicago’s toughest neighborhood. But it’s tough enough. Many in the audience last night had lost children, siblings, partners, parents, or other loved-ones to gun violence. Hadya Pendleton was only the most well-known of the precious people who have been lost.

This memorial to Ms. Pendleton may be the first thing that catches your eye as you enter the school’s front door. Pardon my poor photographic composition. You get the point there.

Cable TV pundits commonly charge that African-Americans communities are reluctant to acknowledge or face the high rate of “black-on-black crime” occurring in Chicago and across the United States.Remember this picture when you hear such claims. That charge displays the insulting psychological distance between these pundits and the communities they are discussing. Nothing could be further from the truth. No topic is more widely-discussed than the incredible toll of gun violence among Chicago youth.

People are desperate to make progress in reducing the violence. I hope and expect that the new Turn Center will be helpful in this effort. During the ceremony, Pastor Harris commented: “Don’t talk about the violence until you are doing something to reduce this violence.”Indeed.

More pics below the fold. Those who wish to donate can do so here. Continue Reading…

Threading the needle: a shiny conspiracy theory

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Just when Hillary Clinton’s polls start to weaken the press suddenly discovers that Trump has been lying and the taboo against using the word vanishes.

Here’s a conspiracy theory for you. The plutocrat owners of the Republican Party don’t want Donald Trump to win. They know he is a nutcase, quite capable of ruining them in a financial panic, and are not giving him significant amounts of money. But they really, really don’t want to lose control of the Senate and especially the House, which writes tax legislation. So they desperately want to limit Trump’s losing margin to stay in the safe zone for Congress. So orders went out to go easy with Clinton on Phlegmghazi and start pushback on Trump’s birther nonsense.

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Like all good conspiracy theories, this is nonsense wrapped round a grain of truth. There is no Plutocratintern: but the club of politically active billionaires is not so big that they don’t know each other. The dilemma is real to them.

It is pretty unlikely that newspaper and TV owners are phoning in day-to-day instructions to the underlings like Stalin to Pravda. It would leak. Rupert Murdoch used to do that sort of thing, but he has handed over day-to-day management of the empire to his less engaged sons. The impact of media bias is also overrated, simply because it is so visible to political junkies. Attempts at fine-tuning the bias would be lost in the noise.

It is a better fit to campaign finance. The Kochs are putting all their donations into downticket races. They are not alone. The millions Trump said Adelson had promised him have not materialised. Some downticket candidates have benefited a lot. Rob Portman, GOP Senate candidate in Ohio, has massively outspent his Democratic challenger Ted Strickland, whom outside donors have now given up on.

needleHow effective could the posited threading-the-needle strategy be? It could just work for the Senate, where strong candidates like Portman can buck a national swing. But how many Portmans are there? Even today, Sam Wang’s modal estimate is a 50-50 Senate, giving effective control to the Democrats. House representatives have much less individual visibility, and voting tends (dixit Wang) to closely follow national swings. Keeping GOP control of the House depends on keeping Clinton’s margin of victory down, which is not really in the plutocrats’ control.

The other worry for the Plutocratintern must be the GOTV operation. American readers please correct me if I’m wrong, but GOTV is normally the responsibility of the Presidential candidate, who can rouse enthusiasm and volunteers in a way that Congressional candidates rarely can. Trump’s crackpot belief that he can do without a field operation therefore leaves House GOP candidates in competitive races stranded, facing the formidable Clinton machine (including at least three RBC bloggers in superhero Lurex catsuits).

2-for-20-green-shield-and-crest-teeThere is no recent precedent for the current gross asymmetry. All other recent American elections have featured two well-funded professional operations mostly cancelling each other out: Chelsea versus Manchester United. 2016 is more Barcelona against Plymouth Argyle. This will be the election when the importance of GOTV is tested.

BTW, Wang’s day job is neuroscience. He has an unusual post up from that perspective on the persistence of belief in provable lies like birtherism. My takeaway: the debunker of a lie like “Clinton started it” must have a true replacement narrative. Fortunately in this case it’s much less complex than the origins of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in a well-concealed fabrication by the Okhrana, the very efficient Tsarist secret police. It took 60 years before the full story was uncovered.

Trump’s brutal rhetoric threatens years of bipartisan progress in crime policy

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David Dagan, Steve Teles, and I have a piece in the Washington Post‘s PostEverything section today:

In the past decade, two major movements for criminal justice reform have arisen: the push against mass incarceration and Black Lives Matter’s mobilization against police brutality. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has attacked both, arguing that the movements would touch off a new crime epidemic.

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He’s wrong. The research we have shows that we know how to fight crime without using more handcuffs and prison cells.

We didn’t always have the evidence we do now. When crime began to spike in the United States in the 1960s, experts were caught flat-footed. Most criminologists thought crime was driven by sociological factors, beyond the influence of the police. They had little to say about how prevention measures short of fundamental economic, educational and social reforms might curb the violence.

This was hardly a message politicians could take to their voters. So legislators came up with their own…

More here.