Category: Uncategorized

On November 13th, I posted the following in social media: 

Can we just fast forward to January 1st? I think it’s safe to file away 2016 as the worst year in the history of years – and that takes a lot for me to say, considering in 2000 I lost a job, a good friend, and my father…not to mention the dubious election of Incurious George. But this 12 month loop around the sun was a bruiser – we lost Prince, Bowie, Leonard Cohen, quiet indecency…the list goes on. I realize there is a lot to dread in 2017, but wow…I think I’ve had enough of this one. 

It’s become a familiar refrain. 2016 – take your boot off our neck. 

TIME magazine adroitly noted that Donald Trump has been the avatar of this misery for many. I can think of no better representation.

In positive news yesterday, (former) Governor Pat McCrory of North Carolina finally conceded the election of November 8th to his opponent, Democrat Roy Cooper. McCrory actually found the entirely reasonable results of the election questionable, which is curious considering the damage he rendered upon the state in just four short years. Let’s take a quick stroll down Resume Road. 

On Restricting the Right to Vote: In August of this year, McCrory petitioned the Supreme Court to consider reinstating the state’s 2013 Voter ID law in time for last month’s election. In case there was any question about the evidence compelling such a law, let’s check in with the judge who wrote the opinion for the unanimous ruling this past July:  

“The new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision” and impose cures for problems that did not exist,” Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote for the panel. “Thus the asserted justifications cannot and do not conceal the State’s true motivation.”

Here’s a clear illustration of that motivation.

The Bathroom Bill: In another case of conjuring a scratch in search of an itch, McCrory supported the infamous HB2 bill, which forbade the lads from entering the ladies’ restrooms. Disguised as a ‘privacy’ law, the population saw it for what it was – a crass attempt to further marginalize and humiliate cross-gendered citizens of the Tar Heel state. At last count, this bill had cost the state $400 million…

 Duke Energy Coal Ash Spill: As Republican legislators are won to do, McCrory favored a ‘business-friendly’ environment for North Carolina. That’s corporate-speak for loose to little government interference in the way of corporate profit (safety and general well-being be damned). The way this works, as we’ve seen elsewhere, is the neighboring pulmo-Americans are likely to experience poisoned water , exploding factories/towns, or in this case, contamination of the Dan River with toxic sludge, courtesy of the $50 billion corporation’s ruptured pipe. He has been accused by his successor of misleading the public on contamination from the spill, and shielding the company from the full scope of its responsibility for fines and clean-up. If you guessed that McCrory’s employer for the 28 years leading to his run for governorship was Duke Energy, congratulations. You are now free to appraise the coincidence.

The concession was fine news, but it’s hard to understand how he felt justified to question the election results in the first place. If you kick a dog enough times, I believe eventually it will bite – if it’s not able to democratically exorcise you as its master at the ballot box.

UPDATE: for a more detailed analysis of McCrory’s defeat, including constituent support of his initiatives, check here.

 

At any point during the most recent presidential contest, you may have heard references to Godwin’s Law if you spent enough time in the swampy feculence of Facebook comment threads. While I don’t entirely reject the comparison – both men are unhinged sociopaths who seek adoration and fealty – I doubt its effectiveness. It’s a tired analogy and invoking it tends to end the dialogue. If the larger point is that we need to be exceedingly careful in deciding who we hand the keys to, that danger (potentially) looms with the granting of power to the temperamental, then let’s look instead to our own history for precedence. 

When Franklin Roosevelt was first elected to the presidency, his Secretary of Agriculture was a generally affable man named Henry Wallace. In the early years of FDR’s leadership, Wallace enjoyed wide popularity despite being somewhat of an outsider, and joined the presidential ticket as VP for FDR’s historic third term. He didn’t drink, and was far more interested in the ethics of legislation and governance than cocktail parties and backroom glad-handing. He was a peaceful and spiritual man, and this may have played a role in his eventual relegation to historical footnote. As World War II waged on and it became clear FDR would seek and win a fourth term, he was pressured by the more conservative and segregationist wing of his party to dump Wallace off the ticket in favor of Harry Truman. He did so, and after 82 days as VP, FDR died and Truman suddenly found himself in the big chair. By his own admission, Truman stepped into the presidency ill-informed and unprepared. He was known to have a fiery temper, to act decisively and not second guess himself.  

Does this sound familiar?  A combustible personality, tragically illiterate to the expectations of the office, suddenly finds himself in power. My point is not specifically to align Truman with Trump – in fact Truman was generally regarded as an honest and well-intentioned man, who was not ignorant to the presidential politics of the day by choice (his first 82 days were spent outside the Cabinet). Instead I think it serves as a reminder of how the history of the world can change irreparably by way of election. There’s no way of knowing how differently things would have turned out had Henry Wallace remained FDR’s VP, and had stepped in upon the president’s untimely death. But we do know that Wallace opposed the cold war, while supporting labor unions, national health insurance, and women’s equality. He was a thoughtful civil servant who believed in a “common man” approach to global relations. 

We also know that Harry Truman dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing nearly 200,000 men, women, and children. He did so despite the objections of many of his advisors, who believed Japan’s forces were so battered that the hostilities were already essentially over.

Oliver Stone released a ten-part documentary in 2013 that explores forgotten moments from decades past, and he spends some time on this story. As a nation, we would be wise to study our history before casting votes for our future. Instead we respond to fact-free accusations and salacious tweets. We get the government we deserve.

 

There are a handful of recurring themes you’ll see addressed in this corner of the webiverse, and I’m going to take a break from presidential tweet monitoring to expand on one of them. This idea forms the underlying foundation of nearly everything we’ll cover here at DOD, and the remaining concepts we’ll explore in the coming weeks are an outgrowth of this unfortunate reality.

Bedrock Theme #1:

Don Draper famously said “if you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.”

Democrats/Progressives/Leftists – by whatever name you choose to label them – are tragically unskilled at political messaging, and have been for decades. Elections are lost to incurious haircuts when your party’s candidate is fighting thirty years of concentrated codswallop without any organized response, to name a recent example. Half the country is convinced Hillary Clinton is a criminal, despite the failure over three decades of any professional investigator to uncover anything that could stick. A strong narrative was developed, shared, and promoted. No comparable communications machine exists on the left. A few more examples:

• History doesn’t definitively indicate when the word ‘liberal’ was first allowed to be considered an insult, but it gained steam in the 80’s under Ronald ‘Government is not the Solution’ Reagan. If Democrats had accepted the label proudly and said ‘yeah, government ought to help people, and we believe you’ve got to spend a little on programs the benefit the common good’ it would have sent a different message. Instead, they’ve consistently cowered and hid from the label.
• Speaking of Reagan…the left offered no counter-punch when the mythologizing of his presidency began to take shape. Could you imagine if Obama had illegally sold weapons to Iran? Or if Bill Clinton had exhibited any clinical signs of Alzheimer’s? Yet Reagan has nearly been canonized by the right (which continues nearly unchecked), while scandal-free presidencies such as Obama’s get tainted with the false stink of reckless spending.
• Speaking of Reagan (again)…we’ve got 40 years of economic data demonstrating that his ‘trickle-down economics’ have accomplished nothing more than stocking the bar in the average executive’s private jet. After World War II, this country saw the largest expansion of middle class wealth in history, which corresponded with an equitable tax plan. But that all began to change in 1980. The concept with trickle-down was essentially to relieve the tax burden of those at the top (the ‘makers’ – Hi, Mittens!), and they would in turn use those extra funds to create jobs. Instead we’ve now got one-percenters who can’t remember where all their beach homes are located and an impoverished population bloc that consistently votes against its own financial interest. Rising tides may lift all yachts, but…..
• The left allowed Bernie Sanders to get painted as some sort of left-wing radical, when his basic platform was not all that different from what the Democrats ran on for decades – social justice issues and equitable economic policies. But how was he presented? As a tousle-haired socialist, running as a ‘long shot.’

This list is by no means comprehensive.

The left allowed the goal posts to move more and more to the right; surrendering to the relentless talk radio communication machine and the barrage of coordinated book-cooking. They never mounted an effective or organized counter-strategy, and the narrative was lost. There is hope, now that President Inevitable has his finger on the feather, that Republicans will start to lose their hold on message-control. If the DNC, who will soon announce a new chair, is smart enough to coordinate it, they can mount a high-grade communications campaign and regain the ear of middle-America.

I’m going to slip down to Roger Sterling’s office while I wait for them to figure that out…

 

Welcome to the blog!  

This country clearly experienced some sort of dissociative event earlier this month, and now we communally face four years of fact-fighting and Twitter tantrums as a result.  We can’t know at this point what his actual governance will look like, but early signs suggest continued nods to our ruling class and a hanging fog of cloudy nepotism (just as he promised, right working class whites?). The mission here at DOD is to share information on this spectacle, occasionally evangelize, and invite you to contribute.  

Our President-elect won on a campaign promise of making the country “great again” (you may have heard). Setting aside the lazy emptiness of that platitude, I would ask you to consider as you visit DOD what it is that makes America great. There’s no doubt that our merit-based system bestows any individual with the right skills and commitment the opportunity to make Trumploads of money or achieve peak levels of success. On paper, that system is designed to extend that same tabula rasa to each of us, regardless of the circumstance of our birth (see Obama, Barack H.). That possibility is – in a word – great. But the country’s esteem must extend beyond the unrestricted capacity to earn or ladder-climb it affords us. It’s a topic that will get revisited often here at DOD, but today I’ll simply suggest we remember our unique ability to make good government. I acknowledge that we’ve abused this ability, and our system has been broken for quite some time. But each of us has a voice, and the opportunity to organize, influence, and educate. We get to determine who represents us and drafts our legislation, and to hold them accountable to do so equitably. My father used to say that those who didn’t vote relinquished the right to complain. Perhaps we’ve entered a new phase in history, where our responsibility extends beyond an annual trip to the ballot box.  

While it will always be fun to highlight the President-elect’s ridiculous daily assertions and/or the embittered white victims  he’s emboldened, DOD won’t be all politics all the time. There will be levity. There will be snark. There may be gratuitous pictures of food.  For example, I made phillies last night:

So good. 

Anyway, please come back. These are hard times.  Let’s do it together.