USA Politics (redux)

[milk]

Urban and minority populations are now underclasses whose wishes are systematically thwarted.

This is a losing political message. I fear for where this leads (the return of trump). Democrats need to give up on this identity oppression obsession and craft policies for all working people who are all affected by long-term trends. There's a grand strategy that would guarantee Democratic victory: Vow to close the borders (and mean it) and reduce immigration temporarily, give up pushing amnesty in the near term, veer away from identity politics and woke culture that aims to deconstruct everybody (emphasize fairness, harmony, equality - not equity, and reformed but strong policing), promise no more nation-building while taking a strong line against China, focus on decent wages, healthcare, reducing costs for higher education and promoting trade schools and community colleges. Keep environmentalism though it's a tough sell (have some conviction).   
This is a winning strategy. Biden should probably not run again. Democrats must dump Harris and look for a mainstream, but not corporate, candidate. Maybe a Dem from a red state (but not WV or Arizona please. Make it a governor maybe).

[Karl Henning]

The narrow nature of the self-defense inquiry is one reason people can escape responsibility for killings that are deeply wrongful in every moral sense. Take, for instance, cases in which bad cops create danger and confusion through incompetence or excessive aggression, and then they respond to the danger or confusion they created by using deadly force.

Kyle Rittenhouse Is No Hero

[Karl Henning]

The U.S. drug epidemic reached another terrible milestone Wednesday when the government announced that more than 100,000 people had died of overdoses between April 2020 and April 2021. It is the first time that drug-related deaths have reached six figures in any 12-month period.

[Karl Henning]

'QAnon shaman' sentenced to 41 months for role in Capitol riot

By Tom Jackman

Today at 12:07 p.m. EST

Jacob Chansley, whose brightly painted face, tattooed torso and horned cap became a visual icon of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, was sentenced Wednesday to 41 months in prison by a federal judge in Washington. His lawyer had asked the judge to impose a sentence of time already served, basically the entire 10 months since the insurrection, during which Chansley attracted more attention for demanding an organic diet while in jail and giving an interview to "60 Minutes."

The sentence of roughly 3 ½ years is equal to the longest yet handed down to a Capitol rioter. Of the roughly 130 people who have pleaded guilty so far, only 16 have admitted to felonies, and Chansley is the fourth felon to be sentenced. The other three received terms of eight, 14 and last week a man who punched a Capitol police officer also received 41 months.

Chansley, 34, was photographed parading shirtless through the halls of the Capitol with a six-foot spear, howling through a bullhorn and then sitting in the vice president's chair in the Senate. He became known as the "QAnon Shaman" because of his appearances at gatherings of the "QAnon" conspiracy theorists and his Shamanic religious beliefs.

Prosecutors quoted Chansley offering a prayer while sitting at the dais of the Senate, thanking God for "filling this chamber with patriots that love you. ... Thank you for allowing us to get rid of the communists, the globalists, and the traitors within our government."

Chansley's "now-famous criminal acts made him the public face of the Capitol riot," prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo. With a suggested sentencing range of 41 to 51 months, the government asked for the maximum 51 months.

Chansley's lawyer, Albert S. Watkins, argued that his client had been sufficiently penalized by his 10 months in jail.

"Mr. Chansley is in dire need of mental health treatment," Watkins wrote in his sentencing memo. He said that a psychological evaluation earlier this year found that Chansley suffered from schizotypal personality disorder, anxiety and depression.

Watkins asked U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth to go below the sentencing guidelines range and release his client, due in part to Chansley's "mental health infirmities of significance."

Chansley spoke to the judge for about 30 minutes, repeatedly invoking his spiritual guides of Jesus Christ and Mohandas Gandhi. "Gandhi would allow his loyalty to God and truth to guide him to accepting responsibility," Chansley said. "I was wrong for entering the Capitol. I have no excuse. No excuse whatsoever. My behavior was indefensible."

Chansley's lengthy comments, in which he praised Lamberth's military service as a lawyer in the judge advocate corps, seemed to convince the judge that he had made significant changes. "I think your remarks are the most remarkable that I've heard in 34 years" as a judge, Lamberth said. "I think you are genuine in your remorse. Parts of those remarks are akin to the kinds of things that Martin Luther King would have said."

But Lamberth said he could not reduce Chansley's sentence below the recommended guidelines because "What you did here was horrific," the judge said, "as you now concede. And obstructing the government as you did is the type of conduct that is so serious that I cannot justify a downward departure. I do think the minimum end of the guidelines is what you've earned because you've done everything right from the time that you started, and you've certainly done everything good today, convinced the court that you're a new person."

Chansley, who lives in Phoenix, had developed a following on various social media platforms in the months before Jan. 6, and posted messages such as, "We shall have no real hope to survive the enemies arrayed against us until we hang the traitors lurking among us," prosecutors said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kimberly L. Paschall noted that Chansley and Watkins had frequently claimed that his protests were peaceful. Reading from his social media posts, Paschall said: "That is not peaceful. It's a call to battle."

Chansley drove from Phoenix to Washington and was first spotted outside the Capitol at 1:50 p.m. on Jan. 6, according to court records. There was ample photo and video documentation of Chansley's movements, wearing a fur vest, carrying an American flag tied to a pole with a spear at the tip, and using a bullhorn. Paschall played some of it for Lamberth on Wednesday. Prosecutors said Chansley was among the first rioters inside the Capitol on Jan. 6. He also was the first one indicted.

Chansley used his bullhorn "to rile up the crowd and demand that lawmakers be brought out," prosecutors said. At 2:52 p.m., he entered the Senate gallery and began screaming obscenities, one of the videos showed.

He then gained access to the Senate floor, took the seat that Vice President Mike Pence had recently vacated, took pictures of himself and declared that Pence was a traitor. "It's only a matter of time. Justice is coming!" Chansley wrote on a paper on the dais, prosecutors said.

"What he wrote there," Lamberth said, "is a big problem."

Chansley was inside the Capitol for more than an hour, prosecutors said. He then drove back to Phoenix and gave an interview to NBC News in which he said, "The fact that we had a bunch of our traitors in office hunker down, put on their gas masks and retreat into their underground bunker, I consider that a win." When he learned that the FBI was looking for him, he called the bureau and told them he was glad he sat in Pence's chair, and called him "a child-trafficking traitor."

While in jail, Chansley spoke to "60 Minutes+" and told them he was allowed into the Capitol by the police, and that he was merely intending "to bring divinity, to bring God back into the Senate."

Chansley pleaded guilty in September to one count of obstruction of an official proceeding, namely the counting of the electoral votes in the presidential election. The charge has a maximum 20-year prison sentence, but Chansley had no prior criminal history and was not accused of committing any violence on Jan. 6.

In arguing for a 51-month sentence, Paschall wrote in her sentencing memo that "the peaceful transition of power in our nation was disrupted by a mob of thousands. ... And this defendant was, quite literally, their flag-bearer."

Paschall told the judge Wednesday that "deterrence weighed heavily in the government's recommendations here." She said prosecutors wanted to send the message, "Don't think the justice system will sit idly by while you attempt to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power."

Watkins argued that "general deterrence does not justify a sentence in excess of time served."

He cited cases in his memo in which judges imposed sentences below the recommended guidelines because of the defendant's health conditions.

He noted that while Chansley was on active duty in the Navy, a psychological evaluation was done in 2006 which diagnosed him with "mental health infirmities," but that was never revealed to Chansley. On Jan. 6, his actions, appearance and Shamanic chants "were obvious indicia of mental health vulnerabilities," Watkins wrote.

"He made himself the image of the riot," Lambert told Watkins on Wednesday.

Watkins agreed.

"Jake is a horrific image indeed," Watkins said. "This assault on democracy was repugnant."

Lamberth also issued the other 41-month sentence in the Jan. 6 cases, to Scott Kevin Fairlamb for assault on a police officer.

"You didn't slug anybody," the judge told Chansley, "but what you did here was actually obstruct the functioning of the whole government."

[Herman]

He noted that while Chansley was on active duty in the Navy, a psychological evaluation was done in 2006 which diagnosed him with "mental health infirmities," but that was never revealed to Chansley. On Jan. 6, his actions, appearance and Shamanic chants "were obvious indicia of mental health vulnerabilities," Watkins wrote.

Increasingly I'm getting the feeling that there are a lot of mental health issues in this political radicalism, fanned by the internet, that plays into people's fears, anxieties and anger.

[Karl Henning]

Increasingly I'm getting the feeling that there are a lot of mental health issues in this political radicalism, fanned by the internet, that plays into people's fears, anxieties and anger.

Yes.

[T. D.]

Increasingly I'm getting the feeling that there are a lot of mental health issues in this political radicalism, fanned by the internet, that plays into people's fears, anxieties and anger.

Quite possible, but I'm inclined not to read overly much into a statement made by a defense attorney (who will of course claim anything). Interesting question is why so many presumably sane/intelligent people buy into the utterances of obvious wingnuts.

[André]

Quite possible, but I'm inclined not to read overly much into a statement made by a defense attorney (who will of course claim anything). Interesting question is why so many presumably sane/intelligent people buy into the utterances of obvious wingnuts.

It could be that these people are not quite sane, having their own mental problems rooted in a sense of alienation. For decades and decades an idealized picture of America as a land of opportunities, justice and power has been ingrained through school, TV, politicians etc. They have trouble adjusting to the reality of a fast-changing, money-obsessed society that is anything but fair.

[arpeggio]

I do not know what to think anymore.

The right claims that the election was stolen.

The left is claiming that Republicans are trying to destroy our democracy.

[SimonNZ]

The second one.

Consider the sources.

[amw]

The left is largely staying out of this considering that we never believed the USA was a "democracy" in the first place, and have no interest in "redeeming" it or whatever, only in seeing it be destroyed by whatever means possible.

From this perspective, it is obvious that Democrats and Republicans are collaborating; neither party wishes to actually govern in any meaningful sense. Normally any official governance can be avoided because government will be divided in some sense (one party will control some institutions and the other will control others, etc), allowing everything to be handled via corporate policy, local police departments, and of course the military. At the moment the Democrats accidentally seized control of both the executive and legislature, so they are having to rely on one or two designated villains (Manchin, Sinema, etc.) to prevent them from taking any action, while they wait for Republicans to gain back the legislature in 2022—a goal they entirely support and are working towards.

The purpose of both parties is not to pass laws (all the freshman Republican state legislators elected over the last decade have found this out to their peril—they pass laws which instantly prove unpopular, are struck down in court, and lead to phenomena such as Kentucky, Kansas and Louisiana electing Democratic governors), or even to win elections; it is to serve as lifelong sinecures for political science graduates who, if they are successful enough at fundraising and have few enough principles, may eventually be rewarded with a safe seat in the House/Senate in perpetuity—and for those who lose elections, lucrative lobbying careers, again in perpetuity. As for the politics, it's almost entirely aesthetics: the parties invent concepts such as Critical Race Theory or Russian Interference In Our Elections, attribute them to the opposite party, and people vote accordingly.

That's the left take on things in any case. People on the centre-left and centre-right do have various beliefs about the possibilities of engaging within the electoral system but these are largely unsupported by reality.

[Fëanor]

The left is largely staying out of this considering that we never believed the USA was a "democracy" in the first place, and have no interest in "redeeming" it or whatever, only in seeing it be destroyed by whatever means possible.
...

I've been listening to "We're a republic, not a democracy" BS from Americans for decades.  But the question whether the USA is democratic, not whether it's a democracy vs. republic.

To simplify just a little, the USA is neither a democracy nor democratic, at least not at the Federal level.

At the inception of the nation, the states saw the Federal government as their "creature";  they intended to keep it that way and have largely succeeded.

[Karl Henning]

In Charlottesville trial, jurors learn to decode the secret slang of white supremacists

By Ellie Silverman

Today at 6:00 a.m. EST

CHARLOTTESVILLE — The jury in a federal courtroom listened as a longtime researcher of far-right movements parsed the style guide of the infamous neo-Nazi website, the Daily Stormer.

"The tone of the site should be light. Most people are not comfortable with material that comes across as vitriolic, raging, nonironic hatred. The unindoctrinated should not be able to tell if we are joking or not," according to a guide section titled "Lulz" — an acronym for laugh out loud. Continuing with a derogatory term for Jews, it read, "This is obviously a ploy and I actually do want to gas k---s. But that's neither here nor there."

This evidence, introduced in an ongoing civil trial against organizers of the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, appeared to highlight a sinister strategy expert witness Pete Simi was trying to teach the jurors: the ways in which white supremacists employ humor to shield their calls for violence, in an effort to render them legally ambiguous.

As jurors consider the plaintiffs' accusation that the rally organizers conspired to foment racial violence, they have been presented with a trove of evidence that includes messages laced with slurs, memes of using cars to run over protesters and calls for cracking skulls. Over the past four weeks, plaintiffs' attorneys have tried to make their case by carefully breaking down the jokes and catch-phrases favored by far-right extremists, in an effort to teach jurors how to decode white supremacists' secret vocabulary of hate.

Whether the jury takes this evidence literally or views it as exaggeration is the crux of many arguments in this trial.

The plaintiffs' attorneys have called in experts to help the jury understand what is sinister about the numbers 1488 — which refer to "14 words," a popular white supremacist slogan, and "Heil Hitler," because "H" is the eighth letter of the alphabet. They have translated the phrase "RaHoWa," which may sound like gibberish to outsiders but among hate groups stands for "racial holy war." And they explained how a question that seems innocuous — "Did you see Kyle? — is actually a play-on-words for the Nazi salute "Sieg Heil."

White supremacist movements use "lots of insider language and codes and specific references that would require kind of an insider's knowledge," Simi said in the courtroom. "They can talk about violence, they can advocate for violence, and then say, 'Well, it was just a joke.'"

Deborah Lipstadt, a renowned Holocaust scholar, testified about the ways antisemitism is a bedrock of white supremacist ideology and one that was featured during the Unite the Right rally weekend, notably at the Friday-night torch march where a mob chanted "Jews will not replace us!"

She said the ideology behind these chants come from the "Great Replacement Theory," the conspiratorial idea of an engineered demographic replacement of White Christians that is frequently repeated by right-wing pundits such as Fox News's Tucker Carlson. In her testimony, Lipstadt called the chants at the torch march "a call to battle."

Heidi Beirich — a co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism and former director of intelligence at the Southern Poverty Law Center — said the subculture of extremism on display in this trial illustrates how the brazen racism seen on the streets of Charlottesville four years ago emboldened and radicalized racists across the country, including those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.

"It shows you how much the online world has pervaded the offline world," Beirich, who has been following the trial, said in an interview with The Post. "The fact is, I wish more Americans knew what the jurors are hearing right now."

Attorneys for the plaintiffs — nine people who allege physical harm and emotional distress that weekend — and defendants are expected to begin their closing arguments Thursday.

The lawsuit backed by Integrity First for America, a civil-rights nonprofit organization, is underpinned by a more-than-150-year-old statute designed to protect newly emancipated Black people from the Ku Klux Klan.

Throughout this trial, defendants have argued they were exercising their First Amendment rights in Charlottesville. Inside the courtroom, they have used the n-word, repeated slurs for Jewish people and openly praised Adolf Hitler.

And they have dismissed calls for violence as hyperbolic jokes. Jason Kessler, a defendant and lead organizer of the Unite the Right rally, testified that many of the messages presented in court were simply "s--tposting," or posting something provocative to get a rise out of someone. Defendants blamed the mayhem of that weekend on counterprotesters they labeled "antifa," or anti-fascists, and police inaction.

Experts and attorneys for the plaintiffs say this deflection is part of a playbook to avoid accountability.

"Plausible deniability, just like mace and shields and flag poles, was a tool of this conspiracy," plaintiffs' attorney Karen Dunn said in court. "Plausible deniability is when you set up a situation in such a way that you can claim later that you had nothing to do with it."

Violence cloaked in humor

In the courtroom, plaintiffs' attorneys played a podcast recording with the voice of defendant Christopher Cantwell, who became widely known as the "crying Nazi" following an emotional video posted when a warrant was issued for his arrest.

It was an episode from Aug. 7, 2017, days before Cantwell joined hundreds of white supremacists in Charlottesville for a rally that turned deadly when a neo-Nazi sped his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer. James A. Fields Jr., who was sentenced to life in prison for the car-ramming, is also a defendant in this civil suit.

"I'm not even a Hitler-ite, but I'm like 'Okay, let's f-----g gas the k---s and have a race war,'" Cantwell said. He then laughed.

"Can you explain, professor, what's going on in that clip?" plaintiffs' attorney Roberta Kaplan asked Simi.

Simi pointed to the eerie juxtaposition of Cantwell's laughter after his call for mass murder: "I can't tell you how many times over the last 25 years I've seen similar instances where violent references, violent rhetoric is ... cloaked with some reference to humor."

Cantwell has pleaded guilty in a separate case to two counts of assault and battery stemming from his use of pepper spray during the Unite the Right rally weekend. He is also serving a 41-month federal prison sentence after being convicted of extortion and threat charges.

Samantha Froelich, whose testimony was played in a deposition video by the plaintiffs' attorneys, joined the far-right group Identity Evropa for about a year to appease her boyfriend. She explained how during that time, she often saw extreme concepts disguised as jokes to make them more palatable — and as a way to have plausible deniability.

"They'll say that it's just edgy humor, but it's really just a way to push the envelope and say as heinous of things or as extreme ideas as they can and get away with it," Froelich said. "If someone were to call you out on it and say, 'Hey, that's really disgusting ideology,' you could say, 'It's just a joke. We don't mean it.'"

'Wolves in sheep's clothing'

The jurors have seen two versions of Richard Spencer in court — the white supremacist spewing a racist tirade after the Unite the Right rally in a secretly recorded audio clip and the suit-and-tie-wearing defendant who claims his beliefs are simply "controversial."

"What they say and do privately behind closed doors is going to tell us a lot about their true motives and plans in this case," Dunn, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys, told the jurors.

Simi and fellow sociologist Kathleen Blee worked with the plaintiffs to review defendants' messages and concluded they utilized a common white supremacist movement tactic, including this "front stage" and "backstage" behavior, "doublespeak" and a "new-age communication platform."

The Unite the Right rally organizers' and attendees' planning messages presented in court come from a leaked trove from the group-chat platform Discord and other communications.

During his testimony, Simi read an email between Kessler and Jeff Schoep, the former leader of the National Socialist Movement, which at one time was the largest neo-Nazi group in the country

"The number one thing that you guys can do is show up in plain clothes without flags or 'white supremacist' symbols ready to participate in and protect our event. There will be a thousand or more antifa and s--tlibs eager to start violence."

Schoep replied: "So just keep in mind that we have ceased use of the swastika as of November 2016 so you will see swastikas in some of the videos which were filmed below before."

Simi said this was a straightforward example of that "front stage, backstage" behavior: The National Socialist Movement did not stop using a swastika as their symbol because they disavowed it, Simi testified, but because of the optics.

Defendants and their followers also spoke about ways to instigate fights with their enemies in Charlottesville in a way that would allow them to claim self-defense, according to evidence presented by the plaintiffs' attorneys.

Froelich also testified to this, explaining how during her time with Identity Evropa, optics "were paramount."

Her boyfriend, who worked at an exterminator company, shared with her how he wished he was killing Jewish people instead of cockroaches.

In public, Identity Evropa members had strict instructions to "speak with eloquence" and avoid racial slurs and Nazi references, Froelich testified in a deposition.

She was told to wear dresses, look feminine and avoid unnatural hair colors.

"They wanted to be presentable," Froelich said. "It was like being wolves in sheep's clothing."

[Herman]

It could be that these people are not quite sane, having their own mental problems rooted in a sense of alienation. For decades and decades an idealized picture of America as a land of opportunities, justice and power has been ingrained through school, TV, politicians etc. They have trouble adjusting to the reality of a fast-changing, money-obsessed society that is anything but fair.

Indeed. At the root of all this anger and anxiety is this disappointment that life is just not that great all the time. It's one of the reasons why there are so few teenagers and adolescents among the angry mobs. Usually very young people are easily mobilized. However, young people have yet to experience the midlife crisis that's feeding these protests.

[Karl Henning]

Indeed. At the root of all this anger and anxiety is this disappointment that life is just not that great all the time.

Grow up, for Mercy's sake!

[Fëanor]

Indeed. At the root of all this anger and anxiety is this disappointment that life is just not that great all the time. It's one of the reasons why there are so few teenagers and adolescents among the angry mobs. Usually very young people are easily mobilized. However, young people have yet to experience the midlife crisis that's feeding these protests.

It seems that Trump won in 2016 because he carried three swing states by small majorities.  Some have argued that the win was on account of swinging only 77,000 votes.

The strategy, purportedly, was based on Cambridge Analytica's detailed individual profiles derived from their info on Facebook.  Susceptible individuals in the key states were individually targeted on Facebook by misinformation authored by Trump supporters.  As I heard it, the personalities most target show neurotic anxieties.

See ... https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/06/cambridge-analytica-how-turn-clicks-into-votes-christopher-wylie

Also ... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-trump-campaign.html

This from The Guardian article ...

"Those 253 predictions were the "secret sauce" that Cambridge Analytica claimed it could offer its customers. Using Facebook itself, advertisers are limited to broad demographic strokes, and a few narrower algorithmically determined categories – whether you like jazz music, say, or what your favourite sports team is. But with 253 further predictions, Cambridge Analytica could, Wylie says, craft adverts no one else could: a neurotic, extroverted and agreeable Democrat could be targeted with a radically different message than an emotionally stable, introverted, intellectual one, each designed to suppress their voting intention – even if the same messages, swapped around, would have the opposite effect." {emphasis add}

[Spotted Horses]

This is a losing political message. I fear for where this leads (the return of trump). Democrats need to give up on this identity oppression obsession and craft policies for all working people who are all affected by long-term trends.

You are missing the point. The Democrats have convinced the American public to vote for them. The Republican-controlled legislatures have engineered the voting districts (gerrymandering) so that Republicans win more seats even though Democrats get more votes. This does not apply to the Senate, which is set up to give disproportionate representation to low-population states. It applies to the house of representatives where Republicans get more representatives elected even when more people in the state vote for the Democrat. It is facilitate by exhaustive data about how many people vote Republican and Democrat in each geographic location, allowing them to pile supermajorities of democrats into a small number of districts and small majorities of Republicans into a large number of districts.

[arpeggio]

I have just heard the Rittenhouse verdict and I am sick 

If Rittenhouse was black or Latino he would have been found guilty.

[BasilValentine]

You are missing the point. The Democrats have convinced the American public to vote for them. The Republican-controlled legislatures have engineered the voting districts (gerrymandering) so that Republicans win more seats even though Democrats get more votes. This does not apply to the Senate, which is set up to give disproportionate representation to low-population states. It applies to the house of representatives where Republicans get more representatives elected even when more people in the state vote for the Democrat. It is facilitate by exhaustive data about how many people vote Republican and Democrat in each geographic location, allowing them to pile supermajorities of democrats into a small number of districts and small majorities of Republicans into a large number of districts.

Yes. And this is why if you add up the aggregate vote in recent Congressional elections, even when Dems have lost seats they've done so with a substantial majority of the popular vote.   

[Mirror Image]

I have just heard the Rittenhouse verdict and I am sick 

If Rittenhouse was black or Latino he would have been found guilty.

O. J. Simpson was found not guilty. Casey Anthony was found not guilty.  We know they did it, but the justice system doesn't always work in favor of emotional feeling but rather the evidence of the case. Were the jury members in the Rttenhouse case bought off? Were there any Black or Hispanic people in this particular jury? I didn't see the jury members, so I'm not sure, but I don't think race was the issue here.