Refreshing my memory about the Electoral College

Never mind all the paintings you’ve seen; most photographs of “Hamilton” found via Google look like this.

In a comment earlier today, I sought to excuse myself from any errors in memory by confessing that I hadn’t read all of the Federalist Papers in decades.

Realizing that was lame, I decided that I should at least go back and read the one that addressed the subject at hand, the Electoral College. That’s Federalist No. 68, probably by Hamilton.

I must say, there was little mentioned about the importance of having the president chosen by states rather than masses of people, beyond oblique references such as these:

And as the electors, chosen in each State, are to assemble and vote in the State in which they are chosen, this detached and divided situation will expose them much less to heats and ferments, which might be communicated from them to the people, than if they were all to be convened at one time, in one place….

Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States….

But such commentary is hardly necessary since the Constitution itself makes it perfectly clear that the president is to be chosen by electors who are themselves chosen by states:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

So there.

Of course, there is a good deal to suggest that Hamilton thought it proper that the method of selection defer to “the sense of the people,” not least the fact that the House would be the body to decide if a clear winner did not emerge from the electors’ deliberation.

Note that the idea that there should be deliberation, and not an up-or-down vote of the people, was crystal-clear:

It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations….

Also, remember yesterday when I suggested that “It would be nice for it to be an actual COLLEGE, in which people study year after year our nation’s history and political science, so that they are completely infused with the kind of knowledge that Donald Trump utterly lacks?”

Hamilton would have hated that idea, apparently. He thought the temporary nature of the college — assembled ad hoc, for the immediate task of electing a president once — was one of the system’s great virtues. Of the Framers, he wrote:

They have not made the appointment of the President to depend on any preexisting bodies of men, who might be tampered with beforehand to prostitute their votes; but they have referred it in the first instance to an immediate act of the people of America, to be exerted in the choice of persons for the temporary and sole purpose of making the appointment. And they have excluded from eligibility to this trust, all those who from situation might be suspected of too great devotion to the President in office. No senator, representative, or other person holding a place of trust or profit under the United States, can be of the numbers of the electors. Thus without corrupting the body of the people, the immediate agents in the election will at least enter upon the task free from any sinister bias. Their transient existence, and their detached situation, already taken notice of, afford a satisfactory prospect of their continuing so, to the conclusion of it….

The context of that, by the way, was in part to guard against this danger:

Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union? But the convention have guarded against all danger of this sort, with the most provident and judicious attention….

Vladimir Putin might get a good chuckle out of that. But on the other hand, every foreign government except those of Russia and China preferred Hillary Clinton. Still, can the mechanism be said to work when the desires of our allies are thwarted, and the preferences of our adversaries granted?

If you haven’t wept for your country yet after last week, consider this hope of Hamilton’s:

The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications…. It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue. … we may safely pronounce, that the true test of a good government is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration….

Riiiight…

The final irony is that, while today the College is perhaps the most reviled part of the Constitution, at the time Hamilton saw it as hardly needing defending, since it was one of the few parts not being heavily criticized:

THE mode of appointment of the Chief Magistrate of the United States is almost the only part of the system, of any consequence, which has escaped without severe censure, or which has received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents. The most plausible of these, who has appeared in print, has even deigned to admit that the election of the President is pretty well guarded. [1] I venture somewhat further, and hesitate not to affirm, that if the manner of it be not perfect, it is at least excellent. It unites in an eminent degree all the advantages, the union of which was to be wished for….

What a difference a couple of centuries make…

This is the right way to praise Trump, if one must

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Bryan sent me an email headlined “Obama: Trump is ‘pragmatic’ – POLITICO,” followed in the body of the message by:

Don’t give me that look. I didn’t say it, Obama did.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/obama-praises-trump-pragmatic-231361

Hey, I wasn’t giving him any look.

What the president said was completely correct, both in the sense of being the proper tone for a president to strike in speaking of his successor, and in terms of accuracy.

Trump is not an ideologue, and is indeed “pragmatic in that way.”

If I were in Obama’s predicament, in a situation in which I felt constrained to say something positive (or at least nonjudgmental) about the president-elect — and he is in that situation — I would say that very thing.

And it would come out sounding nice, because everyone would know how I look down on ideologies. Of course, there’s something that is often worse than an ideologue, which is someone who doesn’t deal in ideas at all. But it would sound nice, and it would be accurate, as far as it went.

Trump believes not in ideas, but in the moods that strike him. That makes him extraordinarily dangerous, but it also means he’s not a rigid ideologue like Ted Cruz. So there’s that. And in doing his duty to say calming, diplomatic things, POTUS hit on just the right thing to say.

He’s good at that. I’m really gonna miss this guy. Watch the video and see how thoughtfully and maturely he addresses the question, and you will likely agree. The nation is really, really going to miss that quality…

Open Thread for Monday, November 14, 2016

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“That’s a fargin’ trick question!”

OK, since y’all didn’t want to talk about cosmic coincidences, before I leave the office, here are some other possible topics:

Trump, Putin agree on phone to improve relations, Kremlin says — Here we go with the bromance. Who do you think is going to get the upper hand in this negotiation — the ex-KGB man who’s been ruthless running the Once and Future Evil Empire, or the guy who was easily flattered when Putin gave him a backhanded compliment?
Obama at press conference will not say if Trump is qualified to be president — “That’s a fargin’ trick question!” he cried.
Pro-Trump rally planned for Saturday at SC State House — What? What do they need a rally for? They just won the election — something about which I wish people would stop reminding me, by the way…
Schools chief should be a cabinet post, Haley urges lawmakers — Well, yeah… Something I’ve only been saying for what, 25 years now? Be nice if it actually happened. It’s ridiculous for the state’s largest executive function to be walled off from the state’s chief executive. Watch for Democrats to resist this, as always, since they continue to consider superintendent to be their best shot at a statewide position.
SC Democratic leader Harrison considering a bid for party chair — That’s national party chair. Hey, who better for such a hopeless job than the guy who’s been doing it in South Carolina? Seriously, Jaime’s a good man. He should go for it.

Synchronicity — don’t tell ME it’s just a coincidence!

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OK, this is just way, way too weird…

Let’s take it step by step…

I wrote about some of the planet’s coolest people dying off in the wake of the election.

Norm Ivey responded that “I know that the election and the deaths of these artists are just synchronicity, but dang!”

I thought, “Just” synchronicity? Wait — doesn’t “synchronicity” imply that there is some sort of meaningful relationship? I decided to look it up.

As I went to another tab in Chrome to look up the word, I thought about responding to Norm, “Don’t say ‘Synchronicity!’ That would mean that, according to the Rule of Three, Sting is next!”

Wikipedia told me that no, Norm had used the word just right, saying it was “a concept, first explained by psychoanalyst Carl Jung, which holds that events are ‘meaningful coincidences’ if they occur with no causal relationship yet seem to be meaningfully related.” The key word being “seem.”

I scrolled down and read this wonderful example from Jung:

My example concerns a young woman patient who, in spite of efforts made on both sides, proved to be psychologically inaccessible. The difficulty lay in the fact that she always knew better about everything. Her excellent education had provided her with a weapon ideally suited to this purpose, namely a highly polished Cartesian rationalism with an impeccably “geometrical” idea of reality. After several fruitless attempts to sweeten her rationalism with a somewhat more human understanding, I had to confine myself to the hope that something unexpected and irrational would turn up, something that would burst the intellectual retort into which she had sealed herself. Well, I was sitting opposite her one day, with my back to the window, listening to her flow of rhetoric. She had an impressive dream the night before, in which someone had given her a golden scarab — a costly piece of jewellery. While she was still telling me this dream, I heard something behind me gently tapping on the window. I turned round and saw that it was a fairly large flying insect that was knocking against the window-pane from outside in the obvious effort to get into the dark room. This seemed to me very strange. I opened the window immediately and caught the insect in the air as it flew in. It was a scarabaeid beetle, or common rose-chafer (Cetonia aurata), whose gold-green colour most nearly resembles that of a golden scarab. I handed the beetle to my patient with the words, “Here is your scarab.” This experience punctured the desired hole in her rationalism and broke the ice of her intellectual resistance. The treatment could now be continued with satisfactory results.

— Carl Jung

Since I was rewatching “Grosse Pointe Blank” on Netflix over the weekend, when I read that, I thought to myself, That’s like “shockabuku.”

So I decided to look up “shockabuku” to see if it was a thing or just made up for the movie, and whether anyone else had connected it to the Jungian concept. Initial results seemed inconclusive. Then I modified to search for “shockabuku synchronicity.”

The fourth result on the search page said, “Dyad – Enclosed – YouTube Gaming.” Whoa! I thought. It happens that I’m working on a newsletter item for an ADCO client about the client’s organization using the “Dyad” organizational model — something I had never heard of before working on this. That seemed, you know, meaningful…

I clicked on “Dyad – Enclosed” and found it was a sort of techno music video. I was listening to Spotify at the time, so I ALT-TABbed over to pause that so I could hear the Dyad thing.

You know how it you leave Spotify running, when you go back to the app, the first thing you see is an ad? Yeah. Well, as I went to click on the “pause” button, I was looking at an ad for this new album by, well, guess who…

I’ve been listening to Spotify for years, and I don’t think I had ever previously seen an ad for a Sting album. Nor had I typed anything into my computer about him, thereby causing some algorithm to show me this ad. All I had done was have that very fleeting thought, upon which I had not acted…

All of this, of course, took place in the space of about a minute, or two at the most, if you count the time spent reading that example from Jung.

I’m going to step off this merry-go-round now, very carefully… I need to get back to working on that Dyad thing…

Leon Russell!?! Why are all the coolest people dying off?

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I’m not saying there’s a connection to Trump getting elected last week. I don’t think this is actually happening because the coolest people refuse to stay on such a planet. But it would be nice to have a little break from horrible news.

First, there was Leonard Cohen — whom I recognize as one of “the coolest people” even though I was never much of a fan. I loved “Hallelujah” (as practically everyone on the planet does), and I recognized one or two other songs, such as “Chelsea Hotel #2,” but that was about it. (I knew he was someone people who were way cooler than I listened to way back in the ’70s, but never got around to him until a few years back.)

But yesterday the real blow came — the death of Leon Russell, The Master of Space and Time himself! The man who defined cool! The calm, imperturbable center of his very own “hippie commune, bonafide,” the Shelter People. The mysterious master who drew so many other famous musicians (George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Joe Cocker, Rita Coolidge, Elton John) to him, but was always apart — presiding imperiously at the keyboard with his bone-straight graying hair (who that we knew had gray hair in 1971?) falling around his shoulders, the regal beard, the top hat, the mirror shades.

Even though he had been a fixture on “Shindig!” years before (a previous incarnation, with a dark Elvis pompadour, no facial hair — but still the same Tulsa voice, the same piano magic), I never knew who he was before the “Shelter People” album in the summer of 1971. But then it seemed he was everywhere — doing the rockingest set of all at the Concert for Bangladesh!… having his own very trippy TV special with the Shelter People just hanging out in a studio — and had always been everywhere, though I hadn’t known it. (Listen to Elton John reel off a litany of people Leon had played with over the years — Bing Crosby, Johnny Mathis, Doris Day, Dean Martin, Herb Alpert, Frank Sinatra, before he even got to Delaney and Bonnie and all the others of my generation — on this clip.)

A year or two later, I saw him in what may be the best rock concert I ever saw in my life, or ever will see. I may have described it before, but let me just tell you how he made his entrance: It was in the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis. The whole entourage was out there on the stage before him — maybe 20 people, from the usual long-haired guys with guitars to the women who sang backup standing on elevated platforms. At the center of the stage were two grand pianos, and sitting at one was this black dude (probably someone famous, but I don’t know who) banging away in this raucous gospel-rock style, and everybody else jamming along with him. But no Leon. They went on like this for maybe 10 minutes, and as it climbed toward a climactic crescendo, Leon made his appearance. He was in a snow-white suit with white top hat (or was it a cowboy hat? — either worked for him), and he was playing a matching white Stratocaster, and I’m like I didn’t even know he played guitar, but I realized that of course, Leon could play anything he wanted.

He strolled out, so casually, so in command of the stage. Then he stepped up onto the second piano’s bench, still playing, then on up to the top of the piano, and stood there and kept playing for a moment, with everybody else rocking away like mad. Then he stepped down, ditched the guitar, sat at the piano, starting dueling with the other pianist, and that’s when the music really hit its peak.

I’ve never seen anyone else with that kind of presence on stage. I was as impressed as Huck Finn at the circus. Worth every penny of the probably $5 the ticket cost me, and then some. Later, I saw Elvis on the same stage, and I don’t think even The King topped Leon, although perhaps I should shy away from committing lèse-majesté — after all this was in E’s own hometown.

And now he’s gone…

I thought I’d share my very favorite Leon song, “Stranger in a Strange Land,” above. I chose that clip because it’s a live performance (a less polished one than I saw in Memphis, but you can feel the energy), so you can get a sense of his style, but I actually prefer the studio version, which you can hear here. I first heard this song when, at the suggestion of my uncle, I got the “Shelter People” album in mid-1971. It was within a year after I first read Heinlein’s novel — which has nothing to do with the lyrics of the song, but is all part of the sensibility of the time.

And to reinforce that Leon had always been with us, even when we didn’t realize it, I also include this clip from his “Shindig!” days…

Some of Pete Souza’s very best work

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In an attempt to cheer me up a bit at the end of a rough week, Bryan Caskey sent me this link. As the page explains,

The White House’s Pete Souza Has Shot Nearly 2M Photos of Obama, Here are 55 of His Favorites

I’ve long appreciated Souza’s work. You see it here on the blog from time to time, often illustrating my Open Threads — even when it has nothing to do the topics in the thread — partly because I like them, and partly because they’re in the public domain and I can use them without being sued.

Anyway, here are a few that particularly appealed to me out of the 55.

Thanks, Bryan…

How does ‘One-Note Samba’ work?

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OK, one more pop-music-oriented post. It’s obliquely related to the one on Leonard Cohen.

Remember long ago when I asked whether Phillip or other musical experts here could explain how “Hallelujah” worked, what it was about it that was so appealing? Phillip and many others rose to the occasion. getz-gilberto-from-tv-show

Well, I’ve got a tougher one today. This morning, I was listening to “One-Note Samba,” and wondered how in the world that could reach out and grab me or anyone else.

Maybe it doesn’t speak to you, but I’ve always had a thing for samba music ever since my Dad brought back some records from a trip to Rio when I was a kid (sort of the way Liverpool kids learned about rock ‘n’ roll from the discs brought into port by sailors). And obviously some people besides me like this one, since it’s been covered so often.

So tell me:

Why does it work? Why isn’t it too monotonous? Does it keep us listening purely because of the rhythm? Is that it? Or is it the fact that we know, as we endure the one-note parts, that it’s going to change, and that change is what rewards us? Or is it because of what the instruments are playing while the singer is stuck on the one note?

Just wondering. Because to me, music is just magic, and far beyond my ken…

Even my earworms are commenting on the election

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In recent days, Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Boxer” has been sort of playing in the background of my mind when I was thinking about other things. I kept finding myself silently mouthing, “pocketful of mumbles,” without bothering to think about it.

Well, in the shower (that font of inspiration) this morning, I suddenly realized why, when I thought of the context:

I am just a poor boy
Though my story’s seldom told
I have squandered my resistance
For a pocket full of mumbles, such are promises
All lies and jests
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest.

Of course, the last two lines are the most pertinent. For a generation now, people have been rejecting Moynihan’s dictum that we’re not entitled to our own facts, and insisting that they have a right to them. This was the election in which that dynamic, men hearing only what they want to hear, has manifested itself most dramatically (and destructively).

But the rest of it fits, too — the meaninglessness of political promises (which I dislike in the best of times), the predominance of lies, and so forth. And who was Fareed Zakaria’s column reaching out to but “poor boys” who feel that their stories have gone ignored?

I seldom hear that song without thinking of a church youth group that I attended some when I was in high school in Hawaii. It was in an architecturally unassuming (a low, frame building probably left over from WWII) Navy chapel up the hill from Pearl Harbor, somewhere between my house in Foster Village and the Sub Base gate. (I just tried to find an image of it using Google Maps Street View, but first, I think it’s gone, and second, Street View stops working with you get to the edge of a military installation. This was actually off base back then, but now all all Navy property seems to be sealed off.)

It was led by a chaplain of that sort we’ve all met, who is really, really trying to reach out to the kids where they are. I can vaguely picture him, and the only thing else I can remember about him was that he once told us about ministering to Marines during a siege in Vietnam when for awhile it looked like they were all going to die. (Khe Sanh, perhaps? Or maybe some smaller action that’s less well known.)

Anyway, one week he urged us to bring our favorite songs to the next week’s meeting, where we would play them and then discuss why they were important to us.

I couldn’t really think of a favorite song. A year or so earlier it would have been easy — “Let it Be.” But I wanted something more contemporary, so I took my copy of the “Bridge Over Troubled Water” album and asked him to play “The Boxer.” I didn’t even know why I picked it then. I think maybe I thought, as a boy starting out in life, to be sort of profound in a self-absorbed young man kind of way, and even literary — the protagonist struck me as a more humble Nick Adams, or something. Maybe I thought it would impress somebody.

Anyway, it’s been there in the background a bit this week…

Leonard Cohen: Hallelujah

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Just thought I’d put this up to mark the passing of Leonard Cohen.

As y’all know, I love this song, so much that awhile back, I asked Phillip and other musical sages here on the blog to help me understand why it was so awesome…

Interestingly, the song almost never reached a wide audience, thanks to the myopia of a record executive.

It’s almost certainly his most covered song, which prompted him to say, “I think it’s a good song, but I think too many people sing it.” See one of the less conventional video versions below.

Anyway, thanks, Leonard, for spending five years writing it. And for all the rest….

Haley fires the whole Rec board

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Read this so early today, I forgot to mention it before…

How about Nikki Haley taking decisive action on the Richland County Recreation Board?

Gov. Nikki Haley is moving to fire all seven members of the Richland County Recreation Board.

The rare action by Haley comes after months of lawsuits alleging sexual harassment by recreation director James Brown III, who retired last month after he was indicted for misconduct in office.

It also follows allegations by a bipartisan majority of the 17-member Richland County Legislative Delegation that members of the appointed recreation board that oversaw Brown had grossly mismanaged the recreation commission’s affairs for years.

Lawmakers said board members allowed unwarranted pay raises and widespread nepotism and thus had neglected their duties.

In a 10-page executive order announced Thursday afternoon by the governor’s office, Haley affirmed the charges brought by the delegation majority and named the seven board members she seeks to remove.

They are: chairman J. Marie Green, vice-chair Barbara Mickens, Weston Furgess Jr., George D. Martin Jr., Joseph Weeks, Thomas Clark and Wilbert Lewis….

This is a bit more than lawmakers had asked for — they had just wanted to ditch the four who had most enabled Brown.

But they weren’t complaining. Sen. Joel Lourie sent me this last night:

In response to the Executive Order issued by Governor Haley today, members of the delegation issued the following statements:

Senator Joel Lourie:

“We thank the Governor and her staff for their diligence in pursuit of all the facts dealing with this complicated matter. This has always been about what is fair and right for the employees of the Recreation Commission and about providing quality, fiscally responsible services to the citizens of Richland County.”

Representative Beth Bernstein:

“I want to personally thank the Governor and her office for hearing our concerns and taking this unprecedented, but warranted, initiative on behalf of the citizens of Richland County. This Board will now be held accountable and the voices of the aggrieved employees of RCRC have been heard.”

Representative James Smith:

“This is a critical next step to restore public confidence in the Recreation Commission.”

Of course, those are members of the pro-reform majority of the delegation.

One of the defenders of the status quo said this:

“This is an absolute overreach,” said Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Richland, who said Haley should leave the board members alone. “They didn’t do anything illegal or unethical.”

Fareed Zakaria on ‘The two sins that defined this election’

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Here’s another thing I recommend if you’re looking for good commentary on the election.

I complained yesterday that I found most of what I was reading unsatisfactory. Perhaps the best, most helpful piece I’ve read yet was this one by Fareed Zakaria, headlined “The two sins that defined this election.”

By way of spoiler, the two sins are:

The utter disdain in which elites held Trump voters.
The real racism that was at work in support for Trump.

So, as you see, he has criticism for both sides.

You should read the whole thing. An excerpt:

Over the past three or four decades, the United States has sorted itself into a highly efficient meritocracy, where people from all economic walks of life can move up the ladder of achievement and income (usually ending up in cities). It is better than using race, gender or bloodlines as the key to wealth and power, but it does create its own problems. As in any system, some people won’t ascend to the top, and because it is a meritocracy, it is easy to believe that that’s justified.

A meritocracy can be blind to the fact that some people don’t make it because they have been unlucky in some way. More profoundly, it can be morally blind. Even those who score poorly on tests or have bad work habits are human beings deserving of attention and respect. The Republicans’ great success in rural communities has been that even though they often champion economic policies that would not help these people — indeed, policies that often hurt them — they demonstrate respect, by identifying with them culturally, religiously and emotionally….

A lot of Trump voters think he’s horrible, too

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Just a heads-up that you might want to read Chris Cillizza’s post, “The 13 most amazing findings in the 2016 exit poll.”

As I’m sure y’all realize, exit polls are the most valuable kind, in terms of explaining what the people who actually vote are thinking when they do so. Candidates like to make claims about what election results mean, but exit polls give you something solid to study.

I think that for me, the most fascinating of the 13 items was this one:

10. Trump’s personal image was and is horrible

Trump’s victory should be in no way interpreted as a vote of confidence in him or his capacity to do the job. Less than 4 in 10 voters (38 percent) had a favorable opinion of him. Only 1 in 3 said he was “honest and trustworthy.” Thirty-eight percent said he was “qualified” to be president. Thirty-five percent said he has the “temperament to serve effectively as president.”

How can a candidate win with numbers like these? Because the desire for change was so great that it overrode all of the doubts — or at least many of the doubts — people had about Trump….

But I urge you to go read the whole thing.

Why didn’t Graham, McCain and the Bushes stand up?

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File photo

Lindsey Graham sent out this release yesterday:

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham on the 2016 Presidential Election

November 9, 2016

“Secretary Clinton’s concession speech, like President-elect Donald Trump’s last night, was appropriate in tone and substance.

“She should be congratulated on doing her part to bring about healing of our nation and setting the right tone in terms of working with President-elect Trump. All Americans should follow her counsel and try to work with our next President. I intend to do so. President-elect Trump will need all the help he can get given the many challenges we face as a nation.

“Secretary Clinton ran a hard fought campaign and I genuinely wish her well.”

#####

“Secretary Clinton ran a hard fought campaign and I genuinely wish her well.” Yeah, uh-huh, OK. So… Why didn’t you help her?

As I said in a response to a comment from Phillip…

I’ve long had a lot of respect for Sen. Graham, and for John McCain, as readers of this blog will know. I’ve endorsed them, stuck up for them — a lot.

But I’m kind of ticked at both of them right now.

They’re part of that large group of Republicans Who Knew Better — and failed to lead in this election.

These are guys who have exhibited a lot of courage in the past, but that was not in evidence this year. They both failed to do the one thing that might have helped — stand up and declare that they were voting for Hillary Clinton, which was the only way to stop Trump (who they knew was a nightmare), and urge others to do the same.

I know why they didn’t — they wanted to keep getting elected, and a Republican most likely can’t do that after saying he’ll vote for someone the party despises so much.

But as much as I want both of them in the Senate, stopping Trump was more important. I suppose it’s human nature — human weakness — that they didn’t see it that way.

But if anybody could have done it, it would have been them. Anyone who paid attention could see that they both worked well with her when she was in the Senate. There was mutual respect there. Their willingness to step over the partisan boundary to try to get things done together made me feel better about all three of them.

They really should have stood up and told the truth, instead of playing along with the fantasy on the right that she was just as bad as Trump, if not worse.

At least they had an excuse, though. What’s the excuse of the two President Bushes? Their political careers are over. Both probably DID vote for Hillary. They should have come out and said so. What stopped them? A desire to protect Jeb’s political future? WHAT political future?

I suspect that all of them thought she was going to win anyway, and didn’t need them to step up.

Well, if so, they were wrong…

There’s really nothing anyone can say that helps, apparently

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Today, I read the newspapers with which I start my days (The State, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal) with far less interest, less avidity, than usual.

That’s because no one had anything to say, or to report, that offered any way forward out of the extreme darkness into which Tuesday’s result has plunged this nation.

A large part of my reading every day is opinion, which I suppose is natural enough given my background, but it’s also because I feel that I get more out of journalism that makes an argument — whether it’s one with which I agree or disagree. I learn better when my mind is challenged.

Anyway, none of the opinion or analysis pieces I read today were helpful. There were all these smart, well-meaning people trying to make sense of what’s happened and offer a way forward, and they pretty much all fell flat. Because really, at this moment there’s nothing to be done, and we’re all braced, waiting for the awfulness that is to come.

The only thing that has spoken to me at all today is this piece published yesterday in The New Yorker, because it fairly well sets out the awfulness of what has happened. So at least this resonates; at least it has a ring of truth. Oh, bits of it are off-key from my perspective: Being a liberal New Yorker, this writer is far more concerned than I about what he is pleased to call “an increasingly reactionary Supreme Court.”

But other parts seemed to fit quite well. Excerpts:

The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism. Trump’s shocking victory, his ascension to the Presidency, is a sickening event in the history of the United States and liberal democracy. On January 20, 2017, we will bid farewell to the first African-American President—a man of integrity, dignity, and generous spirit—and witness the inauguration of a con who did little to spurn endorsement by forces of xenophobia and white supremacy. It is impossible to react to this moment with anything less than revulsion and profound anxiety….

All along, Trump seemed like a twisted caricature of every rotten reflex of the radical right. That he has prevailed, that he has won this election, is a crushing blow to the spirit; it is an event that will likely cast the country into a period of economic, political, and social uncertainty that we cannot yet imagine. That the electorate has, in its plurality, decided to live in Trump’s world of vanity, hate, arrogance, untruth, and recklessness, his disdain for democratic norms, is a fact that will lead, inevitably, to all manner of national decline and suffering.

In the coming days, commentators will attempt to normalize this event. They will try to soothe their readers and viewers with thoughts about the “innate wisdom” and “essential decency” of the American people. They will downplay the virulence of the nationalism displayed, the cruel decision to elevate a man who rides in a gold-plated airliner but who has staked his claim with the populist rhetoric of blood and soil. George Orwell, the most fearless of commentators, was right to point out that public opinion is no more innately wise than humans are innately kind. People can behave foolishly, recklessly, self-destructively in the aggregate just as they can individually. Sometimes all they require is a leader of cunning, a demagogue who reads the waves of resentment and rides them to a popular victory. “The point is that the relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion,” Orwell wrote in his essay “Freedom of the Park.” “The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.”…

That’s probably as far as I can go without violating Fair Use; perhaps I’ve gone too far already.

But the parts I quote were spot on. And I think before the vast numbers of people who did all they could to prevent what has happened can move forward, they need to come completely to grips with just how bad the situation is. Plumb the depths, you might say.

One other phrase from the piece that wasn’t included in the excerpts above: “Trump is vulgarity unbounded…”

In that vein… I haven’t spoken to any of my children or grandchildren yet about what has happened to their country. I’m not sure what to say when I do. I want it to be something that helps, but I don’t know what that will be. So I’ll close with the Clinton ad that more than any other hit right to the heart of why it was utterly unthinkable for this man to become president of the United States:

Open Thread for The Day After, Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016

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Is Pence thinking, “Oh, my God, what have I DONE?” I hope so…

This is not going to be a normal Open Thread (just as we no longer live in a normal country), being election-centric. But as always, y’all are invited to introduce other topics.

The worst major-party nominee in history will now be POTUS — Not to put too fine a point on it… Anyway, there are a gazillion aspects to this, and no doubt we’ll go into a few thousand of them.
And Republicans retain control of Congress — But what will that mean? Seriously, most of these people didn’t want Trump; many were traumatized by his candidacy. So how is this going to work?
What will replace the Republican Party? — Given what I just said above. And if you think the GOP just won a “victory” as a party, you are sadly mistaken…
World gasps in collective disbelief — And can you blame them?
And what about the Democrats? — Now that they’ve gotten through the “It’s Her Turn” election, how will they get their stuff together? Some party is going to have to address the vast middle at some point. It’s insane to keep having elections driven by Trumps and Bernies…
Congratulate my advertisers — Excuse the commercial message, but I’m grateful for their custom, and happy for the ones who won. Micah Caskey won going away, Lila Anna Sauls was the biggest vote-getter in the Richland One School Board race, and Avni Gupta-Kagan is in a too-close-to-call contest for the second spot on that board. Only Frank Barron clearly lost, and he was up against insurmountable odds — running against a Republican incumbent in Lexington County.

And… that’s about it for now. Gotta go do some work. This should get y’all started… If that’s not enough, chew on this:

Intelligence community is already feeling a sense of dread — To quote further: “At some point today, a sober team of analysts will give the president-elect his first unfiltered look at the nation’s intelligence secrets.” Good thing he’s, you know, so discreet, and has such excellent judgment…

Oh, by the way, in case some of you are too young to get the headline: Possibly the biggest TV event of the 80’s was the film “The Day After,” which was about something all of us had tried not to think about during the Cold War — what the day after global thermonuclear war would look like. So of course, we all watched in morbid fascination.

Seemed like an apt allusion…

Has someone decided to burn down the country literally, as well as figuratively?

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Actually, no, as WIS reports…

That smoke you see or smell in the Midlands is likely coming from wildfires burning in western North Carolina and northeast Georgia.

One such fire has resulted in the evacuation of the areas near Lake Lure, NC.

A front moving through the area has picked up some of that smoke and has created some hazy conditions.

“Visibility is reduced and people with respiratory issues should be extra cautious outdoors for the rest of the afternoon,” said WIS First Alert Meteorologist Ben Tanner. “Until the wind speed increases mid/late afternoon, smoke will continue to be a problem.”…

So, we have this to contend with as well. I just pass it on, thinking y’all might have been as curious as I was…

Remember when people thought THIS, mere hours ago?

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Just thought I’d share with you this screen grab from The Washington Post earlier today:

How far we’ve come (or if you prefer, how low we’ve sunk)

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I got to thinking about this the last couple of days, and I managed to figure out a few minutes ago how to go find this Tweet from 2011:

This young man, Eric Miller of Chapin, is passing out Donald Trump literature. He likes his “common sense philosophy”… http://t.co/9IrMsrn

— Brad Warthen (@BradWarthen) May 7, 2011

I Tweeted that during the SC Republican Convention on Saturday, May 7 of that year. By that time, if I recall correctly, we knew Trump wasn’t going to run for president — in 2012. This young man was the only person I encountered at the convention who expressed his wish that that would change.

I distinctly remember debating with myself whether to post that. I didn’t want to seem to be holding the young man up to ridicule for advocating for something outlandish. But it seemed newsworthy, in something between a man-bites-dog and take-note-of way, that someone was actually pushing this position. So I compromised with myself. I merely noted the fact, with his explanation of why he was for Trump, without comment from me of any kind.

The Tweet was mainly ignored. One person reTweeted it, I now see. Probably not approvingly, given what I see on her feed.

Look how far we’ve come now. That one young man, we now know, was a harbinger. The first robin of spring (or, if you’re of a more apocalyptic mind, the first White Walker of Winter.) Something that everyone but him regarded as an outlandish idea has come to pass — Donald Trump is the Republican nominee for president of the United States of America.

We just need to hope, and if it’s not blasphemous pray, that another thing that we have regarded as even more impossible does not happen today…

bradwarthen.com

All The News That Gives You Fits

Refreshing my memory about the Electoral College

This is the right way to praise Trump, if one must

Open Thread for Monday, November 14, 2016

Synchronicity — don’t tell ME it’s just a coincidence!

Leon Russell!?! Why are all the coolest people dying off?

Some of Pete Souza’s very best work

The White House’s Pete Souza Has Shot Nearly 2M Photos of Obama, Here are 55 of His Favorites

How does ‘One-Note Samba’ work?

Even my earworms are commenting on the election

Leonard Cohen: Hallelujah

Haley fires the whole Rec board

Fareed Zakaria on ‘The two sins that defined this election’

A lot of Trump voters think he’s horrible, too

Why didn’t Graham, McCain and the Bushes stand up?

There’s really nothing anyone can say that helps, apparently

Open Thread for The Day After, Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016

Has someone decided to burn down the country literally, as well as figuratively?

Remember when people thought THIS, mere hours ago?

How far we’ve come (or if you prefer, how low we’ve sunk)