Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Today's Roundup: Trudeau, Stoehr, Fallows, Sullivan, Wellman, plus a few tweets/posts



Following up from my post last week, I have been seeing more commentary lately which discuss misinformation and disinformation as the main problem that progressives now have in getting their messages out to the public. Several of the items I found for this Roundup talk about this issue too.
But first, Canadians need to see much more of this, please:

Why Canada is changing its immigration system! PM Trudeau released a nearly seven-minute video on YouTube Sunday talking about the recent reduction in permanent residents being admitted to Canada and changes to the temporary foreign worker program. youtube.com/watch?v=vOB7...

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— JaroGiesbrecht (@jarogiesbrecht.bsky.social) November 17, 2024 at 4:31 PM
Shorter: Moving on to today's commentary:

The Editorial Board/John Stoehr
Trump’s cabinet nominees are a sign of totalitarian drift
Their plain awfulness is the point.
...These nominations signal the totalitarian drift that’s coming to Washington and the country. Yes, that’s right. No, I’m not exaggerating. It’s time to start using that word.
Totalitarianism seeks dominion over the individual to the point where individuality is erased. That’s what happened to the Republican Party. Individuals have looked the same, talked the same, acted the same and thought the same for a long time. (The men sometimes literally dress the same as Donald Trump, with a blue suit and long red tie.) After the election, however, Republican behavior has finally been totalized.
As one GOP congressman said, Trump “is the leader of our party. … His goals and objectives, whatever that is, we need to embrace it. All of it. Every single word. If Donald Trump says jump three feet high and scratch your head, we all jump three feet high and scratch our heads.”
The objective is forcing the rest of America to conform the way the Republican Party has conformed. This can be seen in the anger expressed by some magas. It wasn’t enough to win. Losers must now shut up and get in line, too.
...the strongest evidence of totalitarian drift is the plain awfulness of Trump’s cabinet picks. They have not earned the right to be called on. They haven’t studied or mastered their disciplines. They haven’t built admirable reputations among leaders, professionals and peers. They haven’t overcome adversity and hardship. They haven’t reached high and achieved. They certainly haven’t followed the road toward the American dream, which asks us to work hard and play by the rules.
And that’s the point. Totalitarians fear individual excellence, first because they can’t understand it, and second because excellence threatens their goal of totalizing conformity. They are not humble enough to admit that they are mediocre people but they are arrogant enough to believe they can force the rest of us down to their level. ...
James Fallows/Breaking the News
After the Election: Swimming in the Sea of Disinformation.
“It really is nothing new, but you are watching it happen in your own time and not in a book.” Writers and thinkers on where the denial of reality can lead.
...In essence, “news” is everything you don’t see or experience yourself. And with each passing year, a growing share of the “news” on which people base their sense of reality has come neither from personal experience2; nor from “regular” news organizations, flawed as they may be; but instead from the surrounding climate of social media and other sources that have been skewed in a nihilistic, suspicious-and-hostile direction. A large part of that skewing is intentional—a supercharged version of Fox News, as those I’ve linked to above all argue. Part of it just comes with the technology. And evidence suggests that in 2024 this mattered more than anything the official news media did. People had “heard” that the economy was terrible and no one could find a job and illegal immigrants were everywhere and Kamala Harris was an affirmative-action cipher. And they could see that eggs were expensive—and that Donald Trump had come up, fist-first, after the bullet whizzed by. No contest.
The result explains a lot about these past week in public affairs. If nothing matters, if everything is terrible, if elections are just about swapping one liar for another, why not just shake it all up? Or burn it all down? At least it will be entertaining along the way...
Margaret Sullivan/ American Crisis
As Trump's plans become clearer, reject these four dangerous ideas
Debunking and, I hope, clarifying some of the spin and lies
...After a week of reading and talking to people, I want to push back against these notions:
First, that idea that Trump has a “mandate” from America because of some sort of landslide vote. With the vote still being counted Saturday, according to the highly credible Cook Political Report, he has fallen below 50 percent of the popular vote: 49.99 percent for him; 48.22 percent for Harris. Don’t buy the landslide talk.
Second, don’t believe that these unfit nominees for Trump’s cabinet represent some lofty idea of making America great again. Despite all his effusive language about the supposed statesmanship of Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard, these picks are meant to do two things: show his iron-grip control over the Senate; and sow chaos and despair in the non-MAGA members of the American public.
Third, reject the notion that there’s nothing you can do and that it’s a good idea to tune out. ...
Finally, I urge us to reject the notion that the mainstream media should be absolved of wrongdoing during the campaign coverage because of the way things turned out. That somehow legacy media doesn’t matter because of the growing influence of right-wing podcasts and YouTube videos....
FP Wellman/On Democracy
Mass deportations will change us for decades I saw first hand the impact of a fascist government in Iraq. It's bad.
...The insane and draconian plans for immigration being developed by Stephen Miller, newly named ‘Border Czar’, Tom Homan, and Department of Homeland Security nominee Kristi Noem to lead the largest crackdown on immigrants in history are coming to light. They are promising to sweep up and deport anywhere from 10-20 million immigrants based on which made up number they are currently using.
The plans coming out now include declaring a national emergency and mobilizing the United States military to to aid in the mass deportation efforts. This will likely be included in plans for unannounced workplace raids; deputizing local police and the military; building detention camps; and manipulating existing laws like the Insurrection Act and Title 42 to simply kick them out of the country....
Most disturbing to me at the moment are these plans to use military units to conduct raids against Americans or as guards of detention camps. The second and third order effects of using our military for this operation will be painful for years to come and that’s on top of the politicization we discussed previously through the firing of top generals for “wokeness.” Our military is made up of young people. Late Gen Z and now even Gen Alpha are joining the ranks. A generation with less conservative views. Will they join a force being used to raid American homes, deport millions, and be the strike force for an extremist President?
That’s a problem we will feel for decades to come.
What happens when the government is the “enemy?”
The other effect I think of often is a developing fear of our military and our government. What if your business competition calls the local Sheriff and says you are hiding illegal immigrants? What if they get tipped your basement renters are illegal? Will they approach it with caution or simply kick in the door at dawn?...
I don’t think we need to look 100 years back to Germany or Italy to find comparisons to what could happen under this draconian remaking of our military, government, and nation. Several million of us served in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein and saw first-hand what life under a ruthless dictatorship might look like....
Next, some tweets and posts:

There is no Democratic margin of victory so great that the press will declare it a mandate and there is no Republican victory so narrow that they won't.

— Schooley (@schooley.bsky.social) November 17, 2024 at 10:20 PM

first month of trump ij might involve a major confrontation with the senate, a totally dysfunctional house, and a major conflict with the military!

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— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) November 18, 2024 at 8:17 AM
I know these are funny, but less so as the days pass:

Experts warn Trump dangerously close to figuring out where Canada is

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— The Beaverton (@thebeaverton.bsky.social) November 18, 2024 at 10:24 AM
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