SPLC report on harassment, intimidation in first 10 days after Trump's election

Cassie Miller and Alexandra Werner-Winslow. "Ten Days After: Harassment and Intimidation in the Aftermath of the Election." Southern Poverty Law Center Nov. 29, 2016 https://www.splcenter.org/20161129/ten-days-after-harassment-and-intimidation-aftermath-election

Just a week before the November 8th election, attackers set a church in Greenville, Mississippi, on fire. The historically black church was targeted in what authorities believe was an act of voter intimidation, its walls spray-painted with the phrase “Vote Trump.”

“This kind of attack happened in the 1950s and 1960s,” Greenville’s mayor said, “but it shouldn’t happen in 2016.”

The incident was just a harbinger of what has become a national outbreak of hate, as white supremacists celebrate Donald Trump’s victory.* In the ten days following the election, there were almost 900 reports [n=867 -- see pie chart at left -- pe] of harassment and intimidation from across the nation. Many harassers invoked Trump’s name during assaults, making it clear that the outbreak of hate stemmed in large part from his electoral success.

People have experienced harassment at school, at work, at home, on the street, in public transportation, in their cars, in grocery stores and other places of business, and in their houses of worship. They most often have received messages of hate and intolerance through graffiti and verbal harassment, although a small number also have reported violent physical interactions. Some incidents were directed at the Trump campaign or his supporters.

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In his 60 Minutes interview that aired on November 13, President-elect Trump claimed that he was “surprised to hear” that some of his supporters had been using racial slurs and making threats against African Americans, Latinos, and gays. He shouldn’t have been. In his November 23 interview with The New York Times, Trump claimed he had no idea why white supremacists — the so-called “alt right” — had been “energized” by his campaign. Again, it’s no mystery. Both the harassment since the election and the energy on the radical right are the predictable results of the campaign that Trump waged for the presidency — a campaign marked by incendiary racial statements, the stoking of white racial resentment, and attacks on so-called “political correctness.”

At this point, it is not enough for Trump to look in the camera and say “Stop it!” to the harassers, as he did on 60 Minutes. Nor is it enough for him to simply “disavow” the white supremacists who see him as their champion, as he did at the Times. If he is to make good on the first promise he made as the president-elect — his pledge to “bind the wounds of division” in our country — he must repair the damage that his campaign has caused. Rather than feign ignorance, he must acknowledge that his own words have opened “wounds of division” in our country. Rather than simply saying “Stop it!” and disavowing the radical right, he must speak out forcefully and repeatedly against all forms of bigotry and reach out to the communities his words have injured. And rather than merely saying that he “wants to bring the country together,” his actions must consistently demonstrate he is doing everything in his power to do so. Until president-elect Trump does these things, the hate that his campaign has unleashed is likely to continue to flourish.

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Resisting Trump's rule of law: "[Lawyers] don't do revolution if a strongly worded footnote would suffice." -- Dahlia Lithwick -- plus reax to today's flag- burning Tweetstorm

In no particular order ...

Dahlia Lithwick. "Will Trump’s Rule of Law Be Our Rule of Law?" Slate.com Nov. 9, 2016 http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2016/11/trump_s_threat_to_the_rule_of_law.html.

Subhed: "The fate of the entire legal apparatus of government is in the balance."

* * *

For those of us who believe—as the Clintons do—in the basic tenets of constitutional democracy, in respect for the law, and the courts, and for neutral processes, Trump is the end of that line. These words that we use, due process and equality and justice have actual force and meaning. They are the tools and also the end product of the entire enterprise of democracy. They are the only bulwark against totalitarianism we know.

Donald Trump has never seen the law as anything beyond another system for self-enrichment. Judges are tools. Laws are malleable. True justice flows in a singular direction: toward him. And Wednesday the entire edifice of the American legal system answers to that vision, unless it opts not to.

Lawyers are by definition small-c conservative, incrementalist, and cautious. We don’t do revolution if a strongly worded footnote would suffice. We believe in facts. We believe in neutral rules and principles of fairness. We believe in judicial independence. We will be more apt than anyone to try to shift along in Trump’s America, doing our best. Hoping to make it a little more just for the weakest around the margins.

* * *

B.A. (English), Yale, 1990, J.D. 1996, Stanford Law School

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Ken Paulson. "Trump tweet set Constitution ablaze: Column." USA Today Nov. 29, 2016 http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/11/29/flag-burning-donald-trump-tweet-first-amendment-ken-paulsonn/94607674/.

Donald Trump is a master at unsettling the settled in 140 characters or fewer.

In a provocative tweet Tuesday morning, the president-elect declared “Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag — if they do, there must be consequences — perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!”

As with so many Trump tweets, it’s hard to know whether he’s seriously considering trying to overturn long-established constitutional principles. Sometimes it seems like he’s throwing a rock at a crowd of people just to see them scatter.

* * *

Tweeting proposals has some clear advantages for the president-elect. There’s no need for detailed policy papers and no annoying reporters to ask follow-up questions. One tweet ignites cable television and social media, and suddenly no one’s talking about his cabinet choices or potential business conflicts.

But let’s be clear. This isn’t real. Congress could pass a law punishing flag-burning, but there’s no likelihood the Supreme Court would overturn its 1989 decision or reverse a half-century of protection for symbolic speech.

Justice Antonin Scalia, the man Trump has described as a model for his future Supreme Court appointments, was among the majority that struck down the flag-burning prohibition. Last year, he revisited the decision, drawing on the distinction between his personal views and what the Constitution mandates. "If it were up to me, I would put in jail every sandal-wearing, scruffy-bearded weirdo who burns the American flag," he said. “But I am not king.”

Justice John Paul Stevens, who voted to uphold the flag-burning ban in 1989, had clearly changed his mind by 2004, when he said, “Burning the flag conveys a far different message than it once did. If one were to burn a flag today, the act would convey a message of freedom that ours is a society that is strong enough to tolerate such acts by those whom we despise.”

* * *

There’s some irony in the fact that this nation’s earliest flag desecration laws were designed to in large part to curb the use of the American flag in advertising and marketing. In 1907, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Nebraska ban on “Stars and Stripes” beer. Today, flags are ever-present in product marketing and this past summer Budweiser even marketed itself as "America.” Let’s drink to that.

Ken Paulson is the president of the Newseum Institute’s First Amendment Center, dean of the College of Media and Entertainment at Middle Tennessee State University and a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors.

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Scott Bomboy. "Justice Antonin Scalia rails again about flag-burning 'weirdoes'." Constitution Daily Nov. 12, 2015 http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2015/11/justice-antonin-scalia-rails-again-about-flag-burning-weirdoes/.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was in Philadelphia last night, making remarks about the Court, a controversial flag-burning ruling from 1989, and diversity among his fellow Justices.

Scalia appeared at a Union League in an event moderated by Princeton University’s Robert George, and as usual, the Justice made comments about the original meaning of the Constitution. And according to reports from the event, Scalia also talked the historic Texas v. Johnson flag-burning decision, which is still debated to this day.

Scalia said as a jurist who believes in a pure texualist reading of the Constitution, he has made some tough calls in his career, especially in free-speech cases where his vote went against his personal principles.

“If it were up to me, I would put in jail every sandal-wearing, scruffy-bearded weirdo who burns the American flag,” Scalia said. “But I am not king.”

Scalia made similar comments at a March 2014 appearance in Brooklyn, where he called Gregory Lee Johnson, who brought the 1989 flag-burning lawsuit, a “bearded weirdo.” (He made similar comments at a 2012 appearance in Wyoming, a 2005 appearance at the University of Michigan event and in 2004 at a William and Mary event.)

Back in 1989, Scalia was the fifth and deciding vote in the Texas v. Johnson decision that upheld flag burning in Texas, and a year later, he voted against a federal law that banned flag burning in United States v. Eichman.

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Jonathan Chait. "Donald Trump Wants You to Burn the Flag While He Burns the Constitution." Daily Intelligencer, New York Nov. 29 http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/11/trump-wants-you-to-burn-flags-while-he-burns-constitution.html.

... But why would he choose to pick this strange fight? Here is a case where the common complaint that he is distracting the public from unflattering stories rings true. Proposing a flag-burning ban is a classic right-wing nationalist distraction, and Trump has a number of ugly stories from which to distract: his plan for massive, unprecedented corruption, the extreme beliefs of his appointees, a controversy over a recount that highlights his clear defeat in the national vote.

Trump does not want coverage of his plans to enrich himself and his family or to strip the safety net. A fight over patriotism and citizenship frames the president-elect as the champion of American nationalism — giving a kind of legitimacy that overcomes his defeat in the national vote, much as standing on the rubble at Ground Zero erased all complaints about George W. Bush governing from the right after losing the national vote. There may not be flag-burners to fight at this very moment, but surely the president highlighting the issue will encourage protesters to burn flags in defiance, drawing media attention. Thus the opposition will demonstrate that their hatred for Trump is actually hatred for the country. And he will proceed to enrich himself and his party’s donor class.

Trump’s flag-burning tweet is a frightening moment not because his proposal stands any chance of enactment, but because it reflects one of the few signs that his dangerous and authoritarian politics is calculated, and not merely crazy.

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Stephen Collinson, "Trump takes aim at First Amendment." CNN Nov. 29, 2016 http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/29/politics/donald-trump-first-amendment/index.html.

The early morning blast was classic Trump, picking at an emotive political scar that enlivens his most loyal supporters, hijacking news coverage and forcing everyone in Washington to respond to his own controversial views -- and then wonder if he really means it. It's a tactic familiar from the presidential campaign when Trump's mastery at wielding Twitter as a weapon was at the heart of his battle plan that demolished the Bush and Clinton political dynasties.

"It is pretty remarkable that the President-elect of the United States is calling for penalties, criminal penalties for protected speech," said CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin on Tuesday. "Why is he doing this? That is the question. Is he trying to distract attention from something else? I don't know why he would be, his transition seems to be going pretty well. What is the purpose behind this? I don't really get it."

David Axelrod, a CNN political analyst and former strategist for President Barack Obama, encouraged his Twitter followers Tuesday to pay less attention to what Trump says and more to how he behaves.

"Pressing issue of the day? Best to ignore, unless & until it becomes something more than an AM red meat serving from Dr. Trump & Mr. Tweet," Axelrod tweeted.

Still, the spectacle of a President-elect calling for someone to be disowned by their nation for exercising their constitutional rights -- albeit while acting in a way many Americans find distasteful -- is a shocking one.

* * *

Rex and lex according to Trump and Henri de Bracton, De legibus & consuetudinibus Angliæ (ca. 1235)

Cross-posted from Hogfiddle http://hogfiddle.blogspot.com/2016/11/rex-lex-trump-bracton.html Nov. 25.

The Idea of limited government in English history plays during the reign of Elizabeth I, 1558 - 1603. By Edwin Peter Ellertsen. 1975.

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https://www.facebook.com/bravenewfilms/photos/pb.7035457015.-2207520000.1480276600./10153894975522016/?type=3&theater

https://www.facebook.com/peter.ellertsen/posts/1771880313073007?pnref=story

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Donald Trump, transcript of editorial board interview with The New York Times, Nov. ___, 2016: As far as the, you know, potential conflict of interests, though, I mean I know that from the standpoint, the law is totally on my side, meaning, the president can’t have a conflict of interest. That’s been reported very widely. Despite that, I don’t want there to be a conflict of interest anyway. And the laws, the president can’t. And I understand why the president can’t have a conflict of interest now because everything a president does in some ways is like a conflict of interest, but I have, I’ve built a very great company and it’s a big company and it’s all over the world. People are starting to see, when they look at all these different jobs, like in India and other things, number one, a job like that builds great relationships with the people of India, so it’s all good. But I have to say, the partners come in, they’re very, very successful people. They come in, they’d say, they said, ‘Would it be possible to have a picture?’ Actually, my children are working on that job. So I can say to them, Arthur, ‘I don’t want to have a picture,’ or, I can take a picture. I mean, I think it’s wonderful to take a picture. I’m fine with a picture. But if it were up to some people, I would never, ever see my daughter Ivanka again. That would be like you never seeing your son again. That wouldn’t be good. That wouldn’t be good. But I’d never, ever see my daughter Ivanka.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/us/politics/trump-new-york-times-interview-transcript.html

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Oxford University Press, Online Resource Centres. Endicott Administrative Law 2e [Online Resource Centre materials written by Timothy Endicott and Emer Murphy. Updated July 2011.]

Notes on key cases

Chapter 1: Administration and the principles of the constitution

Case of Proclamations (1611) 12 Co Rep 74: Lord Coke held that the Crown has no prerogative to change the common law or statute, or to create new offences. He also held that the King only has the powers that the law allows him. This case is important as it is a move away from arbitrary government. It cements the separation of powers and the subjection of the executive to the rule of law.

Prohibitions del Roy (1607) 77 ER 1342, 12 Co Rep 64: All judicial power is exercised in the name of the monarch, but Lord Coke held that the King could not determine legal disputes in person. The separation of powers required that the task be delegated to the King’s judges. This case reinforced the separation of powers between the executive and the courts.

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This is the single most dangerous thing Donald Trump said in his New York Times interview By Chris Cillizza November 22

Trump's statement carried considerable echoes of Richard Nixon's famous/infamous line to interview David Frost three decades ago: "Well, when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”

It's impossible to know whether Trump was purposely channeling Nixon. (I personally think he wasn't doing so consciously.) In truth, it reminded me as much if not more of Sylvester Stallone as Judge Dredd declaring "I am the law."

No matter where Trump got the idea, it's a very dangerous one for any president to hold: That you (or anyone) is effectively above the law.

U.S. code Title 18 Section 208,

Hiding behind the "well, there's no law that says I can't do this" is not exactly presidential. And a belief that the president isn't bound to do everything he can to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest suggests a dangerous slippery slope about what a president can and should do in office.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/22/this-is-the-single-most-dangerous-thing-donald-trump-said-in-his-new-york-times-interview/?tid=pm_politics_pop

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Trump’s Kleptocracy Is So Astounding It Already Feels Like Old News By Jonathan Chait

Nov. 23

The question receded into the background, in part because an endless series of other controversies obscured it, in part because Americans couldn’t fathom what Trump had apparently promised: the presidency as an adjunct of his real-estate and branding business. The developing world is filled with ruling families that use the state to amass huge and usually secretive fortunes. Such an arrangement has been heretofore unimaginable in the United States. And yet the surreal has quickly become real.

Astonishingly, the president-¬elect has treated the sanctity of government as a nonissue. In a recent tweet, he pronounced the question of his own enrichment through power to have been settled by the voters (or at least the Electoral College). “Prior to the election it was well known that I have interests in properties all over the world,” he wrote. “Only the crooked media makes this a big deal!” He is not even claiming innocence — he is placing the question itself off-limits.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/11/trumps-kleptocracy-already-feels-like-old-news.html

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Bracton on the King of England: “The king has a superior, namely, God. Also the law by which he was made king. Also his curia, namely, the earls and barons, because if he is without a bridle, that is without law, they ought to put the bridle on him.” [31]

"The king has no equal within his realm. Subjects cannot be the equals of the ruler, because he would thereby lose his rule, since equal can have no authority over equal, not a fortiori a superior, because he would then be subject to those subjected to him. The king must not be under man but under God and under the law, because the law makes the king... for there is no rex where will rules rather than lex. Since he is the vicar of Jesus Christ, whose vicegerent on earth he is..."[32] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_de_Bracton

De legibus & consuetudinibus Angliæ The laws and customs of England 1235 AD, 1569

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Calvin’s Case (1608).

The law of nature is that which God at the time of creation of the nature of man infused into his heart, for his preservation and direction; and this is lex eterna [the eternal law], the moral law, called also the law of nature. And by this law, written with the finger of God in the heart of man, were the people of God a long time governed, before the law was written by Moses, who was the first reporter or writer of law in the world.

. . .

This law of nature, which indeed is the eternal law of the Creator, infused into the heart of the creature at the time of his creation, was two thousand years before any laws written, and before any judicial or municipal laws. And certain it is, that before judicial or municipal laws were made, Kings did decide causes according to natural equity, and were not tied to any rule or formality of law, but did dare jura [give laws]. https://calvinistinternational.com/2016/08/30/sir-edward-coke-on-the-natural-law/

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… the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God … -- DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

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Dan Rather, FB, Nov. 22, 10:44 a.m.

Now is a time when none of us can afford to remain seated or silent. We must all stand up to be counted.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/12/05/the-real-concerns-of-the-trump-transition HIstory will demand to know which side were you on. This is not a question of politics or party or even policy. This is a question about the very fundamentals of our beautiful experiment in a pluralistic democracy ruled by law.

When I see neo-Nazis raise their hands in terrifying solute, in public, in our nation's capital, I shudder in horror. When I see that action mildly rebuked by a boilerplate statement from the President-elect whom these bigots have praised, the anger in me grows. And when I see some in a pliant press turn that mild statement into what they call a denunciation I cannot hold back any longer.

Our Declaration of Independence bequeaths us our cherished foundational principle: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

These truths may be self-evident but they are not self-replicating. Each generation has to renew these vows. This nation was founded as an opposite pole to the capriciousness of an authoritarian monarch. We set up institutions like a free press and an independent court system to protect our fragile rights. We have survived through bloody spasms of a Civil War and a Civil Rights Movement to extend more of these rights to more of our citizens. But the direction of our ship of state has not always been one of progress. We interned Japanese Americans, Red Baited during the McCarthy era, and more. I feel the rip tide of regression once again swelling under my feet. But I intend to remain standing.

In normal times of a transition in our presidency between an incoming and outgoing administration of differing political parties, there is a certain amount of fretting on one side and gloating on the other. And the press usually takes a stance that the new administration at least deserves to have a chance to get started - a honeymoon period. But these are not normal times. This is not about tax policy, health care, or education - even though all those and more are so important. This is about racism, bigotry, intimidation and the specter of corruption.

But as I stand I do not despair, because I believe the vast majority of Americans stand with me. To all those in Congress of both political parties, to all those in the press, to religious and civic leaders around the country. your voices must be heard. I hope that the President-elect can learn to rise above this and see the dangers that are brewing. If he does and speaks forcibly, and with action, we should be ready to welcome his voice. But of course I am deeply worried that his selections of advisors and cabinet posts suggests otherwise.

To all of you I say, stay vigilant. The great Martin Luther King, Jr. knew that even as a minority, there was strength in numbers in fighting tyranny. Holding hands and marching forward, raising your voice above the din of complacency, can move mountains. And in this case, I believe there is a vast majority who wants to see this nation continue in tolerance and freedom. But it will require speaking. Engage in your civic government. Flood newsrooms or TV networks with your calls if you feel they are slipping into the normalization of extremism. Donate your time and money to causes that will fight to protect our liberties.

We are a great nation. We have survived deep challenges in our past. We can and will do so again. But we cannot be afraid to speak and act to ensure the future we want for our children and grandchildren.

https://www.facebook.com/theDanRather/posts/10157761985710716

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FAL. God save thee, my sweet boy!

KING. My Lord Chief Justice, speak to that vain man.

CH. JUST. Have you your wits? Know you what 'tis you speak?

FAL. My King! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!

KING. I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers.
How ill white hairs become a fool and jester! …

Henry IV, part 2 | Act 5, Scene 5

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COMMENT DECEMBER 5, 2016 ISSUE

THE REAL CONCERNS OF THE TRUMP TRANSITION

Amy Davidson

In terms of Trump’s own transition to office, there are indications that the arc of his character is more like a loop. His attacks on everyone from the NBC News reporter assigned to cover him to the cast of “Hamilton” are a repeat of his campaign behavior. He seems unwilling to view the Presidency as an office, which has defined limits, instead of as a new way to express his personal desires, which have none. This is reflected, too, in his supposed gestures of moderation. His waning interest in locking up Hillary Clinton, which he expressed in an interview with the Times last week (“I don’t want to hurt the Clintons. I really don’t”), reveals a view of prosecution as something that a President can decide to unleash or withhold arbitrarily. In the same interview, Trump spoke in vague terms about keeping an “open mind” on international climate-change accords, but he also expressed a distrust of climate scientists, echoing the conspiracy-minded attitude of his campaign.

Trump also seems unwilling to engage seriously in the project of moving from the private sector to the public. The possible conflicts of interest posed by his many businesses, which operate in countries from Turkey to Argentina, can play out in farcical ways, such as when he complained to Nigel Farage, the acting leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, about the wind farms that mar the view from his golf course in Scotland. But the conflicts potentially involve politicians with more real power than Farage and interests that are more damaging to the United States. It would be difficult to manage them even if Trump were willing to give it a good-faith try, which, so far, has not been the case. “Prior to the election it was well known that I have interests in properties all over the world. Only the crooked media makes this a big deal!” he tweeted last week.

He had said that he would hand the management of his business interests over to his adult children, but they are now advisers to the transition. He claims that, if critics had their way, “I would never, ever see my daughter Ivanka again.” But there has to be distance: if it is not between him and his children, then between his children and the business.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/12/05/the-real-concerns-of-the-trump-transition

James Fallows on the hollowing out of American political institutions -- today's mile marker as we all go down that sorry road

Cross-posted today from Hogfiddle ...

James Fallows. The Atlantic, online edition, Oct. 30, 2016. "Trump Time Capsule #150: James Comey and the Destruction of Norms." https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2016/10/trump-time-capsule-james-comey/505904/.

Comes now James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic who has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He once served as a speechwriter for President Carter, and he has written frequently -- and eloquently -- over the years of the erosion of standards in American political life by celebrity culture and the demands of a celebrity-obsessed 27/ news cycle, among other topics ranging from small-engine aircraft (he's a licensed pilot) to industrialization in China. His book Breaking The News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy (1997) especially shaped my thinking.

This year Fallows has been writing a series of time capsules on the following premise: "People will look back on this era in our history to see what was known about Donald Trump while Americans were deciding whether to choose him as president. Here’s a running chronicle from James Fallows on the evidence available to voters as they make their choice, and of how Trump has broken the norms that applied to previous major-party candidates." Today's is about FBI Director James Comey's "October surprise":

The rules in politics haven’t changed that much in recent years. What has changed is adherence to norms, in an increasingly destructive way.

I made that case, using examples different from the ones I’m about to present here, nearly two years ago. The shift in norms is also a central part of Thomas Mann’s and Norman Ornstein’s prescient It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, and Mike Lofgren’s The Party Is Over, plus of course Jonathan Rauch’s “How America Went Insane,” our very widely read cover story (subscribe!) this summer. [Links, including to a subscription page, in the original.]

[Examples, mostly concerned with the U.S. Senate's refusal to schedule hearings on President Obama's U.S. Supreme Court nominee but also including Justice Ginsberg's offhand remark on Donald Trump, omitted.

* * *

The official rules didn’t change in these circumstances. The norms—that is, the expectation of what you “should” do, what you “really have to do,” what is the “right thing” to do, even if the letter of the law doesn’t spell it out—have changed. For its survival, a democracy depends on norms. That’s why the shift matters.

And that is the context in which I think about James Comey’s plunge into electoral politics, with his announcement about whatever “new” Clinton-related email information the FBI may or may not have found.

No one knows what this will mean for the election. Millions of people have already voted; in the nine days until official election day there’s not enough time to fully vet and consider what Comey may have found. Will the announcement re-energize Hillary Clinton’s supporters, making them worry that the race may be tightening again? Depress them? Motivate team Trump? Bolster the “they’re all terrible” case for third-party candidates?

We don’t know. But anyone experienced in politics, as Comey obviously is, would have known for dead certain that his intrusion would change the process in a way that cannot be undone. This is apparently what other officials in the FBI and Justice Department were telling Comey before he took this step. Two former deputy attorney generals—Jamie Gorelick, who served under Bill Clinton, and Larry Thompson, who served under George W. Bush—made that point in a new Washington Post essay that lambastes Comey for his self-indulgent decision (emphasis added) ...

[Extended quotation omitted]

* * *

Last week I mentioned the ongoing cultural/“norms-enforcing” challenges that had plagued the Philippines, which I’d written about back at the end of the Marcos era in a piece called “A Damaged Culture.” The rules by which the Philippine Republic is governed are fine. A big problem involved norms—the things that powerful people did, just because they could get away with it.

The rules of American governance are still more or less OK, despite the increasing mismatch between the 18th-century structural decisions built into the Constitution and the realities of 21st-century life. It’s time to worry about the norms.

Oregon professor finds resilience in community disrupted by Malheur wildlife sanctuary occupation

Emily Halnon [University Communications]. "Bundys did damage in Burns as well as at refuge, UO prof says." AROUND the O, University of Oregon, Eugene, Sept. 20, 2016. http://around.uoregon.edu/content/bundys-did-damage-burns-well-refuge-uo-prof-says.

On a chilly January night earlier this year, hundreds of residents of Harney County congregated in the high school gym in Burns to discuss the heavily armed militia that had been a visible presence in their town for nearly three months — driving trucks through the streets with confederate flags and firearms waving out the windows, approaching mothers and children in the grocery store, and shadowing federal employees.

UO geography professor Peter Walker, who is writing a book about the militia’s effect on Burns, sat among town residents as members of the group marched into the gymnasium, their guns in plain sight. Ammon Bundy, one of the leaders, silently took a seat in the bleachers as his men spread to every corner of the gymnasium.

“I realized they were tactically positioning themselves for a firefight,” Walker said.

Steve Grasty, the Harney County judge, halted the meeting he was presiding over and walked up to Bundy.

“You have caused too much suffering in this community,” Grasty said. “You need to go home.”

Community members rose to their feet and began to echo Grasty’s demand.

“Go home. Go home. Go home,” people chanted in unison.

“It was one of the greatest displays of courage I’ve witnessed,” Walker said. “They were surrounded by heavily armed militiamen — some with criminal records, many who had clearly stated their willingness to die for their cause, and there was so much uncertainty about what they might do — yet the residents still stood up and told them to leave.”

But despite the great display of courage, the militia did not go home. They continued their occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge to protest federal “overreach” of land ownership, until the standoff ended with dozens of arrests and the death of one occupier.

* **

... While law enforcement and the media remain focused on the militia’s 41-day occupation of federal property [during the trial of occupation leaders in U.S. District Court at Portland], Walker is investigating what he calls the occupation of Harney County and its aftermath.

“This community was taken hostage for over three months,” Walker said as he outlined the thousands of death threats that were made, the tires that were slashed and the armed militiamen who started walking around the town in camouflage as early as October of last year. “They weren’t hiding from anything. It was purely for intimidation.”

Walker, who specializes in the politics of land, dropped everything when he heard what was happening in the sleepy town of Burns. He was familiar with Ammon and Ryan’s father, Cliven Bundy, who spearheaded a 2014 armed standoff with the federal government over grazing fees on federal land in Nevada, and sensed the Bundy brothers were trying to start something monumental.

* **

The occupation of the wildlife refuge ended months ago, but Walker’s trips to Burns are far from complete.

“The psychological legacy isn’t over,” he said. “The entire county is suffering something like PTSD.”

Walker’s book will examine how community residents respond to the trauma. Will the months of collective tension and intimidation further unite the community? Or will ongoing division, provocation and fear destabilize it?

His early observations, which include the evening at the high school gymnasium, suggest that their shared experience has led to an increased amount of trust that will likely empower them to remain a cohesive community.

In Walker’s opinion, one of the main reasons the Bundys failed to have the massive impact they desired — which, he speculates, was to trigger a nationwide revolution against the federal government — is due to Harney County’s impressive track record of working together on potentially divisive issues. He can highlight many instances where the town’s solutions to the issues stand in direct opposition to the Bundys’ cause.

“Harney County is the poster child of collaboration between land users and the federal government,” Walker said. “They have spent decades addressing the conflicting interests that can arise over land use and management and have identified innovative solutions for the very issues the Bundys protest.”

* **

Walker believes the Harney County ranchers were also unimpressed by outsiders trying to interfere with local politics, especially considering the Bundy brothers are not actually ranchers or loggers. Ammon Bundy owns a truck repair company and Ryan Bundy is a building contractor.

One of the biggest challenges for the community as it attempts to rebuild itself and move on is a small group that did sympathize with the Bundys: the Committee of Safety, a term borrowed from the American Revolution. The group is still handing out pocket Constitutions and advocating an extreme translation that includes the federal government’s lack of rights to the nation’s land.

“It’s going to be a long and hard process of healing,” said Walker, who plans to be there for the indefinite future as the community copes with both continued provocation and the trauma from months of occupation. “But I suspect Harney County will emerge stronger.”

'From Trollope to Trump' -- 2nd of 2 articles on Brexit worth going back to

Niall Ferguson, "From Trollope to Trump" Boston Globe 18 July 2016 https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/07/18/from-trollope-trump/gLkfvfFWqqRiz4zRRRKMTN/story.html.

Ferguson is Oxbridge-educated (I'm not sure which, maybe both), now teaches at Harvard with other gigs at prestige schools and think tanks worldwide. He has a carefully cultivated image as a contrarian and an independent voice -- but his independent voice typically winds up shilling for whomever the Republican Party chooses to nominate for president at a given moment.

Yet he's not enamored of Donald Trump.

Not yet, at least.

But it's still two months to the election. Give him time.

This column explores the common appeal to working-class voters of Brexit in the UK and Trump in the US. Excerpts:

To understand what has just happened in Britain, mystified Americans are advised to read the novels of Anthony Trollope. I especially recommend “Framley Parsonage.’’ There is a wonderful parody there of a Victorian change of government, which dashes the political ambitions of the unscrupulous Harold Smith, briefly elevated to the Petty Bag Office.

Harold Smith has been brought into the Cabinet by Lord Brock, the prime minister, but swiftly falls foul of his jealous friend Mr. Supplehouse, who savages him in an article in the “Jupiter.’’ Then, with breathtaking suddenness, the Brock government is overthrown.

Nothing that happened last week would have astonished Trollope: the suddenness of the fall of Prime Minister David Cameron and the ascent of Theresa May, the despondency of the ousted ministers, and above all the miraculous resurrection of Boris Johnson as foreign secretary.

The fashionable view is that the fall of Cameron, like the rise of Donald Trump, is a symptom of a worldwide populist revolt against the elites — a novel and alarming challenge to the established political order. On closer inspection, this was a political entertainment (think Gilbert & Sullivan) straight out of the early 1860s.

* * *

As November approaches, US voters are going to find themselves in much the same position as their British counterparts found themselves prior to June 24. The face an unappetizing choice: on one side, the familiar but jaded; on the other, the novel but risky. I feel much the same about Hillary Clinton as I do about the European Union, and much the same way about Donald Trump as I do about Brexit.

I was for keeping the UK in the EU, not because I hum the “Ode to Joy” in the bath, but because I thought the Cameron-Osborne government was the best Britain had had in 26 years and did not deserve to be shipwrecked over Europe. At the same time, I wholly disbelieved the arguments of the Brexit camp that the UK would be economically better off out of the EU.

In the case of the United States, I feel no enthusiasm at the prospect of a Clinton presidency. She has already been pushed alarmingly far to the left of Barack Obama by Bernie Sanders’s challenge. Her reputation for honesty and judgment is in … well, whatever comes below tatters.

Yet the alternative seems even worse. I do not share the view that a Trump presidency would be tyranny, undermining the Constitution and eroding the liberties it enshrines. The Constitution was carefully designed to cope with the tendency of democratic electorates to fall for demagogues. But what it cannot do is protect us from terrible policies. Drastic restrictions on immigration, protectionist tariffs, reckless taxing and borrowing — we have seen all these things before in American history, we have seen their unintended costs, and we could see them again if Trump is elected.

Of course, as a member of the elite, I would say that, wouldn’t I? ...

And on he goes. But where he'll stop, I think I know.

'Brexit means Brexit' -- or does it? 1 of 2 columns too good not to come back to

Declan Lynch, "May is heading for the Exit from Brexit," Sunday [Irish] Independent, 21 August 2016 http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/declan-lynch/may-is-heading-for-the-exit-from-brexit-34981939.html.

Lynch, according to Wikipedia, "... dropped out of law school after one year and began writing for the music magazine Hot Press. He did this for a number of years before leaving to work for the Independent." Good on him! He retains some of the breezy style of a pop music writer.

Some excerpts:

[Lede:] Last week they moved it back again, with Theresa May suggesting that the famous Article 50 might not be triggered until late 2017 , an advance on the original procrastination till early 2017. Which would mean that your actual Brexit might be delayed to late 2019.

But there will be no Brexit.

This was clear from the moment that Theresa May declared that "Brexit means Brexit", a statement of such masterful meaninglessness it suggested that the people who run Britain had already regained some of their composure, after being briefly stunned by a blow to the head from the dreaded Joe Public.

* * *

Leaving the EU is more the style of a bunch of geezers on a stag night sticking their heads out the window of a taxi-cab and shouting some xenophobic abuse to anyone who seems to them a bit unusual. That was essentially the spirit of the 'Leave' campaign, and it is just one of the many reasons why the people who run Britain are in no rush to trigger Article 50 or any other Article which would give effect to such barbarian nonsense.

Unfortunately a lot of time and money will have to be wasted now, finding a way not to implement Brexit. Indeed in one not entirely implausible scenario, Britain will not be leaving the EU because there will be no EU any more for Britain to leave.

But this is also a good time in the world for just forgetting about things, for pretending that what happened didn't really happen at all - Trump is running his campaign with this attitude, Trump who actually impersonated a disabled person and just moved on like it was nothing at all.

But it isn't just Trump who doesn't want to be held accountable for anything. No more than the politicians, the people don't want to be held accountable either - certainly many of the people who wanted Brexit have already stated that what happens next is nothing to do with them, mate, while some of them now wish that their referendum win hadn't happened at all.

For them, the consolation is that they haven't won anything yet, nor will they

Echoes of Nach Hitler Uns?

"Not Chicago 1968, but Berlin 1932"
ROBERT J. S. ROSS -- MARCH 28, 2016
http://prospect.org/article/not-chicago-1968-berlin-1932

Robert J. S. Ross is a Member of the Board of Directors and Vice President of the Sweatfree Purchasing Consortium.

* * *

Listen up Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders supporters, and pay close attention, those who think of themselves as being to Sanders’s left: History will judge us sternly if we fail this moment.

Earlier in 1932 Adolf Hitler’s Nazis had become the largest party in parliament, with about 37 percent of the popular vote. The Social Democrats (SPD) and Communists (KPD) together had about 36 percent of the vote, but were in fierce, mortal competition. The traditional German nationalists could not form a stable government without so they called new elections. Now, in November, Hitler lost seats and the combined vote of the SPD and the KPD was larger than his, as were their combined parliamentary seats. While the KPD was hostile to the Weimar arrangements, it nevertheless proposed to the SPD a common front against the early 1933 power grab by the Nazis. The hostility between the two working class parties with egalitarian visions was too deep.

The split that had created the Bolshevik-Menshevik divide in Russia and had divided the German working class parties over the Great War now prevented a united front against Hitler.

The Communists characterized the SPD as “social fascists”—no better than the Nazis. In a similar vein, leftist commentator Chris Hedges and others have recently written that Hillary Clinton is no better than Donald Trump: “Voting for Clinton and supporting the Democratic Party will not halt our descent into despotism.”

* * *

If left leaning activists are serious about their characterization of Trump as a fascist, a comparison recently made by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, then they better get serious about the problem of unity. It is all very well for Hedges to tell us to vote with our feet in the streets, but as the last century teaches us, the ability of authoritarians to resist popular movements is robust. After the election of November 1932, Hitler came into office as Germany’s largest party (though a minority). And while working class parties together neared a majority, they were two divided to oppose him. The center parties—ostensibly committed to constitutionalism—succumbed to a fear of Hitler’s retaliation and a fear of the left. They cooperated in the formation of a government that would ultimately eliminate them.

The German elections in March 1933 were held under repressive and violent conditions and the concentration camps were next.

* * *

There is some value in thinking about 1968. Unable to countenance support for the administration which had made war in Vietnam, I advocated a boycott of the Humphrey-Nixon contest, while friends in California and elsewhere chose Eldridge Cleaver over Humphrey. In the meantime, the law and order backlash against our demonstration tactics in Chicago also helped Nixon win a razor thin victory over Humphrey. What we got was more bombing in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia and a shameful episode of presidential abuse of power.

* * *

REEFER TO:

"Bernie, Hillary, and the Ghost of Ernst Thalmann" -- HAROLD MEYERSON -- JULY 13, 2016

In campaigning for Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders will be making sure his voters don’t suffer from the blind spot that plagued Nazi-era Communist leader Ernst Thälmann, who argued that the Social Democrats posed a greater threat than Adolf Hitler.

http://prospect.org/article/bernie-hillary-and-ghost-ernst-thalmann

Of shoeboxes, Illinois politics, Paul Powell, Gov. Joel Aldrich Matteson (1853-57) and some modest reforms proposed by state Sen. Daniel Biss, D-Skokie

Several years ago when each state got to design its own quarter, I wanted Illinois' to feature a shoebox. I was reminded of that today by a well-produced video titled "THE ROAD BACK: Culture of Corruption," state Sen. Daniel Biss, D-Skokie. I first saw it on my Facebook feed, but it's available on Biss' website at this address:

https://roadbackillinois.com/an-innocent-trip-to-the-dry-cleaner-35c33b8fda38#.57czl8hdm

(The video is in a June 29 blog post titled "An Innocent Trip to the Dry Cleaner," in which Biss discusses some of the differences -- and occasionally the very close similarities -- between bribery and constituent services. It's nuanced and clearly written, and well worth reading, as the video is well worth watching.)

At any rate, Biss taught math at the University of Chicago and he knows how to hold an audience. The video outlines practical reforms, starting with voter registration and consolidating the welter of special earmarked funds in the state budget, and it does so in an engaging, even entertaining manner. Biss sounds like he must have been good with undergrads at the U of C.

Which is where the shoeboxes come in.

Shoeboxes and Illinois politics, they just go together. And Biss milked the connection for all it's worth.

Everyone knows, or feels like they ought to remember, the story about the shoeboxes stuffed with $800,000 in cash that turned up in Secretary of State Paul Powell's Springfield hotel room after his death in 1970. No one knew how it got there, and Paul Powell's shoebox got to be kind of an Illinois political icon.

Which is why I wanted a shoebox on the state quarter.

Biss' contribution to my knowledge was to begin with a tale of the chicanery that went with the bond issue for the Illinois & Michigan Canal in the 1830s, and a scandal that arose when Gov. Joel Aldrich Matteson, governor from 1853 to 1857, was caught with as much as $200,000 in I&M Canal scrip -- a kind of banknote -- that had somehow been removed from a shoebox in the basement of the old State Capitol in Springfield. A grand jury investigation followed, but Matteson made restitution, no one was indicted and no one ever found out exactly what happened to the canal scrip.

This kind of stuff can be deadly, except to historians and Illinois political junkies, but Biss got my attention.

I'd never heard of Matteson before. But here's some information I tracked down:

• Claire Suddath "A Brief History of Illinois Corruption," Time magazine website Thursday, Dec. 11, 2008 at http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1865681,00.html.

  Suddath says:

  Reach as far back into Illinois history as you like and your hands will likely come out dirty. Blagojevich is the sixth Illinois governor to be subjected to arrest or indictment — seventh if you count Joel Aldrich Matteson (governor from 1853-1857), who tried to cash $200,000 of stolen government scrip he "found" in a shoebox. Matteson pulled a "how-did-that-get-there?" excuse and escaped indictment by promising to pay it back. (Oddly, this isn't Illinois's only shoebox-full-of-money scandal; after former secretary of state Paul Powell's death in 1970, a search of his home revealed shoeboxes full of hundreds of thousands of dollars in checks made out to him by unsuspecting Illinois residents who thought they were paying license plate registration fees).

• See also James William Putnam, The Illinois and Michigan Canal: A Study in Economic History, Chicago: U of C Press, 1918. Chicago's Historical Society Collection, 10: 88 Google Books.

• John M. Lamb. “The Great Canal Scrip Fraud,” in the December 1977 issue of The Magazine of Illinois 16.9: 57-60 at https://www.lewisu.edu/imcanal/JohnLamb/section_6.pdf.
  
  

Lee Atwater interview on dog-whistle politics -- how and why talk of "cutting taxes ... is a lot more abstract than [racial slurs]"

CONTENT ADVISORY -- offensive racial slur in Atwater quote below ...

* * *

Rick Perlstein. "Lee Atwater’s Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy" Nation Nov, 13, 2012, https://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/

From a 1981 interview with Lee Atwater, a Republican political operative from South Carolina who helped design Pres. Nixon's "Southern strategy" and later was Pres. George Bush Sr.'s campaign manager in 1988. At the core of the strategy was appealing to white Southerners who had opposed integration after Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and were leaving the Democratic Party after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law.

Still later, after Atwater's death in 1991, it morphed into today's racial "dog whistles" that don't specifically mention race but are heard in racial terms by people who accept the stereotypes behind them -- for example Reagan's "welfare queens" or the common stereotype in downstate Illinois that "Chicago thugs and gang-bangers" are African American. This one paragraph sums it up in Atwater's words:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

But Atwater's context is important, and the quote really is best understood in the context of the entire interview. Another verbatim excerpt from article:

The back-story goes like this. In 1981, Atwater, after a decade as South Carolina's most effective Republican operative, was working in Ronald Reagan's White House when he was interviewed by Alexander Lamis, a political scientist at Case Western Reserve University. Lamis published the interview without using Atwater's name in his 1984 book The Two-Party South. Fifteen years later—and eight years after Atwater passed away from cancer—Lamis republished the interview in another book using Atwater’s name. For seven years no one paid much attention. Then the New York Times' Bob Herbert, a bit of an Atwater obsessive, quoted it in an October 6, 2005 column—then five more times over the next four years.

Those words soon became legend—quoted in both screeds (The GOP-Haters Handbook, 2007) and scholarship (Corey Robin's 2011 classic work of political theory, The Reactionary Mind). Google Books records its use in ten books published so far this year alone. Curious about the remarks' context, Carter, who learned Lamis had died in 2012, asked his widow if she would consider releasing the audio of the interview, especially in light of the use of race-baiting dog-whistles (lies about Obama ending work requirements for welfare; "jokes" about his supposed Kenyan provenance) in the Romney presidential campaign. Renée Lamis, an Obama donor, agreed that very same night. For one thing she was “upset,” Carter told me, that “for some time, conservatives believed [her] husband made up the Atwater interview.” For another, she was eager to illustrate that her husband's use of the Atwater quote was scholarly, not political.

Carter is " the same indefatigable researcher who brought us Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” remarks," James Carter IV,"

Irish Times editor the day after Brexit vote: "English nationalists have placed a bomb under [Northern Ireland] peace process"

English nationalists have placed a bomb under peace process" Irish Times Sat, Jun 25, 2016 http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/english-nationalists-have-placed-a-bomb-under-peace-process-1.2700068

Recklessly, casually, with barely a thought, English nationalists have planted a bomb under the settlement that brought peace to Northern Ireland and close cordiality to relations between Britain and Ireland. To do this seriously and soberly would have been bad. To do it so carelessly, with nothing more than a pat on the head and a reassurance that everything will be all right, is frankly insulting.

Just five years ago, when Queen Elizabeth became the first reigning British monarch to visit southern Ireland in a century, there was a massive sense of relief. It was not just relief that the visit went off peacefully and well. It was much deeper than that: it was relief from centuries of both British condescension and Irish Anglophobia. A long story – often nasty, sometimes merely tediously wasteful – was over. There was a dignified, decent, democratic settlement that allowed the natural warmth of a neighbourly relationship to come fully to the surface.

I never imagined then that I would ever feel bitter about England again. But I do feel bitter now, because England has done a very bad day’s work for Ireland. It is dragging Irish history along in its triumphal wake, like tin cans tied to a wedding car.

---

What will now happen is not that the old border will come back. It’s much worse than that. The old border marked the line between neighbouring polities that had a common travel area and an intimate, if often fraught, relationship. It was a customs barrier. The new border will be the most westerly land frontier of a vast entity of more than 400 million people, and it will be an immigration (as well as a customs) barrier.

---

Irish Times view: Brexit a bewildering act of self-harm
Fintan O’Toole: Brexit fantasy is about to come crashing down
What does ‘Brexit nightmare’ mean for Ireland?

---

It will, if the Brexiters’ demands to take back control of immigration to the UK are meant seriously, have to be heavily policed to keep EU migrants who have lawfully entered the Republic from moving into the UK. And it will run between Newry and Dundalk, between Letterkenny and Derry. The Dublin-Belfast train will have to stop for passport controls. (Given that the border could not be secured with army watchtowers during the Troubles, it is not at all clear how this policing operation will work.)

Meanwhile, the cornerstone of the peace settlement, the Belfast agreement of 1998, is being undermined. One of the key provisions of the agreement is that anyone born in Northern Ireland has the right to be a citizen of the UK or Ireland or both. What does that mean in the new dispensation?

---

This fecklessness in turn is deeply unsettling for unionists in Northern Ireland. It suggests that the new English nationalism is completely indifferent to their fate. During the referendum debates, a few pro-remain voices, such as the TUC general secretary, Frances O’Grady (herself of Irish descent), tried to make a gentle plea to voters to think about Ireland and the Belfast agreement. They went unheard. English nationalists, it turns out, wouldn’t give the froth off a pint of real ale for the Irish peace process.

And if they don’t care enough even to talk in any serious way about the consequences of Brexit for Northern Ireland, what grounds are there to believe that when they come to power in their own little England they will care about (or pay for) a province they clearly regard as a closer, wetter Gibraltar, an irrelevant appendage of the motherland?

Northern Ireland desperately needed a generation of relative political boredom, in which ordinary issues such as taxation and the health service – rather than the unanswerable questions of national identity – could become the stuff of partisan debate. Brexit has made that impossible. Sinn Féin’s immediate call for a referendum on a united Ireland may be reckless and opportunistic, but no more so than the Democratic Unionist party’s failure to understand that Brexit is the best gift to Irish nationalists. It is the beginning of the breakup of the union and the rise of an independent England for which Northern Ireland will be no more than a distant nuisance.

Early warning?: An English major wonders if Trump's behavior threatens the rule of law and the basis for constitutional government

D R A F T

I hope I'm wrong about this, but I'm really worried about "presumptive [GOP presidential] nominee" Donald Trump's latest outburst. For several months I've been noticing echoes of neo-fascism in his rhetoric and his appeal to working-class voters who have lost ground in today's economy -- compare them to the "Reagan Democrats" of the 1980s or lumpenproletariat of the 1930s -- but this week's personal attack on U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel crosses a new line. I think he threatens our historic commitment to what constitutional scholars call the "rule of law," in a way I hadn't seen before.

Maybe I'm over-reacting, but I take it almost personally -- I wrote my doctoral dissertation on it. It was a spellbinder titled "The Idea of Limited Government in English History Plays During the Reign of Elizabeth I, 1558-1603," and it's been gathering dust (unless the hard copies has been retired and it's now available only in microfilm) in the University of Tennessee library at Knoxville since 1975. To my mind, Trump is playing fast and loose with principles that were already settled law in the 1500s.

But, you're wondering, how do we get from Donald Trump to the idea of limited government? Isn't that kind of a stretch? Well, yes, I hope it is. But in Queen Elizabeth's day, the formula was that "the king is under the law because without the law, there is no king." It dates back to Henry de Bracton, an adviser to King Henry III in the 1200s, and it means -- translating it into today's language -- the royal government was bound by the law of England because without the law any warlord with a big army could overthrow the king.

In other words: Laws, not the whims of the people who administer the law, are the controlling authority.

So at the end of Shakespeare's 2 Henry IV, when Prince Hal just become King Henry V, his old drinking buddy Falstaff comes up to him, and this dialog ensues:

FALSTAFF God save thee, my sweet boy!

KING HENRY V My lord chief-justice, speak to that vain man.

LORD CHIEF-JUSTICE Have you your wits? know you what 'tis to speak?

FALSTAFF My king! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!

KING HENRY IV I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers;
How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!
I have long dream'd of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swell'd, so old and so profane;
But, being awaked, I do despise my dream.

In other words: Prince Hal is now king, and the law -- here personified by the Lord Chief Justice -- rather than personal friendship is the controlling authority.

Bottom line (to my way of thinking): When Trump, as a presidential candidate with a real chance of winning the presidential election, injects personalities into a court case and makes ominous, if vague, remarks about might happen to the case if he wins in November, he's stepping all over legal principles that are as old and as basic as anything we have in the Anglo-American system of law. It's the Donald being the Donald, sure, but it's also way beyond troubling.

Some verbatim excerpts from news coverage and editorials follow below:

---

LATER (June 4): This editorial in yesterday's Washington Post isn't as English major-y as what I wrote, but it goes part-way there.

"Trump wants to put himself above the law — and that is dangerous." Editorial. Washington Post. 3 June. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-wants-to-put-himself-above-the-law--and-that-is-dangerous/2016/06/03/3181b6c6-29aa-11e6-a3c4-0724e8e24f3f_story.html.

LET US assume, contrary to the known facts so far, that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel does harbor some bias against Donald Trump, the defendant in a class-action lawsuit brought to Judge Curiel’s Southern California courtroom by aggrieved former customers of the Trump University real estate school. Let us assume, further, and also contrary to known fact, that this bias even has something to do with Judge Curiel’s Mexican American heritage, as Mr. Trump venomously insists. The thing to do would be for Mr. Trump to file a motion with the court, urging the judge to recuse from the case and spelling out the reasons why. If the motion’s denied, he can appeal to a higher court.

The fact that Mr. Trump has not filed such a motion says a lot about his attitude toward the rule of law and stable political processes — more, in a sense, than his bigoted attacks on the judge themselves. When things don’t go his way, Mr. Trump’s first resort is not to use options for redress the system provides; it is, rather, to blame his problems on an enemy and whip up public hostility against him, in crude ethnic terms, if it seems advantageous. One implication of Mr. Trump’s words, that he is the one with a bias, against Americans of Latino heritage, is bad enough; possibly worse is the ominous signal his behavior sends about how a President Trump would deal with any sort of opposition he might encounter.

---

Jose A. DelReal and Katie Zezima, "Trump’s personal, racially tinged attacks on federal judge alarm legal experts" Washington Post 1 June 2016 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2016/06/01/437ccae6-280b-11e6-a3c4-0724e8e24f3f_story.html.

Donald Trump’s highly personal, racially tinged attacks on a federal judge overseeing a pair of lawsuits against him have set off a wave of alarm among legal experts, who worry that the Republican presidential candidate’s vendetta signals a remarkable disregard for judicial independence.

That attitude, many argue, could carry constitutional implications if Trump becomes president.

U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is handling two class-action lawsuits against Trump University in San Diego, has emerged as a central target for Trump and his supporters in recent weeks. The enmity only escalated after Curiel ordered the release of embarrassing internal documents detailing predatory marketing practices at the for-profit educational venture; that case is set to go to trial after the November election.

“I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater. He’s a hater,” Trump said at a campaign rally in San Diego, adding that he believed the Indiana-born judge was “Mexican.”

He also suggested taking action against the judge after the election: “They ought to look into Judge Curiel, because what Judge Curiel is doing is a total disgrace. Okay? But we will come back in November. Wouldn’t that be wild if I am president and come back and do a civil case? Where everybody likes it. Okay. This is called life, folks.”

* * *

Trump’s attacks on Curiel stand out for their personal nature, for the racial remarks and for the suggestion by a potential president that someone “ought to look into” the judge.

Charles Gardner Geyh, a professor at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law, said he has no problem with presidents or presidential candidates criticizing judges or judicial decisions. But, he said, “there’s a line between disagreement and sort of throwing the judiciary under the bus that I think is at issue here.”Trump’s attacks on Curiel stand out for their personal nature, for the racial remarks and for the suggestion by a potential president that someone “ought to look into” the judge.

* * *

Katrina Pierson, a spokeswoman for Trump, has expanded on the accusations of bias, wrongly suggesting Curiel is part of a group organizing protests at Trump rallies around California. Curiel is a member of the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association, a professional group that she appeared to confuse with the National Council of La Raza, an advocacy group.

Luis Osuna, the president of the lawyers association, said the group is not an advocacy group and supports candidates on both sides of the aisle. He said Trump’s attempts to discredit Curiel should give voters serious pause, not least because his comments reduce Hispanics in the legal profession to their heritage.

“Every time there is a comment like this, it is disheartening,” Osuna said. “It is not, unfortunately, surprising, given the source of the comments. But it displays a complete lack of understanding of the role that we have as attorneys and judges and the role that we have in upholding the Constitution.”

“He’s definitely using it as a dog whistle to his supporters,” he added. “Obviously, I don’t know what is in his heart. I can only judge based on the way he has acted in the past, but this has been a recurring theme in his campaign.”

---

"Donald Trump and the Judge." Editorial. New York Times 31 May 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/01/opinion/donald-trump-and-the-judge.html.

One would think Mr. Trump, whose sister is a federal appellate judge, would know how self-destructive it is for any litigant anywhere to attack the judge hearing his or her case. But Mr. Trump is not any litigant; he is running to be president of the United States — a job that requires at least a glancing understanding of the American system of government, in particular a respect for the separation of powers. When Mr. Trump complains that he is “getting railroaded” by a “rigged” legal system, he is saying in effect that an entire branch of government is corrupt.

The special danger of comments like these — however off the cuff they may sound — is that they embolden Mr. Trump’s many followers to feel, and act, the same way.

For good measure, Mr. Trump added that Judge Curiel “happens to be, we believe, Mexican.” False; the judge is from Indiana. But facts are, as always, beside the point for Mr. Trump, who reassured his audience that “the Mexicans are going to end up loving Donald Trump when I give all these jobs.” (Presumably he was not referring to those he has promised to deport if he is elected.) In a masterpiece of understatement, Judge Curiel, who is prevented by ethical rules from responding directly to comments like these, noted in his order that Mr. Trump “has placed the integrity of these court proceedings at issue.”

Adam Gopnik takes on Trump in another New Yorker piece -- with some background on World War II on the Russian front

Adam Gopnik, a staff writer who does a lot of book reviews for the New Yorker and is one of the most literate journalists in the business, weighed in today on a recent piece by neo-con thinker Robert Kagan in the Washington Post says Republican "presumptive nominee" Donald Trump is some kind of fascist, and a response to Kagan on Vox.com quoting five experts who say no, he's not a fascist, he's a right-wing populist demagogue or, in the words of Robert Griffin of Oxford Brookes University, "... a total xenophobic racist male chauvinist bastard."

Gopnik argues that no matter whether he's none of above or all of above, Trump is dangerous.

"If Trump came to power, there is a decent chance that the American experiment would be over," Gopnik says. "This is not a hyperbolic prediction; it is not a hysterical prediction; it is simply a candid reading of what history tells us happens in countries with leaders like Trump."

I've read Gopnik on everything from Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin to Harper Lee, atheism, Shakespeare, the vagaries of translation, Edmund Burke, the 9/11 Memorial Museum, the synoptic gospels and the origin of Christianity. I've always known him to be a thoughtful, considered writer, and I don't think he's just blowing political smoke here.

Some excerpts from today's post, on the New Yorker website:

... One by one, people who had not merely resisted him before but called him by his proper name—who, until a month ago, were determined to oppose a man they rightly described as a con artist and a pathological liar—are suddenly getting on board. Columnists and magazines that a month ago were saying #NeverTrump are now vibrating with the frisson of his audacity, fawning over him or at least thrilling to his rising poll numbers and telling one another, “We can control him.’

No, you can’t. One can argue about whether to call him a fascist or an authoritarian populist or a grotesque joke made in a nightmare shared between Philip K. Dick and Tom Wolfe, but under any label Trump is a declared enemy of the liberal constitutional order of the United States—the order that has made it, in fact, the great and plural country that it already is. He announces his enmity to America by word and action every day. It is articulated in his insistence on the rightness of torture and the acceptable murder of noncombatants. It is self-evident in the threats he makes daily to destroy his political enemies, made only worse by the frivolity and transience of the tone of those threats. He makes his enmity to American values clear when he suggests that the Presidency holds absolute power, through which he will be able to end opposition—whether by questioning the ownership of newspapers or talking about changing libel laws or threatening to take away F.C.C. licenses. To say “Well, he would not really have the power to accomplish that” is to misunderstand the nature of thin-skinned authoritarians in power. They do not arrive in office and discover, as constitutionalists do, that their capabilities are more limited than they imagined. They arrive, and then make their power as large as they can.

When Gopnik talks about Trump's "blizzard of lies ... made for Twitter and the quick hit of an impulse culture," it would be easy enough to dismiss it as campaign rhetoric. We always stand at Armageddon around election time, and we do battle for the Lord every four years like clockwork. But Gopnik has something entirely different in mind when he says this:

He’s not Hitler, as his wife recently said? Well, of course he isn’t. But then Hitler wasn’t Hitler—until he was. At each step of the way, the shock was tempered by acceptance. It depended on conservatives pretending he wasn’t so bad, compared with the Communists, while at the same time the militant left decided that their real enemies were the moderate leftists, who were really indistinguishable from the Nazis. The radical progressives decided that there was no difference between the democratic left and the totalitarian right and that an explosion of institutions was exactly the most thrilling thing imaginable.

The American Republic stands threatened by the first overtly anti-democratic leader of a large party in its modern history—an authoritarian with no grasp of history, no impulse control, and no apparent barriers on his will to power. The right thing to do, for everyone who believes in liberal democracy, is to gather around and work to defeat him on Election Day. Instead, we seem to be either engaged in parochial feuding or caught by habits of tribal hatred so ingrained that they have become impossible to escape even at moments of maximum danger. Bernie Sanders wouldn’t mind bringing down the Democratic Party to prevent it from surrendering to corporate forces—and yet he may be increasing the possibility of rule-by-billionaire.

And this:

If Trump came to power, there is a decent chance that the American experiment would be over. This is not a hyperbolic prediction; it is not a hysterical prediction; it is simply a candid reading of what history tells us happens in countries with leaders like Trump. Countries don’t really recover from being taken over by unstable authoritarian nationalists of any political bent, left or right—not by Peróns or Castros or Putins or Francos or Lenins or fill in the blanks. The nation may survive, but the wound to hope and order will never fully heal. Ask Argentinians or Chileans or Venezuelans or Russians or Italians—or Germans. The national psyche never gets over learning that its institutions are that fragile and their ability to resist a dictator that weak. If he can rout the Republican Party in a week by having effectively secured the nomination, ask yourself what Trump could do with the American government if he had a mandate. ...

Source: "The Dangerous Acceptance of Donald Trump." Daily Comment, Newyorker.com May 20, 2016. http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-dangerous-acceptance-of-donald-trump.

---

As a book reviewer for the New Yorker, Gopnik has read widely in the history of World War II and the Holocaust. In one review, of a book titled Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning by Yale history professor Timothy Snyder, he provides a glimpse into his opinion about Hitler's articulation of dark impulses felt by the German people.

And in one passage, Gopnik speaks of atrocities committed on the Eastern Front in terms that call to mind precisely, if ever so distantly, Trump's rhetoric about Mexicans and Muslims even though he nowhere mentions Trump by name.

"In a period of fear and panic," Gopnik says, "it is the easiest thing in the world to talk ourselves into the idea that bad things we do are necessities of human nature."

I think it's important to understand here that Gopnik is not issuing a blanket indictment of all Germans. As a book reviewer, he's careful not to let his own opinion overshadow the content of the book he's reviewing. But he suggests what happened in Germany was not unique to that time and place. It happened in Rwanda in the 1990s, it happened in Vietnam, in isolated instances, and it can happen anywhere:

Surely Snyder is right when he implies that the well-meant “Godwin’s law,” which, beginning as an observation about Internet arguments, has come to be shorthand for the rule that the Nazis should never be introduced into ordinary political arguments, is miscast. In fact, we should keep the image of the Germans and the Nazis in front of us—not to show how close the people on the other side of an argument are to unutterable evil but to remind ourselves that we, too, can become that close in a shorter time than we like to think. In a period of fear and panic, it is the easiest thing in the world to talk ourselves into the idea that bad things we do are necessities of human nature. The Germans listened to Mozart and Beethoven and then murdered children, and this was not a cognitive dislocation from which we couldn’t suffer but the eternal rationale offered by the terrified: we can’t protect what really matters if we don’t do things that we wish we didn’t have to.

War makes ordinary people do horrible things. If there is a point that perhaps Snyder does not underline enough—it comes through vividly in Antony Beevor’s books on the Battle of Stalingrad and other campaigns—it is that the Germans who killed were dying, too, in increasingly vast numbers and in cold and fear of their own. Wars make atrocities happen. Americans have still not come to terms with My Lai, a Vietnam atrocity not unlike the acts of the Einsatzgruppen on the Eastern Front, though thankfully more isolated. To engage in political or procedural or even geographic explanations of these histories misses their history. Once panic sets in, for an army or an occupier, then the persecution—indeed, the slaughter—of the population seems a necessity for survival. Frightened soldiers in foreign lands murder the locals without mercy or purpose. One wishes that this happened rarely. In truth, it happens all the time.

Source: "Blood and Soil: A Historian Returns to the Holocaust," New Yorker 21 Sept. 2015 http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/21/blood-and-soil.

Gopnik of The New Yorker goes there, comparing and contrasting Trump's "crypto-fascist" appeal with Hitler, Peron and Huck Finn's Pap

"Going There with Donald Trump" -- posted May 11 to Daily Comment on the magazine's website --

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/going-there-with-donald-trump

... There is a simple formula for descriptions of Donald Trump: add together a qualification, a hyphen, and the word “fascist.” The sum may be crypto-fascist, neo-fascist, latent fascist, proto-fascist, or American-variety fascist—one of that kind, all the same. Future political scientists will analyze (let us hope in amused retrospect, rather than in exile in New Zealand or Alberta) the precise elements of Poujadisme, Peronism and Huck Finn’s Pap that compound in Trump’s “ideology.” But his personality and his program belong exclusively to the same dark strain of modern politics: an incoherent program of national revenge led by a strongman; a contempt for parliamentary government and procedures; an insistence that the existing, democratically elected government, whether Léon Blum’s or Barack Obama’s, is in league with evil outsiders and has been secretly trying to undermine the nation; a hysterical militarism designed to no particular end than the sheer spectacle of strength; an equally hysterical sense of beleaguerment and victimization; and a supposed suspicion of big capitalism entirely reconciled to the worship of wealth and “success.” It is always alike, and always leads inexorably to the same place: failure, met not by self-correction but by an inflation of the original program of grievances, and so then on to catastrophe. The idea that it can be bounded in by honest conservatives in a Cabinet or restrained by normal constitutional limits is, to put it mildly, unsupported by history.

* * *

Hitler’s enablers in 1933—yes, we should go there, instantly and often, not to blacken our political opponents but as a reminder that evil happens insidiously, and most often with people on the same side telling each other, Well, he’s not so bad, not as bad as they are. We can control him. (Or, on the opposite side, I’d rather have a radical who will make the establishment miserable than a moderate who will make people think it can all be worked out.) Trump is not Hitler. (Though replace “Muslim” with “Jew” in many of Trump’s diktats and you will feel a little less complacent.) But the worst sometimes happens. If people of good will fail to act, and soon, it can happen here.

Madigan's April 13 floor speech on Rauner's budget crisis

Verbatim excerpts:

... Every other governor that I have worked with has negotiated with the General Assembly in good faith to help the people of Illinois and to insure that the people of our state would not needlessly suffer.

The fact is the current budget crisis was completely avoidable. While this crisis was avoidable, Governor Rauner has refused to put an end to the crisis. Some of his remarks in recent years clearly indicate this has been his plan from the very beginning.

Source: http://capitolfax.com/2016/04/13/madigan-rauners-impasse-is-a-feature-not-a-bug/

Under comments:

- Lakeview J - Wednesday, Apr 13, 16 @ 9:50 am:

If you want to see how strong the governor has made the Speaker’s position in the Democratic caucus, watch who is among the first to shake his hand after the standing ovation. Rep. Will Guzzardi, who just two short years ago was on the receiving end of the full Madigan treatment.

Blueroomstream has it at http://livestream.com/blueroomstream/events/5138704 linked to Capitol Fax of that date.

And the conservative blog Illinois Review has a transcript, for reasons that are obscure to me since you'd think it undercuts their editorial policy, at

http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2016/04/speaker-madigans-explanation-as-to-why-illinois-budget-remains-stalled.html

Over 30 years, I have worked with six governors from both political parties – twice as many Republicans as Democrats. We didn’t always agree on the issues. We didn’t always agree on the best approach to passing the state government. I had differences of opinion with all the governors I’ve worked with, including governors of my own party.

And let me repeat that – including governors of my own party. Many of you will recall the very strong differences I had with former Governor Rod Blagojevich.

However, we found a way to compromise. My record over the years is one of compromise. Regardless of the governor or his political party, to pass a budget that does not withhold the services that the people of Illinois depend upon. It is my openness to compromise that I stated more than a year ago, and why I continue to believe that to solve the state budget deficit, we must take a balanced approach.

* * *

The fact is the current budget crisis was completely avoidable. While this crisis was avoidable, Governor Rauner has refused to put an end to the crisis. Some of his remarks in recent years clearly indicate this has been his plan from the very beginning.

At the Tazewell County’s Lincoln Day Dinner in March 2013, Governor Rauner said, and I quote, “Even if the Democrats got a major majority against us, you know what? They can’t stop us. They won’t stop me if I want to dramatically spend less. You need the legislature if you want to spend more. If you want to spend less, they can’t stop me. And I apologize, we may have to go through rough times. If we have to do what Ronald Reagan did with the air traffic controllers, if we sort of have to do a do-over and shut things down for a little while …” – like university and social service providers – “that’s what we’re going to do.”

My view of the important role of state government, which I have argued, stands in stark contrast with Governor Rauner’s view of the role of state government as shown through his comments, has not changed since I first took office.

Beyond Inside Higher Ed: Directory of blogs for academics at guardian.co.uk

My own little portal ...

On the Guardian's website -- veddy British, but it has plenty of links to blogs, Twitter accounts, etc. Even an annual Academics with Cats competition.

University life often involves being stuck at a desk; writing articles, marking and planning. Lucky, then, that this usually means there’s an internet connection nearby, offering an escape into the wide world of university-related advice and humour on the web.

Here are some of our favourites (and we’d love to hear yours in the comments).

http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2016/mar/23/follow-the-leaders-the-best-social-media-accounts-for-academics?CMP=share_btn_fb

Connecting the dots -- ALEC and Milton Friedman provide missing link to Reaganite school reform in 1983

D R A F T

Surprise! Surprise! ALEC and the Koch brothers have been heavily involved in it since 1983. Remember Milton Friedman? Him, too.

Cashing in on Kids: 172 ALEC Education Bills Push Privatization in 2015 - See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/03/13054/cashing-kids-172-alec-education-bills-2015#sthash.pZHGFCqD.dpuf http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/03/13054/cashing-kids-172-alec-education-bills-2015 http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/03/13054/cashing-kids-172-alec-education-bills-2015

Submitted by Brendan Fischer on March 8, 2016 - 8:57am

- See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/03/13054/cashing-kids-172-alec-education-bills-2015#sthash.pZHGFCqD.dpuf

Until recently, ALEC boasted on the "history" section of its website that it first started promoting "such 'radical' ideas as a [educational] voucher system" in 1983, taking up ideas first articulated decades earlier by ALEC ally, Milton Friedman, who was an economist with the University of Chicago.

Although ALEC and other school privatizers today frame "vouchers"—taxpayer-funded tuition for private, and often religious, schools—in terms of "opportunity" for low-income students and giving parents the "choice" to send their children to public or private schools, the group was less judicious in its earlier years.

The commentary to ALEC's original 1984 voucher bill states that its purpose is "to introduce normal market forces" into education, and to "dismantle the control and power of" teachers' unions by directing money from public institutions to private ones that were less likely to be unionized.

Friedman was more explicit when addressing ALEC's 2006 meeting. He explained that vouchers are really a step towards "abolishing the public school system."

"How do we get from where we are to where we want to be?" Friedman asked the ALEC crowd.

"Of course, the ideal way would be to abolish the public school system and eliminate all the taxes that pay for it. Then parents would have enough money to pay for private schools, but you're not gonna do that."

Instead, Friedman said, the politically feasible way of moving towards an entirely private educational system is through vouchers:

So you have to ask, what are politically feasible ways of solving the problem. The answer, in my opinion, is choice, that you have to change the way government money is directed. Instead of it being used to finance schools and buildings, you should decide how much money you are willing to spend on each child and give that money, provide that money in the form of a voucher to the parents of the children so the parents can choose a school that they regard as best for their child.

Thanks to the work of the Koch-funded ALEC, David Koch's Americans for Prosperity, and the DeVos-funded American Federation for Children, thirteen states and the District of Columbia have adopted a basic voucher scheme.

- See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/03/13054/cashing-kids-172-alec-education-bills-2015#sthash.pZHGFCqD.dpuf

Sarah Silverman trumps Godwin's Law in full Hitler drag on Conan O'Brien's show

Sorry about the pun -- I can't let go of it, and I can't help myself!

More and more pundits have hinted lately that Donald Trump has fascist tendencies, and a New York Daily News cover flatly says, "Trump is Hitler."

Not much nuance there.

And it's a violation of Godwin's law, which holds that "sooner or later [in an online discussion] someone will compare someone or something to Hitler or Nazism" and "once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress."

So I guess it was inevitable that Hitler would appear on TV to clear his name.

Or, more accurately, that comedian Sarah Silverman, dressed as Adolf Hitler, would appear on Conan O’Brien's late-night talk show Thursday to say her character resents being associated with Trump.

Screen grab of Silverman as Hitler

Reports The Daily Beast this morning:

Out walked Sarah Silverman in full Nazi attire to a wild ovation from the audience. “That’s more applause than I expected,” she deadpanned. Silverman’s Hitler wanted to “clear the air” over what he viewed as “unfavorable” comparisons to Trump.

“Don’t get me wrong, Conan, I agree with a lot of what he says. A lot. Like 90 percent of what he says, I’m like this guy gets it,” Hitler admitted. “But it’s just, I don’t like the way he says it. It’s crass, you know?

“What kind of person talks about his penis size on national television?” Hitler asked. As someone who “famously has a micropenis,” he added, “that’s what makes a tyrant.”

“All these comparisons to Trump, it’s like, it bums me out, you know what I mean?” Hitler continued. “Sometimes I watch him and I’m like, ‘Is that how people see me?’ And I have to be honest, Trump, he’s starting to make me rethink some of the things I’ve done.” After a pause, Hitler added, “Ah, who am I kidding? I got to be me!”

Godwin's law trumped by GOP candidate's "fascist double whammy"

D R A F T

I've suspected for a while now that Donald Trump has a lot in common with the fascists of the 1930s, not so much in Hitler's Germany as Mussolini's Italy and Franco's Spain. I'm reminded of something that apparently Huey Long of Louisiana never said but still embodied -- if fascism ever comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag.

But comparisons with Hitler are considered out of bounds, not always without good reason. And "fascism" has been treated like another "f-word" in our political discourse.

Well, it does begin with "f."

There's even an internet meme for it -- it's called Godwin's law, and the version I've heard says you automatically lose an argument if you call someone a fascist or mention Hitler in a current political context.

Well, with Trump, we're beginning to see Godwin's law broken. I don't know quite what to make of it, but I think it may be significant.

Some unedited notes on the phenomenon, whatever it is, follow:

"Godwin's Law." Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

Godwin's law (or Godwin's rule of Nazi analogies)[1][2] is an Internet adage asserting that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1"[2][3]—​​that is, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Hitler or Nazism.

Promulgated by American attorney and author Mike Godwin in 1990,[2] Godwin's law originally referred specifically to Usenet newsgroup discussions.[4] It is now applied to any threaded online discussion, such as Internet forums, chat rooms, and comment threads, as well as to speeches, articles, and other rhetoric.[5][6]

* * *

There are many corollaries to Godwin's law, some considered more canonical (by being adopted by Godwin himself)[3] than others.[1] For example, there is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress.[8] This principle is itself frequently referred to as Godwin's law.

------------

Ashley Young, "Ex-Mexican President Fox: Donald Trump reminds me of Hitler" CNN Feb. 27, 2016. http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/26/politics/vicente-fox-donald-trump-hitler/

(CNN)Former Mexican President Vicente Fox on Friday kept up his withering criticism of Donald Trump, saying the GOP front-runner reminds him of Adolf Hitler.

"Today, he's going to take that nation (U.S.) back to the old days of conflict, war and everything. I mean, he reminds me of Hitler. That's the way he started speaking," Fox told CNN's Anderson Cooper in a phone interview on "Anderson Cooper 360."

"He has offended Mexico, Mexicans, (and) immigrants. He has offended the Pope. He has offended the Chinese. He's offended everybody."

Fox's comments come one day after he delivered a scathing response on Trump's plan to make Mexico pay for a wall between the Mexico-U.S. border.

"I'm not going to pay for that f***ing wall," Fox said in an interview with Fusion's Jorge Ramos.

-------------

Roger Cohen, "Trump’s Il Duce Routine" NYT Feb. 29 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/01/opinion/donald-trumps-il-duce-routine.html?ref=opinion&_r=1

LONDON — Europe, the soil on which Fascism took root, is watching the rise of Donald Trump with dismay. Contempt for the excesses of America is a European reflex, but when the United States seems tempted by a latter-day Mussolini, smugness in London, Paris and Berlin gives way to alarm. Europe knows that democracies can collapse.

It’s not just that Trump retweets to his six million followers a quote attributed to Mussolini: “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” It’s not just that Trump refuses to condemn David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who has expressed support for him. It’s not just that violence is woven into Trump’s language as indelibly as the snarl woven into his features — the talk of shooting somebody or punching a protester in the face, the insulting of the disabled, the macho mockery of women, the anti-Muslim and anti-Mexican tirades. It’s not just that he could become Silvio Berlusconi with nukes.

It’s the echoes, now unmistakable, of times when the skies darkened. Europe knows how democracies collapse, after lost wars, in times of fear and anger and economic hardship, when the pouting demagogue appears with his pageantry and promises. America’s Weimar-lite democratic dysfunction is plain to see. A corrupted polity tends toward collapse.

Trump is telling people something is rotten in the state of America. The message resonates because the rot is there.

He has emerged from a political system corrupted by money, locked in an echo chamber of insults, reduced to the show business of an endless campaign, blocked by a kind of partisanship run amok that leads Republican members of Congress to declare they will not meet with President Obama’s eventual nominee for the Supreme Court, let alone listen to him or her. This is an outrage! The public interest has become less than an afterthought.

* * *

This disoriented America just might want Trump — and that possibility should be taken very seriously, before it is too late, by every believer in American government of the people, by the people, for the people. The power of the Oval Office and the temperament of a bully make for an explosive combination, especially when he has shown contempt for the press, a taste for violence, a consistent inhumanity, a devouring ego and an above-the-law swagger.

As Europe knows, democracies do die. Often, they are the midwives of their own demise. Once lost, the cost of recovery is high.

-------

Adam Gopnik, "The Clothespin Campaign: A French History Lesson for Anti-Trump Republicans Today [March 3] 12:00 a.m. http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-clothespin-campaign-a-french-history-lesson-for-anti-trump-republicans

... It was no surprise last week when Jean-Marie Le Pen, the former leader of France’s far-right National Front, endorsed Donald Trump. (“If I were an American, I would vote Donald Trump,” Le Pen tweeted.) The shared identity of the two political movements was merely being affirmed: extreme right-wing authoritarians whose core ideology is racist and anti-immigrant, coalescing around anti-Muslim rage (in Le Pen’s case, with the previous addition of anti-Semitism), and both strongly “corporatist,” i.e., not at all liberal but also not at all unfriendly to government welfare programs. It looks like the classic fascist double whammy, in plain English.

* * *

No, this is what one might call a unicameral breakdown: one, and only one, of our major parties has been going crazy for twenty years and is now having a full-fledged gibbering, I’m-The-Emperor-of-Antarctica breakdown. It is hard not to feel just a touch of schadenfreude about this. The Republicans have served up eight years of hatred and nihilism—and now they are surprised to find they have inherited hatred and nihilism as they actually appear in the real world, not neatly blown-dry and smirking but red and orange and heaving, cursing and swearing and contemptuous. Republicans four years ago saw Trump offering the raw sewage of racism called “birtherism” and they giggled timidly and thought that, if diluted sufficiently with moderating water, it would somehow become potable. The chance to drive out Trump for good was Mitt Romney’s when, at no cost to him—and with the additional certainty of getting a disproportionate share of approval for minimal political courage—he could have rejected Trump’s support, instead of going to his hotel in Las Vegas to thank him for his endorsement. That tiny price proved too much to pay. And now they are surprised?

* * *

... The same hysterical urge not to oppose or criticize Obama but to expose and humiliate and render him illegitimate is present in the conservative conversation about Hillary Clinton—she’ll be arrested! She’ll be indicted! She’ll be spanked!—this time with the sexual dimension embarrassingly blatant. It overwhelms rational calculation. Seeing this politicking as a theatre of shame and humiliation is probably smarter than seeing it as an efficient market of interests.

-------

LATER:

Jacob Weisberg. "An Eclectic Extremist" Slate.com March 4, 2016 http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/03/donald_trump_s_terrifying_and_distinctly_american_authoritarianism.html

Though the novel is in truth not a very good one, Lewis develops it around a key insight: that if fascism came to the US, it would be as a variation on American themes, not European ones. The American man on horseback would be more Huey Long than Benito Mussolini, a folksy opportunist rather than a red-faced ideologue. Lewis was shrewd in guessing that an American fascist leader would likely declare himself an opponent of European fascism. This is a point that some of those accusing Donald Trump of fascism—including many on the right—misunderstand. Sure, Trump may retweet the odd quote from Il Duce and wonder why anyone would object. Admittedly, his rallies teeter on the edge of racial violence. Again this week, black protesters were forcibly ejected from his events with the help of white supremacist thugs. True, the world leaders Mr. Trump admires are the dictators, not the democrats. Certainly, he sounds like a dictator himself.

* * *

This is why those arguing that Trump’s policies are more moderate than those of his rivals Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio miss the point. Trump’s authoritarianism is an amalgam not of left and right but of wacko left and wacko right: He thinks that George Bush was to blame for 9/11 and that Muslims should be barred from the U.S. Believing both of those things does not make Mr. Trump a centrist—it makes him an eclectic extremist. When it comes to policies, he actually has none in the conventional sense.

The conflict in the 2016 campaign is no longer Trump versus his Republican opponents; it is now Trump versus the American political system. That system is on the verge of missing its best opportunity to spit him out. Since Super Tuesday, the GOP’s reaction to Trump has been mildly heartening, with anti-Trump ads on television and principled politicians like Mitt Romney denouncing him amid torrents of personal abuse. Three cheers for Sen. Lindsey Graham, who says Trump is a “nut job” and that the GOP has gone “batshit crazy.” Fellow Republicans have taken to calling Chris Christie, who cravenly endorsed Trump last week, a “Vichy Republican.” But this is all probably too little, too late.

TOP COMMENT: "At least Hitler didn't inherit Germany from his dad."