Category Archives: American Politics

The Origin of the Russia investigation.

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In May 2016, a Trump foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, told the Australian High Commissioner in London, Alexander Downer, that he had heard that the Russkies had “dirt” on Hilary Clinton.[1]  Downer immediately informed the Australian foreign ministry.

Six or seven weeks followed, during which time the Australian government did not inform anyone—officially or unofficially—that a hostile foreign power had breached the security of an American presidential candidate.

Christopher Steele had served in important positions in the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI-6), then had opened a private business intelligence company.  He had served in Moscow and had been the head of the “Russia desk” for MI-6.  In June 2016,[2] the Democrats had hired his company to conduct opposition research on Donald Trump.  Steele began investigating Trump’s Russian connections.  Between June and December 2016, Steele wrote 17 memos.  Steele’s memos suggested that a “well-developed” conspiracy linked Trump with the Russian government.  The Russian would help get Trump elected; President Trump would then end the economic sanctions imposed on Russia for its actions in Crimea and Ukraine.   Furthermore, the Russian possessed compromising personal information on Trump.

However, at this time, the FBI had no knowledge of Steele’s memos.

On 22 July 2016, Wikileaks began publishing the Democratic National Committee e-mails provided to them by the Russkies.  At this point, the FBI learned from the Australian government of the report on Papadopoulos.  [So, the FBI knew that the Russians had hacked the computers at the Democratic National Committee, that Russia was releasing stolen information through Wikileaks, and now had a report that the Trump campaign may have had fore-knowledge.]  On 31 July 2016, the FBI opened an investigation of Trump-Russia collusion: “Operation Crossfire Hurricane.”  The operation was conducted in great secrecy, with no leaks to the press.

After the launching of “Crossfire Hurricane,” the FBI sought a FISA warrant to surveil the communications of Paul Manafort,[3] Michel Flynn, Carter Page,[4] and George Papadopoulos.[5]  All four had varying degrees of prior contact with Russia.  [The warrant application was denied as “too broad.”]

In September, Steele shared his memos with the FBI.

[In late September, Michael Isikoff reported that a Trump campaign adviser was being investigated over contacts with the Russians.  The report was based on leaks.]

In October 2016, the FBI obtained a FISA warrant to surveil the communications of Carter Page.  A part of the supporting evidence for the warrant application came from the “Steele dossier.”

Thus, William Barr’s investigation isn’t likely to turn up compromising information.

[1] “The origins of the Russia investigation,” The Week, 28 June 2019, p. 13.

[2] Apparently at the time when the Australian government was not informing the American government of the remarks by Papadopoulos.

[3] The FBI had begun an investigation of Manafort after his candidate, the pro-Russian Ukrainian Yanukovich, had been ejected from power in early 2014.

[4] Page had been investigated by the FBI in 20013-2015 and found blameless.

[5] But not Jared Kushner or Donald Trump Jr. or Donald Trump Sr.  Why not?

My Weekly Reader 20 June 2019.

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If you don’t like the Donald Trump Presidency, then there are some questions you need to address.  First, is Trump what the Brits call a “one off,” or is he the leading edge of a new wave in American politics?[1]  Second, what led to Trump’s election?  No, it wasn’t the Russians.  No, it wasn’t Hillary Clinton’s incompetence as a politician.  Both are real, but the decisive factors lay elsewhere.  On the one hand, Donald Trump decided to target the grievances of white, working-class men.  On the other hand, Donald Trump decided to run as a Republican, rather than in his natural home as a Democrat.  Like “Bud” White, “he’s not as stupid as he seems.”

The grievances of white working-class men are real.  Once upon a time, they were the mainstays of the “New Deal Coalition” that put Democrats into the White House from 1932 to 1952, from 1960 to 1968, and from 1976 to 1980, along with various majorities in Congress.  Unionized working-class jobs gave blue-collar workers middle-class incomes.  Then they fell by the wayside for complex reasons: mostly mechanization, but also the two successive oil “shocks” of the 1970s, organized labor’s attack on struggling employers in the 1970s, foreign competition, and ideological shifts in the two major parties.  Then, in the 1990s, China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) under favorable terms compounded the problems of American industry.

As a result, men’s industrial employment declined, new jobs shifted to other geographic areas;[2] new jobs required “college” rather than “vocational” education; and the social world of the “left behind” disintegrated (single motherhood, alcohol and drug use, general demoralization).[3]

No one in either party had bothered to address those grievances.  The suburban base of the Republicans lives in blue oxford-cloth shirts and Dockers (or the female equivalent).  The Democrats have embraced “identity politics,” which excludes the identity of the white working class.  These are “post-industrial” societies.

As a result Trump’s campaign could drag into the ranks of the Republicans a bunch of normally Democratic voters or non-voters.  The opened the possibility of a Republican presidential victory that must have seemed far-fetched if any of the other munchkins running for the nomination won in the primaries.  Republicans lined up behind Trump and they will do so again in 2020.  They get to pack the federal courts for the lifetime of the appointees.  They get to stall and roll-back the imperial decrees of Barack Obama.

Are we—as a country—better for it?

[1] That’s a disturbing thought.  In twenty years we could be talking about John Carpenter’s “Trump Tower: Power Outage.”  In 2025, radical environmentalists (but I repeat myself) sabotage the federally-mandated coal-fired generating plants that power New York City.  Suddenly, the nightlight of the city-that-never-sleeps go dark.  The elevators (and escalators) and AC and cable-television stop working.  Chaos breaks out in the streets below, but atop Trump Tower a “celebrity roast” of former members of the Trump Administration is underway.  Comments by Jim Mattis, Reince Priebus, H.R. McMaster, Hope Hicks, Sarah Saunders, Jim Comey, Jeff Sessions, Rex Tillerson, Nancy Pelosi, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, etc.  I suppose the deranged killer haunting Trump Tower could wear a Robert Mueller hockey mask.

[2] Try selling your house if you live in Erie, PA.

[3] See: Isabel Sawhill, The Forgotten Americans (2019) and Oren Cass, The Once and Future Worker (2019).  If this is what happened to white Americans, then what are we to make of the impact of “liberal paternalism” on African-Americans since the 1960s?

My Weekly Reader A 19 June 2019.

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In traditional societies, people found their identity within and as members of groups.  In the Medieval and Early Modern West, for example, the Christian churches taught morality and sponsored religious confraternities.  The peasant agricultural societies portrayed by Pieter Breughel involved much group labor and existed within the framework of village life.  European cities were governed by professional groups (guilds) and had purchased various group “privileges” from local lords or more distant kings.  People belonged to hereditary “orders” like Commoners and Aristocrats.  These societies existed within belief systems and economic systems that offered little individual choice.

Then things changed.  It took hundreds of years, but intellectual, political, and economic systems all changed.  The Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment created a skepticism about all received wisdom.  The Voyages of Discovery and the Agricultural Revolution began an economic revolution that spurred rapid growth in both population and wealth.  Rising distrust of received beliefs, an absolute confidence in the power of human Reason,[1] and the growth of a complex middle class then rocked the political system with an Age of Revolutions.[2]

A central feature of all these changes was the rise of Individualism.  Essentially, people aren’t Lego blocks.  Each person is different—if only in subtle and minor ways–from every other person.  Only the Individual person knows what is best for that person: strength and weaknesses, and hopes and fears.  Hence, society and government should seek to maximize the opportunity for Individual fulfillment.  This Individual freedom should be limited only by the requirement that one Individual’s freedom do no harm to the freedom of other Individuals.

This belief system gave rise to Nineteenth Century Liberalism and, by way of reaction, to Nineteenth Century Socialism.  Political Liberalism espoused individual equality before the law, individual rights guaranteed by law, governments answering to elected legislature, and freedom of the press and of thought.  Economic Liberalism espoused economic individualism, free markets, competition, free trade within and between nations, and a small government that concentrated on the essential functions of law and order and national defense.  What Liberals didn’t believe in was either equality or democracy.  Competition—between producers, political parties, and ideas—produced both winners and losers according to the informed choices of consumers.  The whole of society benefitted from competition even when individuals lost.  Similarly, people without the education necessary to understand the competition of ideas and parties, and people with no material stake (property) in the outcome of the debates should have no voice (vote) in the outcome.

Reacting against this position, Nineteenth Century Socialism called for co-operation over competition, planning instead of the market, collective ownership of the “means of production” in place of private property, and democracy with vote for all adult males.  After a while, revolutionary Marxism dominated Socialist thought.

The success of industrialization created immense wealth and immense numbers of industrial workers who were excluded from the political system while living in misery.  Something had to give.  Beginning in the late Nineteenth Century, it did.

[1] See Carl Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers (1932).  Hilarious.

[2] I stole that from Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Revolutions: Europe, 1789-1848 (1962).  Remarkable.

The New Russia Investigation The Usual Suspects 13 June 2019.

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Paul Manafort.

During the Cold War, the United States applied the Roosevelt Standard to foreign rulers: “He may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s our son-of-a-bitch.”  Paul Manafort made a very good living by helping improve the image of some very bad people.  He represented Jonas Savimbi, Ferdinand Marcos, and Joseph Mobutu in the corridors of power.  All of this activity aligned with American foreign policy.  Then the Cold War ended.  Suddenly, the “sons-of-bitches” had to swim for it.  So did Manafort.  He found an apparent new gold-mine in working with the post-Soviet Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.  Much of this work focused on Ukraine.

Ukraine had escaped from the Soviet Union upon the collapse of the evil empire.  However, old antipathies and affinities survived in the new country.  Basically, the farther west you go, the more Russophobe the people become[1] and the farther east you go the more Russophile the people become.  From 2004 to 2010, Manafort found work trying to improve the political chances of the Russophile presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovitch.  It should have been obvious that this work aligned with post-Soviet Russian foreign policy.  Reportedly, sometime between 2006 and 2009, the American Ambassador to Ukraine, William Taylor, told Manafort that he was working against the interests of the United States.  Apparently, Manafort did not heed this warning.[2]  In 2010, Yanukovitch won the presidency in an election judged fair by international observers.[3]  In 2014 he aroused massive opposition among the Russophobes by reversing course on an application to join the European Union.  He certainly did this at the behest of Vladimir Putin.  Soon, Yanukovitch was both out of office and out of Ukraine.  According to one account, the FBI then opened a criminal investigation of Paul Manafort.[4]  It was still running when the FBI began its investigation of suspected conspiracy between the Russians and the Trump campaign in Summer 2016.

What did the FBI investigation launched in 2014 discover?  Did it discover that Manafort had scored big-time, but hadn’t reported his earnings to the IRS?[5]

Michael Flynn.

Michael Flynn had an impressive career in military intelligence during the “Global War on Terror.”  In April 2012, his ascent peaked when President Obama nominated him to lead the Defense Intelligence Agency.  Two years later, Flynn announced his retirement.   Normally, it seems, people get three years in that position, so he was leaving early.  Why?

On the one hand, there’s the whispering campaign.  It was “leaked” to the press that Flynn had a chaotic management style; he didn’t play well with others; he abused his staff; he wasn’t a team-player; and he had a loose grip on facts.  These seem like personality traits.  Nobody noticed them before while promoting him from Lieutenant to Lieutenant-General?  So I don’t think this is very credible.

On the other hand, there’s the counter-whispering campaign.  It has been suggested that Flynn repeatedly told the Obama White House that much of the opposition to Bashir al-Assad came from conservative-to-radical Muslims.  The “moderates” weren’t much present on the battlefield.  This seems to have contradicted the “narrative” preferred by the White House.  Eventually, the White House got fed up.

Then there’s this.  In February 2014, Flynn attended the “Cambridge Intelligence Seminar,”[6] run—in part–by Stefan Halper.  Reportedly, Halper found it alarming that Flynn seemed very close to a Russian woman who also attended the seminar.  Someone else shared these concerns with American “authorities.”[7]  The woman involved was Svetlana Lokhova.[8]  She denies that she spoke with Flynn for any extended period or that they had a personal relationship.  Did American authorities believe that Flynn had been caught in what John Le Carre novels call a “honey trap”?  The Director of the CIA at the time was John Brennan, subsequently an engaged participant in countering President Donald Trump’s allegations about the intelligence community.

[1] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

[2] Why not?  Perhaps because he was making a lot of money and the American government wasn’t offering him an alternative income.  Perhaps because he was trying to get his guy elected president of a new democracy.  America is all about exporting democracy.  What’s more important, democracy or getting the American candidate elected?

[3] See: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/feb/08/viktor-yanukovych-ukraine-president-election

[4] See: https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-paul-manafort-michael-flynn-russia-robert-mueller-turkey-620215  One might be forgiven for wondering if the investigation was pay-back for Manafort having ignored Ambassador Taylor’s warning.  If it was pay-back, it soon hit pay-dirt.

[5] If so, then what—exactly—was Robert Mueller doing with his time for two years?  The Russian hacking information came from the NSA and pretty damn quick at that.  Carter Page and George Papadopoulos were low-hanging fruit easily plucked.

[6] On the larger framework of the Seminar, see: https://thecsi.org.uk/  NB: The reported views of Sir Richard Dearlove are interesting.  For a recent iteration of the Seminar, see: https://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/seminars/intelligence

[7] See: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/us/politics/trump-fbi-informant-russia-investigation.html

[8] Her version of the encounter can be found at https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-39863781  See also: https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/28/lawsuit-suggests-spying-trump-campaign-started-early-2016/

Just typing out loud here 12 June 2019.

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You challenged me on my enthusiasm for Joe Hill’s “Rebel Girl.”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_tz3wPgLUw  Didn’t have a good response at the moment, but it got me thinking.  My mind works slower than do those of most people.  Hence the delay.

To my mind, the Democrats are generically anti-business.  Sure, they talk about income inequality and anti-monopoly and this, that, and another New Deals.  But what they mean to apply is an anti-business policy that will fall on all businesses, great and small.  Taxes.  Regulations by decree.  You never see Democrat candidates who have ever worked in/for a business.  You never see ones who have had their own business.  Barack Obama was a “community organizer.”   (George McGovern’s post-presidential experience is instructive here.)  They’ve all spent their lives as lawyers or “in public service.”  Public service is just another way of saying “public employment.”  You don’t get laid off in a recession and you get good benefits.  For following an elaborate set of rules.

They have a fantasy of returning to the Fifties: a few big industries that don’t have any global competition; high wages and good benefits achieved through government-sponsored union-bargaining; owners who inherited their wealth from their rough-and-ready ancestors who actually created it; and a horde of professional managers who deploy B-School-certified skills in return for a generous, but socially-acceptable, salary.  That—at best—is what the Democrats want to recreate.  Basically, Rudolf Hilferding seventy years on.   (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Hilferding )

None of this has anything to do with contemporary reality.  It has been one, but only one, of the factors that have driven the American economy—and society—into the ground over the last fifty years.

Yes, there is a lot to criticize in Republican policies.  Mostly, to my mind, it is the starving/shrinking of the necessary regulatory functions of the Federal bureaucracy.  To take some examples: the IRS can’t audit; the FAA has shifted airline safety to the plane manufacturer (singular); the FDA can’t keep up with the companies trying to poison us for fun and profit.  Theodore Roosevelt theorized that only a strong government could mediate the conflicting demands of Capital and Labor.  Republicans are gutting the system projected by their second-greatest president.  The reduction of the corporation tax to international (i.e. Canada) norms seems to me a good idea.  All the tax cut-spend-elect stuff to counter Democrats’ tax-spend-elect stuff is wrong, but wrong for both parties.  And wrong for the American voters who gobbled it up.   Maybe “snorted” would be better?

As for “bigness,” see Ellis Hawley, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly.  Yes, we’ve been down this road before.

In the end, what I’m fighting for is my Dad and all the people like him.  He didn’t want to work for the government and he didn’t want to work for a giant business.  He had done both (Army, Shell Oil).  He just wanted his own show.  Win or lose, it was on him.   What’s wrong with that?  He provided a service that people wanted.  He paid his employees the best he could.  Wasn’t great money, but it was the same deal for them that he made.  They weren’t working for the government or big business.  There weren’t procedures to deal with.  Just people.  He and my Mom did a lot of unpaid work to make the business run.  I guess I don’t see much difference between my Dad and an artist: they’re both self-actualizing and creative.  Along the way, he put a roof over our head and food in our mouths and paid his taxes.  Some of those taxes went to pay for public competition with his private business.  Why?  Because not all high-school teachers wanted to coach, so some of them would rather work extra as driving instructors.  Teachers had a union, but private business did not.

 

American Opinion on Abortion 12 June 2019.

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For a baseline, most Americans support Roe v. Wade.  To be clear, in that decision the Supreme Court of the United States (popularly SCOTUS) “ruled that during the first trimester, governments could not prohibit abortions at all; during the second trimester, governments could require reasonable health regulations; [and] during the third trimester, abortions could be prohibited entirely so long as the laws contained exceptions for cases when they were necessary to save the life or health of the mother.”[1]

Oddly for a democracy, many Americans don’t hold the same opinions on abortion as do their elected representatives.  Many people—both Democrats and Republicans—reject the maximalist positions of their parties.[2]  Some 40 percent of Democrats oppose abortion “for any reason” and some 29 percent of Republicans support abortion “for any reason.”  Better than a third (36 percent) of Hillary Clinton voters in 2016 opposed using Medicaid money to pay for abortions, and better than half (58 percent) of all Americans opposed using Medicaid money to pay for abortions.  Basically, that’s the Hyde Amendment, which Joe Biden has just repudiated.

Why have the two parties missed out on this reality?  Well, they haven’t missed out.  They just don’t care.  Take the abortion-uncertain Democrats as one example.  They are more rural, more Southern, more politically “moderate,” less-educated[3], and more religious than most Democrats.  Basically, they live in areas and represent demographic groups that Democrats know they can’t win anyway.  So, why concede anything to the dissenters?  The same is probably true of Republican dissenters.  They’re probably more urban, more Northern, more educated, less religious, and more “moderate” than most Republicans.  Republicans aren’t going to win these regions or groups anyway, so why concede to the dissenters?[4]

Then–and this will be creepy for liberal Democrats–African-American Democrats (but I repeat myself) split 50-50 on abortion “for any reason.”[5]  At the same, public opinion supports abortion when the child is the result of rape or incest, or when the pregnancy endangers to life of the mother, or when the child would be born with some defect (i.e. Down syndrome like my sister Bronwyn[6]).

Anyway, abortion-rights is for Democrats what gun-rights is for Republicans: the issue mobilizes one-issue true-believers.[7]  No fixing America this way.

[1] According to a Gallup Poll, 60 percent of people support abortion in the first three months of pregnancy.  That would be within about 12 weeks.  That is, once a woman has figured out that she is pregnant, and has had some time to figure out how she feels about being pregnant, and has thought about whether she can manage a child, and has figured out how she will feel about terminating a pregnancy.  Put that way, people opposing abortion in this framework are just an immense collection of assholes.  IMHOP.

[2] Nate Cohn, “Crisp Battle Lines on Abortion Blur When Surveys Ask Voters,” NYT, 9 June 2019.

[3] Think about this for a minute.  Democrats with less education are more moderate than Democrats in general, let alone Democrats with more education.  Could one argue that more-educated people—Democrat and Republican—are messing-up our country?

[4] See: Clayton Christenson on Disruption.  Start at the bottom and eat upward.

[5] If I recall correctly—always a tricky issue—African-Americans also oppose gay rights.

[6] See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ_4m2ocxhI  “Go fuck yourself you fucking child!”

[7] In 2015, there were 13,286 firearm deaths, excluding suicides.  According to the Center for Disease Control, in 2015, there were 638,169 abortions.  Put this way, gun control advocates are dealing with the lesser of two evils.  For those people who think that life begins at conception, abortion is a rolling-Holocaust.  Forced to choose between a child molester and a child murderer, about half of Alabama Republicans sat out the election.

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In the Nineteenth Century, the United States prided itself on being the land of “Go-Getters.”[1]  A vast continent packed with natural resources awaited exploitation.  At the same time, American entrepreneurs felt a grievous need for labor to transform those riches into “riches.”  Partly the country satisfied that need through massive immigration.  Partly the country satisfied the need by technical innovation to substitute machines for men.  Partly, the “professional” standards were lower then.  People—men mostly—could try their hand at whatever caught their fancy.

Yet, with all the problems of using what the United States already possessed, there were people who wanted to expand the “Empire of Liberty” still more.  As the term “Manifest Destiny” began to buzz about, people began to ask in which directions that destiny lay.  For most, it meant expansion westward to the Pacific Ocean.  For others though, such notions reeked of reticence, even cowardice.  Everywhere one looked to the South of the United States one saw the same conditions: vast natural wealth going to waste, the “rule of ignorance and superstition” (a common term for the Catholic Church); and the brutal oppression of the many by the self-enriching few.  These were the hall-marks of mid-century Mexico, Spanish-ruled Cuba, and—worst of all—Central America.  By 1836, Texas had gained independence from Mexico; by 1848, California.  The Mexican-American War had ended with a definitive boundary between the two countries.  Still, why stop there?  Why not add southern lands or Pacific islands?

At the same time, the issue of slavery began to tear savagely at America.  All the political compromises banned slavery “north of” some line.  What if the United States—or some one acting on behalf of the United States—conquered foreign lands where slavery already existed or had recently existed?  The sectional “balance” might be restored in an enlarged United States.

It is against this background that we might see the career of William Walker (1824-186o).[2]  The Southern-born Walker tried to set-up an independent state of Sonora and Baja California (1853-1854).  He next invaded Nicaragua, where he made himself President (1855-1857).  In Nicaragua, Walker reinstated slavery, made English an official language, and encouraged immigration from the United States.  Kind of like Texas in the 1820s-1830s.  In the end, an army of understandably-nervous Central American oligarchs drove out Walker.  So, no Santa Ana.  In 1860 Walker took another swing at Central America by trying to invade Honduras.  He wound up having a last smoke in front of a pock-marked adobe wall as a dozen sweating soldiers fiddled with their weapons.

As a thought experiment, consider what would have happened if Walker had succeeded in adding Nicaragua and Honduras and a chunk (or all) of Mexico to the Estados Unidos.  Perhaps the Americans would have wiped out the “colonial legacy” from Spain.

Perhaps the new territory would have ended up like Texas and California.  Leaving aside the Democrat-Republican split, they are both big states with diverse populations, and are states with lots of natural resources and lots of industry.  Same might have happened to Central America if it had become part of the United States.  Perhaps everyone would have been better off?

[1] Not to be confused with the drag performer Carmen Geddit.

[2] Scott Martelle, William Walker’s Wars (2019).

American Opinion in June 2019.

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According to a recent poll, ten percent of Americans believe that Donald Trump is the best president of their lifetime.[1]  Trump’s support was concentrated among older, white, men.  In particular, according to a Pew Trust analysis, “49 percent of those aged 30‒49 feel warmly toward him, 60 percent of those aged 50‒64 do, as did 56 percent of those over 65 years of age.”[2]  So, the enthusiastic ten percent may come from older voters.

In contrast to most voters, both Trump supporters and Trump opponents have some historical basis for judging “best” and “worst” presidents.  If someone was 50 in 2016, then they were born in 1966; if someone was 60 in 2016, then they were born in 1956; if someone was 70 in 2016, then they were born in 1946.  If we postulate that people start to become politically aware at age 20, then 2016 Trump voters became politically aware between 1966 and 1986.

What do they have to work with in terms of historical experience of the presidency?  They have late-stage Lyndon Johnson (Vietnam, the social turmoil associated with the “Great Society”); Richard Nixon (Vietnam, Watergate); Gerald Ford (the first “oil shock” and inflation); Jimmy Carter (second “oil shock,” inflation, Iran hostage crisis); Ronald Reagan (Paul Volker wringing out inflation, defeat of the “evil empire,” Iran-Contra); George H. W. Bush (Preppy in the White House, first Iraq War, “read my hips”); Bill Clinton (Eddie Haskell in the White House); George W. Bush (Frat Boy in the White House, 9/11, the flunked war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina); Barack Obama (Affordable Care Act, but also the Stimulus bill, rule by decree).

Experienced voters might be forgiven (although they will not be forgiven) for thinking that in their lifetime American government has run amuck and that the quality of presidents has deteriorated.  This ignores the reality that we have lived through very turbulent times that demanded government responses.  Many of these problems found no easy solution.  Still, is it possible that the typical voter follows the meta-narrative, rather than the micro-narrative?

Polls also showed that Trump appealed most to those with only a high-school education, but least to those with a college BA or more.  Well, auto-workers and steel-workers and a bunch of other workers used to be able to earn a middle-class income walking off the graduation stage and into an industrial job.  These people used to be a) Democratic voters, and b) the salt of the earth in Democratic discourse.[3]  Why did they stray, assuming it was the voters, rather than the party, that strayed?  Then, how does the educational profile of Trump voters compare with the educational profile of African-Americans?  Data suggest that educational attainment among African-Americans, measured in terms of BAs, is about two-thirds that of whites.[4]  How different is this from the educational profile of Trump voters?

The Pew poll also showed that core Trump voters believed—correctly—that free trade had harmed their own interests.  They believed that he would address illegal immigration, which they regarded as a serious problem.  They thought he was an awful person who might get things done.  “Those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.”

[1] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 14 June 2019, p. 17.

[2] See: https://www.thoughtco.com/meet-the-people-behind-donald-trumps-popularity-4068073

[3] See: Norman Rockwell, “Freedom of Speech.”  https://www.periodpaper.com/products/1945-print-norman-rockwell-vermont-man-freedom-of-speech-open-forum-oil-painting-126405-xaa5-061

[4] See graph: https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/01/28/us-education-still-separate-and-unequal

The New Russia Investigation 1 31 May 2019.

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So, I am puzzled.  First, when did the Trump investigation begin?

In mid-March 2016, George Papadopoulos visited Rome, where he met Joseph Mifsud.

On 21 March 2016, the Trump Campaign announced that Georges Papadopoulos and Carter Page had joined the campaign as foreign policy advisers.  Richard Haas not having joined.

On 24 March 2016, Papadopoulos met Joseph Mifsud and a woman Mifsud introduced as “Putin’s niece” in London.   She was, in fact, Olga Polonskaya.

On 12 April 2016, Papadopoulos again met Mifsud in London.

On 25 or 26 April 2016, Mifsud again met Papadopoulos in London.  Mifsud told Papadopoulos that the Russians had thousands of e-mails relating to Hillary Clinton.  “This occurred after public knowledge that Clinton had deleted thousands of her emails, but before there was public knowledge of the hack of Democratic National Committee and of John Podesta‘s emails.”[1]  NB: So, the most reasonable thing to conclude would have been that the Russians had hacked into Clinton’s private server while she was Secretary of State.

In late April 2016, the DNC began to suspect that its computers had been hacked.  The DNC informed the FBI and hired a private firm to investigate.

Papadopoulos knew an Israeli diplomat in London named Christian Cantor.  Cantor’s girl-friend (now fiancé) is Erika Thompson, then a political counselor at the Australian High Commission.  Thompson told High Commissioner (ambassador) Alexander Downer that he should meet Papadopoulos.

On 10 May 2016, over one or two gin-and-tonics, Papadopoulos told Downer that the Russians had damaging information about Hillary Clinton and might release it to harm her chances in the election.

[What Papadopoulos told Downer and Thompson] “was all good intel, relayed back to Australia in a cable written by Thompson.  But it was what Papadopoulos had said about Russia, also detailed in the cable, that proved critical.  He said the Russians might use some damaging material they had on Hillary Clinton, who was still some weeks from becoming the presumptive Democrat presidential nominee.”[2]  “But the cable came back to Canberra about an aide to Trump saying the Russians had some dirt on Hillary Clinton and were prepared to use it.”[3]

According to Downer, “There was no suggestion — [neither] from Papadopoulos nor in the record of the meeting that we sent back to Canberra — there was no suggestion that there was collusion between Donald Trump or Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russians.”[4]  Moreover, neither Papadopoulos nor Downer remember any mention of e-mails in the discussion. Just “damaging information.”  That could be many things.

“The Americans weren’t informed immediately about what Papadopoulos had said to Downer, but when it became known that the FBI suspected a Russian hack of Clinton emails, the information was shared with the Five Eyes intelligence partner.”[5]

This is ambiguous.  Is there a way to nail down the approximate/exact date when the Australians did share the information?  The Russian hack of the DNC was known by 14 June 2016—not in late July 2016, when the FBI formally opened an investigation.

Also, is there a difference between formally and informally sharing?  Did Downer share the information with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Australia, but withhold the information from his own Senior Advisor—Intelligence in the High Commission?  If so, on what basis?

If Downer did share with the Senior Advisor, then did the Senior Advisor pass the information along to the CIA station-chief in London?  If not, why not?  This was a significant Russian attack on American democracy.

Did Erika Thompson share what she had heard with Christian Cantor?  If she did, then did Cantor share this with his own ambassador and his ambassador with his government?

If either the CIA or Israel did learn of what Papadopoulos had said in early May 2016, would they have acted on that knowledge once the Russian hack became public in mid-June 2016?  Would they have acted on it as soon as they discovered it?

Then, when Downer reported to Canberra, the DNC hack was not yet known.  Yet in his subsequent interview Downer refers to e-mails.

On 14 June 2016, the DNC announced that its computers had been hacked by the Russians.  And, what, the CIA and the NSA stood around with their hands in their pockets for the next six weeks?

Still, a pause ensued from mid-June to late July 2016.  What was happening during this period?

On 22 July 2016, Wikileaks began publishing many of the stolen documents.

On 26 July 2016, the Australian government formally notified the United States of the report by Downer about Papadopoulos.

On 27 July 2016, Trump publically called for the Russians to release the 30,000 deleted e-mails from the Clinton computer.  So, he’d heard something about Papadopoulos’s claims?

On 31 July 2016, the FBI formally opened “Operation Crossfire Hurricane.”  FBI counter-intelligence officer Peter Strzok led the investigation and later served for a time on the staff of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

In either late July or mid-August 2016, CIA Director John Brennan provided the FBI with “contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign.”  According to Brennan, these leads “served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion [or] cooperation occurred.”[6]  NB: So the CIA had been investigating since when?  In what ways?  It was me, I’d spike Mifsud’s internet.  Come to that, I’d spike the on-line stuff of Thompson and Cantor.  Wouldn’t need a warrant for that.  They’re all foreign, same as that Radical-Lutheran Merkel.

From 31 July to 2 August 2016, FBI agents interviewed both Downer and Thompson in London.  From this point on, the Christian Cantor connection probably would have been known.  “Burned,” as John Le Carre says.

[1] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Papadopoulos#Involvement_in_Donald_Trump’s_presidential_campaign

[2] Since this was before the convention that nominated Secretary Clinton, it is fair to ask if they were trying to help Trump or help Senator Bernie Sanders.

[3] See: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-22/george-papadopoulos-alexander-downer-meeting-what-happened/10286868  ABC = Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

[4] See: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/ex-australian-diplomat-explains-why-he-turned-papadapoulos-info-over-to-fbi/  For the somewhat different account of the NYT, see: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/30/us/politics/how-fbi-russia-investigation-began-george-papadopoulos.html

[5] See: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-22/george-papadopoulos-alexander-downer-meeting-what-happened/10286868

[6] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossfire_Hurricane_(FBI_investigation)  Was the August instance additional information or is it a simple error in the article?

Public Opinion 19 May 2019.

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Voting in elections has a somewhat troubled history.  Even before the Russkies and a bunch of other countries started messing with the elections in other places.

Problem: back in the 1800s, when elections were a new thing, how could you tell that the government in power hadn’t rigged the election by stuffing the ballot boxes?

Solution: have everyone place their ballot into the box of an openly identified party or candidate in a hall open to the public.  Observers could count the votes cast.  They could estimate a rough “real” return, then protest apparent fraud.

Problem: If everyone could see how you voted, then so could your land-lord, employer, creditor, and the guy at the local tavern who either extended or did not extend you credit when you didn’t want to tell the Missus you’d wasted your pay.  Public voting meant that voters could be pressured.

Solution: The “Australian” ballot.  Go into a little booth with a curtain, cast your vote in secret, and go tell they guy who paid you to vote one way that you did vote that way.  Then, go get some drinks.

Problem: In a sexist society, women are dominated by the men upon whom they are economically dependent.  Also, according to the accepted thought of the time, women are flighty and emotional.

Solution: Deny women the vote.

Problem: Democracy is political corruption—on the part of the individual voter—writ large.  All men (and women) are corruptible.  That is, they will do what is economically favorable to them.  Tax/Spend/Elect v. Tax-cut/Spend/Elect.  Thus, the economic situation or prospects of the individual citizen will determine their vote.[1]  So, what economic or financial considerations weigh upon them?  That is, may we know their biases when they vote?

Solution: Make public the tax returns (which reveal the financial data and pension assets/claims) and the votes of all citizens, whether they voted or not.  This will help reveal the extent to which Americans are being “corrupted” by their financial interests.  A computer analysis can reveal patterns.

Should the tax returns of President Donald Trump be made public?[2]  No law requires it, but a now-entrenched tradition does require it.

Should YOUR tax returns be available to the public?  So they can tell if you are the pawn of a corporate interest?  One man-one vote, n’est-ce pas?  The same rules for everyone.

Should we apportion voting according to a “corruption index” arrived at by a non-partisan board of academic assessors?  (The NYT has reported that the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, NJ, had developed a system for scoring the “adversity” experienced by college applicants independent of their academic performance.  So, in theory, a “corruption index” could be done.)

[1] OK, sometimes they get distracted by “cultural” issues like race, gender, sexual-orientation, age-cohort, and the general sexiness of the candidate (Go AOC!)

[2] In late April 2019, 56 percent of people polled wanted President Trump’s tax returns released to the public; only 27 percent did not want them released.  That leaves 17 percent Not Sure.  “Poll Watch,” The Week, 26 April 2019, p. 17.