The Twilight Zone. The show that entered us.

As I have long said, The Twilight Zone has formed the basis for modern storytelling.  It is great that the New York Review of Books has decided to discuss its continuing legacy which has truly shaped the way we as modern human beings analyze and perceive many aspects of our own society.

As I have refined my thinking about the importance of The Twilight Zone over the years, I would describe its myriad of individual stories as boiling down to four general themes:

(1) Irony arising from justice:  You get what you want...and it ends up being what you deserve; 

(2) Irony arising from nostalgia: You finally get a chance to go back to when you were young where everything was simple...Except it was only simple to your youthful mind; 

(3) Irony arising from technology...Where we thought technology would free us, but instead it enslaved us; 

(4) Allegories which tend to boil down to...We have met the Enemy...and the Enemy is Us.  And sometimes even the U.S.

There are also space age science fiction and alien invader stories, but they tend to fall into one or more of the above categories as well.

The Daughter used to scoff at me for liking that old black and white show, especially when I said that of the first forty or fifty years of television, before the rise of multi-network programming (i.e. HBO, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Films/Prime, etc.), The Twilight Zone may be the greatest single and most influential show of them all.  But after watching Black Mirror, she decided, on her own, to watch TTZ on Netflix, and came away much more respectful of the show.  As I often said to her, when she was more likely to scoff at something she figured out and saw as a cliché: When you think something is a cliche in terms of narrative arc in a particular episode of The Twilight Zone, think back to what you know of other shows and films of the time, and ask if maybe that cliche was in fact relatively new at the time?  Having said that, it is not like science fiction was invented through the show.  We know it was not, and that its antecedents go back at least to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus, and runs through Jules Verne, and the pioneer science fiction writers in the 1920s, 1930s, and also through The Twilight Zone's entire run, from 1959 through 1964.

I said she should approach The Twilight Zone the way we may approach Jane Austen's work or Ann Radcliffe, which she intuitively already understood, but which I should say here: Read (or watch) it with a critical eye both negatively and positively, recognize its place in its time, and appreciate how readers of the time would have received and perceived it.  For me, such a perspective adds to the enjoyment of the read, and allows one to mentally time travel.

We should also mention the brilliant structuring of the show, with Rod Serling, the main writer, opening and closing the show as our modern muse and speaking with ironic wit and thoughtfulness.  We who know the show can picture him even now, standing often at the side of our television screen, in his dark suit, dark tie, and white or light dress shirt, sometimes with a cigarette dangling from his fingers. Serling's mantra at the start of each episode was that we were entering or have already entered...The Twilight Zone.  

And now, when we think about the show's legacy nearly sixty years on, and we think about its impact in the way our current society recognizes levels of irony, how we view nostalgia, and how we perceive the very idea of the future, we can say, in perhaps an ironic twist, The Twilight Zone has entered us. 

"Traitor Trump": Why Democratic Party candidates need Republican strategists....

I guess Glenn Greenwald is recognizing that his pro-Russian position may no longer be tenable.  Greenwald's co-founded online magazine, The Intercept, has allowed former military intelligence beat writer for the NY Times, James Risen, to pen this essay. And it looks like Risen is going to be writing a multipart series for The Intercept.

This is fun.  We are now seeing a normalizing of thinking of Trump as at least possibly being a traitor.  Time to start those Richard Nixon engines:  Are you now or ever been a supporter of Trump? 

And to Trump-supporting Republicans in public office:  Why are you part of the pro-Russian internationalist conspiracy to undermine America? 

Ah, yes.  This new bag of popcorn.  So fresh.  So tasty.  

For those students of political science who study elections and election campaigns:  This is not about convincing your addled right wing uncle talking about protecting his gun arsenal, even though, if your addled uncle tried firing a shotgun, the recoil would break one of his shoulders.  Nope.  This is not about them--even as you can have some fun accusing them of being anti-American, anti-FBI and anti-CIA.  God, that is fun!  Hmmm...Anyway...

Instead, this is about convincing swing voters in a mid-term election and getting out the vote of your natural constituencies in a mid-term election.  This is how Republican operatives have analyzed and strategized elections for so many decades starting during the Cold War.  They recognize the swing vote consists of people who do not follow "politics" and can get riled up on any number of cultural and emotionally-based political issues.  

Back in the Cold War, Republican campaign strategists perfected the hyped up fears of international atheistic Communism--and Communists hiding under your bed. Then, in the 1990s and 2000s, Republican campaign strategists rolled out gay phobias (note: there is a belief the Ohio and other States vote in the 2004 presidential election may have been affected positively for Republicans starting with GW Bush on anti-gay marriage initiatives Republicans pushed in those states, which pulled out more conservative voters in otherwise more liberal parts of those relatively few states, and ensured a razor thin official win in Ohio for President Bush.  Had even only Ohio gone for Kerry, there would have been a different electoral college outcome).  As we have seen, however, gay bashing no longer works...as too many Republican families had gay children or siblings and it became more and more uncomfortable to deny their existence.

But don't worry, Republican stalwarts:  Republican strategists still have those perennial fodders for fear:  guns and illegal immigrants.

Illegal immigration remains the main perennial favorite with white, aging Baby Boomers, male and female, and is something to watch as this year's elections unfold.

As for guns, perhaps this last school shooting in Florida will be a turning point away from the inflammatory rhetoric about fears of gun confiscation, and the NRA being exposed as a money-laundering foil for Putin's Russia.  However, my take is old, deep habits die hard.  If Democratic Party strategists are smart, they will tell their candidates or activists not to bother trying to convince the relatively few gun lovers.  It is better to concentrate on swing voters who recognize sensible gun related legislation, and stay with that.  It seems to have worked for Doug Jones in Alabama, though again one must caution against over-interpreting those results against a demented Republican candidate like Roy Moore.

Ahem.  Enough of that.  Let's just focus on the simple fact that using culturally based and politically based issues to attract a sufficient number of swing voters has been how Republican operatives, for nearly eighty years, since the beginning of the Cold War, have helped the Republican Party to remain not only competitive, but often dominant when the Party's economic and political platform has rarely had the majority of the public on its side.

But, now, and here in 2018, progressive ideas, cultural, economic, and even political (the latter in terms of same day registration, run off voting, etc.) have the support of a majority of adult age Americans.  It is now time for Democratic Party strategists to stop their Bernie-bashing ways and realize enough Americans are excited about any number of issues from economics to the environment to cultural issues, etc. from what may be called a progressive perspective.  

And related to this is the story of "Traitor Trump" and his enablers of "treason."  The so-called Russia-gate story should be included in the strategic mix as we may reach a point where the difference between electoral victory and loss could include those swing voters who vote for Democrats against perceived treason-enablers in the Republican Party.

Sanders v. Mulvaney, LIHEAP edition

This Bernie Sanders exchange with US Budget Director, Mick Mulvaney, is interesting because Mulvaney shows some of his cruel priorities which favor giving more billions to billionaires while putting poor people at risk of freezing in cold weather.   

Mulvaney is referring to the GAO study in 2010 (nearly eight years ago) which looked into fraud and waste in the home heating subsidy program known as LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program).  He talks about the finding that 11,000 people who were deceased applied for the assistance as if that is a reason for the nearly 2 million people who were alive and needed the assistance to no longer get the assistance.  Sanders rightly takes down for that Dickensian cruelty.

But let's look at the GAO study and see how solid that 11,000 figure is and whether Mulvaney is over-interpreting data.  Here is a quote form pages 5-6 of the study regarding the bad things the GAO found:

* Deceased individuals. The identities of over 11,000 deceased individuals were used as applicants or household members for LIHEAP benefits. Our analysis matching LIHEAP data to the SSA’s death master file found these individuals were deceased before the LIHEAP application date. Benefits involved with these applications totaled about $3.9 million for the year we reviewed.

* Incarcerated individuals. For the four states that provided reliable incarceration data, we found 725 instances where the identities of individuals incarcerated in state prisons were used as applicants or household members. These identities were associated with about $370,000 of LIHEAP benefits even though these individuals were in prison at the time of the application and thus ineligible for benefits.

* Federal employees exceeding income thresholds. Matching LIHEAP data with federal civilian payroll records, we identified about 1,100 federal employees whose federal salary exceeded the maximum income threshold at the time of their application. The benefit payments associated with those applications totaled $671,000.

Because LIHEAP is a block grant program, the potential fraudulent and improper activities associated with these thousands of cases have an adverse effect on the program. Specifically, these fraudulent and improper activities will either reduce the amount of energy assistance provided to recipients or prevent legitimate recipients from receiving the energy assistance because the funds have been used. 

The report, at the start, noted in part as well:

About 9 percent of households receiving benefits—totaling $116 million—in the selected states contained invalid identity information, such as Social Security numbers, names, or dates of birth. Although some of these cases are likely due to simple errors such as typos or incomplete data, thousands of other cases show strong indications of fraud and improper benefits. 

Let us understand something. When we look carefully at the report language, we see that 11,000 deceased individuals were used as applicant names for the subsidy. So when the poor person applicant died, did that mean someone not poor was using the subsidy? Do we know how many of those applicants were living with a person who was also poor, so that the subsidy was still being used for people who needed the subsidy? The study did not go that far in its analysis. Neither did the study ever ask, So if the applicant was in prison at the time of the application, or re-application, were there no poor people in the home the prisoner left behind? 

So the GAO's statement that there are "strong indications" of fraud in those areas is a guess on the part of the GAO. My own knowledge of sociology tells me poor people in poor areas live most often with other poor people. And poor people suffer from as much of a lack of sophistication in filling out forms as their other problems. So it may well be that a majority of these cases are not cases of people living in mansions or driving Mercedes using the subsidies, though that was definitely found in some cases.

Another statement from the study, about the program being a "block grant" program, speaks to something that has long been a peeve of mine. Conservatives, right wingers and neo-liberals in our nation love "block grant" programs more often than not. But that means the federal government gives the money to the States and protectorates (Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, etc.) and then the States and protectorates have to separately administer the program and the US government has to oversee each of the States and protectorates. This creates a terrible lack of uniformity and waters down the effectiveness of what people understand to be a federal program.  Also, let's face it: some States or protectorates will do better than others in tracking people, and checking Social Security and other verification information, just as we saw the GAO audit. It is why I do not like block grants for the most part, as too many States and protectorates do too poor a job compared to having a federal program the federal government administers. There is less bureaucracy involved when something is a straight up federal program where it is one government responsible for administration compared to one plus 50 governments and then other governmental entities in places such as the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, etc. 

For Mulvaney to promote the elimination of the LIHEAP on the basis of the 2010 GAO study shows the shallowness in which he approaches his position as Budget Director, and the cruelty of his public policy prescriptions. If one audited the Koch Bros. own corporate or business organization budgets, one could easily find the same percentage of fraud, waste, etc. To speak of eliminating the home heating fuel subsidy program because of the 2010 GAO study without even asking what has been done to improve its efficiency since then, again, shows how much Mulvaney would rather govern from a bumper sticker or cable news, than true governance.

Tragedy and Farce of Americans accused of supporting Russia over America

Karl Marx's great quote, taken from his long time friend, collaborator, and economic patron, Friedrich Engels, is "...all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice...(T)he first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

In the run up this week to the release of the "memo" (really an advocate's legal brief) from right wing Congressman, David Nunes, I kept thinking of the eccentric Democratic Party Senator from Maryland from the early to mid 20th Century, Millard Tydings, and the Tydings Committee report that was supposed to put an end to the supposedly reckless charges of the then junior-right wing Republican US Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph R. McCarthy. 

Tydings, and several members of his Senate Committee, were trying to defend New Deal internationalists, several of whom turned out to be Communists, and some who were, in the parlance of the time, "fellow travelers" of Communists (one thinks of Owen Lattimore and John Stewart Service, for example). What made the Committee's report so pathetic was that the report was focused on whether these people were Communists, when the report should have focused on whether such people were traitors. The report assumed the "conventional wisdom" of the time, including the belief that if one was a Communist Party member, then such a person was in an actual, continuing conspiracy to overthrow by violent means the US government and let the Soviet Union take over. So some Democratic Party Senators and Congressmen, who knew, respected, and even admired the knowledge and experience of people like Service and Lattimore, rushed to these advisers' and career government employees' defense as not being Communist Party members.

The Republicans of the time knew what to do with such a report, as the Wiki entry for the Committee report tells us:

Tydings labeled McCarthy's charges a "fraud and a hoax," and said that the result of McCarthy's actions was to "confuse and divide the American people[...] to a degree far beyond the hopes of the Communists themselves." Republicans responded in kind, with William Jenner* stating that Tydings was guilty of "the most brazen whitewash of treasonable conspiracy in our history." The full Senate voted three times on whether to accept the report, and each time the voting was precisely divided along party lines.

*Republican US Senator from Indiana.  Jenner was so much an anti-Red, he backed McCarthy right through the hearings investigating General and later Secretary of State George Marshall, and the entire Army.  Just read the Wiki entry on Senator Jenner.

We now see Trump allies, starting with Nunes, suddenly concerned with civil liberties, for the Nunes memo is essentially about a FISA surveillance warrant against one person tied to the Trump campaign.  We see Trump allies and partisans, like Cold War liberals of yore, saying the investigation is dividing the American people and calling the investigation into Trump and his campaign/administration ties to Russian oligarchs and Putin a "fraud" and a "hoax."  

But this is history repeating itself in farce.  The Nunes memo was, at the very least, a "nothingburger" as Esquire's Charles Pierce and Bret Stephens (a right wing anti-Trumpist for what can only be said is reasons of style) each said.  The Nunes memo did not challenge the authenticity of the Steele memo, including the salacious parts.  In fact, the memo refers to Steele as a "longtime FBI source..."  The memo did not prove Trump and his campaign/administration did not collude with the Russians.  One may even say, by what it does not talk about, that it is giving more weight to the government investigation into Trump and his campaign/administration because it is clear there are in fact other sources besides the Steele dossier.  Also, as stated in the last linked article from The Intercept, whose top guy, Glenn Greenwald, is the left apologist for Trump on the entire Russian issue, the FBI routinely relies on sources who are motivated by revenge, money, etc.  Finally, the memo is wrong about who "funded" the Steele dossier: First, it was initially funded by a Republican opponent of Trump, as one finds within this  detailed article in Vanity Fair about Steele, Fusion GPS (the investigative organization), and the Trump-Russia story.  Second, the FBI never paid Steele after he went public with his investigative work about Trump and the Russians.  And isn't it amusing to hear Trump allies treating as nefarious that the main opponent to Trump, Hillary Clinton, would have wanted to find out if her opponent, Trump, is somehow engaged in something that, if true, would be highly nefarious?  

The Nunes memo was, again, more about poor Carter Page, who the FBI was targeting for, ahem, overzealous activities with Russian oligarchs in 2013--three years before the Steele dossier was created.  Poor Mr. Page may even be seen as the Nathan Silvermaster of our times...

So here we are:  David Nunes is the farcical version of Millard Tydings, and Nunes' memo is the farcical version of the Tydings report.  Carter Page is the farcical version of Nathan Silvermaster.  And Trump?  He is at least a farcical Russian stooge or dupe--or maybe he is a corrupt, money-laundering traitor to his nation, again, using Cold War parlance so favored by conservatives and Cold War liberals in the US, and not just right-wingers. 

I must also, say, however, that the Red Scare remains a tragedy.  People like John Stewart Service and Owen Lattimore were simply analysts who understood Chaing Kai Shek (I am still not comfortable with the new spellings for Chinese leaders of the early to mid 20th Century) was going to fall to the Communists, and no amount of fairy dust in the form of deadly US bombs was going to stop that.  People like Harry Dexter White and Alger Hiss were not spies, and whatever information they gave to the Soviet Union was more about gossip and trying to keep lines of communication open as they, as New Deal internationalists, were trying to stop the creation of a bi-polar world full of tension and mistrust in a world with nuclear weapons.  

If anyone wants to say that Trump and his allies are merely trying to side with Putin against international Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, and that the Russia investigation is a criminalization of politics, then I say to such a person, Welcome to the Club I like to call "Let's all apologize to Alger Hiss and Jane Fonda."  For if such a person, wanting to defend Trump, is not ready to admit the Red Scare and the Cold War apparatus against "Comm'n'izm" was a criminalization of politics, that the nomenclature about "fellow traveler," "dupe," "stooge," "traitor," etc. was a demonization of people who had legitimate domestic policy differences (you know the drill: Someone says there should be Medicare for All, and right away, we say:  "That's Socialism!  And Socialism equals Communism equals Treason!"), then I say to such persons:

Trump is at least a dupe or stooge of the Russians, led by a former KGB operative, Vladimir Putin.   Trump needs to open his tax records--all of them since the early 1990s--because there is reason to suspect he is being blackmailed by Russians.  Trump may also, based upon his policy pronouncements, whether the statements denouncing the FBI, various chiefs of the CIA, and even questioning US involvement in NATO, and, in disclosing secrets, be deemed an agent of influence of the Russians, and, therefore, anti-American.

And we can also do what Republicans, conservatives and assorted right wingers (remember Ann Coulter's "Treason" book, which Bill Buckley, himself a defender of Joe McCarthy, called "fun"?) over the years like to say:  Trump's Republican allies are enabling treason!  

God, that feels so good to say, and so much fun to say!  I think the Democrats should do what Republicans did during the Red Scare from 1946 to well....now:  "Congressman _______," who supports Trump, "why are you enabling treason in the White House? Are you anti-American!?"  Yes, Republicans knew what to do with the Red Scare. Time for a new one against the right wingers who want to so badly destroy our nation and its institutions, amirite? Bwwwaaaaaha-ha-ha!

Sherriff--I mean, Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) is maybe like Richard Nixon, who made his fame as a Commie-pinko chaser, but I don't see the haze of corruption around Schiff that enveloped Nixon from his earliest days, and Schiff is legitimately wondering about the money influence with the Russian oligarchs, Trump's own sons who have admitted Russian money has funded the Trump clan, and Trump's relationship with the only major bank to fund Trump--Deutsche Bank--being a known Russian money-laundering institution, etc.  

For let's face it.  I challenge pro-Red Scare historians Harvey Klehr and John Haynes to tell us what Hiss or Harry Dexter White actually gave to the Russian Communist government that was so important.  We know Hiss was likely a Communist Party member at some point, but so what?  As Conrad Black pointed out in his majestic biography of FDR, Hiss was at Yalta and argued against the Soviet Union position on the number of votes in the upcoming United Nations organization that the Soviets were seeking (page 1080).  Some "spy." And White was told to cajole the Russians into joining the upcoming World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and, yes, did believe that the Russians would, if they did so, morph into a more capitalist nation, while we embraced what can only properly be called social democracy a la Scandinavia.  Again, some "spy."  

But one wonders, just what is driving Trump to dump on American institutions, praise Putin, and have business relationships with Russian oligarchs tight with Putin?  As the idiot pundit Peggy Noonan once said about a silly issue over trying to keep a Cuban boy from being returned to his father at the turn of our century:  "Is it irresponsible to speculate?  It is irresponsible not to."   

And let us recall the words of William F. Buckley and his even more lunatic brother in law, L. Brent Bozell, in their infamous work, "McCarthy and His Enemies" (1954), at page 333, and let's substitute the word "Conservative" for "Liberal," as Buckley/Bozell spoke about the real goal of the Red Scare--as they denounced only some of McCarthy's bellicose rhetoric, but defended its intent and import.  The two then rising stars were talking about a speech Joe McCarthy had made where he made a remark about then Democratic Party Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, saying "Alger...I mean, Adlai..."  The two authors then wrote:

"...But it may well be we have not heard the last of this idea.  Some day, the patience of America may at last be exhausted, and we will strike out against (Conservatives).  Not because they are treacherous...but because...we will conclude 'that they are mistaken in their predictions, false in their analyses, wrong in their advice, and through the results of their actions injurious to the interests of the nation.  That is a reason enough to strive to free the conduct of the country's affairs from the influence of them and their works.'"

Buckley and Bozell went on to tell "the MacLeishs, De Votos and Schlesingers" (liberal anti-Communist intellectuals of the time) they had "no grounds for arguing that any sustained effort is being made to read them out of the community."  Sure, Bill and Brent, sure.  For how does one explain why "Liberal" became part of the trio of dreaded words to those who came of age from the post-World War II period up through the near end of the 20th Century in thinking "liberalism equals socialism equals communism equals treason?"  Foreign policy disputes are almost always about domestic politics and domestic political maneuvering.  For if you convince swing voters the other guy or gal is a traitor or suspected traitor, you win elections.  

And this Red-baiting continued a quarter century after the Soviet Union fell.  For how many liberals and even some lefties were fretting in 2016 about Bernie Sanders being opened up like a sardine can for his left liberal policy proposals?  That is how ingrained this rhetoric became in people over 40 in our nation, and why it is so goddamned important to use this nomenclature back against those who perfected it decades ago.

I know it is not pretty, and it is not nice.  But I am not saying you or I need to do this.  But, as Buckley and Bozell did with McCarthy, let's not be so quick to denounce Rachel Maddow and others like Craig Unger for harping on the Russia-Trump story.  Let's recognize that each plays his or her role in domestic electoral politics.  Demonizing opponents is what Jefferson and Hamilton did to each other in the 1790s, if we know our history.   It is as American as apple pie, unfortunately, and it is about time some otherwise erstwhile leftists (I am calling you out personally, Glenn Greenwald and Stephen Cohen) grew a spine on this. 

On Facebook for over a year, I have been saying I am munching on my popcorn about this whole scandal of Trump and Russia.  It has been cathartic for me.  I feel powerless anyway, and a mere bystander in American politics.  But really, this is a moment that should not be lost, as there really is something there about Trump and Russia, and what it is about, as Steve Bannon admitted he is thinking, too, is money laundering.  Sorry historians Klehr and Haynes.  That ain't about ideas and policies, which you support criminalizing.  This is about financial corruption, emoluments, and then, if you guys want, the ideas of white nationalism expressed in a guy like Putin.  

So I munch away.  I say, in 2018 mid-terms, if you want to focus on the tax cuts being a danger to the Social Security and Medicare programs, I say, Go for it!  If you want to focus on Republican policies against women's reproductive rights, I say, Go for it!  If you want to focus on the environment and how our weather is already showing that the climate is changing, I say, Go for it!  If you want to revitalize unions and support Medicare for All, I say, Go for it!  It is a melodic cacophany of political strategy and choice.  But don't stop the music about Trump and Russia. That political music has a place in the overall discourse, and the Nunes memo just showed how scared and desperate the right wing, Republicans, and Trump and his administration are about this whole investigation.  I wonder what is in those Trump tax records going back to 1992 or so...?  Bwwaaaha-haaaaa....