"Don't Look Up"--just watch it on Neflix or however you can.

The Wife and I just finished watching "Don't Look Up" on Netflix. The film is anti-corporate and anti-social media, anti-politics, anti-capitalist, and pro-science. It is a combination of "Network" (here and here), "Dr. Strangelove," "Knowing," and Anthony Burgess' under-appreciated novel, "The End of the World News."This film is a truly dark comedy, and I mean dark, but it is amazingly powerful. 

I am already seeing corporate media reviews that attack the film. I saw one in Salon magazine, as the guy reveals himself to be an idiot who unwittingly admits halfway through his review how much he hated director/writer Adam McKay's "The Big Short." That review only proves the film's point, which is corporate media executives pay stupid people to be stupid. 

Expect more attacks on this film.  It is that dangerous to powerful interests.  Hats off to Netflix for letting this through. Too bad our political-economic elites already know, from climate change to COVID, most people are inert, easily misled, and often what John Lennon said in "Working Class Hero" about most of us.  Just...peasants. 

Oh well. It was interesting while it lasted. :(

Vijay Prashad is one of the brightest and most insightful minds on the planet

Here are two lectures from Vijay Prashad.  The first is from 2019, where he spoke before a Workers Party in Ireland.  It is 22 minutes and one second long.  And it is outstanding in its insight, contextualization, and explanation for why political discourses are the way they are, not only where he lives and in Ireland, but in the United States.

The second is from a lecture he delivers in 2018, where he shows those of us who know world history how much Indian politics resembles other nations' politics, including, to some significant extent, our own. He then talks about the Communist Horizon, which is also a phrase Jodi Dean uses. For those who don't know Professor Dean, here she is (at around the 45 minute mark) on Katie Halper's show knocking down the Neo-liberal position that  normalizes Trump supporters as hopelessly fascist, and the anti-anti-Trump left that normalizes Neo-liberalism as no different than fascism. One is a handmaiden to the other, though they are definitely not the same, but both must be opposed with a robust visionary set of arguments.

Overall, though, Prashad is the brightest and most insightful mind on the Internet today. He is as great as Chomsky in Chomsky's hey-day, as great as Yanis Varoufakis, and possesses a worldview or paradigm changing perspective as Barbara Ehrenreich.  Prashad is simply compelling viewing and hearing.

Harbingers from German History and America Today: Part II of my commentary on Amos Elon's "The Pity of It All"

Before I get to discussing Amos Elon's The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch: 1743-1933, which I discussed last week, I must discuss Trump's latest comments about American Jews, which are a part of an anti-Semitic style that will have relevance to the phenomenon Elon is discussing in German politics and German history. 

What makes Trump's comments dangerous are more than the comments themselves, but how the comments expose how Zionist thinking can itself be anti-Semitic. Consider: Senator Schumer expressly and proudly says he is in the Senate primarily to support Israel (a shomer, or in English, guardian). However, people, particularly many American Jews, bristle if anyone (especially a non-Jew) says that means Schumer or other pro-Israel shills in Congress are as loyal if not more loyal to Israel than the US (The "dual loyalty" trope).  Now, here comes Trump, assuming US Jews have to be loyal to Israel--something I have heard nearly all my life--and then rips into the growing number of American Jews who are showing they are NOT "loyal" to Israel. And now, Trump's acknowledgement that Jews are NOT loyal to Israel, meaning they do NOT have "dual loyalty," is suddenly called anti-Semitic. 

Huh?

Yes, Trump is using anti-Semitic tropes in speaking of Jews as "the Jews" who run things in the US and who are supposed to be in lockstep to Israel because, "Well, they're Jews, ya know?"  I am paraphrasing here, and not quoting Trump, but that is the assumption behind his commentary. Trump knows Chuck Schumer and Trump knows how Jewish organizations behave regarding Israel. However, the reason Trump's statement is, in fact, an anti-Semitic trope is not for the reasons never quite explained in the media commentary. If anything, the media commentary assumes Trump is anti-Semitic more because of Trump's tone, his previous problematic anti-Mexican/anti-Muslim statements, and his statement regarding the Charlottesville, Virginia riot, where there was a major anti-Semitic chant during the event that led to a riot.

The real reason Trump's commentary is anti-Semitic is because Zionism itself contains anti-Semitic assumptions. Yes, you can read that again to ensure I am being clearly understood. 

Now, let's move forward. Zionism, as a political-nationalist creed, says anti-Semitism in Western society (Europe and the US) is immutable and we, as Jews, must support Israel no matter what. This, ironically, is akin to the way back-to-Africa African-Americans in the 1920s, and later the Black Muslims, ingest the deep racism of the US, agree that African-Americans can never belong as "Americans," and accept the terms of a racist debate. That is Zionism, too. This is why the Reform Judaism movement (which grew out of Germany, and was trying to show Jews were a religion, not an ethnicity) rejected Zionism so long in the early 20th Century. It is important to remember the Reform movement-denomination only embraced Zionism with the coming of what became known as the Holocaust, as Reform Jewish leaders in the US recognized Americans overall would never accept European Jewish refugees, and Palestine was the only refuge for Jews escaping the growing conflagration. The shift from anti- to pro-Zionism was therefore a historically-politically based shift. After WWII, and especially after the euphoric pride of finally having a "Jewish" State, arising from the ashes of the decimation of European Jewry, Israel became embedded within American Judaism. It is why nearly every synagogue or temple has, on its pulpit (which Jews call in Hebrew a bimah) an American flag and an Israeli flag. This historically based perspective helps explain why, today, so many older American Jews are so confused and angry when their grandchildren (or children) see what a mess Israel has become (and has been) as a nation which recreates settler-colonialism, including apartheid, and has become itself embedded within the American military-industrial complex.

Therefore, unless one acknowledges how Zionism accepts anti-Semitism as embedded within Western culture (Europe and North America), and how Jews must be loyal to Israel, one is confused about why Trump's statements are anti-Semitic.  For one may again ask, How can Trump saying American Jews are NOT loyal to Israel be anti-Semitic if the charge of "dual loyalty" is anti-Semitic? :) And again, to  reach the conclusion Trump is using anti-Semitic tropes, one also needs to acknowledge the way in which corporate media is itself complicit in this confusion--and then ask, Why is so much of corporate owned media complicit?  The reason is Israel is itself wrapped up in the US military-industrial complex and must be protected from criticism above all else. Why else do we see the majority of US States with anti-Israel boycott laws, which clearly run afoul of the First Amendment jurisprudence, yet still exist across much of the nation?

Yes, these are dangerous times for non-whites and Jews. 

This finally brings us to Amos Elon's deeply compelling and fascinating The Pity of it All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch: 1734-1933 (2002), which I posted at FB and blogged about last week. As I am completing the book, I am struck by how deftly Elon describes Germany's descent into Fascism and screaming Nazism, where 0.9% of the German public, German Jews, were made the scapegoat for the German Kaiser's spectacularly wrong decision to essentially start WWI, even though many Jews supported the fighting of that war, and fought in that war (proudly) for Germany.  What is extraordinary is how most of the German Jewish community ardently supported the war, while a relatively few percentage of Jews who opposed it became, in German mass media, the primary scapegoats--with the media largely refusing to acknowledge or highlight the major decisions made in the non-Jewish German political circles, economic elites, and military high commands. Elon is clear how the industrialists were afraid of socialism and communism coming, and gave tacit support to nationalist extremism, though not as consistently (but more than we like to think) the Nazis themselves. At page 372 of his book, and after describing the political murders and growth of extreme nationalist politics, Elon wrote: 

The political thugs, their intellectual counterparts, the feigned objectivity of the courts that tried them, the complicity of judges, police officers, and politicians--all these would later be recognized as harbingers.

Yes, that is sort of happening right here in the United States, with the way in which increasingly violent and delusional rhetoric from the right is being normalized, while what I called ten years or more ago, Weimar Democrats (corporate Democrats), continue with their fecklessness in not protecting Americans from the ravages perpetrated by international oriented capitalists (not capitalism, as that is merely an ism or itself a creed). 1920s Germans had a choice, which was to go more hard socialist or even communist, which would have greatly lessened the anti-Semitism so long integrated into German national development OR go to hard nationalism, fascism, and Nazism. We know where the elites took refuge, and 0.9% of the nation be damned. Trump is of that ilk of industrialists/financiers, and he knows how to use racist and anti-Semitic tropes to rile up his fans. 

So, yes, again, Trump is using anti-Semitic tropes, as he has done for years. However, until American Jews especially face the contradictions within Zionism, as a creed, and how Zionism functions in Israel and within US power corridors, there will be continued confusion that will eventually lead to a growing anti-Semitism in the US political discourse.  It is horrible enough that racism against African-Americans remains a staple of the US political discourse, with anti-Hispanic and anti-Asian racism not far behind. But, as we saw in Charlottesville in 2017, anti-Semitism is part of "the Great Replacement Theory."  

We have been warned. But, as usual with human beings, we won't see the danger until it is nearly fully upon us. But, sure. Keep thinking the way the Democratic Party leaders and politicians are running things is all we have, and all that can be done. Sorry, but that thinking is how we got here.

Critical Religion Theory in German History

A close friend from my oldest days sent me this book, The Pity of It All: A History of the Jews in Germany, 1743-1933, in paperback form as a Chanukkah gift. Amos Elon (1926-2009), a liberal Zionist for much of his life, who became disillusioned with the Zionist project for its becoming too nationalist and proving its colonialist roots, is the author. 

I am about 60% or so through the book. What has struck me is this book is an unusual history of Germany and Prussia, German unification, and the development of German nationalism through the early 20th Century through a lens that may be called "Critical Religion Theory." It is stunning to me how Elon wrote this history, which, whether intentionally or not, shows the centrality of Jew hatred which runs parallel through German and Prussian political history, the rise of German (and Prussian) unification, and German nationalism, as well as Germany's philosophical pluralism and development of German art, music, literature. If anyone wishes to see why it is so important to embrace the original--not propagandistic versions--of Critical Race Theory, this book will reveal the way in which such a framework, and I prefer Critical Race Framework, is so illuminating. 

The book also provides an illumination of how Jews in Germany were so wanting to be deemed "German" and how those who supported German unification, German political reforms, and German wars against France over Alsace-Lorraine, Bismarck even at his most autocratic, and later Germany in WWI, were of the view that holding tight to a unified Germany and German nationalism would allow the vast majority of Germans to finally see Jews as part of the ideal German cultural and political fabric. Elon is elegant in his description of these Jews, and how their hopes were so often dashed, even if there were moments of hope.

Where I have quibbled with Elon is his anti-Socialist bias and particularly the way he cites Marx's "Jewish Problem" essay from 1844. Elon never lets readers know Marx wrote the essay in response to a German philosopher and theologian, Bruno Bauer, who was truly anti-Jewish (the word anti-Semitic does not show up until 1879), saying Jews should not have political rights, and stay in their economic rights lane. Marx, admittedly using some anti-Jewish tropes about Jews' God being money, though in a Dave Chapelle-like way, that says, "Okay, you Jew haters, I'll accept that for a larger point..." responded by saying Jews deserved political rights and are ultimately no different as people than anyone else. He said, if Germany can move toward Socialism or Communism, it will become abundantly clear why this is the case. Yet, Elon only cites to Marx's tropes without any of the context he brings to his other capsule biographies of German/Prussian/Austrian born Jews. Elon treats Marx, whose family converted to Christianity, as just another self-hating Jew. Elon treats the other Socialists better than Marx, but still not with the same reverence he has for the German Jewish or converted Jewish liberals/capitalists. Had Marx supported Bismarck in the darkest days, Elon would have had a field day, but he tries to find subtlety for those who did. I am great with that subtlety, of course, but he could have been far more fair to Marx, and he was not. 

Nonetheless, this is an extraordinary book thus far (and I sneaked a read of the European historian par excellence Gordon Craig's very positive review of the book in the NYRB), and appears to promise more greatness as the book winds it way to 1933, which Elon fairly properly sees as the end of a relatively normal life for Jews in Germany for the next decade or two--and perhaps beyond, as I am not sure how secure Jews should feel in Germany in a rising tide of international fascism.  Again, though, this book is really Critical Religion Theory/Framework, and shows, again, its usefulness in illuminating various aspects of a society other frameworks may easily miss.

I should add, as a final note, how this book dovetails into a remarkable memoir by the former NPR and still SiriusXm classical music radio personality, Martin Goldsmith, about his classical musician parents coming of age in the time of German Nazi madness, and their dramatic escape from Germany to the United States in the last days before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December, 1941.  The book, The Inexhaustible Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany, is a remarkable read overall, which also proves Elon's point about how the German Jews, only 1% of the overall population were nevertheless overrepresented in the arts, and providing non-Jewish Germans with a way to see their best selves.  It is even more so than Jews in the entertainment industry of our our nation, and the way in which I shocked my students yesterday, as I rattled off so many Christmas songs which those of Jewish religious heritage wrote.  What Germany lost, as a people and nation, in the anti-Jewish madness exhibited over centuries, and definitely over the 1930s and 1940s, is remarkably tragic. That nearly 70% of German Jews escaped from Germany during the 1930s and dawn of the 1940s (many to the US, where FDR did work to manipulate European quotas for Jews, despite major hostility from Congress and his own State Department) is a story too many Jews, as well as others, have surpassed in the tarring of FDR, but that is another story. 

Explaining Roe v. Wade to high schoolers in Gov Politics class

In my GovPolitics class yesterday, I went through Roe v. Wade, the actual decision, and let them know it is likely going to be overturned or decimated for the most part, but at least let's give Justice Blackmun and the Supreme Court in 1973 a chance to explain themselves. To set up the reading we did together, I opened by showing the class what we had analyzed generally before, which is the first section of the 14th Amendment. The section begins "All persons born or naturalized..." I asked, since we know the word "naturalized" applies to immigrants, in the determination of rights between the mother and the fetus, who does the 14th Amendment protect and not protect? Kids laughingly said, It only protects the mother! Yeah, I said. Yeah, the mother--well, at least primarily, as we will see. I then mischievously added: I would find intriguing an argument that said, maybe Congress could theoretically pass a law interpreting "naturalized" to mean a fetus, and we can see what would happen with a court of the type we have now in the US Supreme Court. That would be fun, right? But would that be a good faith definition of "naturalized," I asked? No, not so much. 

I then said, let's put the Roe decision up on this projector, so we can read along. Let's start with the trimester and viability stuff in the decision, since that took so much of the oral argument time on Wednesday at the US Supreme Court, which is considering an essentially anti-abortion Mississippi law. I then explained how the trimester argument was not about constitutional principle, as in "Where does the Constitution talk about 'trimesters,' huh?" I said the trimester system was largely, but not completely based upon the American Medical Association's brief filed with the US Supreme Court during the time the Roe case was pending, which discussed the ranges in which a fetus can become viable, that is protected outside the womb to complete development through medical technology. I explained the trimester system is therefore simply an application of a principle to advise the public about how to delineate when a woman's right to abort ends and a fetuses' life could be allowed to begin so as to limit a woman's right to an abortion. It was expressly intended to be what the more conservative oriented Justice Sandra O'Connor somewhat snarkily called a "moving target," meaning it changes with the developments in medical technologies. So, if we can eventually remove a zygote safely from a woman's body, and place the zygote in a special incubator and keep the zygote growing till birth, a woman, under Roe v. Wade's own holding, can't say, "Kill the zygote no longer in my body!" I said, isn't that funny that one can say Roe v. Wade is actually pro-fetus to at least a decent extent? Funny, right. Lots of smiles in recognition on that one. 

Anyway, I then quoted Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s famous statement, The life of the law is not logic, but experience, and briefly explained how jurisprudence--writing a court decision essentially--is about enunciating a principle, and providing a way for others to apply the principle using our lives' experiences. Then, I said, this is why I really like the jurisprudence of Roe v. Wade, contrary to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who said, for years, even before she became a Supreme Court justice, how bad the decision was from a lawyer's or judge's perspective.*  

I then switched over to the Casey case, from 1992, where the US Supreme Court got rid of trimesters and went to the standard of "no undue burden on the woman wanting an abortion." I asked, Do you think that is more clear or less clear a standard than trimesters? Everyone said the Casey standard was less clear. I then showed them Blackmun's concurring opinion in Casey where he said, with no other justices bothering to contradict him, nothing had really changed since Roe in the medical technology for fetuses. Funny, I said, right? So many so-called smart people and we continue to see how the Court Justices are so, well, "political" while beating up on poor Blackmun for supposedly being "political."

Then, I went back into the Roe decision, again projecting it through a projector so the kids could read along, and read parts of the decision regarding how (1) ambiguous the abortion legacy is within the Catholic Church, with the church not really congealing completely against all abortions until the late 19th Century, just after the American Medical Association had pronounced opposition to all abortions as morally wrong and too dangerous for women to undergo, (2) ambiguities about abortion in other religions, including the ones who invented God--you know, JEWS--and the British common law, which both allowed abortion until the first kick or quickening, which was three months and up to four months into the pregnancy; and (3) local prosecutors in English law, and largely true among American prosecutors in the 1700s and early 1800s, rarely brought abortion prosecutions against women or doctors because they sorta wondered whether abortion is something different than one guy knifing another in a bar fight--though some commentators have said it is because medical technology couldn't tell so easily the difference between a miscarriage and abortion. I showed them the section of Roe describing how abortion laws in the 19th Century initially developed more to protect women than fetuses, but how fetal protection became much more pronounced after the AMA report was released in the late 19th Century.  All through that time, abortions were dangerous procedures for women to undergo. By the 1950s, though, an early-term abortion was essentially as safe or sometimes safer for a doctor to perform on a pregnant woman than childbirth. That means one of the main or primary reasons for abortion laws, that is protecting a woman born or naturalized in the United States, was no longer as, well, viable, due to what, again, oh, yeah, medical technology.

I then took a side-step to discuss Griswold from 1965, which established the right to privacy implied in the Constitution, and how Justices Scalia and Thomas took the position that you can't overrule Roe without overruling Griswold, which both wanted or want to do. I said it will be interesting to see if the five or six justices so hellbent on reversing Roe will face what Thomas and Scalia are saying, and wipe out the right to privacy as a constitutional right. I asked them, show me how many of you think the Constitution should not protect your general right to privacy. No hands went up, not even among the ones I suspected were anti-abortion. I said, See? Sort of a problem there for some of us at least. You may want to outlaw abortion, but I still think a woman's body is pretty private from the claws of state and federal law, at least I think so.:).  

I then said let's go through Justice Rehnquist's dissenting opinion in Roe, and how he was not on board to overrule the right to privacy, compared to say Scalia or Thomas. Rehnquist said, if a woman goes to the doctor or hospital for an abortion, then it's not private, so we can save Griswold and keep abortions illegal if states want to do so. But, even Rehnquist later realized that is not accurate as an analogy, as going to pharmacy and asking for contraceptives over the counter is not private, either. Rehnquist, and the other dissenter in Roe, Justice White, admitted to being overwhelmed by the marshaling of historical, medical, and anthropological evidence, which I told the students was odd because a smart historian could actually attack some of the historical and other interpretations Blackmun cited in Roe. I said the anti-Roe forces got much better in deciding to show where one of the main authors of two  law review articles on abortion history, a guy named Cyril Means, who was a pro-abortion advocate lawyer, was misleading in some of his abortion laws in history. Blackmun cited him by my count at least four times in Roe. I think there was a lot of polemics in Means' law review articles, and now, one may read equally polemical histories that go the opposite way, and which attack Means' analysis. We can expect to hear a lot about this in right wing media, at least.  I would still say there is much merit in Means' analysis, particularly regarding the common law, Jewish law, and much of Catholic legal history. I also think the majority of anti-abortion laws that were passed in the late 19th Century were highly influenced by the AMA report, so that their fervor about protecting fetuses should be recognized to be in the context of abortion being so dangerous to a point that a woman undergoing an abortion could be seen as being manipulated into risking death--so the fervor in the legislative intent is different than our time, where concern for the "unborn" takes on a religious, not medical use of language.  What I like about the attacks on Means' analysis is what I have said multiple times throughout the semester, which is when making a counterargument, always try first to attack the other sides' premises.  It allows you to tell a different story. :)

The final document I showed them was a page from the Congressional Record where a senator arguing for the 14th Amendment, said that, above and beyond (1) the protection of what were then called  "Negroes" from discriminatory treatment, and (2) having national rights for all persons born or naturalized in the US, the then proposed amendment is supposed to give "uninterrupted enjoyment of his life, his limbs, his body, (and) his health..." That's a wow. There is another page from the record where a congressman said the purpose of the 14th Amendment is, in addition to the two main items of protecting African-American rights and creating individual rights from being a citizen of the federal government (the United States) is to protect the right to marry and have kids if people want to do so. (See this piece from The Atlantic where these are cited, too). 

So, wait a minute. Do those quotes from congressmen at the time mean there are possibly rights under the 14th Amendment not to bear a child? Could be. Maybe. However, I added, we need to consider how, just after the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, our nation saw a spate of new anti-abortion laws passed in states that said protect the fetus and not just the mother---and nobody was citing to the 14th Amendment at that time. In fact, the first glimpse of a right to privacy doesn't show up until a dissenting opinion in a US Supreme Court in 1891, and doesn't get direct support as a holding until, well, Griswold in 1965. This is again why it is important to challenge premises of those with whom we disagree. But, original intent can be tricky for doing what we may decide to realize later is suddenly so correct. For example, I said, how many people know there were racially segregated schools at the time of passing the 14th Amendment, and yet it took nearly 70 years for the Supreme Court justices to decide segregated schools now violated the 14th Amendment in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). This was part of the December 1 oral argument regarding the Mississippi ant-abortion law, and it was not pretty on anyone's side--though I would say, are you right wing Justices really so damn sure the Founders or the 14th Amendment framers, with modern technology and an understanding of a right to privacy, would feel as strong morally in overturning Roe v. Wade? But, ah, history is sure complicated, isn't it?

I said a couple of times during all of this, If you still want to be religious with respect to protecting other women's fetuses, go right ahead. At the end, I asked, in my most friendly way, as these are high schoolers after all, If you have any reason to say I missed some good anti-abortion argument, or say, "Mr. Freedman you are full of it because...." please, just say it. It's okay. No takers. But, I had to admit there were no takers because I saw they were just overwhelmed by the barrage of information I was going over. Many kept nodding their heads, saying in effect, wow, that was some performance. So, I then asked:  How many of you had heard of most of this stuff I just showed and explained to you? The kids just shook their heads, saying no way. Yeah, I smiled. Funny how in all the arguments you may have heard in politics on tv, radio, or home, nobody really wants to litigate just what Roe v. Wade actually said and meant. (I had gone briefly into Doe v. Bolton and how the phrase "life or health of the mother" was one that was not really well defined about "health," but how Blackmun thought there would be a good faith legislative enactment about that. Silly Blackmun. That is not what anti-abortionists wanted or want...**) 

I left them with this: Even if you are still anti-abortion in any way, I only ask you to consider: Why is trying to stop another woman from aborting her fetus a public policy priority for anyone compared to, I don't know, climate change, systemic inequality (economic and racial), or even guns? With guns, at least, it is "Hey, don't take away MY gun!" On abortion, it is more removed, and may be seen as judgmental, "Hey, slut! Keep that baby growing inside you!" Kids laughed. I then smiled and said, Oh well, as I said at the start, the chances of Roe v. Wade being overturned are pretty high. I just thought you should know what Roe v. Wade actually said for your own edification. Justice Blackmun rarely gets plaudits for the case, and I thought you students should at least deal with his thinking and ruling.

*See the NYU lecture she gave in 1992, where she called the decision "breathtaking" and unduly setting up a "blanket regime" of abortion rights. I really and truly believe Ginsburg's comprehension skills are overrated in her discussion of Roe over the years, particularly when she would say Roe is not based upon the 14th Amendment and claims it is really more about doctor's rights than women's autonomy. I really think she was terribly wrong. 

** I had meant to go into this polemically based argument about how abortion became the motivating political issue for so many culturally conservative voters, but ran out of time. :)

How we know anyone who is harping on the Steele memo's unreliability is hiding something else

Scott Limieux at Lawyers, Guns, and Money Blog nails the issue regarding Trump's Russia ties, and, along the way, has some fun with his nemesis, Glenn Greenwald on the Rittenhouse case*--and, sadly, how Glenn is a bit soft on things like Black Lives Matter. Calling Dave Chappelle! Another white gay guy who is on the side of white supremacy. Oh well. The key points of Scott Limieux's post are: 

(1) The graph showing how corporate media coverage favored Hillary's email and private speaking fees scandals over the many, many Trump business oriented and personal oriented scandals, and

(2) How the Steele memo proves less than Russiagate is a Hoax folks want to admit, compared to the then-Republican controlled Senate report showing (1) the Russians did acts which proved the Russians wanted Trump to win in 2016; and (2) Trump welcomed Russian help in the 2016 election.**

When one also adds in Trump's cozy ties with Russian oligarchs for nearly 20 years before 2016 and, well, lots of smoke and even some fire. Therefore, one does not have to be a supporter of the FBI, CIA, and NSA in general to recognize there was a reason for those agencies to have people concerned about whether Trump was compromised. Do I think the Russians tipped the election to Clinton in 2016? I have strong doubts and I don't think it is reasonably provable in any event. As I said in a post dated August 1, 2018, the key goal for the Russians was less about victory for Trump than sowing chaos in the United States.

However, I don't think that would matter if, oh, I don't know, Bernie Sanders had such a level of contacts with the Russians.  So many people, including progressives, would be saying there is no doubt the nation could not afford to have Bernie in the White House. It is why I just laugh at right wingers who suddenly hate the FBI, CIA, etc. and trust a con man--a literal con man--over those institutions. For the anti-anti-Trump left, yes, they are correct about neo-libs and the systemic fascistic nature of those institutions. However, I have long said there are many great people who are regular FBI agents, regular CIA analysts, etc. who do their jobs with integrity, with good faith, and are truly interested in preserving our nation's ideals while doing their jobs--and the CIA's analysts' track record on any number of foreign policy issues, when not politicized, are fairly accurate, just to take one long arc example. Why this is so difficult to hold in one's head is perhaps the greatest failing of the species, and explains why we are hurtling toward climate disaster while gross inequality continues.

* My take on the Rittenhouse case may be summed up as follows: Wisconsin's self-defense law gave a Mack truck wide opening for this white kid to walk away from the following facts: (a) he crossed state lines to get a gun to shoot people; (b) he shot the first guy, the bipolar one (Rittenhouse didn't know that, of course), four times, with the first shot taking down the guy so that he was no longer a threat, and Rittenhouse decided, at point blank range, instead of retreating, to plug three more bullets into the first guy, including one to the head--and the first guy was unarmed; (c) he shot and killed the second guy, also unarmed, who was trying to subdue Rittenhouse for his clearly to anyone not white, I suppose, an aggressor in a mayhem situation; and (c) shot the third guy, who was armed, in a similar circumstance. The trial judge all but adopted Rittenhouse, as shown by his ridiculous ruling at the start of the trial that the persons shot cannot be called "victims," but could be called, with NO evidence, "rioters" or "arsonists." Then, during the trial, the judge excluded (suppressed from the jury) video evidence from Rittenhouse, before he went to Wisconsin, saying he would like to go to BLM protests and shoot people. But, sure, Glenn, corporate media commentators didn't have a right to be outraged--even if the media folks don't articulate as well as you and me.

*In a February 3, 2018 post, I wrote about why there it is not necessary to use the Steele memorandum to reveal Trump's and his campaign's Russian ties. However, my memory of my Facebook postings from 2017, when the Steele Memo was first disclosed, and throughout 2017, I was willing to believe the Steele memo may have had some validity.  I just didn't think it was all that important compared to other information from other sources. For me, Craig Unger's "House of Trump, House of Putin" is a far more comprehensive investigation and analysis of Trump's long-time Russian ties--though Unger is credulous about the Steele memo in a few parts of his book. There is, though, much, much, much more information independent from the Steele memo.  And, folks, as I have long said, in comparing this controversy to the Red Scare, I would not fully discount much of the Steele memorandum allegations of facts (not sourcing) eventually coming out. I guess, at that point, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and even Krystal & Saagar will say, "Who could have known?" Heh. 

My review of the new Vonnegut documentary

My Wife and I rented the newly released documentary last night, and loved watching it, particularly the Vonnegut family home movies (I had been a Kickstarter donor years ago, but only gave $25, I think, so I didn't see my name listed as a Kickstarter donor at the end of the film. :)). The Vonnegut home films were amazing and gave important context to the information regarding Vonnegut's amazing and sometimes tragic, often happy, childhood. We loved the documentary's structure that follows a style of a Vonnegut novel--tell us the main person is going to die right at the start, and inject oneself as part of the story, along the lines of watching a kettle boil. The narrator or author affects his own story, and, in Vonnegutian fashion, why not just tell the truth, dammit? :)

However, I admit to being a bit surprised there was not more literary analysis, considering the biographers and lit profs interviewed--particularly for those books the documentary noted were ripped at the time of release, meaning Slapstick, Gallpagos, and especially Hocus Pocus. I know it was two hours plus already, but I think we could have withstood five more minutes to talk about how Vonnegut truly played with narrative arcs in the later novels, which went to Vonnegut's point of how little we know about Time with a capital T. And maybe a shout out to another person who, besides Kilgore Trout, appeared as a real life person in I believe three Vonnegut novels, Eugene Victor Debs. 

The strangest things to me are: (1) making Jill Krementz look like a homewrecker, when Kurt left Jane because Jane embraced a sort of evangelical type of Christianity, which the creator of Bokononism and the Church of Jesus Christ, the Kidnapped could not abide. Vonnegut himself is made to look like the successful doctor spouse who leaves a marriage after the other spouse had paid for medical school. It hints at Kurt's falling out with Krementz, which was over Krementz's infidelity in the 1990s, and it is of a piece that Krementz is never interviewed to tell her side of the relationship. (2) There was no mention of son Mark's psychological challenges, when Mark himself wrote the very successful book, The Eden Express. These two sets of omissions cause me to believe Vonnegut children may have been dictating what was said or not said, even though most of the children got in their usual, and highly understandable, child-of-famous-people digs at Kurt for not being a good parent. 

Still, I have long been a major fan of Robert Weide, having adored his Marx Bros. documentary which I saw in real time on PBS, and his later documentary on St. Lenny (well, not a saint by any means, but he was a martyr for free speech and all). My Wife and I were so pleased to be let in on the life journey he had with Vonnegut, the kind and loving phone messages Vonnegut would leave, and to get a glimpse into Weide's amazing life, particularly with his wonderful and courageous bride. 

My Wife and I both happily sighed at the end of the film, and deeply felt Vonnegut's words about how being kind is a great thing to do as much as we can--though as a political activist, I admit to being frustrated when people will go out of their way to not enact kind policies to help each other, and instead allow or push policies that enable us to kill each other and the planet. Weide's use of the Vonnegut line about mother nature wanting to kill off us humans was also classic Vonnegut, to throw in lightheartedly something that is ultimately very ominous. :)