Where we're at now

Just a brief and not particularly original thought as I try to process Senate passage of this travesty of a tax bill.

While Trump's election has the feel of a perfect storm catastrophe, perfect storms are usually the result of a a long sequence of dysfunctions, and the total corruption of the Republican party was bound to lead to catastrophe at some point. I recall Jonathan Chait saying as much as an episode of debt ceiling legislative terrorism loomed in (IIRC) 2013. His point was not that that particular crisis would lead to default, but that a party always willing to go to the brink in defense of an ideology cooked up to serve the narrow interests of the superrich would lead us over the cliff at some point. Put another way, if it had not been completely evident before, it was evident after Obama's reelection that the fever would not break.

In some ways it's a consolation to view our plight not as an accident that a breath of wind could blown off course but as a reckoning with pathologies we've been collectively grappling with at least since the Reagan era (and far earlier, as every origin has multiple origins behind it).

Short history of the decline and fall of American democracy

I switched on Twitter for 15 minutes at 7:00 a.m. this morning and felt I was watching democracy die before my eyes as a fascist and possibly traitorous president threatened to prosecute Obama.

That led me to a flash review of our decline and fall as the narrative has taken shape in my mind in recent years:

• The Kochs plotted long and hard, building their network of extremist think tanks, fake news sources, astroturf advocacy groups and corporate lobbying groups.


• Reagan ripped the lid off inequality and disinherited the middle class with a cocktail of tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation, weakened antitrust enforcement and union-bashing.


• Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes prepped 30-40% of the population for fascism with twenty years of progressively more extreme gaslighting.

Will debased politics hit the databases?

Politico's Kenneth P. Vogel today delves into the coopetition between the GOP fundraising empires of Karl Rove and the Koch brothers.  When the account turned to rival databases, I suffered a free association so sharp it was almost comic, as if the keyword word flashed in front of my eyeballs. Here was the trigger:

Earlier this year, operatives from both camps had conversations with the Republican National Committee about accessing its mega database of voter information, which is both a powerful organizing tool and a valuable asset used as collateral to secure bank loans and lines of credit.

“This is about getting a hold of the most valuable asset that the RNC has,” said former RNC Chairman Michael Steele, who asserted Rove’s allies have for years wanted to “get their hands on this list so bad they can taste it.”

The word was Stuxnet.  And no, I don't expect the Koch and Rove empires to sabotage each others' databases.  What I can easily imagine is Rove or other GOP operatives corrupting or stealing Democrats' data. It's so in keeping with the m.o. of the aging College Republicans who have directed GOP campaigns for a generation.