Bad night. Bad morning. Minor procedure today. See you in the morning. Fresh post below.
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Friday update: No better. I'm cancelling the day.
Friday night update: Back in the hospital. I dehydrated, not good. I had no idea dehydration could be so wicked. Anyway, here till Monday, probably. Thanks everyone for the good wishes.
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From my brother, a gentle, emailed reminder of my relative incompetence (I've always been the family fuck-up): "Damn Phil, we put mom in a nursing home and she did a better job taking care of herself then you're doing."
This has to be the most telling admission from a "man of God" I have ever read:
When it floods, it floods in a torrent. And it floods quickly. We installed flood gates, but you know, you have to have a lot of faith in those if you are going to put a lot of people into the building.
— Donald Iloff, of Joel Osteen's Houston megachurch, speaking in defense of his boss for not having immediately opened the refuge to hurricane victims.
Prior to Mr. Iloff's mouthing of temporal concerns, his boss was tweeting that "God’s got this" and victims should "stay anchored to hope." Just do it someplace else was the gist of Osteen's revelation, which, like Iloff's, was sublimely devoid of "faith" in God having this gotten. Besides, said Osteen later, "the city didn’t ask us to become a shelter." So, if asked, he would have opened the megachurch sooner, even though his spokesman had no faith in the flood gates? Well, no, actually, because Osteen also contended that his megachurch was "inaccessible due to severe flooding" — which, as this video shows, was a lie.
Osteen has taken a lot of heat for his lack of help. Typical is this NY Times op-ed by religious studies professor Anthea Butler, who dumps on Osteen for being Trumplike. Both men, she writes, are in possession of a "morally bankrupt soul." Trump's was on display well before Houston, and Osteen's well before Trump's political foray. But why bother with such denunciations?
It's not to so much that the poor must always be with us; it's that Christianist rubes and right-wing crackpots — Trump's base — will always be with us (which does indeed render poverty a de facto perpetuity). The charlatanism of both camps has never been disguised or concealed; it's always been out there for all to see — and reject. But rubes and crackpots are more engrained in society than poverty itself.
Nothing gets through to these people. Nothing. Trump will go on to establish a media empire at their expense and Osteen will go on raking in their tithes. We can denounce them or try to educate them. But in the end we're reminded of the words of philosopher William James, who once said in final exasperation toward a contentious audience member at one of his lectures, "I cannot allow your ignorance however great to take precedence over my knowledge however small." In our own defense, that's just about all we have.
How will Trump react when Houston turns from an "epic" photo-op and MAGA-cap sales venue to a soggy hellhole for homeless thousands?
"His responses to the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey have been more focused on the power of the storm and his administration’s response," notes the Washington Post, "than on the millions of Texans whose lives have been dramatically altered by the floodwaters." The drama will intensify — fast — as Trump's bluster is drowned out by the daily reality of untold devastation.
"It’s catastrophic, not epic," said former Obama aide Alyssa Mastromonaco. "They have no idea the damage that’s been incurred and how many people will need a place to live when this is over." Nonetheless, "the president seemed to be stopping just short of declaring victory over Harvey," reports Politico.
"We won’t say congratulations until it’s over. We’ll do that later," said Trump from Corpus Christi.
One assumes that in Trumpworld it'll all be "over" by, oh, maybe Monday? Reports of confused, inadequate relief efforts should be pouring in by then, at which time Trump will jump to another shiny object. Perhaps North Korea will loom once again as the exclusive focus of presidential attention. Criticism of his administration's response will be countered by sarcastic tweets, but little else. Off the front pages will any criticism go, as Trump plunges into yet another subject change.
I'm not that keen on presidential visits to disaster areas; they're pure ritual in place of pragmatic action, and, as many have noted, presidents will be criticized for such visits, no matter their timing. But if a visit there must be, President Obama showed the office of the presidency how to do it in 2012 — the real substance of which I have photographically posted by way of contrast. No bragging, no bluster, no high-fiving over impending congratulations.
In this age of Trump, was there ever a more appropriately named piece of legislation?
In 1916, Congress gave the National Guard dual status, requiring all guardsmen to take oaths to support the United States and the President as well as the state and its governor. An amendment to the Dick Act further authorized the President to draft the National Guard into federal service for deployment abroad.
It seems for some journalists there is no permanently disqualifying behavior by this president — not his campaign grounded in the sickness of birtherism, nor his sexual predations, nor his pro-Nazi sentiments. Trump is always given another chance, long after you would have disowned your child for the same, repeated behavior. Selections from Glenn Thrush:
*Hurricane Harvey … offers [Trump] an opportunity to recapture some of the unifying power of his office he has squandered in recent weeks.
*Trump is behaving like a man whose future depends on getting this right.
*In announcing his trips [to hurricane-struck regions], he used the dulcet, reassuring and uplifting language of prior presidents.
*A storm that is ravaging low-lying areas gives Mr. Trump a chance to reclaim the presidential high ground.
The selfsame allowance for a Trumpian rebirth holds true for some popular historians, too, such as presidential hagiographer Jon Meacham, whom Thrush quotes:
"So far, he’s been aggressive and forward-leaning, which is encouraging. It’s possible he can get through a cycle, the politics and the substance of a disaster, for the first time in his eight months in office. But you know somebody is going to say something that bothers him, something critical that he sees on cable, and suddenly it becomes fake news, fake weather."
Yes, we do know that, so there will be nothing striking about it. Why, then, begin by saying that Trump's current behavior "is encouraging" and that "it's possible" he can behave for two or three days as would a normal human being rather than as the depraved little creature he is, always has been, and always will be?
Televangelist Jim Bakker is predicting that Christians would begin a second civil war in the U.S. if President Trump were impeached. "If it happens, there will be a civil war in the United States of America. The Christians will finally come out of the shadows, because we are going to be shut up permanently if we're not careful," he said on "The Jim Bakker Show."
And the close:
Bakker served nearly five years in prison for fraud and conspiracy … [and] resigned from the ministry in 1987 after he was accused of rape.
From Goldwater's "hunting where the ducks are" to Nixon's demagoguery on school bussing to Reagan's braying about welfare queens, not a word about race was ever articulated by their party at large. Did it need to be? Everyone understood the GOP was the party of, the party for, white people. Donald Trump has merely been blatant about it. The bigoted elephant in the room has now thumped its ass down hard, but conservative intellectuals of vestigial conscience are behaving as though Republican racism is of rather recent development.
David Brooks' symptomatology is the most staggeringly conspicuous and pathetically proffered. "[The GOP has] become more of a white party in recent years … but it was still possible to be a Republican without feeling like you were violating basic decency on matters of race," he writes. Brooks also recently wrote that he was getting out and about, getting in touch with the little people so as to shut down any touches of Big Apple elitism. He should have undertaken the journey sooner. I recall asking, in the late '90s, an elderly white gentleman who willingly conceded he knew nothing of politics but always voted Republican just why, then, he voted Republican. "I can't really say," he answered with a peculiar authenticity. But I could say for him. He was a racist to the core and he well comprehended what the Republican Party kept muted. He understood what a NY Times Republican commentator claims to have known little of.
The Washington Post's Michael Gerson has also been struck by belated enlightenment: "[C]ongressional hearings demanding an account of [Joe Arpaio's pardon] would demonstrate seriousness in the only task … left to Republican leaders: attempting to salvage a party identity separate from racism…. Resistance is required. Any party that swallows the Trump/Arpaio ethic will be poisoned. And gagging, in this case, is a sign of health."
However overdue, I suppose it is.
Don't mistake. Although I'm critical when it comes to Brooks, Gerson et al's decades-long contributions to the horror of modern Republicanism, I welcome their present opposition to it. Conservative intellectuals' tolerance of Republicanism's persistent racism was a testament to blind partisanship in the service of some higher ideology — and the left is equally vulnerable to such tolerance. We shouldn't be too cocky in condemning eleventh-hour epiphanies (however questionable as true epiphanies they are), for the next one could be our own.
In a NY Times op-ed, two psychiatrists — one from Brown University, the other from the American Enterprise Institute — tackle their profession's proper relationship to Section 4 of the 25th Amendment:
"Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is [out of his everloving mind], the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President."
What the co-authors ask is simple: Since only mental health professionals could affirm the clinical existence of presidential madness, should the decision to remove such a lunatic substantially be left to these professionals, rather than to a political process? The answer is complicated, but in its shortest form, no.
The answer exposes the uselessness of psychiatric diagnoses in politics — but even worse it exposes the legitimacy of any utterly diseased democracy. "[A]s psychiatrists and citizens," write the authors, "we agree on this point: The medical profession and democracy would be ill served if a political determination at this level were ever disguised as clinical judgment."
In other words, the body politic has every right to elect a madman, to keep and protect the madman in office, and to endanger the nation's existence as a democracy. Every psychiatrist drawing breath might agree that Donald Trump is clinically bonkers and a violent peril to all that is virtuous, but submission to democratic considerations must outweigh competent opinion. For mental health professionals to declare Trump unfit for office "would strike those who elected him as elitist and anti-democratic," observe the authors. "Don’t the people have the right to choose an exceedingly narcissistic leader?"
Back home from the hospital early afternoon, I was leading a chaste life. I would not drink I would not chew and I'd not go with any girls who do. Yes, major surgery had made me the picture of clean living. And then I made my big mistake. I watched that appalling embarrassment of a criminal president at his news conference. I kid you not, the experience was so painful, it was as though my aching guts were reaching up through every fiber of my body, attempting to throttle my already assaulted brain. The prescribed pain killers weren't nearly enough. So into the car I jumped (tenderly) and off to the store I went — for a bottle of wine, a canister of Grizzly Mint and a bushel of lemon creme cookies. To hell with good physical health. My sanity was on the line.
There are certain climate change-related factors that we can, with great confidence, say worsened the flooding.
Sea level rise attributable to climate change (some is due to coastal subsidence due to human disturbance e.g. oil drilling) is more than half a foot over the past few decades…. That means that the storm surge was a half foot higher than it would have been just decades ago, meaning far more flooding and destruction.
In addition to that, sea surface temperatures in the region have risen about 0.5C (close to 1F) over the past few decades, from roughly 30C (86F) to 30.5C (87F), which contributed to the very warm sea surface temperatures…. That means 3-5% more moisture in the atmosphere.
So Harvey was almost certainly more intense than it would have been in the absence of human-caused warming, which means stronger winds, more wind damage, and a larger storm surge.
Finally, the more tenuous but potentially relevant climate factors: part of what has made Harvey such a devastating storm is the way it has stalled right near the coast…. The stalling is due to very weak prevailing winds which are failing to steer the storm off to sea, allowing it to spin around and wobble back and forth like a top with no direction. This pattern, in turn, is associated with a greatly expanded subtropical high pressure system over much of the U.S. right now, with the jet stream pushed well to the north. This pattern of subtropical expansion is predicted in model simulations of human-caused climate change.
In conclusion, while we cannot say climate change "caused" hurricane Harvey (that is an ill-posed question), we can say that it exacerbate several characteristics of the storm in a way that greatly increased the risk of damage and loss of life.
Climate change worsened the impact of Hurricane Harvey.
[We've seen] the truth of this president: He won’t stop. His contempt for the U.S. Constitution and willingness to divide this nation knows no bounds. Now he’s pardoned a law-enforcement official who terrorized the Latino community, violated its constitutional rights, defied a federal court order to stop, and ran a prison system so rife with torture and abuse he himself called it a "concentration camp."
You, me, and the citizens of this country carry a special burden in 2017. We have to do what our president has not. We have to uphold America’s values. We have to do what he will not. We have to defend our Constitution. We have to remember our kids are watching. We have to show the world America is still a beacon of light.
Joined together, we are more than 300 million strong. Joined together, we will win this battle for our soul. Because if there’s one thing I know about the American people, it’s this: When it has mattered most, they have never let this nation down.
I can't know with epistemological certainty if Biden's message of national salvation is accurate, but I do know his is the best voice to be delivering it. Perhaps if he had been running in 2016, we wouldn't be in this crisis?
I'm feeling especially rocky this morning, and so from that feeling I also feel compelled to cheat on any originality and merely quote the Navy-verteran daughter of the secretary of the interior, Ryan Zinke, from July 26:
"This man [Trump] is a disgrace. I've tried to keep politics out of my social media feed as much as possible, but this is inexcusable. This veteran says sit down and shut the fuck up, you know-nothing, never-served piece of shit. #itmfa" (which is an acronym for “impeach the motherfucker already”).
The quote was inspired by Trump's transgender ban; the hashtag was inspired by the very existence of Trump.
(I'll be back later, should I feel a bit better later.
Update: Now comes word that, if I can keep food down and then processing out, I might be sprung tomorrow.)
The NYT's Timothy Egan asks, "What if Steve Bannon Is Right?" What if it's true that "the longer [Democrats] talk about identity politics, I got 'em," as Bannon savored the prospect. "I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats."
There is reason that Bannon could indeed be right. But what of Egan's proposal? "Some live in the much- discussed zone of despair, places where opportunities for people without a college degree are few.... These folks are persuadable, if the message is economic hope…. Democrats could grab the economic nationalism argument from Bannon, refine it along Bernie Sanders lines, and run with it."
Could they? In analysis after analysis, the irony of modern American politics is exposed. Republicans' chief appeal is that of cultural counter-fighting — they're the ones defending traditional American values — while Democrats, who are actually competent in economic governance, are seen by the Everyman as elitist and culturally radical. That's a perception that will be hard to penetrate and correct.
Could Sanders' economic nationalism help? Egan describes it thus: "Health care for all is pro-American. Raising wages across the country is pro-worker. A moonshot infrastructure program would lift every community." These are all admirable goals, though they're also characteristically void of means to ends. But, in the Age of Trump, in which demagoguery is king, perhaps realistic proposals and sober reflections on enacting them are simply too old school.
I haven't had time to write about politics today. Things are moving pretty swiftly in terms of my care, not the least of which has been treating the claustrophobia I get from confinement in hospital beds and hospital rooms. Said claustrophobia makes me a rather unpleasant patient. Next comes the removal of this hideous nose tube and catheter. Be back soon.
Please tell me I'm still drugged. (Wait, I am still drugged.)
Tell me, please, that as Trump was pardoning the fascist Joe Arpaio for having committed criminal contempt of court, the fascist Sebastian Gorka wasn't penning a resignation letter on the basis of amorphous "forces" aligned — and "ascendant" — in the White House. Calling Richard Hofstadter.
Added Gorka: "Regrettably, outside of yourself, the individuals who most embodied and represented the policies that will 'Make America Great Again,' have been internally countered, systematically removed, or undermined in recent months."
So Trump has the power to pardon or to even launch a nuclear war, but he's helpless inside his own White House?