Paul Klee Fire at Full Moon 1933
Tucker: Trump is an indictment of America’s ruling class. They love Donald Trump because no-one else loves them.
@simongerman600: Level 1:This map from a @cgpgrey shows that winning 50.1% of each red state would be enough to become president. That means with only 22% of total US votes you could win an election. Broken system much? Source: https://buff.ly/3g6IGVq
• How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System (Somers)
Whereas the sequencing of DNA defined molecular biology in the early two-thousands, the sequencing of RNA defines it today. If you imagine a cell as a kind of computer, then your DNA contains all the software that it could possibly run. It is a somewhat astonishing fact of life that the exact same DNA is shared by every cell in your body, from the skin to the brain; those cells differ in appearance and function because, in each of them, a molecular gizmo “transcribes” some DNA segments rather than others into molecules of single-stranded RNA. These bits of RNA are in turn used as the blueprints for proteins, the molecular machines that do most of a cell’s work. If DNA is your phone’s home screen, then transcription is like tapping an icon.
By sampling the RNA present in a group of cells, researchers can see which programs those cells are running at that moment; by sampling it after the cells have been infected with a virus, they can see how that virus substitutes its own software. TenOever’s team quickly discovered that sars-CoV-2 was uncannily good at disrupting cellular programming. A typical virus replaces less than 1% of the software in the cells it infects. With sars-CoV-2, tenOever said, about 60% of the RNA in an infected cell is of viral origin—“which is the highest I’ve ever seen. Polio comes close.” Among other things, the virus rewires the alarm system that cells use to warn others about infection. Normally, as part of what is known as the “innate” immune response—so called because it is genetically hardwired, and not tailored to a specific pathogen—a cell sends out two kinds of signals.
One signal, carried by molecules called interferons, travels to neighboring cells, telling them to build defenses that slow viral spread. Another signal, transmitted through molecules called cytokines, gets a message to the circulatory system’s epithelial lining. The white blood cells summoned by this second signal don’t just eat invaders and infected cells; they also gather up their dismembered protein parts. Elsewhere in the immune system, these fragments are used to create virus-specific antibodies, as part of a sophisticated “adaptive” response that can take six or seven days to develop. Usually, the viruses that humans care about are successful because they shut down both of these signalling programs.
The coronavirus is different. “It seems to block only one of those two arms,” tenOever told me. It inhibits the interferon response but does nothing about the cytokines; it evades the local defenses but allows the cells it infects to call for reinforcements. White blood cells are powerful weapons: they arrive on an inflammatory tide, destroying cells on every side, clogging up passages with the wreckage. They are meant to be used selectively, on invaders that have been contained in a small area. With the coronavirus, they are deployed too widely—a carpet bombing, rather than a surgical strike. As they do their work, inflammation distends the lungs, and debris fills them like a fog.
In late May, tenOever’s team shared its findings in the biweekly journal Cell. In their article, they argued that it’s this imbalanced immune response that gives severe covid-19—which can sometimes cause blood clots, strange swelling in children, and ultra-inflammatory “cytokine storms”—the character of an autoimmune disorder. As the virus spreads unchecked through the body, it drags a destructive immune reaction behind it. Individuals with covid-19 face the same challenge as nations during the pandemic: if they can’t contain small sites of infection early—so that a targeted response can root them out—they end up mounting interventions so large that the shock inflicts its own damage.
“You have to treat it as an opaque system. You do not know what is going to happen, and therefore it is going to be one or the other 50-50,” says @nntaleb on the 2020 election.”
• Taleb: Global Coronavirus Response A Case Study Of Incompetence, Denial (CNBC)
The global governmental response to the coronavirus pandemic has been rife with shortcomings that have prolonged the acute phase of the health crisis, “Black Swan” author Nassim Taleb told CNBC on Monday. “I think this is a case study of government worldwide incompetence in dealing with a problem and denial,” said Taleb, whose bestselling 2007 book warned of highly improbable events and their potential for severe consequences. In a “Squawk Box” interview, Taleb specifically pointed to the importance of coronavirus testing. While countries have improved their capacity since the early days of the Covid-19 outbreak, Taleb said there has been a failure to develop quick, efficient testing at a scale that can cut off chains of transmission early. It also has the least economic cost, he said.
“Ten months into the pandemic, we still don’t have systematic testing when you board a plane or when you want to go to a restaurant or something,” said Taleb, a professor of risk engineering at New York University. “If we had instant, systematic testing, we wouldn’t be here. We wouldn’t be talking now about the pandemic.” Taleb’s comments come as coronavirus cases in the U.S. and Europe are surging again, leading to governments in the U.K., Germany and France to put in place varying degrees of lockdowns in hopes of reducing the spread. In America, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said recently the country “could not possibly be positioned more poorly,” as daily case counts set a series of record highs.
"We can focus immediately on the simplest solution and the one with the smallest economic cost– testing would be the ideal solution. Why 10 months into the pandemic we still do not have systematic testing?" – @nntaleb. pic.twitter.com/QLttgNKA0u
— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) November 2, 2020
“We don’t know what’s going to happen. Imagine this continuing until January, February, March because in the winter people are inside so contagion rates are higher,” Taleb said. “Think about what can happen. It’s not that rosy.” Taleb said he believes everyday citizens and government leaders have, for the most part, failed to grasp the potential consequences of the pandemic. “I’m seeing a lot of denial in social life, everywhere, about this virus from the beginning,” he said. “Now we’re 10 months into this virus, and people are still hoping for a vaccine, something that will cancel it.” [..] “You should realize you have more uncertainty ahead now than you think. The returns can be a lot better or a lot worse than you think,” Taleb said, though he refused to comment on returns directly. “There’s a tendency of people to underestimate that uncertainty is chronic.”
“At 10:04 PM on the night before an election, we discover that as part of his investigation into DNC hacking/election interference, Mueller declined to indict Assange and WikiLeaks due to a lack of evidence and First Amendment concerns.”
Ad Jesus Christ, Buzzfeed, there were never any hacked emails. Stop that nonsense!
• Mueller Declined To Indict Assange And Wikileaks Due To Lack Of Evidence (BF)
Prosecutors investigated Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, and Roger Stone for the hacking of Democratic National Committee servers as well as for possible campaign finance violations, but ultimately chose not to charge them, newly released portions of the Mueller Report reveal. Although Wikileaks published emails stolen from the DNC in July and October 2016 and Stone — a close associate to Donald Trump — appeared to know in advance the materials were coming, investigators “did not have sufficient evidence” to prove active participation in the hacks or knowledge that the electronic thefts were continuing. In addition, federal prosecutors could not establish that the hacked emails amounted to campaign contributions benefitting Trump’s election chances and furthermore felt their publication might have been protected by the First Amendment, making a successful prosecution tenuous.
The fresh details of special counsel Robert Mueller’s decision not to charge Assange, WikiLeaks, or Stone for their role in influencing the 2016 election come just a day before voters head to the polls for the 2020 presidential election. The material sheds new light on the seriousness with which the special counsel investigated the hacks of Democratic party computers. In July 2018, Mueller indicted 12 Russian officers belonging to the Kremlin’s intelligence directorate, the GRU, for the theft and distribution of those emails. The role that Stone and Assange may have played in the hacks or their distribution has been the subject of much speculation. Little, however, was known about how intently the special counsel focused on those individuals as possible targets for prosecution during the two-year investigation into Russian election interference.
But a new version of the 448-page Mueller report released Monday by the Justice Department contains previously redacted sections on 13 pages, nearly all of them dealing with events surrounding the hacked emails and their eventual publication. The passages were disclosed in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, filed by BuzzFeed News and the advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center, that called on the government to release the report in its entirety. In September, a federal judge ruled that while some parts could still remain hidden, the government had violated the law by withholding portions dealing with internal discussions among prosecutors. The judge ordered the Justice Department to release relevant sections by Nov. 2.
At 10:04 PM on the night before an election, we discover that as part of his investigation into DNC hacking/election interference, Mueller declined to indict Assange and WikiLeaks due to a lack of evidence and First Amendment concerns. https://t.co/ZrmtqS7R7j
— Chip Gibbons (@ChipGibbons89) November 3, 2020
But at the same time that Mueller’s utter failure becomes even clearer, they just start again as if nothing ever happened to discredit these ludicrous claims.
• DHS, FBI Spin Dubious Russian Election Threat Days Before Voting (GZ)
Just days before the 2020 election the bureaucratic forces behind the original claim of Russian hacking of state election-related websites in 2016 launched a new drive to spawn fears of Moscow-made political chaos in the wake of the voting. The new narrative was not consistent with information previously published by the the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security’s new Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), however. It was so incoherent, in fact, that it suggested a state of panic on the part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials worried about a possible transition to a Joe Biden administration. On October 20, Christopher Krebs, the head of CISA, issued a video statement expressing confidence that “it would be incredibly difficult for them to change the outcome of an election at the national level.”
Then he abruptly changed his tone, adding, “But that doesn’t mean various actors won’t try to introduce chaos in our elections and make sensational claims that overstate their capabilities. In fact, the days and weeks just before and after Election Day is the perfect time for our adversaries to launch efforts intended to undermine your confidence in the integrity of the electoral process.” Krebs’ warning of a possible Russian announcement that hackers had succeeded in disrupting the result of the U.S. election was so removed from reality that it suggested internal panic DHS over the failure of Russian hackers to do anything that could be cited as interfering the election.
Two days after Krebs’ dubious warning, the FBI and the DHS’s new Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an “alert” reporting that “a Russian state-sponsored APT [Advanced Persistent Threat] actor” known as “Berserk Bear” had “conducted a campaign against a wide variety of U.S. targets.” Since “at least September,” according to the DHS alert, the DHS warning claimed that it had targeted “dozens” of “U.S. state, local, territorial and tribal government networks.” It even claimed that the supposed Russian campaign had compromised the network infrastructure of several official organizations and “exfiltrated data from at least two victims servers”. At the same time, it acknowledged there was “no indication” that any government operations had been “intentionally disrupted.”
The report went on to suggest, “[T]here may be some risk to elections information housed on SLTT [state, local territorial and tribal] government networks.” And then it abruptly shifted tone and level of analysis to offer the speculation that the Russian government “may be seeking access to obtain future disruption options, to influence U.S. policies or actions”, or to “delegitimize” the “government entities”. On October 28, Krebs elaborated on the latter theme in an interview with the PBS NewsHour. Referring inaccurately to government warnings about “Russian interference, some of which targeted voter registration,” which the FBI-CISA alert had never mentioned, PBS interviewer William Brangham asked, “Do you worry at all that there might be infiltration that we are not aware of?” Instead of correcting Brangham’s inaccurate suggestion, Krebs responded that “infiltration” into voter registration files was “certainly possible,” but that “[W]e have improved the ability to detect compromises or anomalous activity.”
UK Sunday Express and Democracy Institute poll.
“Mr Biden still comes a distant third when asked about who has had the most positive impact on the criminal justice system with 14 percent behind both Mr Trump and the celebrity Kim Kardashian both on 43 percent.”
• Donald Trump Set To Win US Presidency By Electoral College Landslide (DI)
Donald Trump is on course to win four more years in the White House with a one point lead in the popular win, the final Democracy Institute poll for the Sunday Express has found. The survey of voters by the US President’s favourite pollsters gives him 48 percent ahead of his rival Joe Biden on 47 percent. In the last days of the campaign the Democrat former vice president who has been dogged by corruption allegations surrounding his son Hunter which have, according to the poll, cut through with the electorate. Significantly, the President has, according to the latest findings, maintained a four point lead of 49 percent to 45 percent in the key swing states including Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
It means he is on course to easily win the electoral college by 326 to 212 votes against his Democrat rival in a result which would shock the world even more than his astonishing defeat of Hilary Clinton in 2016. The Democracy Institute/Sunday Express poll has throughout the campaign been one of the few to predict a Trump victory since March. This is because unlike other polls it only looks at people identifying as likely voters instead of just registered to vote and it has tried to identify the shy Trump vote. According to this latest poll almost eight in ten (79 percent) of Trump supporters would not admit it to friends and family compared to 21 percent of Biden supporters.
With the race hotting up in the final days allegations that Mr Biden and his family are corrupt surrounding claims about his son Hunter’s business dealings with China and the Ukraine using family connections appear to have had cut through. There was controversy when social media platforms including Twitter apparently attempted to filter out the stories surrounding Hunter Biden published by the New York Post. But the row has, according to the poll, only helped to put the issue in the public consciousness more. Asked who they thought was telling the truth about the Biden family allegations 57 percent chose businessman and former Biden associate Tony Bobulinski who has levelled accusations against the former vice President.
Meanwhile, 52 percent agreed that Mr Biden is “a corrupt politician” with 21 percent saying they are less likely to vote for him and 75 percent saying it makes no difference. Asked if the allegations made him a national security risk, 54 percent agreed that it did. [..] Mr Biden still comes a distant third when asked about who has had the most positive impact on the criminal justice system with 14 percent behind both Mr Trump and the celebrity Kim Kardashian both on 43 percent.
Trump within one state of winning
Director of Battleground Strategy Nick Trainer tells reporters that Biden campaign just outlined on a zoom call that said Trump was within one state of winning
— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) November 2, 2020
“Trump is polling about 10 percentage points higher with African Americans than he did in 2016, and 14 percentage points higher with Hispanics.”
• The Trump Vote Is Rising Among Blacks And Hispanics (NBC)
In 2016, Donald Trump got a lower share of the white vote than the previous Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, and white turnout was stagnant as compared to 2012. Trump was able to win nonetheless because he got a higher share of Black and Hispanic voters than his predecessor — up roughly 3 percentage points with African Americans and 2 percentage points with Hispanics — helping tilt pivotal races in states such as Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania toward Trump. That is, it was minorities, not whites, who proved more decisive for Trump’s victory. Going into Election Day in 2020, Trump seems poised to do even better with minority voters.
His gains in the polling have been highly consistent and broad-based among Blacks and Hispanics — with male voters and female voters, the young and the old, educated and uneducated. Overall, Trump is polling about 10 percentage points higher with African Americans than he did in 2016, and 14 percentage points higher with Hispanics. Perceptions of Trump as racist seem to be a core driving force pushing whites toward the Democrats. Why would the opposite pattern be holding among minority voters — i.e. the very people the president is purportedly being racist against? It may be that many minority voters simply do not view some of his controversial comments and policies as racist. Too often, scholars try to test whether something is racist by looking exclusively at whether the rhetoric or proposals they disagree with resonate with whites.
They frequently don’t even bother to test whether they might appeal to minorities, as well. Yet when they do, the results tend to be surprising. For instance, one recent study presented white, Black and Hispanic voters with messages the researchers considered to be racial “dog whistles,” or coded language that signals commitment to white supremacy. It turned out that the messages resonated just as strongly with Blacks as they did with whites. Hispanics responded even more warmly to the rhetoric about crime and immigration than other racial groups. That is, on balance, these “racist” messages seemed to resonate more strongly with minorities than whites! Across racial groups, most did not find the messages to be racist or offensive— despite researchers viewing these examples as clear-cut cases of racial dog whistles.
“There’s no precedent for a president-elect resigning before he is sworn into office. No doubt there will be lawsuits over this and they will lead post-haste to Supreme Court adjudication.”
• The Awful Reckoning (Jim Kunstler)
And, if by some mysterious act of God (or write-in ballot fraud) Joe Biden manages to get elected POTUS, how can he possibly be inaugurated with himself and his family tangled up in a grift case that involves the Chinese Communist Party’s intel service? It flat-out ain’t gonna happen. Mr. Biden will be forced to disqualify himself. Does Kamala Harris then become Acting-POTUS. There’s no precedent for a president-elect resigning before he is sworn into office. No doubt there will be lawsuits over this and they will lead post-haste to Supreme Court adjudication. At the same time, also look for an all-out Lawfare assault on individual state voting outcomes and the translation of dubiously harvested votes into electoral college alt-delegations.
Lawfare will bring to bear every legerdemain in the trick-bag of legal necromancy to work this scam in the Democratic Party’s favor. But they will not go unopposed by Mr. Trump’s lawyers. And what will it avail the Lawfare campaign, anyway, as Mr. Biden gets buried in allegations of criminal misconduct. And — not to lard the lily, as they say — what happens if, post-election and before January 20, Messers Barr and Durham just happen to finally deliver indictments against the perps of RussiaGate? Oh, won’t this be a world-beating political mess of all messes ever? Think the stock and bond markets will love it? Meanwhile, will we be treated to the extravaganza of Antifa and BLM burning and looting in the cities from sea to shining sea? I would ask: How might that not happen?
They’ve been rehearsing for the Big Show all year. With new Covid lockdowns, the insectile armies of black-clad street-fighters will be anxious to reactivate the social space that Antifa and BLM so nicely afford. Riots are fun! Especially when the police are not allowed to effectively intervene to stop them. Smashing stuff, burning, and looting are fun — like Halloween and Christmas put together! I’ll be voting for Mr. Trump tomorrow in my little bid to prevent the Democratic Party from getting its depraved mitts on the levers of government. I’ll chime in with a post-election-day update, right here on Wednesday, though perhaps not at the crack of dawn.
“This week’s election is not a choice between “light or darkness,” but “pretty much anything or Donald Trump…”
• The Worst Choice Ever (Taibbi)
Joe Biden is a corpse with hair plugs whose idea of “empathy” is to jam fingers in the sternums of people who ask the wrong questions, or call them “fat” or “full of shit,” or dare them to “try me” — and that’s if he remembers what state he’s in. Is he a better human than Donald Trump? Probably, but his mental decline has hit Lloyd Bridges-in-Hot-Shots! levels and he shares troubling characteristics with the president, beginning with a pathological struggle with truth. Biden spent much of 2020 lying about everything from his Iraq War vote to his educational history to a fantasy about being arrested in South Africa with Nelson Mandela. The same press that killed him for this behavior in the past let it all slide this time. Same with the growing ledger of handsy-uncle incidents that had adolescent girls and campaigning politicians alike wondering why a Vice President needs to smell their hair or plant lingering kisses on their heads while cameras flash.
Biden’s entire argument for the presidency, and it’s a powerful one, is his opponent. This week’s election is not a choice between “light or darkness,” but “pretty much anything or Donald Trump,” and only in that context is this disintegrating, bilious iteration of Scranton Joe even distantly credible as a choice for the world’s most powerful office. Donald Trump is going to be a difficult case for future historians because he’s simultaneously the biggest liar and the most lied-about politician in American history. The standard propaganda lines about Trump are all incorrect. The usual technique involves sticking his name in headlines next to absurd disqualifying descriptors: “fascist,” “traitor,” “dictator,” and so on.
“18 Ways Trump Might Be a Russian Asset” is a typical example of what passed for commentary at outlets like the Washington Post in the Trump years. Such hot takes were a sure way to get TV invites. Trump may have played cartoon Mussolini on the stump and reached for Hitlerian cliches in his campaign videos, but the dirty secret of the last four years — hidden from the broad mass of voters by both conservative and mainstream media — was that the president’s much ballyhooed strongman leanings were a fraud. Trump the Terrible was great TV, but away from cameras he was a fake despot who proved repeatedly that he didn’t know the first thing about how to exercise presidential power, even in his own defense.
We’re about to see whose claims are right.
• Twitter Flags Trump’s Tweet Warning Of ‘Violence In The Streets’ (RT)
Twitter has put a “might be misleading” label on a tweet in which President Donald Trump condemned a Supreme Court ruling that allows absentee ballots to be accepted in Pennsylvania after election day, calling it “dangerous.” “Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process,” reads the warning the platform attached to Trump’s tweet, in which the president aired his grievances over a recent SCOTUS decision to allow mail ballots that arrive three days after November 3 to be included in the Pennsylvania tally. “The Supreme Court decision on voting in Pennsylvania is a VERY dangerous one,” Trump argued in the tweet, referring to the court’s decision last week to deny a GOP request to block the three-day extension for counting late-arriving ballots that had been granted by Pennsylvania’s top court.
The Supreme Court decision on voting in Pennsylvania is a VERY dangerous one. It will allow rampant and unchecked cheating and will undermine our entire systems of laws. It will also induce violence in the streets. Something must be done!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2020
The Republicans wanted the SCOTUS to fast-track their motion, and, although they did not succeed, several conservative justices indicated they might take up the issue after election day. The GOP insists that the extension runs afoul of the US Constitution, arguing that the organization of the electoral process is up to state legislatures, rather than state courts. As he heaped scorn on the ruling, Trump rehashed his claim that the delayed ballot count “will allow rampant and unchecked cheating and will undermine our entire systems of laws.” It will also induce violence in the streets. Something must be done!
Trump has repeatedly alleged that the system of universal mail-in voting is highly vulnerable to fraud and abuse, arguing that the postal service is unprepared to deal with an unprecedented surge in absentee ballots streaming into the system due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The US Postal Service, however, brushed off these concerns, with Postmaster General Louis DeJoy saying in September that the service was “equipped” to deliver the ballots. Pennsylvania is one of the key battleground states, representing 20 Electoral College votes out of the 270 needed to win the race.
Thanks MSM. Hope you enjoy your clickbait.
• You Are No Longer My Mother, Because You Are Voting For Trump (ZH)
America hasn’t been this divided almost since the end of the “Reconstruction” era. President Trump has been labeled the most polarizing political figure of his generation. In certain areas, the red ‘Make America Great Again’ baseball cap simply cannot be worn without the risk of harassment or physical violence. This has made many Trump supporters all the more stubborn about expressing their views, provoking confrontations and arguments at the table during family get-togethers. In a recent piece published just one day before Election Day, Reuters spoke to 10 people who shared how their support for the president has impacted their relationships with family member.
One lifelong Democrat named Mayra Gomez, an immigrant to the country, told her 21-year-old son five months ago that she was voting for Donald Trump. In response, she says, he cut her out of his life. Their last argument was so acrimonious, Gomez isn’t even certain whether their differences can be overcome. “He specifically told me, ‘You are no longer my mother, because you are voting for Trump’” Gomez, 41, a personal care worker in Milwaukee, told Reuters. Their last conversation was so bitter that she is not sure they can reconcile, even if Trump loses his re-election bid. “The damage is done. In people’s minds, Trump is a monster. It’s sad. There are people not talking to me anymore, and I’m not sure that will change,” said Gomez, who is a fan of Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants and handling of the economy.
Once upon a time, elderly family members relied on their children and grandchildren to run errands and help provide for them in old age. That social contract has now eroded to such an intense degree that many believe it’s too late now: the damage to the inter-generational relationship will be almost impossible to repair, even if Trump loses, few expect the animosity animating Trump and his supporters to fade quickly. “Unfortunately, I don’t think national healing is as easy as changing the president,” said Jaime Saal, a psychotherapist at the Rochester Center for Behavioral Medicine in Rochester Hills, Michigan. “It takes time and it takes effort, and it takes both parties – no pun intended – being willing to let go and move forward,” she said. Saal said tensions in people’s personal relationships have spiked given the political, health and social dynamics facing the United States. Most often she sees clients who have political rifts with siblings, parents or in-laws, as opposed to spouses.
“..the unholy profit-seeking alliance of social media algorithms and TV ratings..”
• Who Wins If Trump Loses (Tracey)
From the moment Donald J. Trump took office, I argued it was necessary that he face a rational opposition — with an emphasis on “rational.” Discerning, targeted, evidence-based criticism would be imperative to counteract against Trump’s worst impulses, I maintained at the time, given his hardly-disguised penchant for blusterous, petty authoritarianism. While of course Trump would be far from the only president whose excesses needed checking — any occupant of the most powerful office in world history would — there was at least some reasonable cause to believe that his regular issuances of impulsive, fly-by-tweet demands could eventually raise unique civil liberties concerns. In hindsight, I might as well have been arguing for a parade of pinstriped purple unicorns to march down Fifth Avenue. Because the concept of a rational Trump opposition was an utter fantasy.
Instead what we got right off the bat was blanket “Resistance” to Trump, with the concept of “Resistance” turning into far more of a self-promotional branding exercise than any kind of sensible civic-minded disposition. Seemingly every word that came out of Trump’s mouth, no matter how inane or innocuous, prompted wild outbursts of blithering hysteria — egged on by the unholy profit-seeking alliance of social media algorithms and TV ratings. In the imaginations of his most excitable antagonists, it was taken as a truism that the United States was perpetually teetering on the edge of total Trump-induced collapse. Usually because he insulted a cable news host or something. To encapsulate this paranoid oppositional tendency, the slogan “Resistance” was picked for a specifically self-aggrandizing reason — having been derived from European anti-Nazi insurgent brigades in World War II.
As preposterous as it sounds that anyone of stable mental health could have possibly believed present-day America to be meaningfully comparable with Occupied France, this conceit became near-ubiquitous within anti-Trump activism and media circles. Sure, some who trafficked in rhetoric of “anti-fascism” probably did so out of a bizarre psychic need to feel as though they were combatants in an epic battle to save civilization from genocidal tyranny. But many also came to really and truly believe it, with full-fledged sincerity — as I can personally attest based on innumerable direct interactions with such people. A “Literal Nazi” president running literal concentration camps? Yup, that was a standard, uncontroversial viewpoint amongst the culture-media-activism industrial complex.
Clearly, to harbor such delusions about the nature of your own country’s political circumstances was antithetical to the “rational opposition” ideal that I’d initially floated. Combine it with the storyline that Trump had been illegitimately installed into power by a hostile foreign government — another profit-generating bonanza for the corporate media — and any prospect of sanity being maintained during the 2016–2020 period was rendered completely hopeless.
Still corrupt. Still ruled by oligarchs.
• Ukraine’s Zelensky Calls On His Party To Fire Constitutional Court (KP)
A day before the Ukrainian parliament convenes for its first session after the Oct. 25 local elections, President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed lawmakers of his party in an audio message, calling them to back his draft bill that seeks to fire all judges of the Constitutional Court. In an audio message that was leaked on Nov. 2 through LB.ua news website, Zelensky urged his party, Servant of the People, which holds the majority seats in the parliament, to show unity and support his bill. Zelensky came up with the proposition to dismiss the Constitutional Court after it ruled against Ukraine’s anti-corruption system last week, undoing several years of progress and jeopardizing backing by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.
This week, the Constitutional Court is set to review some of the most contentious bills such as those on farmland sales, the Ukrainian language law, and the Deposit Guarantee Fund. Their reversal might further harm Ukraine’s reform record and undermine international support. The president’s bill, which was registered on Oct. 29 and marked as top priority, has to get a green light from the parliamentary committee on legal policy before being put out for a vote. The date of the committee’s meeting is unknown. Head of the committee Andriy Kostin did not respond to calls. An ideal solution to the crisis would be if all of the court’s 15 judges resigned, Zelensky said during an appearance on a political talk show on ICTV channel on the night of Nov. 2.
However, that’s not likely to happen. So Zelensky wants his lawmakers to at least pass his bill in the first hearing to provide leverage over the court’s judges. “This bill will hang above them as the Damocles sword (an impending disaster),” said Zelensky. “And they will not rule on the language law, on farmland sales, or (annul) the High Anti-Corruption Court.” Zelensky notably didn’t mention the court’s intention to rule on the Deposit Guarantee Fund on Nov. 3, which can undermine Ukraine’s whole banking system.
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