Politics Plus

This article from AlterNet is by Liz Posner.  She is a managing editor at AlterNet. Her work has appeared on Forbes.com, Bust, Bustle, Refinery29, and elsewhere. You can follow her on Twitter at @elizpos.  Although I did go through the motions of reprinting it, I don’t seem to have picked up all the credits, so I am making sure to put them in manually.  As TC says so well, “It is not our intent to violate anyone’s proprietary rights.”

When I set out to research the German words that capture what it feels like to be an American living during the era of the Trump administration, I didn’t expect there to be so damn many.

Like many of my fellow citizens who have flocked to therapists’ offices over the past year, eager to sort through their trauma at being governed by a narcissistic megalomaniac, I was already aware that the current political era was doing something strange to my psyche. But it can be hard to pin down exactly what these emotions are, if words for them even exist.

It was one particular moment of schadenfreude (as I laughed at Steve Mnuchin’s wife revealing her true self on social media) that got me wondering: what other gems of the beautiful German language could help me diagnose the rollercoaster of emotions one feels during a typical day in Trump’s America? There’s so much relief in having a name for these feelings of fear, paranoia and anger, after all. Here are a few, for starters.

1. Fernweh 

Fernweh, or “distance pain,” is like the opposite of homesickness. It’s the feeling of wanting to be elsewhere, anywhere but where you are at this moment. The Fernweh many Americans feel today is a bit like wanderlust, minus the glamour and with the added fear that you may be harshly judged as an American traveling abroad in the time of Trump.

2. Weltschmerz

Weltschmerz translates literally to “world pain,” and boy oh boy, does that say it all. It’s the state of weariness one feels at the state of the world. Some of us may have felt a constant state of Weltschmerz since Nov. 9, 2016.

3. Kummerspeck

If your state of Weltschmerz has been really getting to you, it’s possible you’ve put on a few extra pounds of Kummerspeck, or literally, “grief bacon.” Know that you’re at least in good company: last year, Barbra Streisand, Judd Apatow and others complained they’d gained a “Trump 10” in the months following the election. Eat your feelings, indeed.

4. Kuddelmuddel

This wonderful heap of syllables evokes chaos or a hopelessly messy, unstructured state. Sounds like the White House as told by Michael Flynn.

5. Fuchsteufelswild

This is a state of unfiltered, primal rage. You may have felt it over the past year while listening to any White House press conference, hearing Trump describe Haiti, El Salvador and many African nations as “shithole countries,” seeing the president troll Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand on social media…or really, any time at all.

6. Fremdschaemen

Ever felt ashamed on behalf of a member of the Trump White House? Like the time Kellyanne Conway told Fox viewers to “go buy Ivanka’s stuff”? Or when Trump claimed his inauguration speech literally made the clouds part and the sun come out? That’s Fremdschaemen.

7. Backpfeifengesicht

In German, this means “a face that deserves to be punched.” Insert your own joke here.

There seems to be something about this – Resident – that makes people feel that their own language is just not big enough to describe his awfulness.  While Liz is turning to German to expand her vocabulary, Germany seems to be turning to American English to do the same.  A couple of examples:

So I invite everyone, especially Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, to have some fun expanding out vocabularies this week.  Sometime one simply needs to have a little fun.  (But, Furies, if you get bored, you can always go check out those fitness trackers.)

Cross posted to Care2 HERE

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. Even though there are many more which I can’t include. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

I’ve lately been focusing on single issues for this column rather than groups of individual incidents, and this week will not be an exception. I want to examine, and I want the furies to examine, why it is so adjectivally difficult, not just to establish the innocence of people wrongfully convicted by one or more of out sixty-plus criminal justice systems, but to get the system to let go of them.

Since it was established in 1992, the Innocence Project has succeeded in reversing the convictions of over 200 people, but the group says that a “staggering number of innocent people” remain behind bars today.

Perhaps even more troubling is that even when clear, indisputable evidence emerges showing that someone has been imprisoned for a crime they didn’t commit, prosecutors, police, and judges will often fight tooth and nail to keep them incarcerated.

Mark Godsey was a prosecutor in New York in the nineties when the Innocence Project was founded. He loved being a prosecutor, loved putting away the bad guys and benefiting society. He was considered a “prosecutor’s prosecutor.” He decided to become a law professor. On his very first professorial gig, he was at a school which had an Innocence Project.

When I arrived, they said, “The professor who runs it is on sabbatical this year. Since you’ve got a criminal-law background, you’re going to have to supervise it.’ I really couldn’t say no—I was untenured, I was the new guy on the block. But I remember thinking, “You’ve got to be kidding me. There are no innocent people in prison.” That was my view.

He was convinced the Innocence Project was a bunch of bleeding-heart hooey right up until the first DNA results came in on a case being worked that year. At that, Godsey himself is extraordinary. On the continuum he is on the far end as a science accepter. At the other end is Donald J. Trump, who is still insisting that the Central Park Five should be executed, long after their innocence has been proven beyond a doubt. Most people in the justice system appear to be clustered on the Donald end. Godsey again:

The first thing that shocked me when I started doing post-conviction innocence work is when we had several cases with DNA evidence, and it was absolutely clear the person was innocent. I saw these prosecutors just going into denial and spinning all these ridiculous theories about how the person might still be guilty. They almost make you laugh. My first reaction was, “Are these people kidding? Are they serious?” I’m in court thinking, “Is this Candid Camera?”

That’s how ridiculous these theories could be. And I realized that the Innocence Movement is really pointing out some flaws at the basic core of the criminal-justice system, and those in the system are really in denial about it. I think I was too, as a prosecutor.

Godsey points out that prosecutors, and their teams, including law enforcement, and jurists, become conditioned to this mindset, and he should know – he was himself conditioned.

If you really could step out of that role, somebody might be able to just sort of shake you out of that bureaucratic mindset and say, “Step back from this a minute. Look at why you went to law school. Look what you’re actually doing to this person.”

Godsey notes that racism and other forms of discrimination are also problems, but in his book, Blind Injustice: A Former Prosecutor Exposes the Psychology and Politics of Wrongful Convictions, he doesn’t spend much time discussing them for this reason:

Obviously, racism is a huge problem in the criminal-justice system, and it’s a huge part of wrongful convictions. But what I focus on is things like confirmation bias, malleable memory—things that don’t get as much attention. If I were to address racism, it would end up swallowing the entire book, because it’s such a pervasive problem. It’s also addressed elsewhere in other books, and I’m trying to highlight things that aren’t regularly discussed.

If you tell people up front it’s a book about racism, everybody thinks they’re not a racist, so they just sort of check out, and think, “Okay, this doesn’t apply to me.” But if you disarm them on that, then you can get them to learn about confirmation bias and tunnel vision and all these psychological flaws that we all have.

He does spend time and effort on the behavior of elected prosecutors and judges as opposed to the behavior of appointed prosecutors and judges.

I was a federal prosecutor in New York City. Federal prosecutors and judges are appointed by the president. They don’t have to run for reelection. They don’t have to get the endorsement of local law enforcement. When I came back to Ohio, and started doing innocence work, I was absolutely shocked at how the [state] judges [who are elected] just seemed to be politically aligned with the prosecution. The judges would simply line up with the prosecution and ignore plain evidence of innocence. I detail in the book how the imperatives of electoral politics cause prosecutors to always want to look tough on crime, and they end up being conditioned to look tough on crime all the time instead of being reasonable in some cases.

It’s the same with judges. The person that judges want to get to endorse them and appear on commercials with them come re-election time is the prosecutor. This is common in the 38 states where we have elections.

In addition to the connections that he mentions (and which a lot of us are aware of), however, I think that when elections are in play there’s another big cultural factor that he misses – at least in this interview.

I was brought up to believe that it takes a truly honest person, and a person with a big soul, to be able to admit mistakes. And my personal experience has reinforced this – it’s extremely difficult, I might even say damnably difficult, for me to admit publicly to a large mistake. It takes every ounce of moral fiber that I have. But as a result, I have tremendous respect for the person who admits and rectifies mistakes over the person who is “never wrong.” As far as I can tell, most people don’t. And people who run for office know this. Even those who might personally be willing to admit a mistake feel that they cannot be perceived to admit a mistake, or they will be at a political disadvantage. And they are probably right.

And this is why I am calling on the expertise of the Furies here. Yes, to some extent we can fix this if all states go to appointed judges and prosecutors rather than elected judges and prosecutors. But it would help tremendously if we could also change the cultural stereotype. Can you ladies help?

Anyone who clicks through can read the edited transcript (which is well worth reading) or even listen to the 25-minute interview.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage.  These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that.  Even though there are many more which I can’t include.  As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

I wrote last week about impersonation trolls and how “well” they are doing – for Nazis.  But it turns out that impersonation trolls are not JUST for Nazis.  Corporations are doing them too.

I know, I know, the line between corporations and Nazis is a pretty thin one, especially what with Citizens United and all.  But it seems to me that the goal of Nazis is to steal freedom, and lives, and livelihood from certain individuals, and when this involves stealing money, that’s just a fringe benefit.  Whereas with corporations, it’s just the opposite – the goal is to steal money (they are not so particular as to from whom), and any loss of life, or livelihood, or freedom is just a fringe benefit.

So we have a regime which wants generally to limit or eliminate regulations – you know, regulations, the things that keep us safe and keep our playing ground kinda sorta halfway level.  And, we have a bunch of wealthy corporations that just want to get wealthier, and those darned regulations are expensive to comply with.  Stir into the mix a sprinkling of people who know how to hack, and what do you get?  You get –

Hundreds of thousands of comments, purportedly made by Americans, have come in over the electronic transom to at least five different federal agencies calling for an end to Obama-era consumer protections and other regulations that impede profits, a series of investigative reports by the Wall Street Journal found. Except, the people who supposedly sent these comments never did.

Further,

“The Journal previously found fraudulent postings under names and email addresses at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission,” it continued. “The Journal’s findings were cited by calls from Congress to delay the repeal of the FCC’s net-neutrality rule.”

Well, we know what happened to that.

Posting a fraudulent comment on a Federal website is a felony, and the departments who have been defrauded will remove such comments when notified.  But most agencies make it a bit difficult to check the authenticity of comments independently.  Only a few, for instance, publish the email address with the comment.  And I find that reasonable.  When I post a comment, or sign a petition or a letter sponsored by an organization, I don’t mind the agency having my email address, nor do I have a problem with the organization having my email address (that’s probably how I found out about the petition.)  But I really don’t want my email posted by my name on the agency website – for exactly this reason.

I would, however, want my email address provided to any government attorney who is investigating comment fraud – and that’s just what is NOT happening.

The day before the FCC vote in late November, the Verge reported, “A search of the duplicated text found more than 58,000 results as of press time, with 17,000 of those posted in the last 24 hours alone.”

At that time, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a Democrat, had been stonewalled by the FCC for six months in his office’s efforts to investigate the falsified public comments. (Verge first reported the fake comments in May 2017.)

I would certainly have trusted Eric Schneiderman with my email address (which, I suspect, is exactly why Ajit Pai wouldn’t.)   And we did hear a little bit about this, at the last minute, before the FCC threw us to the wolves – but it all happened pretty fast.  And it was just the tip of the iceberg anyway, as you see from the agencies we KNOW were targeted..

Furthermore, the impersonating software was able to insert subtle differences in the messages so that they would not be dismissed as identical.  It was even able to insert some phony comments on the side opposite the side that was being pushed!  Not so many as to distract from its main point, though.  Just enough to make unsuspecting agencies think there was an actual dialogue and real interest – on issues where there wasn’t.  Probably surprising no one, those whose identities were used without their permission were just as furious if they agreed with the comment as they were if they didn’t.

If you have a subscription to the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, you can read the full report – it’s linked from AlterNet.  (I don’t.)

But there’s one thing missing from it:

[T]hey didn’t explore the most obvious question: who is behind these moves? While there is likely to be more than one answer and one culprit, only one category of special interest has the means and motives to thwart government regulators: that’s the targeted industries, professional trade association and lobbyists and the biggest corporate players.

Instead the Journal’s investigative reports leave readers with small-scale indignation and not the bigger pattern that private sector interests have found a new way to steal and use personal data for their bottom-line battles with government.

Yes, other things happened last week.  But many of them we know about, thanks to TC and Sam and Stephen and Rachel and all the others.  And I think this is important enough to stand alone and receive the attention of all three Furies (and all their nameless sisters – you never know – there could be thousands – even millions.)

Alecto – Megaera – Tisiphone – it’s a deceptively simple problem.  Corporations have plenty of money to produce huge fakes (which make them more money).  Regulators do not have the resources (money, but also adequate staffing, adequate training, adequate time) to tear them down.  And, even if they did, the corporations would just have the Republicans steamroll over them.  So  it all comes down to getting them out.

We are trying our best to have candidates everywhere – and to get out the vote everywhere – and to deliver our true message well enough to get more people involved everywhere.  But – help us.  Please.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage.  These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that.  Even though there are many more which I can’t include.  As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

I know we have a number of people who follow Politics Plus who have backgrounds in health care.  I’m not sure how many are still active, or how many of those work with surgical patients or chemotherapy patients or any other specialty that works with intravenous fluid delivery.  So this may or may not be news to you.  It was news to me.  Let me start with a quote from a Tweet:

My wife’s nurse had to stand for 30 mins & administer a drug slowly through a syringe because there are almost no IV bags in the continental U.S. anymore. See, they were all manufactured in a Puerto Rican factory which still isn’t fixed. Meanwhile that stupid swollen prick golfs  11:09 AM – Dec 28, 2017

The firm, owned by Baxter, also manufactures surgical equipment and other medical supplies.  The FDA understands the problem, but under this regime has very limited power indeed.  Here, from an FDA press release of 11/17:

Most significantly to date, hospitals across the country are reporting shortages of IV fluids, particularly sodium chloride 0.9% injection bags – a type of saline bag. Saline IV fluids, which are used to inject drugs intravenously in hospital and outpatient settings, have been intermittently in shortage dating back to 2014. However, despite our best efforts, the situation in Puerto Rico has greatly exacerbated this supply issue. The FDA understands the concerns and impact of the ongoing shortages of IV solutions. These products have been on the list of approximately 90 medical products (which includes biologics, devices and drugs) that the FDA has been monitoring since the storm hit, and the FDA is actively working to address the shortage. Among the steps the FDA is taking, in conjunction with manufacturers of these products:
•temporarily allowing the importation of IV saline products from facilities outside of the U.S.;
•encouraging the expansion of production at existing facilities to meet shortfalls; and
•expediting our review of new product applications that will help address this shortage.

“[T]emporarily allowing the importation of IV saline products” and “expediting the review of new roduct applications” both make me nervious with regard to the products to be used meeting existing Federal standards.  I am not a huge fan of the FDA in many ways, but “meeting existing Federal standards” still has to be more desirable than “falling below existing Federal standards.”  If you click through to the article and read the comments, you will learn some things about the uses of IVs which you may not have known unless you actually work with them.  This is truly scary.

Alecto, once again I am giving you an assignment that has so many things slipping through the cracks that you may feel scattered.  But I believe you can handle it.

And another problem involving the Orange Regime is rearing its ugly head.  I will just let John Soltz, an Iraqi War veteran and the founder of VoteVets, explain it clerly and concisely:

Every summer, hundreds of veterans head to Bristol Bay, Alaska to earn a living as commercial fishermen.

It’s not easy work and it separates them from their families — again — but in this tough economy it pays well and takes care of things back home.

A few years ago, we ran a massive campaign mobilizing support for these veterans when a Canadian Company attempted to build a mine to extract gold beneath the fishery.

And we won. The Environmental Protection Agency found that the damaged caused by Pebble Mine would be “irreversible” and results in the “complete loss of fish habitat due to elimination, dewatering and fragmentation of streams, wetlands and other aquatic resources.”

Well, now there’s a new man at the head of the EPA, and after Scott Pruitt met with the head of the Pebble Mine project, he ordered the regulations be scrapped and that the mining company could begin acquiring permits.

VoteVets has started a petition on this, and I hope it will be widely signed and shared.  But I’m confident other action will be needed as well.  Megaera, can you be sure to keep us up to speed on what else we can do?

Finally, I know I have written before about the practice by municipalities of giving one-way bus tickets to the homeless.  If I recall correctly, the last time was about a homeless person in Nevada who was given a ticket to Los Angeles, which was no more able to support the person’s mental health issues than Nevada was, and in some ways less.  But, in fact, many places have been doing this, some for as long as thirty years.

Now, the Guardian has published a new report just on this practice, and Amy Goodman of Democracy Now has published an interview with the editor responsible for this report.  Some interesting trends have emerged … and some of these were probably predictable.

Fact:  Most people who are homeless in any given city are actually from that city.  The myth of homeless people being drawn to certain cities by weather or services is just that – a myth.

Fact:  The cities which have and administer these programs have pretty much zero idea of whether their own programs are actually working.  “[F]or instance, for a 5-year period, between 2010 and 2015, when the city offered thousands of people bus tickets and thousands of people left the city, the city could only provide us records showing that it had been able to follow up with only three of those people to find out if their situation at the other end had improved.”

Fact:  Many of the tickets are given out through shelters, and acceptance of the ticket bans the recipient from ever receiving services from the shelter in the future.  And many people who accept tickets are not aware of that condition.  (Not all shelters do this, of course.  The one in Key WEst, FL, however, is notorious for it.)

I can’t help feeling that the lack of good data on this subject is because people don’t WANT to know – they just don’t want to see homeless people.  Anything that takes the homeless away from their sight is fine with them.  Tisiphone, what would you suggest?

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.