Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

Starting off with some nice news:

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was honored with the ACLU’s Roger Baldwin Courage Award at the ACLU of Southern California’s annual Bill of Rights dinner Sunday night.
Ford, whose appearance was a surprise, was being recognized for her testimony during Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination process.

“I did one thing. When I came forward last September I did not feel courageous. I was simply doing my duty as a citizen.” Ford said at the ceremony Sunday night. [snip]

Loyola Law School professor Jessica Levenson says Ford’s testimony was and still is criticized by conservatives: “Some people thought she was lying. Some people thought embellishing. Some people thought there was a there there, but she was making too much of it. Basically, it was a long time ago and she needed to get over it.”

But the civil rights group says no one would lie and open themselves up to such public scrutiny.

“She spoke the truth and paid an incredible price for it. She was subjected to incredible vile hate and unspeakable threats.” said ACLU Executive Director Hector Villagra. [snip]

Dr. Ford asked the audience to believe Ambassador Marie Yavanovitch who testified during an impeachment inquiry hearing last week. And she says she chose to accept the award because it was the same distinction given to Anita Hill after Hill testified in Clarence Thomas’ confirmation process.

Dave Roberts has an interesting read about the ongoing "tribal epistemology" on the right, the effects of which we see damaging our country every day.  A few long excerpts:

Tribal epistemology happens when tribal interests subsume transpartisan epistemological principles, like standards of evidence, internal coherence, and defeasibility. “Good for our tribe” becomes the primary determinant of what is true; “part of our tribe” becomes the primary determinant of who to trust.

A circular logic, which has become quite familiar in the impeachment affair, emerges: Anyone who says anything contrary to the tribe marks themselves as an enemy of the tribe (cough *deep state* cough); enemies of the tribe cannot but trusted, so their testimony or evidence can be ignored. Thus, by definition, nothing that questions the tribal narrative can be trusted.

A decades-long effort on the right has resulted in a parallel set of institutions meant to encourage tribal epistemology. They mimic the form of mainstream media, think tanks, and the academy, but without the restraint of transpartisan principles. They are designed to advance the interests of the right, to tell stories and produce facts that support the tribe. That is the ur-goal; the rhetoric and formalisms of critical thinking are retrofit around it.  [snip]

Now everyone with any power on the right is deep in the bubble, right up to the president himself, who spends a considerable portion of his time watching and tweeting about Fox News. There are no more moderates or responsible Republicans behind the curtain, keeping an eye on the difference between tribal tall tales and reality. Fox natives are running the show, including the federal government. 

Roberts goes on to dissect the need for Republicans to maintain doubt and prevent consensus:

This is the story of American politics: a narrowly divided nation, with raw numbers on the side of the rising demographics in the left coalition but intensity and outsized political power on the side of the right coalition. Put in more practical terms, the right still has the votes and the cohesion to prevent a Senate impeachment conviction.  [snip]

All they need to do is to keep that close partisan split frozen in place. Above all, they need to ensure that nothing breaks through to the masses in the mushy middle, who are mostly disengaged from politics. They need to make sure no clear consensus forms, nothing that might find its way into pop culture, the way the entire nation eventually focused its attention on Nixon’s impeachment. 

We'll stop there, but there's more relating to the current impeachment that we see playing out already.

While we're at it, check out this Through The Looking Glass quote from The Dumb Don's Roy Cohn that perfectly illustrates the points made above:

“In waging a scorched-earth, no-holds-barred war against this administration, it is the left that is engaged in shredding norms and undermining the rule of law,” [Attorney General William "Low"] Barr told a room of attorneys at the annual gathering of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group that has been influential in determining President Donald Trump’s nominees for federal judges.  (our emphasis)

That's some powerful gaslighting there.  But judging from the looks of him, Barr has a lot of gas to light.

Speaker Pelosi has an offer nitwit crime family boss Donald "The Dumb Don" Trump can't will refuse:

“If he has information that is exculpatory, that means ex, taking away, culpable, blame, then we look forward to seeing it,” she said in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” Trump “could come right before the committee and talk, speak all the truth that he wants if he wants,” she said. [Ed.:  love the way Pelosi continues to break down big words for the nitwit to digest.]

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer echoed that suggestion.

“If Donald Trump doesn’t agree with what he’s hearing, doesn’t like what he’s hearing, he shouldn’t tweet. He should come to the committee and testify under oath. And he should allow all those around him to come to the committee and testify under oath,” Schumer told reporters. He said the White House’s insistence on blocking witnesses from cooperating begs the question: “What is he hiding?”

One more look back at the latest Republican debacle produced by The Dumb Don, the Louisiana governor's race:

“If you had any doubt that Trump was a human repellent spray for suburban voters who have a conservative disposition, Republicans getting wiped out in the suburbs of New Orleans, Louisville and Lexington should remove it,” said Tim Miller, a Republican strategist and outspoken critic of the president.

The Louisiana results are a stinging rebuke for the president, because he spent so much time there and because Trump allies couldn’t chalk it up entirely to local factors as they did for Kentucky, where Mr. Bevin was deeply unpopular. And even before the Louisiana race was called on Saturday night, finger-pointing from the Capitol to the White House to Mr. Trump’s campaign broke out about why he spent so much political capital on the race in the first place.

Trump and his rotted- out Republican Party will have to lie, cheat and steal to win in 2020 -- and they'll certainly try.  But somehow, in 2018 and in this year's off elections in Virginia, Kentucky, Louisiana and elsewhere, they're still coming up short.

As always, we end by highly recommending Infidel 753's link round- up to provide his usual cornucopia of "various interesting stuff" he found from the past week or so.  Infidel 753 also surveys how the impeachment hearings are playing in the right- wing's bubble, which mostly validate Roberts' observations, as well as his own thoughts about the impact (or lack thereof) of the hearings.