The Books of Bokonon

See the graph below: “If panic occurs now (and it can happen simply due to fear among the Russian population, say, through social media rumors), everything could collapse in a matter of days.” - Economist “The Russian economy is indeed on the brink of collapse and disintegration.“ [image or embed] — Jason Jay Smart ( @jjsmart.bsky.social ) November 27, 2024 at 11:57 AM We've heard this before back in 2022 when the first sanctions were rolled out and the Ruble briefly plummeted in value. Although the central bank has been quite adept at adjusting for sanctions up to a point, there is only so much a central bank can do. A devalued currency and inflation go hand in hand. There are remedies for inflation but those remedies are painful. The obvious one is to increase interest rates, which the central bank has certainly done. Right now if you are a consumer or borrower in Russia, it sucks to be you. Add to that the inevitable shortages that come with sanctions and shortages in the l...

I have been meaning to return to the remaining lessons in Timothy Snyder's book, On Tyranny . If you haven't read this book, make a point of checking it out at your local library or purchase it at a local bookstore. It's a brief book and inexpensive.  This lesson on social denunciation has both positive and negative implications. On the negative side, Dr. Snyder reminds us that when a nation descends into fascism, it is crucial to be aware of how the people in your life change as events change. So this becomes more a matter of survival. Cues in our social environment can tell us a lot about whether or not something is about to go sideways. If your neighbor who has greeted you for years suddenly stops speaking to you, there may be a problem. That's why it's a good idea to have your passport and go-bag ready (Snyder doesn't mention that last bit, but I think we can say it's implied). On a more positive note, making eye contact and small talk can provide much-n...

So Trump's prospective "border czar" is threatening the Denver mayor with arrest over the mayor's resistance to mass deportations . As an expert on authoritarianism (minor in comparison to Altemeyer or Duckitt, but I do have a few peer review publications to show for it) and an amateur history buff, I don't see how this standoff ends well. Trump's fascist tendencies are on full display - this time by one of his henchmen. Either the federal government goes forward with its mass imprisonment of undocumented residents (and anyone who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time) and the Denver mayor goes to jail, or the mass deportation happens and the mayor folds like so many others who were supposed to be our bulwarks of democracy.  The US has devolved to the point that a plurality of its citizens don't seem to be bothered with electing a convicted felon as their president and can't be bothered to care who gets hurt in the process. The US ha...

 

Kyiv Independent has a feature article about the Orange Revolution of late 2004 and early 2005. It's worth reading. This would not be the last time that Viktor Yanukovych would stare down the ire of the public and lose. There were credible accounts of ballot stuffing to where after two months of continuous protests a new vote was held and a more pro-European government was formed as a result. The Ukrainian people truly flexed their collective muscle then, and that sense of independence has carried the Ukrainian population since then. The regime in Moscow has made it clear that it does not view Ukraine as an independent nation or Ukrainians as distinct people and is in the process of perpetrating a genocidal war against Ukraine. Those heady days of 2004 are a reminder that Russian dominance - in the form of an empire, the USSR, or whatever sort of mafia government Putin runs - is not inevitable.

I don't know if you have ever been to a city or town council meeting or a school board meeting. If you haven't, make a point of attending a meeting at some point in your life. You probably won't thank me, but you will find it educational. I was at my city's board of directors meeting this past Tuesday. Most of the agenda was pretty cut and dry. I get the impression at most board of directors meetings in my city that much of the heat comes from the on-going fallout from a consent decree after the US government had finally had enough of my city's leaders at the time consistently failing to update a failing sewer system until it met federal regulations. Much of the heat on that set of issues is understandable, as there is a lot of frustration over the cost of decades of mismanagement from our elected leaders is being passed on to us. I feel the same frustration. I also know that the city just needs to get on with it and get the job done.  This week, the heat was direc...

This is more of a brief personal note. I just sent a birthday text to a friend who seemed to vanish into the ether back in April this year. I will likely never know what happened. I doubt this person will ever read it, so this may be more just self-therapy for me. I do something similar with friends who have passed away, but whose email or social media accounts are still available. I know darned well that they will not see anything I write. It's more for me to simply reflect on some pleasant memory or memories I have and perhaps to express some gratitude for the person just having been in my life for however long that lasted. I think we all have ways of grieving, and this just happens to be mine. It's also a reminder that we all affect each other in ways we can never truly appreciate until one of us passes away or simply disappears from our lives. There are memories still to be cherished, after all. Somehow it helps to be reminded of those times and the friendship's value t...

Since the middle of the last decade, I've heard repeatedly that we live in a "post-truth" era. That was best exemplified by Kellyanne Conway's usage of the term "alternative facts" back in 2017 in response to the kerfuffle over the crowd size for Trump's inauguration in late January of that year. So, this is the so-called post-truth era. Admittedly it has been a long while since I was taking philosophy classes as an undergraduate student, but terms like relativism (sometimes used interchangeably with perspectivism and perspectivalism) have some value. The basic gist is that each of us will have a somewhat different experience of the same phenomenon. Note what isn't in dispute: that there is some phenomenon that has occurred and that each of us had an experience of it. The facts on the ground are what they are, but what each of us might make of the facts may vary - sometimes in ways that can be constructive, and sometimes in ways that are not. As long...

Here are some more words to live by as we prepare for a second Trump term after barely surviving the first. A lot of what Dr. Snyder says here is just good common sense. The concerns about the lack of local news and investigative reporters is, sadly, on point. Rebuilding local networks of investigative reporters/journalists will be a daunting but necessary task. In the meantime, do your best to be informed and be on the look out for propaganda. Here's the video:

The lesson itself is one I take to heart: "To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights." I have been working on and off on a post regarding why I reject the post-truth narrative that has become part of our media landscape and discourse during this past decade. Dr. Snyder's lesson dovetails nicely with my own thoughts. Without truth, we have no meaningful way to communicate, to settle disagreements, to challenge misinformation and disinformation (the distinction between these two terms is subtle, but important). I'll still eventually get my post finished and published on this blog, but Dr. Snyder says it better. So let's listen to what he has to say:  

I will continue with a series of posts I started recently. This is one of a series of videos Timothy Snyder created ahead of the release of a revised edition of his book, On Tyranny. Lesson 9 has to do with language. Dr. Snyder has a few things to say about how the algorithms we are exposed to when we are on social media narrow the language we are exposed to, and some ways to move forward in a way that stimulates the sort of critical thought needed to keep democracy afloat.  

  Photo credit: James Benjamin (August 2021) Timothy Snyder's recent newsletter post, Decapitation Strike , is a must read. Snyder here outlines some fundamental functions of our democratic republic and how those are now under threat now that we see what Trump has in store for installing his own loyalists to head these key agencies. The damage potentially done to our public health agencies, our military, and our intelligence agencies is essentially incalculable. What I think can be safely asserted is that we may find much of our government's bureaucracy irritating, but we are in deep trouble without it. I'll post a couple highlights: Imagine that you are a foreign leader who wishes to destroy the United States. How could you do so? The easiest way would be to get Americans to do the work themselves, to somehow induce Americans to undo their own health, law, administration, defense, and intelligence. From this perspective, Trump's proposed appointments -- Kennedy, Jr....

The occasional article with anecdotes of Trump voters who are apparently horrified by what they have just done has already dropped. There will be more of this to come. Expect it. These articles, to the extent that they have more than a few grains of truth to them, will also show the limits of liberal tolerance, which will be a rude awakening to many. The unfortunate reality is that as someone who has immediate and extended family members and friends who are definitely in harm's way if the worst of this next Trump term transpires (and that is seemingly increasingly likely), I will find the subjects of these anecdotes to be entirely unsympathetic. As someone who has a transgender adult child facing the potential loss of their hormones and daughters who may find their birth control options severely restricted, I doubt it will be easy to sympathize with a Trump voter who just found out that his or her aunt who was an undocumented resident is being rounded up to be deported or found th...

I basically spelled out some reasons to have a personal blog when I started this one back in 2023. I still stand by that reasoning. I am really much better using a format where I don't have to worry about character limits. I still have a Twitter account (that's going dormant), but that platform has well passed its expiration date. I think Mastodon has some real potential, but I don't really get a lot of interaction there, even when I post a whole bunch. Bluesky is where most of academic Twitter ended up, and where a lot of the Democratic activist and advocate community are heading, and for some purposes it will do. But if I am not going to get much in the way of interaction, I might as well do so without being concerned about whether the platform can handle threaded posts, reposts, quote posts, and so on. At least I can satisfy myself that I could say what I wished to say in the way I wanted and be grateful for the handful of views it will get. I did let this blog go fallow...

Timothy Snyder speaks on the importance of standing and being counted.

Our next installment in Timothy Snyder's videos to promote the 2021 edition of On Tyranny is about those who are bearing arms as police officers, military personnel, and other public servants who regularly carry firearms as part of their job. As you listen to the lesson, you'll notice that Dr. Snyder makes it clear that the burden does not just fall on those who are police officers or military personnel, but by the rest of us as well. His recommendations about the January 6th insurrection (remember this video was shot a few months after that failed coup attempt) went largely unheeded with the January 6th Commission and Jack Smith's work as Special Counsel duly noted. Dr. Snyder also notes the loss of local newspapers, which means a lack of reporters who could alert the public to abuses of power. At the end of the day, it is clear that not only do those who take on the responsibility of serving their country as soldiers or their communities as law enforcement officials need ...

I have been following Bill McBride's Calculated Risk blog since around the time the housing bubble was getting close to bursting, leading to the Great Recession. So this is a blog that has mattered a lot to me for over a decade and a half at this point. Bill knows his stuff. I think real estate is more his beat, but he runs a good general purpose economics blog that serves my purpose. One thing Bill has done is to take a look at the economic outlook post-election. As is his custom, a week on, he has his initial assessment for the economy Trump is inheriting, and what Trump's policies might mean. In 2016, Bill was pretty sanguine about how the US economy would function with Trump in the White House. By 2019, he started to worry a bit, thanking (prematurely) his lucky stars that no major emergency, like a pandemic, had occurred. This time around, Bill is considerably less sanguine. At best, he's expecting that this latest Trump term will lead to increased budget deficits and ...

Obviously, after the returns last Tuesday from the Blue Wall states showed a clear trend toward Trump, I was no longer in the mood for late night comedy. Thankfully, Pinku-Sensei from Crazy Eddies Motie Blog was more on the ball than I was. You can find most of the talk show video links here . The link to Jon Stewart's pep talk is here .

I am expecting the next Trump term to be even more of a Pool-Pah (a Bokononist term for a shit show, or God's wrath - whichever you prefer) than the last. That's such a safe bet that there isn't much point discussing it. I continue to read and hear hot takes on what went wrong for the Democratic Party and almost all of them are awful.  If the only lesson Democratic politicians learn from this election is aggressively tamp down on inflation regardless of the consequences, we're truly in trouble. Conventional wisdom among the pundit class that has done well during the neoliberal era is that economic stimulus should be kept to a minimum, much the way the Obama administration did during Obama's first term which was during the Great Recession and its aftermath. There was a recovery of sorts, but it never really felt like a recovery, and we as a party did suffer - maybe not in the sense of losing the White House in 2012, but we lost a lot of ground politically and we are ...

This is the next lesson from Timothy Snyder's excellent book, On Tyranny . He does a good job of sharing with us how the merger of paramilitaries and police and military forces are an important red flag when it comes to the health of our democracy. Once we get to that point, as he notes, the end democracy as we know it has happened. That paramilitaries and legitimate police and military forces can merge in the run-up to a successful coup and the consolidation of power is something that we can find plenty of evidence for in our history books. We are not special in the US. We have our own paramilitary forces (e.g., Proud Boys, Three Percenters, etc.) who have at least some allies in law enforcement and in the military. Given that we had a coup attempt in January 2021, we needed a much more comprehensive understanding of how that coup happened and to what extent the paramilitaries involved were enabled by law enforcement. I think we got some clues from the January 6 Commission when it...

Timothy Snyder's fifth lesson is a crucial one. Despots succeed to the extent that those in the various professions (legal, business, etc.) abandon the ethics that guide their professions. Going back to the idea that the institutions themselves are not what save us from a potential dictatorship, but rather the people in those institutions, we need to ask what the institutional ethical norms are and how well members of the various professions will hold on to their ethical commitments in the face of pressure from a dictator or would-be dictator. In the summer of 2020 and again late in 2020 and into 2021, our military leaders refused to go along with Trump's coup attempts. Their ethical compass was to follow the Constitution rather than Trump's orders. So too did lawyers, judges, and other important stakeholders. These are the same folks who will need to do so once more. Here's the video:

One of the bloggers at Emptywheel posted about what November 9th means to Germans , and the decidedly mixed emotions that the date brings up. In 1923, the day marked the Beer Hall Putsch. In 1938, the date marked Kristallnacht. Those each were dark days. In 1989, the date marked the fall of the Berlin Wall, marking the end of Soviet dominance of eastern Germany, and eventually the fall of the communist USSR which paved the way for the eastern and western sides of Germany to be once again reunited for the first time since WWII. This year's date is marked probably more by German and European worries about what a Trump regime in the US will mean, including emboldening a Russian dictator hell-bent on reviving the old Soviet Union, just minus the Marxist rhetoric. We are back to dark days.

Today marked the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. For a brief period, there was some hope that a more democratic and peaceful future was upon us. Alas, it was not to be. But for that one brief moment...

The symbols and monuments around us tell us not just about the past or even the present moment, but are pointers to a possible future. Symbols of hate should not just be ignored, but they need to be actively removed. In this video, Snyder certainly mentions the swastika, which was the Nazi symbol, and which regrettably is still in use to day, often in the US accompanied by Confederate and MAGA symbolism.  When I was a college student, I lived in a part of California that had a real neo-Nazi skinhead problem. I would often see swastikas plastered on to building walls, including on my campus. Usually those were pasted on so well that a simple pocket knife would not be sufficient to scrape them off, and I didn't simply have some whitewash to paint over them. But I did have tools in my backpack - pens and sharpies - that I could use to deface them and to convey an alternative anti-fascist message. It was an infinitesimally small act of defiance in the grand scheme of things, but it was...

  I want to highlight a recent blog post by Erik Loomis in part because I largely agree with his conclusions, but also because after a few days we are moving past the point of poorly thought-out hot takes. This is no hot take. He makes 20 points that begin with the most obvious: that Harris faced some stiff headwinds into this election simply because of something many of us have observed, which is an anti-incumbent mood in democracies across the globe. Almost without exception, incumbent governments have been replaced. I also think it is helpful that Erik offers a perspective about the union vote that is overlooked: the proportion of labor union members who voted for Harris were really about the same as the proportion of union members who cast a vote for Walter Mondale in 1984. So 40 years and no difference, except that the percentage of union voters is now much smaller than then, so their turnout is valuable but has less impact than it might have in the late 20th century. He also...

As anyone who has known me for a while - even if simply as an online presence - will understand, I've been residing in the state of Arkansas for about fourteen and a half years. When I moved there in the summer of 2010, the state's Democratic Party was usually more successful than not in electing statewide officials to office, held two US Senate seats, and supermajorities in both chambers of the State Assembly. In other words, compared to other neighboring southern states in the US that had long ago become solidly GOP, the Arkansas Democratic Party defied political gravity. The 2010 election was a sign that something was starting to change. Statewide office holders did fine, and Governor Mike Beebe won re-election by comfortable margins. But we lost a US Senate seat that year and we still had governing majorities but no longer supermajorities. Some formerly Democratic state politicians had changed their party affiliation from Democratic to GOP. And the population in the state s...

Here's the next installment in Dr. Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny series:  

I borrowed that title from a band called Brian Jonestown Massacre - a clever name for a band that has been around since the 1990s. Why? I have been processing what happened on election night here in the US. What I have to say won't provide any real comfort, since we still face a uphill battle to prevent this nation from descending into fascism and chaos for the foreseeable future. But perhaps I can help provide some perspective.  A theme I have seen emerge in elections in reasonably well-functioning democracies around the world since 2023 is that the majority or governing party in almost any election we can think of has been voted out of power. Sometimes that is meant that a liberal or social democratic led government gets replaced by a conservative led government. Sometimes the conservative - or in the case of Poland authoritarian government - gets replaced by a coalition of more moderate and liberal parties. See what happened to the Tories in the UK. In France, the centrist party...

This one is courtesy of Dennis Hartley of Digby's Hullabaloo . What my friends elsewhere in the world call civil society will be very important for us now more than ever. I'll place the links below just because a bit of redundancy is a good thing: "In anticipation of what may be in store for us, here are links to the resources likely to be more crucial than ever. Bookmark this post! ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom American Civil Liberties Union Amnesty International Center for Democracy and Technology Committee to Protect Journalists Electronic Privacy Information Center Electronic Frontier Foundation Human Rights Watch Indivisible League of Women Voters Planned Parenthood Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press Southern Poverty Law Center You’re welcome. — Dennis Hartley"

 Here is the second installment in the series from Timothy Snyder's classic book: This seems like a timely lesson, as institutions will not protect us unless we actually take care to protect them and make them part of our identity. Those remaining intact in the US need our help now.

 

The election is over and many of the results are known outside of the composition of the US House of Representatives, which we probably won't completely know for a while longer. We'll have to be patient. The House and Senate flipping were expected, but then again, so was Harris winning the Blue Wall states, and we can see how well that turned out. So, right now, I hold out some faint hope that Hakeem Jeffries will get the Speaker's gavel, and essentially be able to throw a few necessary wrenches into the works whenever necessary (probably often). A few other things I want to put out there. I really like Joe Biden and think he was a good solid President during his term. He was not perfect, but perfection is over-rated and non-existent. He was competent. He did not create chaos. That said, I had expected him to be a transitional President who would serve a term and pass the baton to the Democratic Party's future leaders. That should have happened in the summer of 2023 at ...

Research on authoritarianism, which dates back at least to the classic set of studies published by Adorno and colleagues around the mid-20th century, is especially relevant as we move forward. There is of course authoritarianism as a form of governing, which is not where my focus is, and there is the psychology of authoritarianism. The latter is of interest to me and has been for decades. I have published a few papers on and off dealing with facets of authoritarianism as a personality trait or individual difference since about 20 years ago. I really should do more.  The basic theory of authoritarianism at this point has its origins in the work of Bob Altemeyer. He took the original F-Scale and developed a better measure of authoritarianism. Altemeyer's questionnaire was pretty decent, but because of how its questions had been developed, it was really difficult to understand which facets of authoritarianism were most predictive of specific attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. Duckit...

"History! Read it and weep!" Linkage

I am getting ready to turn in, and I checked the latest about the remaining swing states. It does not look good. Trump is likely to get Pennsylvania's electoral votes. That's the ballgame, if that is what transpires. Again, if I had money that's regrettably how I would bet. I have no more idea than anyone else about what an American version of fascism will end up looking like. We'll know soon enough. In the meantime, I have a couple thoughts. 1. No matter whatever happens in the future, you have agency. You can make choices. The choices may not necessarily be to your liking, but you still have the ability to chose. Use it.  2. Each of us has a moral compass. Don't compromise on your moral compass. That can be very difficult to do under duress, but it is important not to lose who you are as a human being. Once you lose that, you're just lost. 3. My mom used to say the Republicans were good at causing economic depressions. The policies that Trump ran on, if they c...

As we await results in the Blue Wall states, which are not looking so great, revisiting the work of Dr. Timothy Snyder strikes me as a good idea. We got a taste of what a Trump dictatorship might look like during his term as president, and we've certainly been made aware of Trump's threats for a second term. I have repeated a well-worn line time and time again: when someone shows you who they are, you would be wise to believe them. Trump showed us who is was then and who he is now. That he is on the cusp of winning the electoral vote now is a reminder that we will soon be reliving the chaos of that first term, but with far fewer guardrails to keep his worst impulses in check. We have to accept the reality that around half of our fellow citizens will embrace a fascist for the promise of cheaper gasoline or eggs (ironically, we were moving away from the high inflation era, but perhaps too late). That is hardly a comforting thought, and it's one that should not be sugar-coated...

When you see this, it will be election day morning here in the US. Hopefully you have made your plan to vote, and ideally did what I normally do which is to take advantage of early voting. I voted in person as usual during the first week of early voting. I tend to make up my mind about elections early on. I'm pretty tuned in to the news cycle, which seems inevitable for anyone who studies authoritarianism as part of their living. Maybe you do things a bit differently. But enough of me. Let's get to some late night talks show hosts:

The 5th of November is a day that shall never be forgot. I hope we are ready for our own 5th of November. Here's an inspirational video that was posted in what might as well be another lifetime ago: We need hope more than ever, and to remember what is important to us - not only on this day, but every day.

THE END AT LAST… It’s the final day of campaigning in the US. Both sides are ending here in Pennsylvania. Today we’re all off to the Harris rally. Our job hits overdrive tomorrow when we literally pick people up and drive them to their voting place. In this state every vote counts and everybody knows it. The margins officially are razor thin but that’s not the feeling you get. Maybe my willingness to hope for a Harris victory is skewing my view but my gut instincts are rarely wrong. I was one of those back in 2016 saying Trump would win when everyone else said no way. It wasn’t what I wanted. The tiny political and economic promises, the minutiae of what’s on offer from Harris matters to Americans. As a duel citizen they matter to me a little.   What matters to me is vastly more strategic. My fundamental concern is that a fascist doesn’t take over the United States. Because if it can happen there it can happen in the UK - and anywhere else. America is the fundamental bastion ...

  Part of an interview on The Gray Area podcast (link to the article in the comments): "I think the biggest point — and I’m afraid the ship has already sailed — is that violence should never be a part of politics. Once it’s there, it is very hard to make it go away without even more violence that ultimately neutralizes the people willing to do it. Violence has no part in a representative political system. But I think the other thing that is really important for us to understand is that you cannot wait or hope that a single individual is going to fix the problems in a society or fix the problems in a political system. If you have a political system that has functioned reasonably well and has been adaptable over the course of decades or centuries, that’s a very valuable thing. It creates rules, it creates assumptions, it creates a state of play where everybody more or less knows when you do X, this is how the system is going to respond. If you destroy that, you have nothing. And if...