“An ear in a glass of alcohol”

Lessons from an Outlier

By Marshall Carder

[This essay appeared originally on WordPress, posted on March 20, 2016, prior to the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. Republished here with the permission of the author.]

The rise of Donald Trump as a serious contender for President has elicited an avalanche of criticism aimed at stopping this impending catastrophe in its tracks. Comparing his rapid ascent to that of the most reviled figure in recent history, Hitler, is so common that it may have lost its power to disgust. The tired analogy is generally thrown around mostly as pure hyperbole by both sides of the political spectrum, but in Trump’s case that is chillingly not so. In a few short months he has gone from a laughingstock orange carnival barker to the overwhelming favorite to gain the Republican nomination, and he has done so with a sordid mix of lies, insults and incitement which can only be understood properly if you have lived through this type of thing before. There is a good reason that the experts and pundits failed miserably to notice his sick and widespread appeal. They have not witnessed first-hand what “normal” people will resort to when the rhetoric and circumstances have ignited their inner furies and primal fear. There is almost nothing they won’t do in defense of their “principals” (read Rights).

Thor's Day: Straight from the pit of hell

When we thought it just couldn't get any better, the Associated Press came out with a small story from Athens, Georgia, that

10th Congressional District Republican candidate Rep. Paul Broun said in videotaped remarks that evolution, embryology and the Big Bang theory are "lies straight from the pit of hell" meant to convince people that they do not need a savior.

Mission not impossible

Images from
LBJ's "Daisy"
ad attacking
Goldwater

Your assignment: Describe an attack ad that the Democrats could use to "nuke" the Republicans in the coming political election.

In his current column in New York Magazine, "Nuke 'Em: Why negative advertisements are powerful, essential, and sometimes (see “Daisy”) even artistic," June 16, Frank Rich describes Chrysler's halftime ad for Super Bowl 2012 as arguably "the best political ad of 2012 so far."

...Narrated by Clint Eastwood, [it] was so arresting, and, intentionally or not, so supportive of the auto-industry bailout, that [Karl] Rove hailed it as an "extremely well-done ad" even as he said he was "offended" by its seeming Obama partisanship.

    Rich fails to point out that Eastwood's final line could be the anthem for Obama's re-election campaign: "Yeah, it's halftime, America, and our second half is about to begin."
    President Obama's first half taught him one of the lessons that America had been depending on him to learn: Trying to work with ideologically rigid Republicans in a bipartisan spirit doesn't work. In his second half, which begins with winning re-election, the President must hit the Republicans hard and drive them back to their own goal line.
    I predict that he will take effective steps to do just that, and the momentum he establishes by winning re-election will result in his achieving some more of the things in his second term that we'd hoped to see in his first.

Moristotle readers can help. You may already have thought of an idea that could be developed into a highly effective attack ad.
    If not, I suggest that you go read "Nuke 'Em." Rich provides links to about ten political ads that you can watch for stimulation, including the "Daisy" ad referred to in his column's subtitle, which the Johnson administration used devastatingly against Senator Barry Goldwater, who lost to Johnson in a landslide.

The Johnson team had a number of promising lines of attack to work with in going after Goldwater: his opposition to civil-rights legislation, his desire to make Social Security "voluntary," his fellow-traveling with John Birchers and other loons of the far right. But the campaign settled on Goldwater’s sloppy bluster about nuclear weapons because the prospect of an atomic Armageddon transcended ideological or policy differences and cut to the emotional quick of the electorate's existential fears.
    The content dictated the bold form. Goldwater’s propensity for flip rhetorical bellicosity was so well known that any replay of his actual words in the ad would be a gratuitous distraction and could be dispensed with. Better still, from the Democrats' point of view, it was Goldwater's own vanquished GOP rivals for the nomination—Nelson Rockefeller and William Scranton—who had led the way in publicizing his loose talk and portraying him as a risky warmonger. (The then-governor of Michigan, George Romney, was another helpful Goldwater basher.) The Republicans had done such a good job of advance hatchet work that voters taking in David and Bathsheba [the movie on TV during which the ad was aired] could let their own imaginations run wild while filling in the ad's blanks. As any student of horror movies knows, what isn't seen or stated is far scarier than any literal enactment onscreen. It's hard for a Hitchcock fan to look at "Daisy" and not see it as a cinematic stepchild of Psycho (1960), in which the brutal shower scene is all the more terrifying because the audience never actually sees the knife violate Janet Leigh's body.

Study Rich's paragraph that describes Mitt Romney’s résumé as "a preposterously target-rich environment for attack ads."

...his lackluster record as Massachusetts governor...his career at Bain...Potentially abortion [would] be criminalized [if Romney were elected]. Women [would] be denied contraceptive services. He’s far right on immigration. He supports efforts to amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage.
    ...There’s also the flip-flopping Mr. Etch A Sketch...countless tone-deaf attempts to feel the pain of the 99 percent...his effort to deny that his Massachusetts health-care law was the precursor of Obama’s Affordable Care Act...his truculence in foreign policy...[his] "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt"...the money stashed in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland...his endorsement of the Paul Ryan budget, which would mutilate the social safety net, including benefits for seniors...his endorsement of Arizona immigration policy as a national "model"...his call for illegal immigrants to submit to "self-deportation"...the radical party he is attempting to mask with a moderate image....

When you've finished shaping your best idea for an attack ad against Romney and the Republicans, submit it to Moristotle for publication. Moristotle's readers will vote to determine the best attack ad idea submitted, and Moristotle will send the winning idea on to the Obama re-election campaign for consideration.
    Multiple submissions are allowed. If you submit two or more winning ideas, you might have a future in political attack advertising!

Punish him...or reward them?

One reader of "Calling all voters" told me that she agrees completely about not donating any money for election campaigns. "It is absolutely unnecessary." Most American voters can read and have the ability to obtain reliable information about the candidates and the issues. They don't need to watch or read political advertisements.
    But my friend doesn't agree about what to do on Election Day. (I had written, "Follow Nike's advice and just go out and vote.")
    After losing the elections of 2000 and 2004 (my friend voted for Gore and Kerry), she was made hopeful in 2008 by "Obama's great plans and ideas."
    But midway through 2012 she is bitterly disappointed. "Obama has not delivered anything he promised." She says that she is "not going to waste my time to vote this year."
    Bitter disappointment is a poignant, personal reason not to vote, and my friend is not the only one who could use that excuse for shunning the poles in November.

But not voting for that reason is equivalent to punishing President Obama without taking the Republican party's deliberate roadblocking into consideration.
    The Republicans' oft-expressed Number One Goal has been (and continues to be) to put Obama down and make sure he can't be re-elected. If my friend doesn't vote, she will be rewarding Congressional Republicans more than she will be punishing President Obama.
    But I have faith in my friend. I'm sure that she'll see the illogic of her intention not to vote and will show up at the polls on Tuesday, November 6, hoping to give the President another chance (and the Republicans fewer members of congress). And helping to give the nation another chance.
    I hope that everyone else suffering disappointment over our government's frustrating stalemate (and I'm one of them) will not reward the obstructionist party in November by refusing to vote for anybody at all.
    To do that would not be the first step in taking our country back.

A moment of silence, please

‎"All the fools in town are on our side—that's a majority anywhere."
–Mark Twain, The Man Who Corrupted Hadleysburg

Put on your black arm band

"A setback for human rights and dignity," as a headline in today's Durham Herald-Sun put it. Sixty percent of North Carolina voters had somehow voted for "Amendment One," or the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act" (DOMA).
    In the column beneath that heading, Chris Fitzsimon, the executive director of North Carolina Policy Watch, explained the outcome this way:

Polls showed that the amendment would pass in large part because the vast majority of voters did not understand what the amendment actually would mean, how many lives it would affect, how many laws it would threaten, how many families it would hurt.

    Judging by the many Bible-thumping letter-writers who got their diatribes printed in newspapers in the weeks leading up to Tuesday's election, I think it's fair to say that the voters they represented didn't give a jot or a tittle about any of that.
    If the amendment didn't pass because of ignorant (intellectually aberrant) voters, it may have passed because of the Bible-adherent, morally abhorrent ones.  (Hmm, enough rhymes here for a limerick or two....)
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Mr. Fitzsimon's text can be found on the NC Policy Watch website under the title "The morning after and the morning after that," dated yesterday.
    Thanks to my friend Mr. Tom Lowe for the Mark Twain quote.

Be prepared to fight for your right to vote

With so many Americans in the McCain/Palin camp showing themselves to be red-hot rednecks, we well-behaved, hopeful Americans need to be ready for what might unfold on Election Day. We haven't forgotten the debacle in Florida eight years ago, or the serious findings of vote theft and disenfranchisement in Ohio four years later (see Robert F. Kennedy, Jr's Rolling Stone article, "Was the 2004 election stolen?"). It is impossible to doubt that similar things will be tried this year. After tolerating an illegitimate "president" Bush for eight years, it would be heart-breaking (and nation-destroying) to endure four more years of such "leadership."

The New York Times reports, in today's editorial, "Sorry, I Can’t Find Your Name," that

Republicans have been pressing for sweeping voter purges in many states. They have also fought to make it harder to enroll new voters. Voting experts say there could be serious problems at the polls on Nov. 4.
    When voters die or move to a new address, or when duplicate registrations are found, a purge is necessary to uphold the integrity of the rolls. New registrations must also be properly screened so only eligible voters get added. The trouble is that these tasks generally occur in secret, with no chance for voters or their advocates to observe or protest when mistakes are made.
    A number of states — including the battleground state of Florida — have adopted no match, no vote rules. Voters can be removed from the rolls if their names do not match a second list, such as a Social Security or driver’s license database. But (like the U.S. mail) lists of this kind are notoriously mistake-filled, and one typo can cause a no match. In Ohio, Republicans recently sued the secretary of state, demanding that she provide local officials with a dubious match list. As many as 200,000 new voters could have been blocked from casting ballots. The Supreme Court rejected the suit, but Republicans are still looking for ways to use the list on Election Day.

The editorial warns us to be prepared to fight for our right to cast a ballot and recommends that voters vote early if their state permits it. "Any voter who finds that their [sic] name has disappeared from the rolls will then have time to challenge mistakes."

The editorial concludes [emphasis mine] that

If voters find on Election Day that their names are not on the rolls, they should contact a voters’ rights group like Election Protection, at 1-866-OUR-VOTE, or a political campaign, which can advocate for them. They should not, except as a last resort, cast a provisional ballot, since it is less likely to be counted.
    There is a desperate need for reform of the way voting rolls are kept. Until then, election officials, voting rights advocates and voters must do everything they can to ensure that all eligible voters are allowed to vote.

I plan to vote early myself, as many, many Americans are doing—they're that angry¹ and that concerned. I'm hearing that the lines for voting early are getting pretty long, but they're surely a good deal shorter than what we'd experience on November 4 if we haven't voted (or attempted to vote) before then.

By the way, the comments from Times readers on today's editorial are extremely moving.
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1. A friend tells me that some white people in her neck of the Pennsylvania woods who still use the n-word are so mad they're going to ignore Mr. Obama's skin color and vote Democratic...if they're not prevented by one or another dirty trick.