Political analysts of all stripes agree that the 2024 Presidential Election will be decided by about 5% of voters who don’t identify with either the Red Team or the Blue Team exclusively. Those rarely seen in the wild independents will prove especially important in the six states that will likely determine which candidate gets 270+ electoral votes—Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia.
I’m Team ‘Blue Team’ in a decidedly blue state, meaning the Octogenarian won’t really need my vote. So what can I do, and people like me, who are desperate to preserve our democracy?
Several things. First, let’s identify all of our independent friends. For example, using their Alaska Airline abbreviations to maintain their privacy, I’m thinking of MARN, TMAT, and MLAL.
Second, ask each 5 percenter which of the six swing states they like the most and would be willing to move to by summer’s end*.
Third, find them a job in their swing state of choice that pays an equivalent amount.
Fourth, help them sell their current crib and buy a similar one in their swing state of choice in time to establish residency.
Fifth, hire a moving company to ease the transition, give them ample gas and hotel money, and pack treats for their journey.
Imagine if everyone on Team Blue, did this, like me, for three of their independent friends.
Landslide baby, landslide.
*with the understanding that as soon as they vote, they can move back if they so choose
File this under “The Fall of the American Empire”.
“Exhibiting a distinctly 21st-century form of raw media power, X has also throttled and punished Mr. Musk’s perceived competitors and foes while reinstating accounts that were previously banned for content violations, some relating to the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. The platform’s algorithm — which dictates how posts are circulated on the site — also now gives added promotion to those who pay to be “verified,” including previously banned accounts.
Among them is @KanekoaTheGreat, a once-banned QAnon influencer who this month circulated a 32-page dossier promoted by Mr. Trump that recounted a barrage of false charges about the 2020 election.
“Trump’s evolution into a Jesus-like figure for some but not all white evangelicals began soon after he began his first presidential campaign. As David P. Gushee, a professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University, explained by email:
‘Some of Trump’s Christian followers do appear to have grown to see him as a kind of religious figure. He is a savior. I think it began with the sense that he was uniquely committed to saving them from their foes (liberals, Democrats, elites, seculars, illegal immigrants, etc.) and saving America from all that threatens it.’
In this sense, Gushee continued, ‘a savior does not have to be a good person but just needs to fulfill his divinely appointed role. Trump is seen by many as actually having done so while president.’
This view of Trump is especially strong ‘in the Pentecostal wing of the conservative Christian world,’ Gushee wrote, where he is sometimes also viewed as an anointed leader sent by God. ‘Anointed’ here means set apart and especially equipped by God for a holy task. Sometimes the most unlikely people got anointed by God in the Bible. So Trump’s unlikeliness for this role is actually evidence in favor. The multiple criminal charges against Trump serve to strengthen the belief of many evangelicals about his ties to God, according to Gushee:
‘The prosecutions underway against Trump have been easily interpretable as signs of persecution, which can then connect to the suffering Jesus theme in Christianity. Trump has been able to leverage that with lines like, “They’re not persecuting me. They’re persecuting you.” The idea that he is unjustly suffering and, in so doing, vicariously absorbing the suffering that his followers would be enduring is a powerful way for Trump to be identified with Jesus.'”
No doubt, add a lot of PressingPausers to the list of liberals, Democrats, elites, seculars, illegal immigrants, and other nefarious foes that many Iowans think they need saving from.
Of course, they don’t really know any PressingPausers, some of whom I’m indebted to for reaching out after my recent “It’s My Parents’ Fault” post. I had a beer with one in Olympia yesterday. Others in Olympia; Greensboro, NC; Huntington Beach, CA; and Japan messaged, texted, and emailed. Trust me, no one needs saving from them. They’re savers of others.
Weight loss drugs inventor Lotte Bjerre Knudsen says proudly adding, “I don’t care that much about money.”
One two-part myth people in the (dis)United States ignorantly perpetuate about socialism is that it fails everywhere because it zaps people’s motivation to work. That absent economic incentives, people won’t achieve much of anything.
Ethnocentric capitalists maintain their collective ignorance of socialists, and socialism, by not knowing the Lotte Bjerre Knudsens of the world. Cue a recent LBK interview.
DER SPIEGEL: You have made Novo Nordisk Europe’s most valuable company, with a greater market capitalization than Daimler, Bayer, Lufthansa and BMW combined. Do you benefit financially?
Knudsen: I don’t care that much about money, I’m a socialist! Here in Scandinavia, we teach our children teamwork from an early age. It’s not about the individual. And that’s how I am too. I have never asked for a raise in 34 years.
DER SPIEGEL: You never got more money? Not even now?
Knudsen: Yes, of course. But I didn’t push. I can’t see that capitalism and money make people happy. At Novo Nordisk, I have always preferred to use my credibility to demand more funding for science, not more salary for myself. I also have no intellectual property rights. They belong to the company because I gave them up when I was employed.
I don’t care about money? It’s not about the individual? I can’t see that capitalism and money make people happy?
“Former President Donald J. Trump is planning an aggressive expansion of his first-term efforts to upend America’s trade policies if he returns to power in 2025 — including imposing a new tax on “most imported goods” that would risk alienating allies and igniting a global trade war.”
The Former Guy is such a successful businessperson, and so rich, we should probably just trust that he knows what he’s doing.
The New York Times has the temerity to disagree with my assessment. They write:
“Evaluating the merits of Mr. Trump’s trade vision is complex because there could be multiple ripple effects, and he is seeking long-term changes. But many economic studies concluded that the tariffs he imposed as president cost American society more than the benefits they produced.
Research from economists at the Federal Reserve and the University of Chicago found that tariffs Mr. Trump imposed on washing machines in 2018 created about 1,800 jobs while raising the median prices consumers paid for new washers and dryers by $86 and $92 per unit. That spending added up to about $817,000 per job.”
Wait a minute. If the Former Guy is mistaken about tariffs, what else might he be getting wrong?
In the 2022 film, Banshees of Inisherin, Colm Doherty’s motivation may not have been fully appreciated amidst the story’s intensity. Doherty wanted to avoid smalltalk at any cost because he realized he had become old and the end was near, so if he was going to leave any meaningful legacy, he had to focus exclusively on his musicianship.
I wonder if we avoid questions of legacy out of a fear of being forgotten. Will anyone remember? If so, who? And what will they remember? And for how long?
Enter Jonny feckin’ Steinberg, author of Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage. I predict Steinberg’s book will be the go-to source for understanding the end of apartheid for hundreds of years. I read it because I followed the anti-apartheid struggle closely in my twenties and I wanted to learn more about two of the central characters. And not knowing much about their marriage, I suspected there would be some salacious details.
Almost immediately though, I got distracted by Steinberg’s brilliance, constantly wondering how he managed telling such a complex and intimate story in the most intelligent way imaginable. Surgical is the word that springs to mind. Steinberg, working mostly from a 15,000 page file illegally held on to by one of the government’s top security officials, repeatedly takes readers inside the Mandela’s relationship, into Nelson’s Robben Island prison cell, inside the African National Congress’s machinations, and onto the streets of the Soweto uprising.
The descriptive writing is good, but what’s most exceptional about the book is Steinberg’s masterful interpretation of documents and events. It’s an ingenious example of historiography or how history should be written. Sometimes Steinberg opts for humility and uses tentative language such as “Although we can never know for certain, . . .” At others, he fearlessly calls into question both central characters’ veracity, especially Nelson’s. Most of the time though, he’s helpfully splitting the difference, thoughtfully offering a particular interpretation based upon the precise historical context and the preponderance of evidence. Very early on, Steinberg’s brilliant interpreting and reasoned judgement caused me to conclude that he was the most credible of narrators.
Steinberg’s acknowledgements reveal that he had eight editors across three publishing houses. And he’s generous in crediting his research assistant, several archivists, and numerous readers of his drafts. Writing may be a solitary endeavor, but publishing a seminal work of this nature, clearly is not.
In terms of the story itself, first and foremost, one can’t help but be overwhelmed by the scale of the government’s persistent human rights abuses and violence, but also the black-on-black violence it engendered.
Another lasting lesson is that the media places individuals on pedestals, whether Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, or Volodymyr Zelenskyy by limiting coverage of their failings, both personal and political. For if we get too close, we will always find, just like with Nelson and Winnie, the famous aren’t just fallible, they’re extremely flawed.
There are many other take-aways. While an imperfect analogy, I came to think of Nelson as a Martin Luther King like thinker and activist and Winnie as a female Malcom X. This tension begs important questions including how does social change happen, nonviolently or violently, slowly or quickly? And if changing a violent regime requires its own violence, how do the survivors turn off that spigot?
Like many of you, I loved me the late 70s and 80s Dodgers. Steve Garvey was a nice first baseman, but political scientists have found no correlation between hitting a curve ball and representing constituents well.
Just say no to nostalgia, because at 75, he’s too old to be your next Senator.*
Wait a minute, that picture is from 2019?! When Garv was 71? Looks a lot younger. Maybe I’m just jelly of the hair, and of course the forearms, but I digress.
I know you have a soft spot for octogenarian Senators, so I’m probably wasting my time. Hell, you’re probably thinking Garv could serve two terms and still not be in DFeinstein territory.
Garvey is ahead of Porter and he doesn’t even use a whiteboard, so his candidacy is no joke. As a former son of the Golden State, I’ve done what I can to turn the election. My work here is done. Now, to quote today’s youth, whatevs. You’re on your own.
Ron
*Please note Dan Dan The Retired Transpo Man, the nonpartisan ageism.
Pressing Pause 