A tough day. Possible daylight. And what we share below the surface.

The Hannah Arendt Center ran a short piece of mine - Below the Surface - about underlying currents that (especially) most Americans share and how they might help resolve our conflicts. 

Alas, these very traits -- like a reflexive suspicion of authority -- are being used against us, riling us -- right and left -- to see threat only  from directions that our faction dreads, unable to conceive that our opponents share the same instinctive fear... just aimed at different, oppressive elites.

We could use this commonality to unite against the manipulators! If that Arendt piece interests you, come see more extensive discussions of these topics in Polemical Judo: Memes for Our Political Knife-fights.

But yes, as I polish this posting, history is being made. A vote in the popularly elected U.S. House of Representatives that will surely, in January, be cancelled in the unrepresentative Senate, throwing it back into our laps. That is, unless...

== The Secret Ballot gambit? ==

From Politico: "A secret impeachment ballot in the Senate might sound crazy, but it would take only three senators to allow that."  Of course the right-o-sphere reacts to this idea with volcanic fury. But this article points out just three GOP Senators could swing a rules vote allowing secret balloting for conviction.

"Trump and those around him seem confident that he won’t lose the 20 Republican senators needed to block a guilty verdict. But it’s not hard to imagine three senators supporting a secret ballot. Five sitting Republican senators have already announced their retirements; four of those are in their mid-70s or older and will never run for office again. They might well be willing to demand secrecy in order to give cover to their colleagues who would like to convict Trump but are afraid to do so because of politics in their home districts. There are also 10 Republican senators who aren’t up for reelection until 2024 and who might figure Trumpism will be irrelevant by then." writes J. Glover in Politico.

Interesting. As far as it goes.

Only then note (as I do in my book's chapter on "Exit Strategies") that what's required for conviction and removal is 2/3 of those "present," with a quorum being just 50 Senators. Hence in theory, if enough Republicans feigned illness, or proclaimed fear of (nonexistent) death threats, or almost any excuse, those stay-aways could throw all of Mitch McConnell's math out the window.

Let me be clear, I deem the dominionist apocalypse-fanatic Mike Pence to be more dangerous than the jibberer currently roaming the Executive mansion throwing tantrums. Still, if you want to explore a variety of chess moves... some of them you can do, personally... well, the kindle version is really cheap and so is the paperback.

Oh, indicative of how far the mania has sunk. From a recent poll: "Majority of Republicans say Trump better president than Lincoln.” 

Um, duh? What do you expect from confederates? Oh, but it goes farther...

== Putting it starkly ==

"More than half of Republicans surveyed in a 2019 Pew poll said colleges and universities are hurting the country, a drastic shift from how the same group viewed such institutions two years ago. In September 2019, Tennessee Republican State Sen. Kerry Roberts called for eliminating higher education - yes, that - on his conservative radio talk show arguing it would cut off the 'liberal breeding ground,'” writes Justin Wise in The Hill.

There's a lot to this new Know Nothing movement, of course, and I explore the disease in Chapter 5 , as well as this article: “Declining trust in our expert castes: what are underlying causes?” Why would the GOP masters be pushing this meme? 

Because an Orwellian hate fest toward fact-people undermines the very ones standing in the way of a re-imposition of feudalism. And of course nearly all fact-folks were influenced by colleges and universities. And the stupidest Democrat failing of all is not making the War on Facts a central, towering grievance to corner them with.

Now comes an exposé in Foreign Policy revealing how alt-righters are savagely attacking the very idea of a career civil service, a campaign accelerating in the era of Trump.

 “Career civil servants often endure stressful working conditions, but in the Trump White House, some of them face online trolling from alt-right bloggers who seek to portray them as clandestine partisans plotting to sabotage the president’s agenda. The online attacks often cite information that appears to be provided by unnamed White House officials or Trump loyalists.”

Want to hear something surprising? I am actually sympathetic with the core pain that propels this inchoate rage toward college educations! 

For a century, "blue" city-university America has done something overwhelmingly hurtful to "red" rural America. Not intentionally hurtful - it would seem a good thing to any rational person - but traumatic, nonetheless. Every September, we steal their children - the best of them, the pride of their high schools - who scurry to our colleges - to Mordor - as fast as they can. And when they return - if they return - they are changed. It is an ancient dread, just as in all those old mythologies of stolen babies and changelings.

We owe no apology. It's all part of a good and wondrous thing! But we do owe it to our fellow citizens, to try and understand. Not only as our duty, compassion and love, but because only understanding will empower us to better resist their volcanic rage.

See it explicated here: Declining Trust; Rising Fear.

== What "our" billionaires ought to do, instead ==

What if Michael Bloomberg truly wants to fight Trump - and be viewed as a hero, not an egotist?

There’s an approach that he - and Tom Steyer - could take that’s cheaper, more dignified and likely far more effective than running for president. Let them - or other civilization-loving zillionaires - offer to pay the legal expenses of anyone who’s thinking about breaking a Trump Non Disclosure Agreement.  

Trump has openly bragged about his Great Wall of NDAs. Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal are just the fluffy crust we see. Breaking through Trump’s mythology of vengefully-enforced coerced silence just a couple of times might shatter the whole edifice, unleashing a tsunami of revelation. 

Note that we don't need a billionaire, to do this. Almost any House Committee could do this by promising immunity from prosecution and possibly civil suits, to anyone coming before them and testifying the contents of an NDA!  Doubt that? Shouldn't we test it?  Then remember this, any lawsuit filed by Trump etc. against NDA breakers would then go before a jury and likely be nullified. That's a three layer defense to lure a tsunami of revelations!

Or see elsewhere my much broader proposals for subsidies for whistleblowers and or repentant henchmen!

== Tidbits ==

For those too busy to read... "tl;dr... this Animated Mueller report from The Washington Post brings it to life and makes clear whether there was "exoneration."

Again, I recommend this cogent and insightful issue of The Atlantic for its sober appraisals of the possibility of US civil war. I think the brilliant authors are myopic and miss much. But in a nation of the blind, the nearsighted are sages, indeed.