This Is Your Grandpa's Democratic Party(?)

"Democrats abandoned ordinary Americans."

It's not true. But it's stuck, like a craw in the mouth of the American voter (and the American pundit). And the big question amongst Democratic strategists is how to dislodge it.

My latest idea, in my ongoing quest to become the Democratic Party's Francis Coppola, is to explicitly run with a narrative that says "yes, this is your Grandfather's Democratic Party" -- directly tying oneself to JFK and the New Deal and the civil rights era and that whole period where (supposedly) the Democratic Party was the party of ordinary Americans. Cut to lines about:

• Defending labor unions.
• Bringing back honest, well-paying jobs that can support your family.
• Taking on the billionaires robbing our democracy.
• Protecting civil rights.
• Restoring a women's right to choose.

All intercut with images of modern workers interspersed with older imagery (the March on Selma, men on girders building skyscrapers, etc.) that evokes the good old days.

What's the point of the ad? Basically, it's to create a permission structure for people who have -- for whatever reason -- internalized the narrative of "the party left me" to tell themselves things have changed again. They're not voting for the modern Democratic Party that Fox News has created for them in their minds over the past few years (latte-sipping coastal elites blah blah blah), they're voting for the mythologized Democratic Party of yesteryear that the Fox News caricature is tacitly juxtaposed against -- the party of the New Deal and of JFK, the party that was a working-class party, the party that built things and fought for everyday Americans.

"Mythologized" is important. Obviously, in reality the Democratic Party of that era (or any era) was not some clarion beacon of the worker's voice; nor was it some uncomplicated bastion of civil rights and women's rights advocacy. I know that, you know that. I also know that "ordinary Americans" is a loaded term, that the past wasn't actually that great for a whole lot of people, and so on.

But we're not writing a history paper here, we're dealing with a mood, and that mood is not especially connected to historical reality. How many times have you heard someone say that the current Democratic Party "just keeps moving to the right" (when it is beyond obvious that the Biden administration is the most progressive Democratic administration in my lifetime)? Objectively, it is impossible to defend the notion that the Democratic Party leadership is more conservative now than it was during the Clinton administration. In reality, making a show of affirming people who think "well, back then Democrats were fighting for me" is worth playing a bit of make-believe. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, and just the gesture of "this is a change in a direction that makes you feel fuzzy" can have an outsized impact. The past wasn't actually that great, and modern changes are good actually. But if you can make people feel as if the things we're pulling for now are simply a restoration of the hazy memories they have when things were inchoately "better" (or "less complicated" or "less divided" or whatever), you're in a very good position.

I'm not saying the idea is perfect. In particular, even as a subversion of the "not your grandpa's ..." frame, the tagline still is a rough one at a time when many people are aggrieved at the "gerontocracy" in American politics. So workshop the hell out of this. I'm not prideful about it. But I think there's something here. The great insight of the contemporary conservative movement is in how they manage to fuse their present-day reactionary values as if there were simply a restoration of the greatness of the founders (I read one constitutional commentator describe originalism as "ventriloquizing the present through the past"). Democrats can do it too -- and as the Republican Party falls deeper and deeper into the grip of billionaire oligarchs and weird paranoid extremists, there's an opening here we can and should exploit.

Learning the Right Wrong Lessons, Part II

The major pivot point in Joe Biden's term in office did not stem from inflation or the war in Gaza. It came following his withdrawal from Afghanistan. That decision was marked by a few key characteristics:

1. It was the right call: we weren't accomplishing anything in Afghanistan, and nobody had a better plan to turn things around other than "stay for six more months, and then six more months after that."
2. It was always going to be bumpy, leaving ample attack avenues open for political opponents (and the media) to exploit; and
3. It was vocally demanded by the American left.

Three of Biden's predecessors over a twenty year period had stayed in Afghanistan, perhaps not believing the first point, perhaps fearing the second. Biden was the one who actually followed through and did the right thing, hoping that the progressive actors who enlivened the third point would rise to his defense to counteract the second.

It didn't happen. Biden withdrew, got absolutely pilloried for it in the press, received essentially no credit for it from the left, and to be honest his presidential tenure never recovered. As I and many others observed, any rational political observer knew what lesson to draw from the ordeal, and it's not a good one.

I think we're going through the same scenario with Biden's recent commutation wave targeting persons who were already moved into home confinement during COVID. After the Hunter Biden pardon, there were absolutely valid questions about how the clemency power was being used, and one narrative many progressives rapidly coalesced on was that if Biden is going to pardon his own son, he better use it to the benefit of ordinary, non-connected inmates in the clutches of prison system. Much like the Afghanistan withdrawal, this was a vocal demand of the left, and much like the Afghanistan withdrawal it was essentially assured that any large-scale deployment of the clemency power would yield something that political opponents could exploit. Contrary to the idyll fantasies in certain quarter, most people in prison have indeed done something wrong, and any political action to benefit the likes of "them" is a ripe avenue for political attack. This is one reason why criminal justice reform is hard.

Anyway, Biden issues a commutation order for roughly 1500 people, the largest one-day usage of the clemency power in American history. One of the beneficiaries was the notorious "kids for cash" judge in Pennsylvania, Michael Conahan. People -- including liberals who a moment earlier were demanding expansive use of the clemency power -- went ballistic. And Biden got essentially got no credit.

It goes without saying that the Conahan committed an absolutely heinous crime. But it is a testament to how bad the media culture is around this issue that when I first heard about Biden's decision I was misled twice. First I thought it was the case that Biden pardoned Conahan; he didn't, the sentence was commuted. Then I got the impression that the commutation meant that the judge would serve a negligible time in jail (time is meaningless to me right now, I had absolutely no sense of when the judge committed his crimes or was convicted and sentenced). Wrong again: Conahan was sentenced to seventeen years in prison, and this commutation occurred after he served fourteen.

Could one say that the Biden administration could have reviewed the commutations more closely to make sure a guy like this wasn't included? Perhaps -- but I'd level two notes of caution. First, if it wasn't him, odds are it'd be someone else. Again, most people in federal prison did something to hurt someone. If you support using clemency on a wide scale, you have to be willing to take that hit. Second, there is an inherent incompatibility between doing clemency at scale and adding a bunch of extra layers of individualized review. If we're talking a dozen or so people or so, it's probably possible to conduct a timely review of each of their records in depth that will assure oneself that there's nothing there that will trigger major political blowback. When we're talking about thousands of people at once, that sort of review isn't feasible without gumming up the works indefinitely. So if you think the problems in our carceral system are not just a few idiosyncratic cases of unusually sympathetic people who were caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time, but is systemic, then you need to allow for reform mechanisms that are systemic in nature, and that necessarily means they're not going to be perfectly attentive to the particularities of every inmate's case.

Here, the reason that Conahan received a commutation wasn't because someone looked at his particular case file and said "this person is especially worthy of executive grace." There was rather a broad metric the Biden administration was using -- people who had already served most of their sentences, were medically vulnerable in prison, had not been convicted of violent or sexual offenses, and who had already been transferred into home confinement -- and this man was one of 1500 or so who met the criteria. That's a reasonable metric, and if you're telling me that it's essential to add more bureaucratic barriers to the clemency process -- and, in essence, make it much, much harder to issue clemency at scale -- in order to ensure that Michale Conahan serves seventeen years in prison instead of fourteen, then I say your priorities are out of order.

But the reality is that, like with Afghanistan, any observer will see what Joe Biden did here, see the reaction, see the anemic defense he received even from many of those who demanded action just like this, and learn the only rational lesson there is to learn: stay away from criminal justice reform. Be stingy with the clemency power. Keep more people in prison for longer. That's the lesson, and I'm sure every savvy Democratic politico is internalizing it.

Racist Idiots Continue To Be Mad That Caitlin Clark Is Not Racist

It's an exaggeration to say that conservatives only care about women's sports when it gives them an excuse to be transphobic. Sometimes they care about women's sports in order to be racist too.

For example, every once in a while, idiots try to conscript Caitlin Clark into racism and then get really mad that she doesn't participate.

In college, I remember a blowup some people had over Angel Reese doing some trash talking against Clark when LSU beat Iowa in the national championship. Clark, of course, is no stranger to trash talk herself, and people rightfully understood the pearl-clutching on her behalf as highly racialized in character. But the "controversy" was entirely on the outside; Clark gave absolutely no indication that she couldn't take what she dished out. Her view was always that trash talk and the like is part of the game, whether she's on the giving or the receiving end. Racists wanted to be racist on Clark's behalf, Clark did not bite, and it was pretty clear that the folks who rushed to "defend" her resented her for not obliging.

The other day we witnessed another iteration of this, after Time Magazine mentioned ongoing frustration by some Black WNBA players (h/t: Kevin Drum) who think they're persistently overlooked because of race (and that, in turn, Clark's popularity stems in part from the "great white savior" narrative). Clark was asked about the issue, and gave a perfectly reasonable answer about the importance of celebrating and uplifting the many Black players who have contributed immeasurably to the league's success:

“I want to say I’ve earned every single thing, but as a white person, there is privilege,” says Clark. “A lot of those players in the league that have been really good have been Black players. This league has kind of been built on them. The more we can appreciate that, highlight that, talk about that, and then continue to have brands and companies invest in those players that have made this league incredible, I think it’s very important. I have to continue to try to change that. The more we can elevate Black women, that’s going to be a beautiful thing.”

A good answer, and predictably, some people went ballistic over it:

Well, it happened. Caitlin Clark finally bent the knee to the insufferable, gaslighting, disgusting, race-baiting woke mob.... Anyway, Clark got her roses, and then proceeded to bend the knee to the mob.... Caitlin Clark bends the knee to an invisible mob.... Why did the best player in the WNBA — by a laughably wide margin — crumble like a cheap tent?

Now we can concentrate on how pathetic this whine is. But I want to flag something specific, as someone who actually did follow the WNBA season this year: Caitlin Clark is not, in fact, the best player in the WNBA. The best player in the WNBA, by a laughably wide margin, is A'ja Wilson. This is no knock on Clark, who is an outstanding player and was well-deserving of rookie of the year. But let's look at the stat lines this season (all stats on a per game basis):

• Wilson: 26.9 points, .518 FG%,11.9 rebounds, 2.3 assists, 1.8 steals, 2.6 blocks, 1.3 turnovers
• Clark: 19.2 points, .417 FG%, 5.7 rebounds, 8.4 assists, 1.3 steals, 0.7 blocks, 5.6 turnovers

With all respect to Clark, this is a blowout. Wilson averaged a double-double on the season. She led the league in blocks; she set an all-time league record in points per game. She led Clark in every statistical category but assists (unsurprising, since Clark is a guard and Wilson is a center). That's why Wilson won the MVP by a unanimous vote -- only the second time that's occurred in WNBA history.

Again, this is not at all to dismiss Clark as anything other than an all-star. She had a great rookie season. She did a fantastic job leading the hitherto sad sack Indiana Fever to the playoffs, overcoming a dismal season start (where we saw Clark's own adjustment pains getting used to playing at the highest level of the sport). Her own rookie of the year honors, and fourth place finish in MVP voting, were also very well-deserved. And she plays a exciting style of basketball that's a ton of fun to watch -- I know full well that  a Caitlin Clark game is must-see TV.

Obviously, at one level this only validates the complaint by Wilson and others regarding how they're overlooked for clearly racist reasons. But I also raise this because the sort of racist morons out here demanding Caitlin Clark be racist also, very clearly, pay absolutely zero attention to the WNBA -- Caitlin Clark included -- for any reason other than looking for an excuse to be racist. They know nothing about the game other than that it might provide a vector for various racist and transphobic projections. So it's no surprise that when the game and the players don't indulge them in their bigotry, they throw a tantrum. It's literally the only reason they care about women's sports.

With Great Blocking Power ....

As everyone knows, one of the main differences between Bluesky and even "old Twitter" is the blocking culture. One of my favorite stories from when I first joined Bluesky came in the wake of a series of negative interactions with a semi-prominent journalist figure. I considered blocking her but then I thought "no -- while this wasn't pleasant, there was nothing abusive here, so I'm going to be better than that." The next morning I woke up and discovered ... she had blocked me! Moral of the story: block first. At least that way you get the satisfaction.

The block-happy culture of Bluesky has led to a lot of chatter about Bluesky turning into an "echo chamber" -- an accusation which, ironically enough, is one of the fastest ways to get yourself blocked on Bluesky. For my part, I think the echo chamber complaint is overblown (in part because very often what we tell ourselves is "exposure to diverse views" actually is a way to reaffirm "wow, those people are maniacs"). But I do think that it is important to start thinking about best blocking practices in a informational system where "block early, block often" is normal and not frowned upon.

Take block lists, for example. These can be valuable tools to ramp up blocking of entire suites of bad actors quickly. But they're also easily abused. I've seen reports of trolls and other bad actors setting up block lists seeded with an assortment of the "usual suspect" controversial accounts and then, once people adopt them, adding in (say) trans rights activists. If you're not paying attention to who is curating the lists, it is easy to get taken in by that sort of move. That doesn't mean "don't use block lists", it just means be mindful when and how you use them. The mantra of "block early, block often" shouldn't be used to disavow one's own responsibility over the choices you make -- rather, it should accentuate it.

A similar concern attaches to "secondary" block lists -- that is, those populated not by the primary bad actors, but by people who follow those bad accounts. Again, it's not that I can't see the use case for these, but they're fraught with danger. Most obviously, people who research, say, antisemitism (to use a random example) may follow all sorts of unlovely accounts for research and monitoring purposes. Follows do not equal endorsement. And the broader version of that insight is that who people follow is their business.  People make follow/unfollow decisions for an infinite number of reasons. We have absolute autonomy over what shows up on our feed, but we shouldn't start claiming authority over other people's feeds. If they start being unpleasant in their own voice, block them, but the moralization over who one follows strikes me as problematic. Tend to one's own garden.

Maybe you have quarrels with either of the above examples. But the bigger picture point I'm trying to make is this: a social media culture in which blocking is normal also has to be one where we take responsibility for the choices we make when blocking. A social media culture where blocking is rare can get away with people being less mindful about it, because they're only going to be acting in the most clear-cut cases -- one doesn't need to do a lot of deep reflecting to justify blocking RandoNazi1488. It's when we move beyond those cases that thought and consideration becomes important. And precisely because there are not and cannot be rules about blocking -- it is, ultimately, a matter of personal discretion -- it is especially important to cultivate a suite of good virtues around blocking. Block people who are abusive, but not people who just disagree. Block people for what they write, not for what the people they follow write. I don't think these are especially onerous, and I think most people are trying to follow them to one degree or another. But it can be easy to conflate Bluesky's quite healthy "block early, block often" mantra into an unhealthy belief that the actual ethos of the community is "I shouldn't have to think at all about my blocking choices." That isn't our ethos, and it shouldn't be our ethos.

A willingness to block often is not the same thing as being cavalier about blocking. Ideally, a healthy blocking culture will entail thinking carefully about how to balance hearing from a range of views and avoiding epistemic silencing with having a pleasant experience and not being inundated with worthless troll blather. I do think most people are capable of striking that balance in a reasonable way, but it isn't something one can do thoughtlessly. With great blocking power comes great blocking responsibility, and that's something we should embrace.

Saturation Ad Air War

One aspect of political culture I very strongly believe in is that most voters' knowledge of political affairs is primarily one of ambiance. They don't know much in the way of facts (what is the inflation rate, has crime gone up or down). They know a "mood". They feel that things are getting better, or worse. They hear a lot that America basically has open borders, or they hear a lot that abortion rights are going away. The connection to reality is pretty well unimportant (we definitely don't have open borders; abortion rights really are under threat). It's the sensation, the steady drumbeat of narrative, that moves them.

To that end, I've long thought that a good progressive billionaire project would be to continually air issue ads that are not tied to a given political race or even an election, but are just part of the backdrop every time one turns on the news or watches Monday Night Football. The goal of these ads should be to make certain hopes, fears, and moods simply part of our backdrop -- something "we heard somewhere." It should not cast itself as expressly political -- an effort to elect this or that politician. In fact, "issue ads" is probably the wrong moniker. It shouldn't present itself as political at all. It should be simply a story, told over and over again, until it seeps into the national subconscious.

What sorts of ads do I have in mind? I pitched one about abortion a few years ago. I had another idea for one about trans and gender non-binary issues:

A family is at home in classic suburbia: mom, dad, and a gender non-conforming adolescent kid. The scene is utterly mundane and ordinary, but with a touch of danger lurking in the background. Mom is cooking, but beside her one can see a newspaper headline announcing the latest right-wing attack on trans kids. Dad is telling a dad joke to the kid (who rolls their eyes), the TV news on mute in the background but the subtitles have a talking head calling families who provided gender-affirming care to their children sexual predators who should be thrown in jail.

Interspersed with each shot, we have a quick cut of heavily armed police massing outside the house. Right as everyone is getting ready for dinner, the door is battered open and the scene goes black. All we hear is the police demanding everyone on the ground, then demanding the child come with them as the family screams frantically. The last we hear is the kid pleading to their parents "don't let them take me!" 

What's the point of the ad? To put people (and particularly suburban parents -- political hell hath no fury like a suburban schoolparent scorned) in a mindset where families are in danger. Maybe their family. Maybe their neighbor's family. There's no lie here -- these are the stakes, and families are in danger. But the point is to prime them with that sensation in advance, so that it's what they immediately think of whenever the Trump administration announces policies that will be all about threatening families.

The ad is just an idea (and nobody wants my advertising ideas). And not all the ads need to be negative, necessarily (though as the opposition party, that's probably going to be the bulk of it). But the broader point is that liberals need to do everything they can to just saturate their narratives into the American bloodstream, not as part of a discrete political campaign, but simply as a background feature of what the world is right now. We can't wait for election season, and we certainly can't wait for an increasingly infirm legacy media to the job for us. These stories should be mainlined into every American home, by any and every medium available, and should start right now.

The Making of a Murder-Cheerer

Last week, I spent some time at the eye doctor to address periodic swelling, irritation, and pain in my left eye. This happens periodically, but it got especially bad during my trip to Florida (to the point where airline attendants asked if I needed paramedics to meet me once we landed). The doctor was quite nice but suggested that incidents like this are a symptom of my keratoconus worsening and there probably wasn't much to be done at this point other than hope it doesn't happen too often and ride it out when it does.

I say "at this point" because at an earlier point there was something to be done -- a surgical proceeding called corneal cross-linking. Cross-linking surgery doesn't "fix" keratoconus, it just stops further deterioration, but since keratoconus is a degenerative condition that's no small thing. I was slated to get cross-linking surgery while at Berkeley, but at the last moment my insurer denied coverage as not medically necessary since I could still see with contact lenses. Again, remember that what cross-linking does is stop degeneration -- that is, the surgery would preserve the status quo where I could see with contact lenses -- so the fact that I currently could see with contact lenses is exactly why the surgery was being recommended to me. Nonetheless, even though the surgery had been scheduled for months, the insurer issued its denial just a day or two before, giving me essentially no time to appeal or gather additional medical information to support why the surgery was, in fact, necessary.

Several years later (now in Portland), I was able to get the surgery -- but only in my right eye. My left eye had, in the intervening years, deteriorated to the point where it was no longer a candidate for the procedure. And that deterioration is likely permanent, and (given the periodic swelling etc.) possibly still ongoing. My doctor said that if things continue to get worse in that eye, the only real treatment option available is a full-blown corneal transplant -- quite a bit more intense (and expensive) than cross-linking would have been, and not something I'm especially excited to pursue. There's not even the karmic satisfaction of the insurer having to pay more, because I'm on different insurance now compared to when the surgery was initially denied!

My experience is, of course, not uncommon. We've all been swapping stories on this subject prompted by the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. My case is not to the degree of being denied life-saving care, but permanent vision loss in an eye is not exactly frivolous either. Like many Americans, I have persistent ambient anxiety about what would happen if I faced a major medical crisis, and that anxiety is less about the crisis itself and more wondering in what ways will my insurer try to screw me over in my most vulnerable moment in order to financially ruin me.

There are very, very good reasons for Americans to loathe their health insurance companies. But even still, it is alarming how many people are outright thrilled to have witnessed a street murder. The cause of this excitement is, no doubt, in significant part justifiable fury at the injustices health insurers wreak on regular people. But that more systemic explanation I think has to be cut with acknowledgment that a significant portion of people seem to be excited at the prospect of being justified in cheering a murder. They are luxuriating in this feeling of justified schadenfreude, and are encouraging others to feel similarly, and are hoping to feel it again and again.

No matter how one identifies the cause, such a situation is not a sign of a healthy society. For me, there were eerie echoes of the days after October 7, where we also saw too many people be not just thrilled at seeing Israelis murdered, but thrilled at their mutual, collectively reinforcing justifications at why they were right to be thrilled. Certainly, Thompson was far more directly complicit in injustice than a group of teenaged concertgoers, whose "complicity" was basically being Israelis full stop. But to the celebrators, this is a difference of degree and not kind -- they labored hard to establish why being Israeli was a form of culpable complicity for which the proper punishment was death and the proper affect was a hearty cheer. And that effort to stretch so one can properly enjoy the murder is powerful evidence that the desire to enjoy murders is the actual driving motivation, with the political or strategic apologias just epiphenomenal window dressing. How far down the pecking order at UHC is it warranted to be excited at extermination? To the adjusters? To the HR professionals? To the janitors? We all know the Tumblr accounts who would rush to point out we should cheer not just the death of the Himmlers but every German Nazi, top to bottom -- so why not apply that logic to UHC? Or to Israel? Or to any other institution complicit in systemic injustice -- a category which can include without too much in the way of struggle every institution? (This was one of the lessons of The Good Place -- while everyone has an obligation to try to do the right thing, overindulgence in "complicity" arguments makes everyone guilty and places everyone in hell).

The terrible realization many of us had, and are having again, is that for many the orientation towards Israel/Palestine or the American healthcare system isn't "let's create a just political structure for all" but rather "I want to see the right people be hurt," and the thirst for the latter is what drives the nominal political commitments rather than vice versa. Even where one can sympathize with the causes, this sort of outlook never leads anywhere good; more often than not, it's just people coming up with stories for why they should be permitted to revel in the misery of others. As a species, we should know well that our problem is not that we are too skittish about justifying brutality and violence, and so we should be hesitant about any political momentum which takes the form of accentuating and accelerating a popular desire to enjoy murder.

It is no answer to point out the many, many more people whose lives have been ruined by unjust insurance denials (UHC has the highest denial rate in the country, denying a full third of all filed claims). For one, anyone who reads a story about one of these denials and lets out a whoop and high fives would be a bad person too. More fundamentally, I also return to one of the most outstanding articles I've ever read, Robin West's "Sex, Law, and Consent," which does a superb job explaining how direct interpersonal injustices are qualitatively different than "systemic" ones even when the latter cause greater tangible loss than the former. We experience being robbed or burgled differently from being on the receiving end of wage theft, even if the latter might actually take more dollars from our pocket; West extends this analysis to how we think of rape vis-a-vis the broader suite of patriarchal norms which regularly generate "consent" to sexual activities that are not truly or enthusiastically desired. Again, this doesn't mean that UHC's conduct in the healthcare system isn't an example of serious injustice -- it is, just like wage theft is and just like structural sexism is -- but the point is that we're not simply delusional in viewing street murder as qualitatively different notwithstanding the fact that it is but one dead body.

I say all this because there is not, or should not be, a tension between "the murder of Brian Thompson is bad" and "we are obligated to create a more just and humane healthcare system that is not liable to the exploitations and predations of entities like UnitedHealthCare." Anxiety about insurer-driven financial ruin notwithstanding, and direct experience with insurer manipulation causing permanent medical injury notwithstanding, I never wanted Brian Thompson to die, and I cannot relate to thousands of internet strangers who did want him to die. What I want is for our health care system to work for us and to take care of us. That's all. My first response to Thompson's murder was to write:

The murder of UnitedHealthcare's CEO is outrageous. We as a society must do everything in our power to ensure that a tragedy like this never occurs again. If that means implementing national universal healthcare so that anger over a failing private system isn't displaced onto violence, so be it.

And while yes, that was intentionally snarky, I also meant it with total earnestness. We should hate murder. And we should commit ourselves to creating a just healthcare system that doesn't generate justified seething hatred amongst ordinary Americans.

Yet here we see another element of our despairing time, which is that the proof is in the pudding in terms of what drives social change. Just like it may be sadly true that manipulative echo chambers are a more effective political strategy that earnest and honest engagement with people of diverse political views, it may be sadly true that violence and social disruption are able to drive necessary political change where persuasion and law fail. It is a bad precedent when we let terroristic violence drive even salutary social change, and the lesson to draw from that is to make salutary social changes without being prompted to do so by terroristic violence. And if we can't learn that lesson, then I'm at a loss except to say that it inherently puts us in a very grim place, and nobody should be excited to live there.

I have no answers here. But I again cannot help but feel that it is fundamentally unhealthy when people feel, and are encouraged to feel, excitement over murder. For too many people, the murder of Brian Thompson isn't about murder or even about generating justice in the healthcare space. It rather is an opportunity to enjoy the spectacle of a murder, and feel righteous in doing so. That instinct is one we should be very wary about letting flower unchecked, in ourselves or in others.

We Who Are About To Die

The Romans loved their gladiator games.

I actually have no idea if that's true. Most of what I know about gladiators comes from how they're portrayed in Ridley Scott movies. For all I know, Romans did not actually enjoy seeing innocent people torn apart in the arena by wild animals or what have you.

But, to quote Philip J. Fry, "it's a widely-believed fact!", so we'll run with it.

It seems clear that a huge part of the second Trump administration will be vindictive political prosecution of his "enemies". This was a recurrent campaign theme of his, from proposing "military tribunals" for the likes of Liz Cheney to alleging "COVID crimes" by Anthony Fauci. Willingness -- implicit or explicit -- to engage in such thuggery has been a theme of his early announced appointees, from Kash Patel to Brendan Carr to Pete Hegseth. Concern over such tactics was expressly raised by Joe Biden in his pardon announcement for his son, Hunter. How deep down the list will he go? Unclear, though normalcy will not save you. The hammerfist coming to smash American rule of law is something unprecedented in my lifetime.

These prosecutions will be lawless along every possible dimension. The people driving them won't care about the law. The venues will be selected based on political convenience (I bet one will be amazed at how many of the "crimes" in question will center on the Western District of Texas). The "crimes" themselves either will be frivolous or nakedly selective. It will be undisguised authoritarian thuggery: the apparatus of law enforcement entirely perverted to immunize the president's allies while harassing his enemies (the almost-assured pardon of the January 6 insurrectionists is also part of this story).

I won't here venture a prediction as to how the judiciary will respond to these endeavors. It's possible they'll hold the line, as they largely did in 2020. But it's also the case that in 2024 the conservative legal movement has embraced and assimilated into full-blown MAGAism to a far greater degree than in 2020; even if they don't actively embrace the conspiracism (which they might), one can very easily imagine them hiding behind rules of deference to enable Trump to run wild.

The open question I want to consider, though, is how the public will respond to all of this. Of course, Trump's base will love it -- they've been baying for blood since 2016. And equally obviously, people like me will hate it. But I have a bad feeling -- maybe doom-mongering, maybe not -- that these spectacles of prosecution will go over better than one would think with low-information independents.

The reason isn't because they necessarily have strong opinions that Joe Biden or Anthony Fauci or various military generals actually are criminals. Rather, it is a more inchoate desire to see "the powerful" get their comeuppance. It almost doesn't matter whether they're guilty or not; the mere practice of seeing people one is accustomed to thinking of as "above you" laid low, ripped apart by the animals in the arena, is desired in of itself.

Consider what is for me one of the most infuriating aspects of Trump's victory: that he will not be held accountable for his many, many blatant crimes. No sentencing for the New York felony convictions, no consequences for the attempted 2020 insurrection, no pursuit of the document theft case, no nothing. It is maddening, to see such naked abuses of power result in nothing simply because Trump is powerful enough to evade responsibility for anything. If you take that indignant sensation and shear it from any substantive political knowledge, you're just left with the boiling resentment that a vague "they" keep "getting away with it". And the mere performance of going after a "they" can appeal to those resentments -- a fascist essence where the struggle is valuable in of itself, to show oneself to be the tribune of the people.

This suggests that Democrats could have leveraged this same atavistic desire to get at a powerful "them" by, for example, a fast Garland or prosecuting big bankers for the financial crisis or going after Elon Musk. And much like with echo chambers, I'm of two minds on this: torn between thinking that (for better or for worse) this is the strategy that works, versus thinking that it is a bad thing to encourage this sort of political climate (to be clear: I have no quarrel with "going after" big bankers or whoever when they commit crimes, but performatively going after an "enemy" class -- no matter who it is -- untethered by normal rule of law constraints strikes me as bad both morally and also conducive to a political environment that ultimately helps the right).

So once again, I'm at a bit of a loss here. But if we're relying on a natural popular revulsion to politicized sham prosecutions by the Trump administration, I'm not sure we're going to get it. We are going to be entering a very, very dark time.