Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

The words do not have to be perfect.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Nikki Haley, who can’t acknowledge ‘slavery’, is a pathetic shill.

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

ha ha ha! Nice try weird people.

Trump makes a mockery of the legal system and cowardly judges just sit back and let him.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

In after Baud. Damn.

Glad to see john eastman going through some things.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

Let’s finish the job.

The US Supreme Court is on the ballot in november.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

The choice is between normal and crazy.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

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On the Now Far Too Many Days That the Ideals That Are the Real America Are Tested, It Is Important To Remember When They Are, or Have Been, Actually Lived

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Last night in the comments to my post on the Rittenhouse case and trial, Cacti posted this comment:

There are two types of people who become lawyers.  Those who do it because they believe in the system, and those who do it because they don’t.

I’ve seen plenty of legal pros move from group 1 to group 2 the longer they practiced.  I’ve never seen anyone move from group 2 to group 1.

And I posted this reply:

I’ve moved from group 1 to group 2 over the past 6 years as a national security professional!

As a result of my disillusionment, it is nice to be reminded of when we actually live up to and live the ideals that are the real America, rather than the degraded dregs of white supremacy unfortunately deeply interwoven into our structures and institutions and those who see nothing wrong with this unfortunate reality that we saw so clearly on display yesterday.

Here’s a great example provided to us by the folks at Canadian Forces in the US. I’m going to put most of this below the read more widget as it is a LONG thread and I know on older machines that how Twitter’s code interacts with our code can cause people problems:

Captain Symington’s report to his squadron commander, Rear Admiral Johnson, from 6 DEC 1917 is below the jump followed by the rest of the thread:

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The Reality of the Rittenhouse Acquittal Is the Result of Poorly Written/Worded Self Defense & Stand Your Ground Laws

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By now everyone has, I’m sure, done a bunch of venting about the outcome of Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial today. Whether that’s about the judge and his behavior, the prosecution, the defense, the actual events, or some combination of all of them. The reality though, and I’m sure someone put this in a comment in MisterMix’s post, is that the odds were always in favor of an acquittal. I’ll leave the discussion of whether the local prosecutors in Kenosha overcharged or incorrectly charged Rittenhouse to the our crack team of readers and commenters who are lawyers, especially those who practice in Wisconsin (hint, hint). As for whether the judge’s behavior and rulings were way out of bounds, I’m sure those readers and commenters who are lawyers will be happy to explain that judges, especially those handling criminal cases, are often unique individuals. I’m sure those that do defense work will also explain that the instructions about using terms like victim or perpetrator are actually what every defendant should be getting from judges, but, sadly, all too few ever do. Especially if the accused are people of color.

This is a good thread from a public defender in Louisiana about the judge’s instruction on the language the prosecutors and the defense counsel could and could not use during the trial and how almost all the initial reporting and subsequent commentary got it wrong. Here’s his take on the outcome of the Rittenhouse trial. Here’s Ken White’s, aka Popehat, explainer on Judge Schroeder, his behavior, and why it is all too common.

I want to just briefly focus on why today’s acquittal was always the likely outcome: because the laws on armed self defense and/or stand your ground laws are either sloppily written or are currently interpreted in a very broad manner. I’m most familiar with Florida’s stand your ground expansion of its self defense laws because I was teaching state and local politics* at UF when it was being debated. The bill, commonly referred to as the Baxley Amendment as it was submitted by a state legislator from the greater Orlando area named Dennis Baxley. Baxley didn’t write the bill, it was written by Marion Hammer, who was the then chief lobbyist for both the NRA in Florida and Associated Industries of Florida (the largest business lobby in the state). Hammer is commonly referred to as the Gun Granny. The bill has what is now the usual legislative language about a reasonable person feeling threatened as the determinant for whether standing one’s ground is justified, as well as no duty to retreat. However, it also frames this within the perception regarding whether the person who is claiming stand your ground as a defense is actually facing an imminent threat. When you combine the latter with the no duty to retreat portion of the law, it allows someone to instigate and/or escalate a confrontation, determine they’re being imminently threatened with serious harm and/or death, and therefore use lethal force to stop that perceived threat.

While my understanding of the Rittenhouse case from the reporting and the commentary is that there was no stand your ground law in place in Wisconsin for Rittenhouse’s defense team to invoke, the description of instigating and/or escalating a confrontation determining one is being imminently threatened with serious harm and/or death, and therefore employing lethal force to stop that perceived threat is a pretty good description of Kyle Rittenhouse’s actions on the night he decided to go play shooting medic in Kenosha.

That description, part of which – that Rittenhouse was under attack by three different people as the lead elements of a mob of protestors, demonstrators, and rioters – focused on the imminent threat Rittenhouse was in and his inability to safely retreat, which required him to use lethal force in self defense is what his defense was built around. It was the focus of his direct testimony and it was the focus of his attorneys’ theory of the case. And it was a powerful defense because with the exception of Gage Grosskruetz, the people he shot were not alive to tell their version of events.  And this is what I want to focus on.

The simple reality is that in these armed self defense and/or stand your ground cases, the person who survives and is able to tell their version of events usually has an advantage. For the simple reason that the person or people that they shot and killed are dead and can’t really speak for themselves. The Tampa Bay Times did an extensive investigation into Florida’s stand your ground law and had two major takeaways. The first is that if only one party survived, specifically the party invoking stand your ground, then he or she (though it is usually a he) had a very high chance of either not being charged or of an acquittal because the other party or parties to the shooting were dead. The second was that if the person who was claiming stand your ground was white, the person they shot and killed is a person of color, and/or both they have an exceedingly high chance of either not being charged or of an acquittal. Whether Baxley, or really Marion Hammer, intended Florida’s stand your ground law, which became the model for similar legislation with minor variations in many other states, to actually have a racist effect is both not known and immaterial. Like so many other of our criminal laws, the reality is it produces a serious and significant racial disparity when applied.

This brings us back to Kyle Rittenhouse. The only way today’s outcome would have been different was if Gage Grosskruetz had shot Rittenhouse rather than moving his gun off of Rittenhouse as a target to signal he wasn’t a threat. Rittenhouse ignored that, which makes the acquittal on the charges regarding Grosskruetz’s being shot so egregious, and then claimed self defense because Grosskruetz was actively targeting Rittenhouse, which created an imminent threat of serious bodily harm and/or death.

Grosskruetz’s cardinal mistake was in deciding Rittenhouse was not a threat and, as a result, taking his gun off of Rittenhouse as a target and not shooting. I know that sounds cold and callous. And before someone eventually reads this and thinks I’m calling for Rittenhouse to be shot, I AM NOT CALLING FOR RITTENHOUSE TO BE SHOT!!!! The reality is if you draw your gun for self defense purposes, especially if you have a handgun and the person who is doing the shooting has a rifle, you had better take the shot. Unless you are under secure and impenetrable cover so that no matter what the other person does, you can’t be shot. Because if you don’t, the person who has been doing the shooting will see you, see your gun, and shoot you because you are a threat to him (it is almost always a him).

As I wrote way back when the congressional Republicans’ softball practice was attacked, the first attempted claim of stand your ground was in Philadelphia in the 1790s. The judge determined it was not a valid defense under the US constitution, Pennsylvania’s constitution, or the common law. The local newspaper actually published the write up of the trial as a special pamphlet, which is attached below this post. It is important to remember that the people (okay, white men) who had just come through the Revolution, the founding of the US, and were alive for the debates around both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution did not accept stand your ground as a legitimate defense. That it has been revived over the past twenty years with claims of originalism rooted in the largely created from whole cloth revisionism of the 2nd Amendment’s legislative, constitutional, and legal history is just stupendously amazing.

Open thread!

Duane 1799 – Report of extraordinary transactions at Philadelphia (1)

* When I first got to UF, because I already had a pair of masters degrees and experiencing teaching as an adjunct and as a teaching assistant, I got assigned to septuagenarian member of the faculty who had had a mild stroke from which he’d made an almost complete recovery. The guy rode his bike about 40 miles to and from campus each day! His specialty was state and local politics and, to be frank, he should have retired many years before I got there as time, the discipline, and reality had long passed him by. He was a wonderful person, really cared about the students, and loved teaching. Unfortunately they’d assigned him a 300 student intro to state and local government section. He’d never taught any course with more than 20 or 30 students, including the intro course. My job was to help him deal with this new reality. To this day I’m convinced the department chair at the time assigned him this section in the attempt to either force him to retire or kill him from the stress. Regardless, because I basically ran the course for him – I did the syllabus, handled drafting the tests and quizzes and getting them graded, did all the administration, ran the review sections, etc – we both got through the semester without major incident and as a result it was determined that I was now qualified to teach state and local politics. So every few semesters, I’d get assigned to teach it despite it being well outside of my specialty areas.

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Worrying About Republican Retaliation Is Pointless. They Retaliate Even When They Have Nothing to Retaliate For

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While I slowly work up a longer post Cole asked me to do on the real point of the Durham Special Counsel investigation, which keeps getting pushed father and farther back because of actual work, I wanted to just briefly remark on the veiled and not so veiled threats made yesterday by House Republicans in regard to the censure of Congressman Gosar (R-AZ), who is an avowed anti-Semite and white supremacist, as well as his being stripped of his Oversight Committee assignment. Charlie Pierce has already done a longer piece on this, and I recommend it because he’s great to read and he’s right, but I want to focus on the threats made by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and others that if/when the Republicans retake the majority in the 2022 elections that they will do to the Democrats what the Democrats have done to them. This was, of course, met with some skepticism on the claims that Democrats don’t tweet out videos showing them killing their Republican colleagues, or threatening them, or trying to rile up their supporters to attack them, so there isn’t really anything to worry about.

This is the wrong way to look at the threat. And it is the wrong reason to look at the threat because we know what Republicans do when they get a solid House majority and believe they won’t ever have to give it up. Back during the Bush 43 administration, as Karl Rove was working his plans for a permanent Republican majority, or at least control of the Federal government even if they didn’t really make up a majority in the US through extreme gerrymandering, voter suppression, and one patriotic war per term (Iraq was supposed to be term 1, Iran term 2, then 9-11 happened and we got Afghanistan and Iraq in term 1 and, fortunately, no Iran in term 2), and Grover Norquist was talking about gelding the Democrats in the congressional minorities like farm animals, Republicans actually acted out despite having nothing to retaliate for. Democrats were locked out of committee rooms. Committee meetings would be officially scheduled in one place, when the Democrats showed up, they’d find empty or locked rooms, while the Republicans ran the meetings without them somewhere else. Democrats would schedule minority committee member hearings and find the microphones cut and/or the lights turned out on them.

In 2005, the Republicans had nothing to retaliate for and they retaliated anyway. What we’re seeing now with the House and Senate Republican caucuses, let alone the legislatures and governorships they control in 23 states and the legislatures or governorships they control in several others, is not something new. It isn’t something we’ve never seen before. It is just a more extreme form of the extreme behavior they have been demonstrating since the late 1990s.

Doing what has to be done, doing the right thing, is the only thing that matters right now because worrying about what the Republicans will do if/when they win in 2022 is a trap. We already know what they will do, especially if they get a large enough majority in the House. If their majority is large enough they won’t just censure Democrats or prevent them from serving on certain committees, they’ll just expel them. All while crying crocodile tears that they were forced to do this by the overreach of Speaker Pelosi in 2021. They’ve been telegraphing who their targets are. Frankly they’re doing it not to indicate what they’ll do to them in terms of censure or preventing them from serving on certain committees, they’re doing it in the hope that one of their loosely tethered to reality supporters will get the message and rid them of those meddlesome members of the Democratic caucus. Congressman Crenshaw* set Congresswoman Omar up for assassination several years ago. Congresswoman Boebert, whose white supremacist, anti-Semitic campaign manager was raided by the FBI yesterday, and who has more arrests all by herself, let alone in conjunction with her convicted of domestic abuse and lewd exposure to a minor husband, then your average career criminal, did it again last night. She also set up several other Democrats in her one minute of hate.

This is why finding a way to get the voter rights and electoral reform bills through the Senate are so important. If they aren’t passed soon, let alone at all, then the Republicans will retake the House just as a result of the extreme gerrymandering they’re doing right now. Not to continue to be a downer, but you cannot out organize the extreme gerrymanders that are being put into place in NC, Ohio, Florida, WI, and other states with either complete GOP control of the state government or where an extreme gerrymandered Republican supermajority in the state legislature has stripped the Democratic governor of their power to veto legislative redistricting maps. The Republicans continue to preview through their House and Senate majorities, as well as in the 23 states where they have complete one party control of the state government, what they will do if they come back to power in Congress, let alone Congress and the presidency. We don’t have to speculate. We’re watching it in real time.

Open thread!

* There’s only one former Navy SEAL in the House of Representatives:

And that former Navy SEAL has already made a video of his fantasies of what he’d do to just every day Americans who disagree with him.

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I’m Likely To Wind Up Bigfooting M4, But Since Apparently Everyone’s Decided I’ve Moved On, I Figured I Better Do a Post

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Bigfoot

Or maybe not bigfoot M4, though he was drafting a post when I started typing this. Or appeared to be. The ways of the WordPress Dashboard are arcane…

And I did!

Everyone, please don’t freak Cole out!

Trust me, if I ever decide to stop writing here, whether because of an assignment I’ve taken where I just can’t do it or whatever, I will first discuss it with Cole and then I will do a post explaining why.

In 48 tediously dense paragraphs.

All on the front page with no read more option.

Because you all deserve it!

But I appreciate everyone asking after me.

To be honest I was just taking a bit of a break from the front page. With everything going on we’re all a bit testy and rather than writing something I think is important to post and then everyone getting riled up and then the comments turning into people, including me, sniping at each other, I figured I’d just comment a bit and come back to things next week. Whether you believe it or not, I’m not trying to piss everyone off.

Especially as events were fast moving and because they were fast moving I wanted a bit of time to reevaluate my comments about the follow on effects of the election results on Tuesday. I’m also trying to think my way through something I think is a major systemic problem in American politics, partially related to the off year elections and definitely related to the 2022 midterms and 2024 presidential/national elections, but it isn’t fully cooked yet. So I’m holding off on that for a few more days, give or take, as I think it through.

Now, I did see that MrForkBeard asked about my take on the regular order infrastructure bill and the reconciliation bill. I think the passage of the regular order bill is, in general, a good thing. Anytime you can pass major legislation that is going to improve the lives of the citizenry that is a great thing. I saw one person, it might have been Ron Klain, remark that presidential candidates have been promising to pass a bill to fix and upgrade American infrastructure for 50 years, that it isn’t easy, but that it has now been done. And that is both a good thing and a sad reflection on American politics.

I think everyone’s concerns are that by passing the regular order bill and sending it to President Biden, that the House, especially the House leadership and the House Progressive Caucus, have taken a massive leap of faith. This is true to an extent. However, both Speaker Pelosi and Congresswoman Jayapal are good at what they do. If they’ve decided that the Senate Democratic leadership’s and President Biden’s and his teams’ assurances that the reconciliation bill will pass the Senate no later than 15 November, then we who are not privy to these discussions have to recognize that they’re not fools and just watch and wait.

It is important to remember that all of the leverage has not been removed. President Biden has 10 working days to sign the regular order bill into law, veto it, or pocket veto it. 15 November is within those ten working days. I would expect that it has been made very, very, very clear to the 9 or 10 House Democratic moderates and to Senators Manchin and Sinema that if they screw the President, their Democratic colleagues in both chambers, and Americans over by not doing what they’ve repeatedly indicated they will do on the reconciliation bill that there will be consequences. Up to and including a veto threat.

I think the reason the decision was made to go ahead and move the regular order bill on Friday was to provide further impetus for changing the narrative. The most recent polling from a reputed pollster has the President back to even on his favorable/unfavorable rating at 48/48, the employment numbers for October and the upwards revisions for August and September were very positive, and the Dow went over 36,000. So passing the regular order bill provides an opportunity to reframe the discussion, regain the advantage, and go on the offensive in terms of messaging. Most of you know I watch a lot of rugby union. To me, this is similar to the best teams kicking penalty goals (3 points, similar to a field goal in American football) to build momentum on the scoreboard until they are able to score tries (5 points for touching the ball down in the in goal area with a two point kicked conversion for a possible seven points – the origin of the touchdown in American football). Passing the regular order bill is the Democrats putting more points on the board because they were in range to do so.

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Let Me Inject a Bit of Reality Into Your Fantasy Land: THERE IS NOT NOW, AT ALL, A BUILD BACK BETTER BILL!!!!!!

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The Build Back Better bill, which is how the reconciliation only legislation has been branded, DOES NOT ACTUALLY EXIST!!!!! What does exist is a series of legislative frameworks and requests from the White House, the latest of which President Biden released this morning shortly after his press conference on the topic and different possible legislative language bouncing around the Senate from different Democratic senators. There is no actual, cohesive, final bill written. It is unclear when, if at all, such an actual, cohesive, final bill will be written.

The problem with the list that WG provided in her post a little while ago is that NONE OF WHAT IS LISTED BELOW THE EMBEDDED VIDEO IS IN THE BILL BECAUSE THERE IS NO BILL!!!! What there is, right now, is the  third or fourth proposed framework for what President Biden will accept at a minimum in a reconciliation bill. There is no legislation written from that framework yet. There is no clear, firm, unequivocal commitment from either Senator Manchin or Senator Sinema that they’ll support a reconciliation bill written to Biden’s framework. And the House Progressive Caucus, as well as at least five Senate Democrats, have made it pretty clear in the last several hours they don’t trust either of them enough to take the leap of faith and pass the regular order infrastructure bill through the House unless it is tethered to the reconciliation bill. Which, and again, DOES NOT CURRENTLY EXIST!!!! 

And I can’t say anyone could or should blame them:

We live in the real world. We don’t live in fantasy land where things just work out because they always sort of, if you squint from a certain angle, have in the past. There’s nothing to post on what is in the bill each week because what may or may not be in the bill changes several times an hour because neither Manchin nor Sinema will actually clearly, firmly, and unequivocally commit to anything. There’s a reason that as good a communicator and vote counter as Congresswoman Jayapal has demonstrated she is through all of this insanity for the past several month, Jayapal won’t get into specifics because she doesn’t have any specifics to go into. There’s what she and her caucus want, there’s what they’ll support if Biden says support it, and there’s the reality that all that exists on the Senate Democratic side is a constantly shifting list of what might, possibly be included depending on what time of the day someone asks Senators Manchin and/or Sinema about it.

That’s the reality of where we’re at. It is not where any of us want to be. But we’re here. And by the way, we’re not just here because of Senators Manchin and Sinema, we’re here because not a single Republican senator will support anything that President Biden proposes even when they, themselves, personally support the idea. Senator Manchin drafted his voting rights bill, that failed to get a single Republican vote to clear the cloture threshold last week, with Senator Murkowski. She still voted to prevent it from even moving to debate. All those Republican senators and representatives that negotiated and helped draft the regular order infrastructure bill now oppose it. And while it passed the Senate with a dozen or so Republican votes, the entire House GOP caucus opposes it. And we’re also not just here because the Republican Party has decided it has no interests in governing, just ruling, but because the news media, especially the political reporters covering national politics cover everything as if the Republicans have no agency. That everything is the Democrats responsibility and therefore fault. Here’s currently on paid medical leave because CNN provides it Kasie Hunt providing an example of this:

You know who doesn’t support paid medical leave at all, for any reason, for anyone? EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN SENATOR AND REPRESENTATIVE!!!! But Kasie here is going to make it her personal mission in life not reporting, but on setting the narrative that the Democrats have somehow failed, once again, to save everyone from the fact that the Republicans will not do anything or support anything that is actually beneficial to the vast majority of Americans.

This is where we actually are. This is the actual reality. The Democrats are not in disarray. Each proposed framework, from Senator Sander’s original $600 billion per year equaling $6 trillion over 10 years reconciliation package to the initial compromise $350 billion per year equaling $3.5 trillion over 10 years to today’s compromise on the compromise framework is in line with what President Biden campaigned on, what all but a handful of Democratic representatives and 2 Democratic senators unequivocally support. Where we are is that the the Senate and House Republican caucuses refuse to lead, refuse to follow, and refuse to get out of the way because their objective is to rule. And the news media, especially the political reporters that cover DC, have a narrative, which is that the Democrats must always be the responsible actors and do something, regardless of what the Republicans do because Republicans and their actions get written about in the passive voice, which just turns everything into a big schmoz and confuses every issue unless one is paying very close attention. The do the same thing when they cover state level politics regarding redistricting, the pandemic, this entirely fabricated moral panic around CRT, etc. It’s why we have 23 states where Republicans control the governorships and the state houses as a result of extreme gerrymanders and voter suppression legislation. In those states there is no liberal democracy as voters cannot actually choose their representatives. Rather, in almost half of the states in the United States we have different variations of Orban’s and Putin’s managed, illiberal democracies!!!! The only person who regularly covers this is Ari Berman at Mother Jones. And the only chance at even remotely combating it right now is Marc Elias’s legal team.

Just yesterday Governor DeSantis finally set the dates for the state constitutionally mandated special elections to fill three state legislative seats that are open. All three are in minority majority districts and will almost certainly be filled by Democrats of color. When did he set the date for the general election to fill these seats? Three days before the end of Florida’s next legislative session. The people living in those districts will have NO REPRESENTATION DURING FLORIDA’s 2022 LEGISLATIVE SESSION!!!!

We can either deal with the actual reality we’re facing or we can live in fantasy land. The latter may be more mentally and emotionally comfortable, but ultimately reality is interested in you even if you are not interested in it.

Open thread!

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Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services Rachel Levine, MD Has Been Sworn In as Admiral Levine In the US Public Health Service!

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Admiral Levine is now the first four star transgender general officer/flag officer in an of the United States’ uniformed services.

From The Washington Post:

A senior Biden health appointee who made history when she became the nation’s highest-ranking openly transgender official has also become its first openly transgender four-star officer.

Rachel Levine, the U.S. assistant secretary for health,wassworn in Tuesday as an admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, a 6,000-person force that responds to health crises on behalf of the federal government, including administering coronavirus vaccines and delivering care after hurricanes. Levine is also theorganization’s first-ever femalefour-star admiral.

The public health service is one of the nation’s eight uniformed services, although it is distinct from the six military services — including the Navy, Army and Air Force — by explicitly focusing on medical issues. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps, whose officers command vehicles that probe hurricanes and map the seafloor, is also a uniformed service.

Here are Admiral Levine’s remarks after being sworn in:

Open thread!

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Front Paging an Often Overlooked Bit of American History: The Business Plot to Overthrow FDR

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Sab asked:

Can you frontpage this? My spouse doesn’t read comments but he needs to read this about FDR and Butler

Americans did not revolt and attempt to overthrow the government at any point during the Great Depression. The closest thing that existed to a mass movement against the Hoover administration was the Bonus Army, also known as the Bonus Expeditionary Army orthe Bonus Marchers. A group of WW I veterans who were trying to get the bonus payment they’d been promised disbursed to them. During May and June of 1932 they marched, often with their families, hitching rides on trucks and trains, from all over the continental US to DC where they set up camp on the Anacostia flats. They tried to get a meeting with Hoover, who refused. Congress rushed through enabling legislation, for the second or third time, to give them their $500 bonus ahead of the scheduled payment, which was still a decade off. The closest they got to meeting with a senior leader was when Major General Smedley Darlington Butler went to their camp and spent hours talking to each of the Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines who wanted to speak to him. Butler had been passed over for his next assignment several years before– Commandant of the Marine Corps – and threatened him with false charges of insubordination for his public comments opposing Mussolini and the rise of fascism. Butler retired the year before the Bonus March.

As for the Bonus Army, they didn’t get their bonuses. They also, desperate as they were, didn’t try to overthrow the US government or even just the Hoover administration. They just quietly kept doing what they were doing: camping in DC, accepting what charity in terms of food aid was offered, and quietly pressuring the Hoover administration to give them what they were owed. For this, Hoover put MacArthur in charge of clearing them out as they were irritating him. MacArthur, because he was MacArthur and because the infiltrators he’d put into the camps told him that 1/3 of the marchers were Jews and 1/3 were black and all of them were communists, which was reinforced by J. Edgar Hoover who was already undertaking his plans to turn the Bureau of Investigation into the FBI, ordered the 20,000 Bonus marchers and their families cleared out. Five tanks, 200 cavalry, and several hundred infantry cleared out the marchers who were trying to evacuate peacefully on foot. Tear gas grenades were used on the Bonus marchers and their families. Some were run down by the cavalry and beaten with the flats of their sabres. Eisenhower told MacArthur he was an idiot and refused to participate. Patton, being Patton, clicked his heels and carried out MacArthur’s orders. The irony is that one of the veterans in the Bonus marchers driven out that day, Joe Angelo, was the Soldier who pulled Patton to safety on the battlefield in France, thereby saving his life.

Through all of this – the Depression, Hoover’s and MacArthur’s violent attack on peaceful veterans who merely wanted the bonus payment they’d been promised repeatedly, Hoover’s continued mishandling of the Depression through the election and the inauguration of FDR – Americans did not rise up and revolt. There was no backlash.

Well, that’s not entirely true. There was a backlash, to the election of FDR. And it wasn’t led by those who had been so brutalized by the Depression or Hoover’s failures as president or by MacArthur on the Anacostia flats in July of 1932. It was led by the wealthiest of the wealthy. The men who had actually made money during the Depression. The men who had picked America’s bones almost clean.

In 1933 a group of wealthy financiers and corporate owners decided that the US could not continue as a self governing democratic-republic if they and their peers were going to continue to profit. They decided that the US should instead become a fascistic oligarchy with a democratic facade. After sending a trusted agent to meet with the emerging fascist leaders in Italy, France, and Germany they determined that the easiest way to accomplish their goals in the US was to encourage and promote street level violence and disorder, culminating in widespread attacks in DC to pressure FDR and force him to accept their hand picked co-president. A co-president who would rule the US on their behalf from the shadows while FDR continued on the face of a faux democracy.

In order to achieve these objectives these wealthy financiers and captains of industry and investment determined that the remnants of the Bonus Army of WW I veterans would make the perfect foot soldiers in their campaign of disruption. They approached MajGen Smedley Darlington Butler, who was beloved by these veterans, to lead them. Fortunately, Butler recognized exactly what game was being played, gathered as much information as possible, and then took it to Congress and the news media. While Butler’s actions successfully stymied what we now call the Business Plot, Congress and the news media largely covered it up. As a result it is unclear even today exactly which, if any, elected or appointed officials might have been involved. The known coup organizers and plotters, however, were not some fly by night, nouveau riche group of amateurs. Their leaders included George Herbert Walker and Prescott Bush Sr. The grandfather and father of one president and great-grandfather and grandfather of a second.

They did this despite FDR winning 90% or so of the Electoral College vote and having gigantic majorities in both the House and the Senate. If I recall correctly the Democratic congressional majorities were something like 68 out of 96 senators and upwards of 300 members of the House. FDR’s electoral mandate was enormous and yet they still attempted a coup…

Here’s the Universal Newsreel of MajGen Butler calling out the plotters in an attempt to force Congress and the news media to actually take this seriously and do something about it.

For all of our vaunted lip service and fealty to our revolutionary past, Americans have consistently shown for the past 100 years that there is nothing you can do to them that will make them push back. Let me clarify that: white Americans have consistently shown the past 100 years that there is nothing you can do to them that will make them push back. Hell, as we’ve seen repeatedly over the past 100 years, a significant portion of them will actually be actively involved in creating and perpetuating the problem while another significant chunk will just stand on the sides and tut tut all of the upheaval. And those of good conscience, like all of you (and I mean that sincerely, whatever our disagreements, you’re all good people), will, of course, be willing to put themselves on the line for positive change.

You can’t out organize an extreme gerrymander. Nor extreme voter suppression. If just the Florida and Texas redistricting maps are allowed to stand, it won’t matter what happens in any other state, the Republicans will retake the House. The Senate map, while favorable to the Democrats for the 2022 elections, is still going to be a huge lift. And this is the last favorable Senate map for the Democrats. From 2024 on it gets worse and worse for them.

Those of us that keep beating this drum aren’t telling you all this because we want to be mean. Or because we want to upset you. We’re telling you this because we want everyone to understand just how dangerous this moment is. Just how precarious things are right now. And, as with the history lesson at the beginning of this comment, just how absolutely normal it is in America for extremely wealthy conservative interests to seek to overthrow the constitutional order and establish a fascist system running behind a facade of democracy.

Time will tell if I and the others sounding the alarms are right or wrong. I’d love to be wrong. I’d love for all of you to spend weeks and months dunking on me after the 2022 elections are over and, again, after the 2024 elections are over. Goku got started a bit prematurely in last night’s comments…

But until then, I will beat this drum until we are out of danger.

Front Paging an Often Overlooked Bit of American History: The Business Plot to Overthrow FDRPost + Comments (97)