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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: American democracy continues to be in a state of "slip-sliding away" [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2024-12-17  

We begin today with Dave Zirin of The Nation taking a peek, perhaps, at what follows Trump’s invitation of Jordan Neely’s killer Daniel Penny to the Army-Navy game.

Before Neely’s body was cold, Penny became a right-wing, white-power folk hero. He was the Marine “standing up” to the crazies on the big, bad urban subway; his New York City “persecution”—like Trump’s—was a sign of a liberal legal system off the rails. But unlike Trump, Penny was acquitted by a New York City jury. It was a case where the facts were never in doubt: The only question was whether the jury—in a long, ignominious, American tradition—would give its approval to what should be called a lynching. The word “lynching” is used intentionally here, with all the implied historical weight. It is an accurate descriptor for a killing that was public (filmed and widely shared on social media) and that many cheered as an act of necessary social and racial discipline. The online revelry accompanying this verdict is a digital equivalent of the old black-and-white Jim Crow lynching postcards, where a sea of white faces and white smiles surround a Black man’s body—neck twisted obscenely—hanging from a tree. Lynchings are not just executions; they’re celebrations of terror. [...] It is impossible to comprehend Trump’s invitation to Penny without considering the incoming president’s refrain that the “true enemy” of the United States is within our borders. How will Republicans defeat this “enemy within?” They are telling us. We know they are building prison camps for immigrants. We know Trump wants to activate the armed forces in our cities. We know his administration will be revoking education visas and deporting student agitators for a free Palestine. And now we know that its “law and order” agenda will not be confined to providing immunity to the next-generation Derek Chauvins on the police force but will extend to celebrating the right of people they like to kill the people they don’t. We saw it with George Zimmerman. We saw it with Kyle Rittenhouse. We see it with Daniel Penny. They are three men whose capacity to kill made them right-wing cause célèbres.

I don’t like the flippant use of the word “lynching” and Zirin doesn’t use it flippantly here even if a lynching is, by definition, an act of group participation in an act of extrajudicial murder.

Other than that technicality, I can’t say that I disagree with a word he’s saying.

I know that my headline sounds depressing in a big way but it does reflect the reality of the situation.

Michelle Goldberg of The New York Times notes “the great capitulation” of elites in media, tech, and politics to a certain shoe salesman.

Since Trump won re-election — this time with the popular vote — many of the most influential people in America seem to have lost any will to stand up to him as he goes about transforming America into the sort of authoritarian oligarchy he admires. Call it the Great Capitulation. [...] Displays of submission aren’t limited to tech and media. Christopher Wray, the head of the F.B.I., agreed to step aside before the end of his 10-year term rather than make Trump fire him. Several Democrats have signaled their willingness to work with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, whose so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, seems poised to hack away at our already threadbare safety net. [...] Different people have different reasons for falling in line. Some may simply lack the stomach for a fight or feel, not unreasonably, that it’s futile. Our tech overlords, however liberal they once appeared, seem to welcome the new order. Many hated wokeness, resented the demands of newly uppity employees and chafed at attempts by Joe Biden’s administration to regulate crypto and A.I., two industries with the potential to cause deep and lasting social harm. There are C.E.O.s who got where they are by riding the zeitgeist; they can pivot easily from mouthing platitudes about racial equity to slapping on a red MAGA hat.

Paul Krugman writes for his “Krugman Wonks Out” Substack wondering if Trump voters will care that he can’t deliver on his promises to lower prices.

Of course, post-election Trump is, on this issue at least, telling the truth. Cutting prices — as opposed to reducing the rate at which prices are rising — is very hard. Partly this is because employers are very reluctant to cut wages, because they fear the effects on employee morale (a phenomenon closely linked to the perception that wages are earned, while prices are someone else’s fault.) A recent survey by Truman Bewley— who did pioneering work on downward wage rigidity — finds that companies also believe that they face kinked demand curves — they will gain fewer customers if they cut prices than they will lose if they raise prices. And there’s clear evidence that prices are downwardly sticky. A recent paper by Dennis Bonam and Bart Hobijn looks at pricing in Britain as the economy recovered from Covid — they focused on Britain because it made the relevant data available. What happened in the post-Covid recovery was a big shift in the composition of demand away from services toward goods. Goods prices soared because of overloaded supply chains, but service prices didn’t fall… [...] ...Trump went all in on promises to bring prices back down again. Anyone who knew much about economics knew that he couldn’t possibly deliver on those promises — but again, he won thanks to strong support from low-information voters. The question is, will voters who backed him because they believed his promises on prices turn on him when he fails to deliver, and actually drives prices up with tariffs?

Malcolm Ferguson of The New Republic says that we may be saying good-bye to a public institution so vital that The Founders wrote it into the U.S. Constitution.

USPS privatization has been in the works for some time now. Trump-appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has been doing his best to corrode one of the oldest, constitutionally ensured institutions in this country. On-time delivery rates fell when DeJoy was appointed in 2020, particularly in communities of color. He facilitated the removal and destruction of mail sorting machines that were crucial to allowing USPS to function smoothly. And he has multiple questionable investments. Last week, he even covered his ears while being grilled by congressional Republicans for dismantling USPS from the inside out. “Louis DeJoy is the perfect example of a Trump nominee. After Trump appointed him, he ran USPS into the ground. Now, he claims it doesn’t work & will propose privatizing it,” one X commentator wrote. “Then, he, Trump & their cronies will steal the business, charge exorbitant amounts & rape the public.”

Jill Abramson writes for The Boston Globe about the chilling effects that ABC News settlement of the lawsuit filed against the news organization by Trump.

There’s nothing new about Trump threatening, suing, or seeking retribution against the press, which he calls “the enemy of the people.” But the context is new. He is the president-elect and has power to punish the news media for coverage he deems hostile. Some journalists criticized ABC for buckling under. In an era of declining trust in the news media, adverse libel judgments from juries have become more common. While newspapers once rarely settled defamation suits and the bar for proving libel is extremely high, Trump has urged that the libel laws be “opened up.” Several conservative Supreme Court justices have indicated a willingness to revisit Times v. Sullivan, the landmark decision that requires that false information about public figures to be knowingly published in order to prove libel. Inside leading news organizations, editors, reporters, and lawyers are discussing how to protect journalism. Reporters have been reminded that their notes can be seized in certain instances and their calls monitored. Attorney General Merrick Garland issued new guidelines that make it harder to force journalists to disclose their sources, but lawyers expect these guidelines to be rescinded by the Trump Justice Department.

Finally today, Robin Wright of The New Yorker says that the conflicts of a post-Assad Syria have only just begun.

“The conflict is not over,” Geir O. Pedersen, the U.N. special envoy for Syria, warned. Regional and global players want to be “positive and supportive, but many are nervous” about a government created by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, a Sunni militia that led the uprising and whose leaders previously had ties with Al Qaeda and isis. “They see an Islamist group come to power and wonder if they’ll really deliver on what they promise.” The danger, Pedersen noted, is the Libya scenario. After the ouster of Muammar Qaddafi, in 2011, rival governments fought from Tripoli and Benghazi. Other transitions after the Arab Spring uprisings have not gone well, either. Tunisia’s democracy has eroded since 2011, as democratically elected leaders have been imprisoned or silenced. Egypt’s democratically elected government was removed in a military coup in 2013. Yemen was split after the Houthis seized power, in 2014, during a civil war that now targets international shipping. The question is whether Syria’s uprising—which also started in 2011—is the Arab Spring, Part Two. Six diverse political and ethnic groups now claim territory. Pedersen reflected, “It will require a new miracle in the days and weeks ahead to insure that things don’t go wrong in Syria.” [...] As a first step, H.T.S. appointed Mohammed al-Bashir, an engineer who had run the provincial H.T.S. government in northern Idlib, to be Prime Minister for about three months. For the rest of the world, U.N. Resolution 2254 remains the legal premise for a transition. It calls for a new constitution and free elections stretched over eighteen months. But it was written nine years ago. Time is moving much faster now in a country where the economy is collapsing and millions have been displaced or forced into exile. “We should accept instability, because it is part of the process,” Sawsan Abou Zainedin, who leads Madaniya, an umbrella organization for two hundred Syrian civil-society groups, said. “We’re all standing on good will, but we can’t stand on good will for long.”

Please try to have the best possible day everyone!

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