…tuesday, huh? I guess it’s only to be expected

In a country riven by discord, the extent of disagreement among people, their political representatives and their media outlets feels simultaneously intransigent, untenable and entirely inevitable. Not only are we bad at agreeing with one another; we’re also terrible at arguing with one another.
[…]
Bo Seo, a 28-year-old two-time world debating champion, says the problem of polarization isn’t so much that we disagree but rather that “we disagree badly: Our arguments are painful and useless.” We spend more time vilifying, undermining and nullifying those we disagree with than opening or changing their minds.
How to Argue Well [NYT]

…look…I’m not trying to argue that the NYT drops every ball in favor of grabbing the wrong end of any stick in sight…& the part about arguing badly is very possibly true…but…that is one poor choice of headline for a piece that includes the phrase “A little high school debate club might help“…if that was all it took then a number of things that are undeniably current events would be impossible

Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump asked a federal judge on Monday to deny the Justice Department’s request to immediately restart a key part of its criminal investigation into his hoarding of sensitive government documents at his residence in Florida.
[…]
The 21-page filing was an aggressive rebuke of the Justice Department’s broader inquiry into whether Mr. Trump or his aides illegally kept national security secrets at his property, Mar-a-Lago, or obstructed the government’s repeated attempts to retrieve the materials. It played down the criminal inquiry as a “storage dispute” and insinuated that officials might have leaked information about the contents of the files.
[…]
The filing, which came as Mr. Trump returned to the Washington area, underscored how he has succeeded for now in using what amounts to a procedural sideshow to stall the criminal investigation, even after his representatives falsely said in June that his office had returned any documents marked as classified in his possession.

…to skip through the broken record part…the “argument” presented…let alone the complete lack of foundation or supporting fact offered along side it…would not survive a high-school-level debate…but by dint of having installed a judge who by all appearances is content to personally obstruct & pervert justice with vestigial respect for the law that debate continues rather than crashing & burning on impact

Prosecutors had asked Judge Cannon last week to let investigators resume working with about 100 documents marked as classified that formed a small portion of the nearly 13,000 items the F.B.I. seized during a court-authorized search of Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8.

They said the prohibition on using those materials was hindering the intelligence community’s review of any risk caused by the insecure storage of national security secrets and a classification review of the materials, arguing that those efforts were inextricably intertwined with the criminal investigation.

But on Monday, Mr. Trump’s lawyers dismissed the government’s claims, saying that those assertions appeared to be “exaggerated” and that only a “brief pause” would be required for the special master’s review to be completed. (On Friday, Mr. Trump’s lawyers indicated that they expected the review to take three months.)

…I mean…here’s the thing…at the risk of just offering yet another avenue by which to find this stuff insufferable…for which you can blame the “how to argue” lady for making me wonder why it wasn’t worthy of mention…the ways in which the argument being made falls apart of its own accord before it so much as attempts to support any of its assertions are so evident that people who’ve been dead for centuries would be able to tear it to shreds

The clash traces back to an order issued early last week by Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee, in which she said she would appoint a special master with broad authority to review all the seized materials. In her order, the judge said they could be scrutinized not only for any documents potentially covered by attorney-client privilege, a relatively common measure, but also for executive privilege, which would be unprecedented in a federal criminal inquiry.

…executive privilege…literally a privilege of the executive…which the man no longer even has the pretense of being…over documents that pertain to national defense…even if you accept that there might be a hypothetical case wherein the risks of disclosing that kind of classified information could be judged by a president to be outweighed by some sort of moral imperative to proclaim it to the world…that isn’t the same as physically taking documents in open defiance of the explicit laws pertaining to their security & shuffling them around amongst your possessions in a variety of poorly secured locations…& to contend otherwise is absurd on its face

On Thursday, the Justice Department shot back, telling Judge Cannon in yet another filing that the intelligence assessment and the criminal inquiry were “inextricably linked.” Prosecutors asked her to lift her ban on using the seized materials and requested she restrict the scope of the special master’s review to unclassified documents, excluding about 100 seized files bearing classification labels.

Moreover, prosecutors informed her that if she did not grant by Thursday their request to stay the portion of her ruling that is keeping investigators from working with the documents marked as classified, they would ask the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, to intervene and block it.

…as for the special master…DoJ said they’d roll with dearie…but pointed out that rather than being “retired” as per the bullshit school of filing…he’s more by way of being “inactive” but still technically a serving judge…either way he’s at least possibly what I’m increasingly feeling like we can call an “actual judge”…& he looks pretty reasonable as a choice if the two DoJ offered get rejected given that the other one is…well let’s just say that potential special master would likely be pretty clear on who his master would be

https://t.co/GYKmf0MvxP

— 🇺🇸🇺🇸Gazpacho Police🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@wendbroky) September 10, 2022

In its initial filing on Monday, Mr. Trump’s legal team sidestepped the question of whether he had declassified all the documents he took to Mar-a-Lago, as he has insisted outside of court. His lawyers said that as president, Mr. Trump had the authority to declassify anything he wanted and referred to the files as “purported” classified records.

But they stopped short of affirmatively stating that he had declassified any files that the F.B.I. seized. No credible evidence has emerged to support that assertion, and lawyers face professional consequences for making false claims in court.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/12/us/politics/trump-doj-special-master.html

…much the same way they “argue” against the DoJ’s picks for special master

UPDATE: Trump objects to DOJ proposed special masters but doesn’t want to explain why publicly. “There are specific reasons,” his lawyers say. pic.twitter.com/EYM5wdi4Ja

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) September 12, 2022

…I mean…I can think of some specific reasons for a thing or two

NOW: The DOJ has issued a sweeping grand jury subpoena to “Women for America First,” an organization who helped plan the January 6 rally.

— Brian J. Karem (@BrianKarem) September 12, 2022

…like…the reason specifically that it strikes me as relevant that one of their proposed options for the person to hold up proceedings in order to get to spend time with the shit that shouldn’t be in the possession of an un-presidented person happens to have a spouse who sits on the court at which appeals to the “case” being argued would be heard…is specifically the same batch of concerns provoked by ginni thomas…who was up to her eyeballs in that “women for america first” crap…& the ways her behavior & her husband’s rulings seem to argue convincingly for a clear example of undue & improper influence…you know…for starters?

The most significant news is the seizure of the phones of Trump advisors Boris Epshteyn and Mike Roman, as part of the investigation of the fake electors scheme.

Seizure requires a judicial finding that there is probable cause to believe that evidence of a crime is on the phone. https://t.co/QGSFvBlO3t

— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) September 12, 2022

…& as starters go…there’s a lot more where that came from…much of it from people who maybe could use a refresher course on the foundation of argument too, as it happens

Since the Trump administration achieved three appointments to the nine-member bench, the court has swung sharply to the right with a six-three conservative supermajority. It voted in June to dismantle Roe, returning the power over abortion rights to the states and leaving 58% of US women of reproductive age, or 40 million women, in states hostile to abortion rights.
[…]
“[Roberts] added, at the Friday event: “I don’t understand the connection between the opinions people disagree with and the legitimacy of the supreme court,” while being interviewed by two judges from the Denver-based 10th US circuit court of appeals at its conference in Colorado Springs, the Gazette newspaper reported.

“If the court doesn’t retain its legitimate function of interpreting the constitution, I’m not sure who would take up that mantle. You don’t want the political branches telling you what the law is, and you don’t want public opinion to be the guide about what the appropriate decision is,” Roberts said.
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/sep/11/john-roberts-defends-supreme-court-kamala-harris-abortion-ruling

…call it an oversimplification…but that last part strikes me as an illustrative example of something…in that (I’m guessing) it was something he said to what might be called a receptive audience…rather than one to whom the inference that the only opinions that ought to be guiding such matters should implicitly be their own might be one of those things that’s taken as read to demonstrate “the connection between the opinions people disagree with and the legitimacy of the supreme court“…or illegitimacy, as the case may be…&…that might be important…from a certain point of view…or as some might style it…in reality…which these days does rather beg the question of whose reality?

The dire state of local journalism in the US has been well documented in recent years, as the closure of hundreds of local newspapers has created American “news deserts” where people struggle for information on local politics and happenings.

It has also created openings for companies and political groups to swoop in, serving up a mixture of local news and propaganda, with the latest being Chevron, in Texas’ news starved – and oil-rich – Permian Basin.

The launch of Chevron’s “Permian Proud” site, in August, was first reported by Gizmodo.
[…]
“New solar energy field in Permian Basin to lower Chevron’s carbon intensity” is one. Another headline reads: “Independent analysis gives Chevron highest environmental rating in Permian Basin.”

Gizmodo reported that content on the site has been written by Mike Aldax, who works for a San Francisco-based PR firm. Since 2014, according to Gizmodo, Aldax “has also written for a Chevron-funded newspaper in California called the Richmond Standard”.

Chevron’s Texas offering has echoes of other dubious “local news” sites that have emerged in recent years.

Locality Labs and Metric Media, both operated by the same ex-journalist, have opened hundreds of “news” sites, which purport to represent local communities, since 2019. The sites, which include the Great Lakes Wire and the Illinois Valley Times, masquerade as local news outlets, but in reality are funded by Republican and conservative groups.

Last November an investigation by Popular Information found that rightwing operatives had used the sprawling network of fake news sites to target crucial state elections, including the Virginia governor’s race in 2021. As the Virginia election loomed, 28 sites, all run by Metric Media, published almost 5,000 articles about critical race theory in schools, a frequently misrepresented issue that has become a call to arms, and to the ballot box, among the right wing.

The rise in fake sites coincides with a crisis for local journalism. Since 2005 the US has lost more than a quarter of its newspapers, according to Northwestern University’s Medill School, and is on track to lose more than a third by 2025.
[…]
“In a self-governed democracy, accurate news and information is the oxygen for citizens to be able to make good decisions at the ballot box, or good decisions about how to live their daily lives.[” said Tim Franklin, the John M Mutz chair in local news at the Medill School.]

“So I think the implications of this are very serious for our democracy and for the country.”
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/sep/12/chevron-newspaper-local-news-permian-proud-site

…now…geography might not be my strong suit…but…the permian basin…that’d be in what might be referred to as “the south west”, I believe

A recent analysis by the Washington Post found that, in some parts of the south-west, average annual temperatures have already risen by more than 1.5C, a threshold widely considered the tipping point at which devastating consequences for people and the environment take hold.

The extraordinary conditions offer a warning of what lies ahead for other arid regions that cross this line. It is also a reminder that despite all the modern innovations to circumvent an unforgiving climate, drought may once again have the final say unless drastic steps are taken quickly.

“We were given an excellent warning by climate scientists,” says Bill McKibben, the journalist turned climate activist. “And, yet, instead of mustering the will to do something about it, our political and economic systems rallied to do nothing.”
[…]
While drought is a natural part of the south-west’s climate, looking at the relationship between tree rings and soil moisture found that the current period of aridity, which began in the year 2000, is unprecedented since AD800. The 2022 study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, attributed 42% of the last two decades’ hot and dry conditions to global heating.

Tim Kohler, an archaeologist and professor at Washington State University, says the current megadrought is different from prehistoric dry periods. “This one seems to be more severe than any of the previous droughts and just as long,” he says. “But the really bad news is all the previous megadroughts took place without the influence of increasing greenhouse gases. Now we are playing a new ballgame and scientists don’t know what to expect.”
[…]
A report last February from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) detailed how wildfires ravaging the south-west’s ponderosa pine forests are fueling a dangerous “positive feedback cycle”. Instead of acting as a “carbon sink” that absorbs CO2, explains Camille Parmesan, an ecologist who contributed to the report, some forests can actually become generators of greenhouse gases as they burn, in turn driving more heating.

“At some point, we may have put such a long, heavy train into motion that the positive feedback cycles will be locked in and continue to produce CO2 regardless of what humans do,” Parmesan says. “We have evidence this is starting and that is really scary.”

Another alarming aspect of the current dry period is something Parmesan calls “synergistic compounding effects”: essentially when the consequences of climate change occur simultaneously and turn what might otherwise have been a normal weather-related event – such as a fire or a heatwave – into a disaster.
[…]
This compounding phenomenon also played out last spring and summer with large wildfires in northern Arizona and northern New Mexico. A dearth of snowfall led to a parched forest floor where drought and pests had already killed many trees. That combined with record heat, low humidity and hurricane-force winds to create unstoppable wildfires.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/us-west-megadrought-climate-disaster

…that basin only includes parts of southern new mexico, though…so, you know…I’m sure those two sets of facts can freely coexist as a basis for decision making with no adverse consequences for anyone…probably not even worth mentioning really in the grand scheme of things…not when people are busily identifying the real foundations of our problems

America’s democratic structure is indeed shuddering — but it is shuddering under its own weight. The threat to democracy isn’t (for now) a usurper system, but democratic ideology itself. At least that’s one way to read a significant new study on democratic attitudes published in the American Political Science Review by Danish academic Suthan Krishnarajan.

Talk of the “defense of democracy” in the United States evokes a conveniently sharp division between citizens who favor democracy and those who don’t. Krishnarajan takes a more subtle approach. He shows that citizens who self-consciously support democracy can simultaneously support undemocratic actions on a large scale when it suits their political interests — and not recognize the contradiction.
[…]
Even as they overstated democratic transgressions by the opposing side, Americans were reluctant to identify bona fide abuses by their own side. “When leftists are confronted with undemocratic right-wing behavior” — such as restricting the venues where liberal politicians can campaign — “62% of them perceive it to be highly undemocratic. When they are confronted with an identical left-wing undemocratic behavior, only 36% think so.” A similar gulf exists on the right.

This creates perverse incentives for envelope-pushing politicians. “The more unambiguously clear the undemocratic violation, the more people polarize in their perceptions of how undemocratic it is,” Krishnarajan writes. Moreover, “biases are not simply present at the poles of the political spectrum but exist even for citizens who simply lean either direction politically.”

Crucially, Krishnarajan finds in his analysis, respondents don’t see themselves as sacrificing their democratic values, even as their survey answers tell a different story. Motivated reasoning “relieves them of unwanted conclusions about the state of democracy by altering how they understand democracy in a given situation.” To the partisan mind — which is to say, most of our minds — violations of democratic norms are simply less salient when directed against a disfavored group.
[…]
If U.S. democracy is functioning poorly, the problem is not that Americans are embracing some nondemocratic system of government, or even turning away from democracy in the abstract. To the contrary, we are so ideologically invested in the purity of our democracy that much of what the other party does seems like a threat to it. And that sense of threat in turn justifies political hardball as a countermeasure — and makes citizens more tolerant of their own party’s abuses.

So the fight in America right now isn’t between democracy and non-democracy, but between two opposing visions of popular sovereignty. The concept of democracy, broadly agreed upon but fiercely contested in its particulars, never came with fixed guardrails. And the higher the perceived stakes rise, the more tempting the invitation to destroy political norms — and to rationalize their destruction as necessary for democracy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/11/american-democracy-threat-from-within/

…ok…so…if I’m entirely honest I do think I can understand the point that’s trying to make & can see how it might be valid…but…it also strikes me as the rhetorical equivalent of dividing by zero…& I think that’s where I find a lot of this stuff seems like it misses the point by accepting a flawed premise…sure, neither side of the US two party system is a paragon of unblemished integrity…& that means there’s plenty of fault to be found on the side of the aisle who are named for being fans of that whole democracy lark…but then as churchill had it

‘Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’
https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form-of-government/

…& the flawed premise that’s winding me up…as ever it somehow continues to despite the endless stream of stuff you’d think would inure me to it…is that in order to adhere to the sacrosanct principles of our much vaunted social & political norms it is necessary to engage with utterly transparently malicious & self-serving bad faith bullshit as though it is due the same respect as cogent, well-reasoned & adequately supported arguments and demonstrations of what those scientists like to think of as empirical fact…so…forgive me…but that’s what had me thinking about people who’ve been dead for centuries…see…aristotle had some thoughts about quite a lot of things…among which was the structural components of argument…& I don’t know about you…but I tend to think he made some salient points about what he called the “modes of persuasion“

…like…for the ethos part…which would basically be the question of the speaker’s character…he contended that to achieve credibility (or at any rate the appearance of such) required competence, empathy & beneficent intent…which perhaps suggests a degree of naïveté with an unenviable life-expectancy in our brave new world of modern discourse…but still seems like a serviceable wish-list for a scenario where something like democracy might get a fair enough shake to maybe look pretty functional

…pathos would be that whole business of trying to sway your audience so as to incline them to see the thing from your perspective…of which, I guess…more anon…with the third leg of the stool being logos…or…broadly speaking…evidence

…so…maybe I just got up on the wrong side of bed this morning…but…to the extent that what I tend to think of as the wrong side of what we somewhat euphemistically refer to as things like “national debate” or “public opinion” only seems to have any interest in empathy or competence when it comes to how to competently take advantage of empathy they don’t share to advance their own interests at the cost of those who have enough of the stuff to get a hook in…which they’re happy to do explicitly in bad-faith…& that if the playing field were level in the sense of resembling an evidence-based landscape…the territorial advantage would…to crowbar in a star wars reference by way of light relief…often resemble the much memed moment in which the duly appointed avatar for the forces of evil, soon to become darth vader (let’s say – in the case of the special master stuff – the part played by hair furore) is warned to reconsider since the reluctant wielder of the forces of justice & decency (going by default to one merrick garland per this tortured analogy) has “the high ground”

…so it’s sticking in my craw that in aristotle’s terminology the extent to which the common theme of why dime-store sophistry applied to the pathos aspect of the thing seems to be the only leg these assholes are standing on…& for practical purposes we’re all supposed to just pretend it isn’t quite clearly busted beyond all recognition

…so…there’s a lot of other stuff worth talking about…& apologies for not doing that instead…I’ll try to find some tunes that might somewhat atone for any price you might feel you paid for getting this far…but I think I can safely say my need for another cup of coffee is an incontestable reality?

[P.S. …if you think that was bad…at least I didn’t start in on his views concerning the principle of non-contradiction?]