Daughter Number Three: Stop the Gish Gallop, Green New Deal from January on

A couple of posts from two of the "good men" on Twitter today.

First, media critic Jay Rosen, discussing the need to stop covering Mafia Mulligan at the White House daily "press briefing" on the COVID-19 catastrophe (all emphasis added by me):

It is believed by many people who follow me that tougher, more confrontational questions — and more determined follow-ups — are the answer to press briefings on the virus that allow Trump to elude accountability.

I disagree. It's is one of my least popular conclusions.

In my view, the lens through which we should interpret the briefings is how to increase the supply and circulation of good information about the virus and what has to be done, and decrease the spread of misinformation, strategic distraction, magical thinking, etc.

From this point of view, a key point to begin at is that Trump at the podium and on TV is the single most potent force for misinforming Americans about the dangers of the virus and what needs to be done now. Yet he is also the star and central figure in the briefings. See the problem?

It is very widely believed — among people who talk to me on this website, but also among journalists who report on politics — that tough questions and determined follow-ups can prevent the president from using the briefings to inject falsehoods into national discourse.

From their point of view he can be "made" to answer the question by determined journalists who will not back down. It just takes balls! And some solidarity. If he evades or dissembles, follow up. If the follow up fails, the next reporter has to insist. Keep insisting until he answers!

To me this a fantasy. A malignant narcissist greets even the slightest challenge as a personal attack and evidence of the challenger's bad character. And Trump is wired differently from me and you in that he lacks the gene for being shamed into good conduct. On top of that, he generates momentum by drawing censure and criticism from those whom his supporters love to despise. The White House press and the show hosts back at the studio sit atop the list of hate objects for soldiers in the Trump movement. All the incentives align toward attack.

But here's the bigger problem. If you try to "grill" him about a false statement his reply will typically introduce three new falsehoods without responding one bit to your original. Now you have four things you need to "grill" him about, your time is up, and he's moved on.

Another way to put it: the questions proceed in linear way, but when they are put to Trump the lying and disinformation increase exponentially. And remember, our aim is to increase the supply of reliable information and slow the spread of falsehood and strategic distraction.

When I point this out to believers in tough questions and determined follow-ups, they often revert to a logic I grasp, but do not share. They say that provoking a confrontation with Trump will lead to a meltdown or rage fit that will finally show Americans who this guy is.

This is another fantasy, a longing for a Joseph Welch moment. Remember him? He was the lawyer who in American mythology is said to have destroyed Joe McCarthy in 1954 with the famous lines, "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

There is no Joseph Welch in the press corps who is going to "destroy" Trump. And anyway that is not a legitimate aim for journalists who report on him. Accountability IS a legitimate aim, but only a politician with a sense of shame can be held accountable by tough questions.

Also: It's become clear to me and many others that the daily briefings on the virus are morphing into substitutes for the rallies Trump cannot hold under social distancing rules. Now imagine if at one of those rallies there was a Q & A session with reporters in the media pen.

Picturing that? Because better than any argument I can construct, such an image explains why in my new post I recommend withdrawal from the briefing room, suspension of normal relations with the Trump government, and a switch to an emergency setting.

Finally, I have to observe... People who think that confronting Donald Trump more forcefully with facts he cannot deny will produce some kind of accountability must never have lived with a malignant narcissist.

It does not work.

As I've said before, Trump is the Gish Gallop incarnate, and now I have the Jay Rosen seal of approval for that designation. And now I think we can also say he is a human virus.

Then, there's this from Cory Doctorow, who is always thinking of the larger solution:

The current situation has revealed deep cracks in our system: replacing public transit with gig economy drivers who don't get health care or sick leave; the gig economy itself; the lethal inadequacy of private-sector broadband and private-sector health-care, and beyond.

The fact that we can simply abolish data-caps (without networks falling over) and the liquid ban (without planes blowing up) reveals that these supposed existential threats were, in fact, arbitrary, authoritarian, rent-seeking bullshit.

The people who've spent 40 years convincing us that we're just not free-marketing hard enough continue to insist that all of these problems are merely the result of not having fully dismantled the state (so much for "state capacity libertarianism"):

They're licking their chops for a 2008-style reboot: eviscerating public services, immiserating workers, fattening plutes and dissolving regulatory safeguards. It's a playbook developed by Milton Friedman: the scheme to have "ideas lying around" when crisis strikes.

But as Naomi Klein reminds us, the Shock Doctrine cuts both ways. The manifest failures of plutocracy in the Great Depression got us the New Deal and the "30 Glorious Years" of shared prosperity and growth.

We haven't been idle since 2008. We have "ideas lying around," too. Ideas for a just and resilient society that reorients human life around sustainable and just practices.

Motherboard's editorial staff gave us a manifesto for that society, so that this crisis doesn't go to waste, called The World After This. It includes:

Free and universal healthcare ("healthcare is a basic human right" –B. Sanders)

Abolish ICE and prisons ("ICE is now a public health hazard")

Protect and empower labor ("Without these protections, everyone’s safety and health is put at risk")

A healthier climate ("If the 2008-09 financial crash is any indicator, carbon could shoot right back up as soon as the crisis is over")

Fast, accessible broadband ("Community owned/operated broadband networks, long demonized and even prohibited by law are looking better than ever")

Smash the surveillance state ("This pandemic mustn't be used to infringe on the civil liberties and privacy of millions")

Billionaire wealth ("They're sending people to work while jetting off to luxurious doomsday bunkers, getting Covid-19 tests while normal people can't, and also singing "Imagine" from bucolic getaways.")

Public transit that works ("Congress is poised to prioritize bailing out airlines and the cruise industry before it takes a look at public transit")

The right to repair ("Right-to-repair has become a matter of life and death.")

Science for the people ("We were caught flat-footed by a fixation on 'innovation' and lack of public options")

The future will not be like the past. Whether it is worse or better is our choice to make. It is in our (well-scrubbed) hands.

I woke up this morning thinking about how to call my senator Tina Smith to talk her into supporting — becoming a leader on — the Green New Deal, as a segue from the coronavirus crisis. That we can't bail out casinos and cruise ship companies (or oil companies, banks, airlines) when people, nonprofits, and small businesses are all going under. And that when we rebuild after this (whenever that is), it's an opportunity to rebuild a country adapted to both the climate crisis and equity.

And there was Cory's thread, waiting for me.

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