Unhappy Thoughts Part II

The post-election blues continue on, obviously.

One of the things still haunting me a month later is how the results just did not fit the enthusiasm I saw among fellow Harris/Walz voters, how it just didn't seem possible that a deeply unpopular figure like trump could add to a popular vote count to win.

And now we have to cope with the "autopsy" as it were with people yelling and screaming where things went wrong.

Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up this Monday pointed me to another blog where the artist created a cartoon basically highlighting all the (hindsight) armchair quarterbacking taking place among the Democratic ranks after the loss:

 

Visit Amp's blog to view the full image, please

As the artist Ampersand noted:

Lacking any clear-cut truth, most people just go ahead and say that the election proves that the Democrats have to endorse whatever policy stance they prefer or they’ll never win an election again...

I understand the impulse. I think the Biden administration has been horrifically bad on Gaza. Now that Harris has lost, it would be very convenient for me if everyone agreed that Harris lost because of the Biden administration’s terrible policies on Gaza.

But “convenient for me” isn’t the same as “true.” (Which is a very unfortunate way to set up a universe, and as soon as I locate the management I will make a complaint)...

Everybody's got a pet peeve and policy issue to defend. I've encountered a number of the ones presented in that comic: I've met people who are obsessed over reports how Elon Musk's Starlink system got election counting data before any official counting was done; I know a few people online who were genuinely upset about Biden's failure to rein in Israel's genocide of Palestinian families in Gaza and West Bank; I've read the arguments from the media pundits who think Biden (and by proxy Harris) were getting punished for higher prices even as inflation was trending down.

I myself am convinced that the mainstream media - led by the cowards at New York Times and Washington Post - failed to keep voters informed about how criminal and corrupt donald trump was, underplaying his scandals while punishing Biden/Harris/Democrats with a "both siderism" narrative that made Democrats look old and broken themselves.

But even I know that's not the entirety of the problem.

The real answer why Democrats failed to win this 2024 election cycle is that donald trump - leading a squalid and cruel army of Republican officials and voting base - appealed to the worst nature of a large plurality of our fellow Americans and got them to back his election. He stuck to his decades-long campaign hating on immigrants, hating on Blacks, hating on women; getting more and more Republican figures and media cheerleaders to push that fear and rage. And he got more and more voters - and not just angry Whites but also angry men and angry women from the very ethnic groups he's attacking - to buy in, spreading Hate like a plague. 

trump went from 63 million voters - when we could explain it away as a failure of a broken Electoral College - to 74 million - where we could avoid it by accepting Biden's popular vote win of 81 million - to 77 million where there's no other way to avoid this.

Democrats lost because Republicans appealed to sadists and assholes who are greater in number than we realized. The Cruelty was the point, and now it's policy. 

Every attempt to appeal to any rational Republican or centrist voting group wasn't going to work. Trying to get more liberal and progressive voters to show up seems limiting, and not enough of them were willing to buy in to the Big Tent Biden and Harris tried to build.

The reason why a lot of us who voted for Harris - who voted for competency and sanity and justice and an America we thought we knew - are skittish and unhappy today is that we've learned our neighbors, families, and communities are full of people who knew trump was a monster - a convicted felon and sex offender, openly willing to commit more crimes as President - and voted for him anyway.

Gods help us.

The Fall of Assad, and the Fate of Syria and the Middle East

This had been happening over the past two weeks, but I didn't want to say anything about it because I'm tired of getting ahead of myself on historic events as they occur, but in the Middle East - alongside all the fighting and bloodshed - we're witnessing the swift and sudden downfall of a tyrannical regime in Syria (via Willem Marx at NPR):

A rapid advance by Syrian rebel groups on the country's capital has led to the collapse of Bashar al-Assad's control of a nation his family had ruled for half a century.

Crowds celebrated the seismic political shift in the streets of Damascus overnight and into Sunday, as Syrian state television broadcast a statement from a group of rebels, one dressed in a black hoodie, who announced that all Syrian prisoners had been freed from jail and Assad had been deposed.

The man reading that statement on television, just hours after the city's fall, had echoed calls from the leading group in this lightning rebel offensive, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, demanding that citizens and fighters alike ensure the country's national institutions were protected. He ended his statement with a declaration after more than 13 years of bloody civil conflict: "Long Live a Free Syria..."

The British-based war monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Assad had left the country to an undisclosed destination.

Hours later, Russia, which had long used its military to prop up the Assad regime against wide-ranging opposition forces, also said that the toppled president had left the country. The Russian foreign ministry did not say where he had gone.

There's a timeline at AP News that helps highlight just how quick this whole turnabout moved. A lot of foreign policy think tanks are working overtime - like this Atlantic Council - to figure out the massive implications that Assad's fall means not just for Syria but for the entire Middle East region.

We're talking about a key Arab nation that had long contributed to the violent instability and chaos in the region well back into the 1950s. Syria - alongside Iran, and backed by Russia - were themselves backers for such extremists groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon, which contributed to ongoing violence with Israel and leaving Lebanon in political and economic turmoil for decades.

Syria itself has been broken by a decades-long civil war since 2011 - among a number of uprisings going back to the 1980s - that sent millions of civilians fleeing as refugees to avoid the indiscriminate bombing and gassing that Assad's regime deployed as means of putting down resistance. Gods, I last blogged about this civil war in 2015 when I pledged some financial support to help those refugees, and the war itself in 2013 when Obama's presidency attempted to defuse Assad's use of chemical weapons in that civil war.

The end of Assad means only a temporary respite in that war, unfortunately. Syria as a nation was cobbled together by a mix of differing ethnicities and religious groups - Kurds, Turks, Sunnis, Shi'a, Christians, dozens of smaller cultural communities - some of whom remain hostile towards each other even in this moment of possible nation-building into functioning coalitions.

This is the thing a lot of Western nations are dreading: the potential of Syria to backslide much like Iraq or Afghanistan or Libya into still-broken internally squabbling states that could become home to corruption and religious extremists.

In opposition to that dread, there looks to be a sizable amount of hope. The HTS rebels who claimed victory are posing - at the moment - as functional moderates looking to legitimize their rule. In the years that they've received training from their Turkish handlers, there is the decent possibility that they've learned how Turkey handles religious tolerance and can placate the larger Christian populations in Syria. The Turkish government - looking to reduce or end the ongoing Kurdish separatist movement in their own borders - would want Syria to take the burden of dealing with the Kurds: This would require genuine coalition-building.

A stabilized Syria should mean an end to one of the largest refugee crises facing the Middle East (and Europe/United States). Fourteen million displaced Syrians could start moving back - hopefully within weeks - just as long as serious rebuilding efforts are funded by foreign aid to rebuild cities and homes to move back to. Ending this crisis could well relieve a lot of discontent among the sanctuary nations - especially across Europe - that had their Far Right parties spewing racist outrage to promote their own agendas.

There is also the possibility that the end of Assad's regime - which was hostile towards Israel and a major backer of Hezbollah and Hamas - could shift the dynamics of the ongoing bloodshed that Netanyahu's government has been inflicting on Palestinian and Lebanese civilians over the past year. Cutting off Syrian support of Hezbollah ought to weaken their position in Lebanon to where the broken power-sharing system falls apart. Pacifying Lebanon ought to mollify Israel... although letting up on the ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank is going to require different tactics.

A lot of this is going to involve diplomacy - and money - and gods help us if any of this drags long enough until trump is back in the White House to break it all out of his greedy self-interest, but let's not stress about that just yet (get on Air Force One NOW Biden, and get to Damascus to hammer out a deal before Christmas goddammit!).

The most obvious thing to note out of all this is how broken Russia is right now. As Michael Scollon and Frud Bezhan at Radio Free Europe point out:

When Vladimir Putin took the reins of power in a post-Soviet Russia in shambles a quarter-century ago, he immediately set about restoring Moscow's status as a global power.

It took 15 years, but Russia heralded its military intervention in the Syrian civil war as proof of its return as a force to be reckoned with on the international stage.

Moscow leveraged that image to expand its influence throughout the Middle East and beyond as a counterweight to the West.

Now, the fall of the government of President Bashar al-Assad, a key ally of Moscow, has dealt a serious blow to Russia's great-power ambitions.

"Putin's military adventure in Syria was designed to demonstrate that Russia is a great power and can project its influence abroad," said Phillip Smyth, a Middle East expert. "Losing Syria is a huge slap in the face for Putin."

Assad's ouster represents not only a reputational hit to Russia but likely a major strategic setback.

Syria is home to two major Russia military installations: an air base in Hmeimim and a naval base in Tartus. The latter is Russia's only warm-water naval base and provides Moscow access to the Mediterranean Sea...

Reports were fast and furious on social media that Russia's fleet at Tartus sailed out days ago - abandoning Assad even then - arguably forced to travel the long way around to the Atlantic and Baltic Sea, as getting back into the Black Sea means facing an eager Ukrainian torpedo boat drone attack that would happily sink it (that is if Turkey reopened the path through Istanbul's waterway for them).

Moscow capitalized on its involvement in both Syria and Ukraine to sell itself as a power capable of challenging the United States, NATO, and the West in general while expanding its global reach from the Mediterranean to Africa and Latin America.

Following Russia's all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Syria became more of an asset for Moscow, experts say, while also presenting the challenge of maintaining military campaigns on two fronts...

Syria's fall quickly makes it clear that Russia can't handle a two-front war. Putin is so obsessed and focused on conquering Ukraine that he can no longer provide manpower or equipment or time to any of the client states he's been propping up across the globe. Russia - aside from their nuclear missiles, and there's even some serious doubt about that - is no longer a military powerhouse. Their political and economic influences are just as diminished.

In fact, he's been vacuuming up equipment and manpower from those client states - look at all the weapons manufactured in Iran, look at the North Korean troops "volunteered" to slam into the meat grinder in Kursk - in a desperate attempt to force Ukraine to a negotiation table where Putin hopes to retain his land gains to justify retreating and repairing his losses. Putin dares not make any more mass conscription efforts among his own Russian people without risking draft riots. And he can't provide any mercenary support - bye, Wagner! - overseas (especially now that his long-range bases are cut off).

It used to be from the Cold War onward that Soviet Russia - and Putin's Russia - were militarily and financially capable of spreading their influence and support across the entire globe. Putin was attempting to market Russia as an alternative to other global powers like France and the U.S. across Africa, but now those efforts seem empty and likely unfulfilled. Client states like Cuba and Venezuela are now literally struggling to keep the lights on. Other nations that could be allies in Russia's time of need - China and India - are now too self-sufficient and too powerful themselves to where they can stand on the sidelines and see what benefits them most as things fall apart.

There's a lot of chaos still out there - not just in Syria and in Ukraine - and a lot of it can get worse when a meddling and incompetent trump gets back into office.

Keep hoping the good things happen before then.

The Killing

Respectable little murders pay/
They get more respectable every day
-- "Sunset Grill," Don Henley

With all of the drama and madness in this Darkest Timeline, with all the gun violence our nation witnesses on a daily basis, it's telling that the shooting of a single person only matters when that person was the uber-rich CEO of a healthcare corporation (via Jake Offenhartz, Michael Balsamo, and Michael R. Sisak at AP News):

New clues emerged Thursday in the hunt for the masked gunman who stalked and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, including possible leads about his travel before the shooting and a message scrawled on ammunition found at the crime scene.

The words “deny,” “defend” and “depose” were found emblazoned on the ammunition, echoing a phrase used by insurance industry critics, two law enforcement officials said Thursday.

The words were written in permanent marker, according to one of the two officials, who were not authorized to publicly discuss details of the investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.

Investigators also now believe the suspect may have traveled to New York last month on a bus that originated in Atlanta, one of the law enforcement officials said...

One of the interesting developments in this story is how quickly social media jumped on the story... by satirizing (if not brutally mocking) the victim's status as an allegedly corrupt corporate boss of a major health care insurer with a known history of massive profits at the expense of denying millions of Americans any affordable health care. As Troy Farah over at Salon notes:

Violence is a strategy that never warrants celebration because it is crude, brutal and ineffective, not to mention immoral. There’s always a better way, even if it’s not as easy or as dramatic. Nonetheless, it’s not bizarre or surprising to see that Reddit is being flooded with memes mocking the murder, or that many on social media are seemingly trying (or failing) to suppress their glee. There’s now even a rush to cash in with merch, such as a ballcap using the company’s logo next to crosshairs and the phrase “We aim to please.” A chart from valuepenguin.com displaying the percentage of claim denial rates by insurance companies, with UnitedHealthcare topping the list, has gone super viral, with one user on Threads captioning it, “To paraphrase Chris Rock ‘... but I understand.’”

The overall justification for this celebration — the New York Times described it as a “torrent of hate” — lies in the widely understood the fact that health care companies inflict violence on thousands of people in this country, if not millions, every single day. Take the announcement this week from Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, which couldn’t have had better or worse timing, depending on one’s perspective. That company proposed that its health insurance plans in Connecticut, New York and Missouri would no longer cover anesthesia care if a surgery or operation extends beyond an arbitrary time limit. That seems to have outraged the American Society of Anesthesiologists, which has called on Anthem to immediately reverse this proposal.

On Thursday, Anthem did just that, but the shock remains. If that’s not violence, what is? Whether you’re in an alley or on an operating table, if someone has a knife to you and demands your money, it’s violence. Or consider the innumerable examples that aren’t just proposals but routine policy: the tidal wave of denied or delayed claims, the noose of restrictive networks, costly deductibles, prescription refusals and on and on. There is also convincing evidence this walled garden especially excludes and discriminates against people of color, queer people and women, making this systemic violence not just prevalent, but also disproportionate...

Thompson's murder is not different from the many times a wingnut gunman went storming into a Planned Parenthood clinic to shoot at "baby killers," so celebrating the act would be monstrous hypocrisy for those us angered by Far Right violence towards women and the health care providers they need. If there is any difference, it's that most of those gunmen are pumped up on lies from Far Right media, whereas this gunman can well be acting out direct vengeance. Nearly every observer's comments/viewpoints on "motive" - something the police haven't confirmed yet, because there's a good chance of misdirection - are going by the things Farah highlighted about our nation's broken health care system: This shooter could well have lost a loved one to a fatal illness that Thompson's United HealthCare corporation refused to help.

That is of course pure speculation on my - and a lot of other people's - part. For all we know, the killer could have been a hired hitman: Thompson was under investigation for insider trading, for example.

Ah, as Farah noted: "...But I understand."

This killing brought to the fore news coverage of how hundreds - if not millions - of Americans are rightly angered by how our health care companies routinely deny any affordable health care. Just to share from Selena Simmons-Duffin's report at NPR:

Yolonda Wilson is one of many people who shared painful stories about health insurance gone wrong on social media this week.

Her insurer, UnitedHealthcare, denied coverage for a surgery about two days before it was scheduled, back in January. She finally got it approved, in the nick of time, with a lot of unnecessary stress and tears. "I did not know until Wednesday afternoon whether I would be able to have surgery Thursday morning," she told NPR.

Wilson, a professor of Health Care Ethics at Saint Louis University in Missouri, noted that she was telling her personal story, not speaking on behalf of the university.

The shocking, targeted killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson Wednesday struck a nerve on social media, triggering an outpouring of negative experiences with the tangled health care system in the U.S.

Many people shared searing stories of health care denials from health insurers. One person said his mom's scan to check on her stage IV lung cancer was recently denied. In another post, a dad shared the letter UHC sent him denying a wheelchair for his son with cerebral palsy.

"A lot of people are in deep pain, and maybe didn't have anywhere to put that pain," Wilson says.

UnitedHealthcare is the biggest private health insurer in the U.S., with an outsized market share in both the commercial insurance and Medicare Advantage markets. UnitedHealth Group reported $371.6 billion in revenue last year and faces an antitrust lawsuit to block its $3.3 billion acquisition of a rival home health and hospice service.

Americans generally say they're pretty happy with their health insurance, according to survey data from health policy research organization KFF — unless they're sick. Those with "fair" or "poor" health are nearly twice as likely to be displeased with their insurance compared to those with "good" health.

The sick thing about getting sick in America is that the moment you do, those insurers who'd been taking your money all those years suddenly refuse to pay any of it back to you. God forbid they cut into those billions of revenues.

Pam Herd, a professor of social policy at the University of Michigan who studies administrative burdens involved in accessing government services, says barriers to health care access are especially painful.

"It's one thing to be frustrated at the DMV because you have a ton of paperwork to fill out or you have to spend an hour in line," she says. "It's a whole other thing to face those barriers when they are the difference between whether you're going to get life-saving care or not."

Herd's research shows how barriers in the health care system can affect people's actual health — whether it's calling several times to just get an appointment or trying to find an in-network specialist or fighting to get a procedure covered...

For all the Far Right and Libertarian types out there who whine about the federal bureaucracy, the DMV ain't got shit on UnitedHealthcare or the other for-profit corporations out there that work to delay, defend, and deny any help to the people at all. Dealing with the stress of jumping through hoop after hoop and running into brick wall after brick wall is just as sickening as getting a life-threatening-yet-treatable illness.

One of the more shocking stories going public is how UHC under Thompson's reign implemented an AI-based automated process that generated 90 percent error rates while denying their clients the financial help they were supposed to get. That was originally a report from 2023, but only now are people really reading it.

Again: "...But I understand."

As of right now, the other CEOs of large corporations - not just in the insurance business - are hiring more bodyguards and clearing their names off the company websites to avoid getting on anybody's Naughty Lists. They are - obviously - not interested in responding to the growing public outrage towards their ravenous greed: They have, after all, just bought off the 2024 election cycle to guarantee trump and the Republican Party will grant them the massive tax cuts and deregulations they desire to add to the billions they already possess.

The CEOs - the true class-driven elite, the robber barons of the 21st Century - are mourning the death of one of their fellow greedheads while overlooking the body count of thousands of Americans who die because they didn't get their health care approved or covered in time, or worse the thousands who die because they can't get any insurance coverage at all.

THAT is why a lot of people suspect the assassin was acting out of vengeance. 

And yeah, we understand.

Which murders - the shooting of a CEO or the deaths of families and loved ones - get more respectable in the end?