Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 898
January 9, 2016
Hong Kong’s publishers keep disappearing. Its autonomy could be next

That vision of Hong Kong, however, is growing dimmer. If allegations are correct, it now appears that those who scrutinize Beijing’s political elite can get snatched off the streets of Hong Kong and dragged into China proper.
That is among Hong Kongers’ worst fears, and they are right to worry. In recent months, five people connected to a single publishing house — known for detailing misdeeds of Communist Party officials — have simply vanished.
The latest to disappear is 65-year-old Lee Bo. He is an editor with Sage Communications, which puts out salacious books, sometimes shakily sourced, that describe Communist Party scandals. His top transgression, it seems, was preparing the release of a book on the — alleged — secret love life of China’s President Xi Jinping.
Lee’s case is remarkable because he was on Hong Kong soil when he disappeared on Dec. 30.
His wife, whom he briefly called after being detained, has told reporters that he said Chinese operatives took him to a non-disclosed location. He called from a number with a mainland Chinese area code.
According to his wife, he told her he was asked to assist an investigation into the dissident publishing house. (Lee’s wife has since withdrawn her missing-person report after claiming to have received written assurances from her husband, a move that Amnesty International said “smacked of intimidation.”)
If true, this is a massive breach of Hong Kong’s autonomy.
Under a cherished set of “one country, two systems” laws, which offer limited independence to Hong Kong, Chinese police aren’t allowed to make arrests within its borders. If covert Chinese forces can freely abduct dissidents in Hong Kong, the territory’s prized free speech ideals are practically meaningless.
Three other Hong Kong residents connected to the publishing operation vanished while visiting the Chinese mainland in October. Another disappeared while on vacation in Thailand — a sign that the Communist Party is willing to pursue its targets even on foreign soil. (Thailand, ruled by a military junta, is increasingly cooperative in deporting traveling Chinese dissidents back into their government’s hands.)
Sage Communications belongs to a clique of independent publishers in Hong Kong that focus on “power struggles behind the scenes, love affairs and political gossip,” says Maya Wang, a researcher with Human Rights Watch.
These titles excite many readers in mainland China, where the government maintains a tight stranglehold on both published and online speech. “As a result, there’s been a thriving industry, though it’s a bit small, in which tourists come to Hong Kong from the mainland just to purchase books,” Wang says. “The books fill an important need in the Chinese publishing industry.”
The abductions have stirred panic among Hong Kong’s feisty anti-Beijing crowd, which agitates for liberalized democracy over the Communist Party’s authoritarian stylings. One Hong Kong lawmaker, Dennis Kwok, says that the allegations, if true, strike “a fatal blow to ‘one country, two systems’ and Hong Kong’s judicial independence.”
“In the past, we were safe because we lived in Hong Kong instead of mainland China,” says Agnes Chow, a student activist who helped lead Hong Kong’s “umbrella revolution,” in a video posted online shortly after Lee vanished.
“However, the circumstances have changed with this abduction... we feel that Hong Kong is not Hong Kong anymore,” Chow says. “I’m also afraid for my personal safety after this incident happened. I still believe we should continuously fight for freedom from fear.”
The Communist Party is hardly discreet about its loathing of what it calls Hong Kong's “radicals.”
“Their behavior will only make the city’s future path bumpier and bring annoyance to the local people,” stated a recent op-ed in the Global Times, a Chinese government mouthpiece. The piece also warned that “certain people from Hong Kong should really feel ashamed of what they have brought to the city.”
For now, the whereabouts of the five missing publishers are unknown. Activists and lawmakers publicly speculate that they are being held in China — perhaps by shadowy forces dispatched by angry officials, perhaps by the government itself.
A similar case — in which a Hong Kong publisher named Yao Wentian was nabbed while prepping a book called “Chinese Godfather Xi Jinping” — may offer a clue to their fate.
The publisher was arrested in 2014 for “smuggling” industrial chemicals, purchased legally, on a trip to the mainland. His supporters are adamant these charges were a means to punish his political speech by proxy. He is now serving a 10-year prison sentence somewhere inside China.

That vision of Hong Kong, however, is growing dimmer. If allegations are correct, it now appears that those who scrutinize Beijing’s political elite can get snatched off the streets of Hong Kong and dragged into China proper.
That is among Hong Kongers’ worst fears, and they are right to worry. In recent months, five people connected to a single publishing house — known for detailing misdeeds of Communist Party officials — have simply vanished.
The latest to disappear is 65-year-old Lee Bo. He is an editor with Sage Communications, which puts out salacious books, sometimes shakily sourced, that describe Communist Party scandals. His top transgression, it seems, was preparing the release of a book on the — alleged — secret love life of China’s President Xi Jinping.
Lee’s case is remarkable because he was on Hong Kong soil when he disappeared on Dec. 30.
His wife, whom he briefly called after being detained, has told reporters that he said Chinese operatives took him to a non-disclosed location. He called from a number with a mainland Chinese area code.
According to his wife, he told her he was asked to assist an investigation into the dissident publishing house. (Lee’s wife has since withdrawn her missing-person report after claiming to have received written assurances from her husband, a move that Amnesty International said “smacked of intimidation.”)
If true, this is a massive breach of Hong Kong’s autonomy.
Under a cherished set of “one country, two systems” laws, which offer limited independence to Hong Kong, Chinese police aren’t allowed to make arrests within its borders. If covert Chinese forces can freely abduct dissidents in Hong Kong, the territory’s prized free speech ideals are practically meaningless.
Three other Hong Kong residents connected to the publishing operation vanished while visiting the Chinese mainland in October. Another disappeared while on vacation in Thailand — a sign that the Communist Party is willing to pursue its targets even on foreign soil. (Thailand, ruled by a military junta, is increasingly cooperative in deporting traveling Chinese dissidents back into their government’s hands.)
Sage Communications belongs to a clique of independent publishers in Hong Kong that focus on “power struggles behind the scenes, love affairs and political gossip,” says Maya Wang, a researcher with Human Rights Watch.
These titles excite many readers in mainland China, where the government maintains a tight stranglehold on both published and online speech. “As a result, there’s been a thriving industry, though it’s a bit small, in which tourists come to Hong Kong from the mainland just to purchase books,” Wang says. “The books fill an important need in the Chinese publishing industry.”
The abductions have stirred panic among Hong Kong’s feisty anti-Beijing crowd, which agitates for liberalized democracy over the Communist Party’s authoritarian stylings. One Hong Kong lawmaker, Dennis Kwok, says that the allegations, if true, strike “a fatal blow to ‘one country, two systems’ and Hong Kong’s judicial independence.”
“In the past, we were safe because we lived in Hong Kong instead of mainland China,” says Agnes Chow, a student activist who helped lead Hong Kong’s “umbrella revolution,” in a video posted online shortly after Lee vanished.
“However, the circumstances have changed with this abduction... we feel that Hong Kong is not Hong Kong anymore,” Chow says. “I’m also afraid for my personal safety after this incident happened. I still believe we should continuously fight for freedom from fear.”
The Communist Party is hardly discreet about its loathing of what it calls Hong Kong's “radicals.”
“Their behavior will only make the city’s future path bumpier and bring annoyance to the local people,” stated a recent op-ed in the Global Times, a Chinese government mouthpiece. The piece also warned that “certain people from Hong Kong should really feel ashamed of what they have brought to the city.”
For now, the whereabouts of the five missing publishers are unknown. Activists and lawmakers publicly speculate that they are being held in China — perhaps by shadowy forces dispatched by angry officials, perhaps by the government itself.
A similar case — in which a Hong Kong publisher named Yao Wentian was nabbed while prepping a book called “Chinese Godfather Xi Jinping” — may offer a clue to their fate.
The publisher was arrested in 2014 for “smuggling” industrial chemicals, purchased legally, on a trip to the mainland. His supporters are adamant these charges were a means to punish his political speech by proxy. He is now serving a 10-year prison sentence somewhere inside China.

That vision of Hong Kong, however, is growing dimmer. If allegations are correct, it now appears that those who scrutinize Beijing’s political elite can get snatched off the streets of Hong Kong and dragged into China proper.
That is among Hong Kongers’ worst fears, and they are right to worry. In recent months, five people connected to a single publishing house — known for detailing misdeeds of Communist Party officials — have simply vanished.
The latest to disappear is 65-year-old Lee Bo. He is an editor with Sage Communications, which puts out salacious books, sometimes shakily sourced, that describe Communist Party scandals. His top transgression, it seems, was preparing the release of a book on the — alleged — secret love life of China’s President Xi Jinping.
Lee’s case is remarkable because he was on Hong Kong soil when he disappeared on Dec. 30.
His wife, whom he briefly called after being detained, has told reporters that he said Chinese operatives took him to a non-disclosed location. He called from a number with a mainland Chinese area code.
According to his wife, he told her he was asked to assist an investigation into the dissident publishing house. (Lee’s wife has since withdrawn her missing-person report after claiming to have received written assurances from her husband, a move that Amnesty International said “smacked of intimidation.”)
If true, this is a massive breach of Hong Kong’s autonomy.
Under a cherished set of “one country, two systems” laws, which offer limited independence to Hong Kong, Chinese police aren’t allowed to make arrests within its borders. If covert Chinese forces can freely abduct dissidents in Hong Kong, the territory’s prized free speech ideals are practically meaningless.
Three other Hong Kong residents connected to the publishing operation vanished while visiting the Chinese mainland in October. Another disappeared while on vacation in Thailand — a sign that the Communist Party is willing to pursue its targets even on foreign soil. (Thailand, ruled by a military junta, is increasingly cooperative in deporting traveling Chinese dissidents back into their government’s hands.)
Sage Communications belongs to a clique of independent publishers in Hong Kong that focus on “power struggles behind the scenes, love affairs and political gossip,” says Maya Wang, a researcher with Human Rights Watch.
These titles excite many readers in mainland China, where the government maintains a tight stranglehold on both published and online speech. “As a result, there’s been a thriving industry, though it’s a bit small, in which tourists come to Hong Kong from the mainland just to purchase books,” Wang says. “The books fill an important need in the Chinese publishing industry.”
The abductions have stirred panic among Hong Kong’s feisty anti-Beijing crowd, which agitates for liberalized democracy over the Communist Party’s authoritarian stylings. One Hong Kong lawmaker, Dennis Kwok, says that the allegations, if true, strike “a fatal blow to ‘one country, two systems’ and Hong Kong’s judicial independence.”
“In the past, we were safe because we lived in Hong Kong instead of mainland China,” says Agnes Chow, a student activist who helped lead Hong Kong’s “umbrella revolution,” in a video posted online shortly after Lee vanished.
“However, the circumstances have changed with this abduction... we feel that Hong Kong is not Hong Kong anymore,” Chow says. “I’m also afraid for my personal safety after this incident happened. I still believe we should continuously fight for freedom from fear.”
The Communist Party is hardly discreet about its loathing of what it calls Hong Kong's “radicals.”
“Their behavior will only make the city’s future path bumpier and bring annoyance to the local people,” stated a recent op-ed in the Global Times, a Chinese government mouthpiece. The piece also warned that “certain people from Hong Kong should really feel ashamed of what they have brought to the city.”
For now, the whereabouts of the five missing publishers are unknown. Activists and lawmakers publicly speculate that they are being held in China — perhaps by shadowy forces dispatched by angry officials, perhaps by the government itself.
A similar case — in which a Hong Kong publisher named Yao Wentian was nabbed while prepping a book called “Chinese Godfather Xi Jinping” — may offer a clue to their fate.
The publisher was arrested in 2014 for “smuggling” industrial chemicals, purchased legally, on a trip to the mainland. His supporters are adamant these charges were a means to punish his political speech by proxy. He is now serving a 10-year prison sentence somewhere inside China.

That vision of Hong Kong, however, is growing dimmer. If allegations are correct, it now appears that those who scrutinize Beijing’s political elite can get snatched off the streets of Hong Kong and dragged into China proper.
That is among Hong Kongers’ worst fears, and they are right to worry. In recent months, five people connected to a single publishing house — known for detailing misdeeds of Communist Party officials — have simply vanished.
The latest to disappear is 65-year-old Lee Bo. He is an editor with Sage Communications, which puts out salacious books, sometimes shakily sourced, that describe Communist Party scandals. His top transgression, it seems, was preparing the release of a book on the — alleged — secret love life of China’s President Xi Jinping.
Lee’s case is remarkable because he was on Hong Kong soil when he disappeared on Dec. 30.
His wife, whom he briefly called after being detained, has told reporters that he said Chinese operatives took him to a non-disclosed location. He called from a number with a mainland Chinese area code.
According to his wife, he told her he was asked to assist an investigation into the dissident publishing house. (Lee’s wife has since withdrawn her missing-person report after claiming to have received written assurances from her husband, a move that Amnesty International said “smacked of intimidation.”)
If true, this is a massive breach of Hong Kong’s autonomy.
Under a cherished set of “one country, two systems” laws, which offer limited independence to Hong Kong, Chinese police aren’t allowed to make arrests within its borders. If covert Chinese forces can freely abduct dissidents in Hong Kong, the territory’s prized free speech ideals are practically meaningless.
Three other Hong Kong residents connected to the publishing operation vanished while visiting the Chinese mainland in October. Another disappeared while on vacation in Thailand — a sign that the Communist Party is willing to pursue its targets even on foreign soil. (Thailand, ruled by a military junta, is increasingly cooperative in deporting traveling Chinese dissidents back into their government’s hands.)
Sage Communications belongs to a clique of independent publishers in Hong Kong that focus on “power struggles behind the scenes, love affairs and political gossip,” says Maya Wang, a researcher with Human Rights Watch.
These titles excite many readers in mainland China, where the government maintains a tight stranglehold on both published and online speech. “As a result, there’s been a thriving industry, though it’s a bit small, in which tourists come to Hong Kong from the mainland just to purchase books,” Wang says. “The books fill an important need in the Chinese publishing industry.”
The abductions have stirred panic among Hong Kong’s feisty anti-Beijing crowd, which agitates for liberalized democracy over the Communist Party’s authoritarian stylings. One Hong Kong lawmaker, Dennis Kwok, says that the allegations, if true, strike “a fatal blow to ‘one country, two systems’ and Hong Kong’s judicial independence.”
“In the past, we were safe because we lived in Hong Kong instead of mainland China,” says Agnes Chow, a student activist who helped lead Hong Kong’s “umbrella revolution,” in a video posted online shortly after Lee vanished.
“However, the circumstances have changed with this abduction... we feel that Hong Kong is not Hong Kong anymore,” Chow says. “I’m also afraid for my personal safety after this incident happened. I still believe we should continuously fight for freedom from fear.”
The Communist Party is hardly discreet about its loathing of what it calls Hong Kong's “radicals.”
“Their behavior will only make the city’s future path bumpier and bring annoyance to the local people,” stated a recent op-ed in the Global Times, a Chinese government mouthpiece. The piece also warned that “certain people from Hong Kong should really feel ashamed of what they have brought to the city.”
For now, the whereabouts of the five missing publishers are unknown. Activists and lawmakers publicly speculate that they are being held in China — perhaps by shadowy forces dispatched by angry officials, perhaps by the government itself.
A similar case — in which a Hong Kong publisher named Yao Wentian was nabbed while prepping a book called “Chinese Godfather Xi Jinping” — may offer a clue to their fate.
The publisher was arrested in 2014 for “smuggling” industrial chemicals, purchased legally, on a trip to the mainland. His supporters are adamant these charges were a means to punish his political speech by proxy. He is now serving a 10-year prison sentence somewhere inside China.






New atheists must become new vegans: Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and the extra burden on moral leaders
“…the fact that I participate in a system that does this knowingly (animal factory farming) more or less condemns me as a hypocrite… We are two people who have admitted to participating in a system that is not only in some sense objectively bad, but perhaps so bad as to be the kind of thing that would be on the short list as to be an embarrassment to our descendants.”Happily, in a podcast released earlier this month, Harris has reported that since that statement he has been a “vegetarian… and aspiring vegan.” Given his position as a vocal and persistent champion of reason, I always suspected this day would come. Other than just providing a few more decibels to my small and intermittent efforts to encourage others to consider the implications of what they have on their dinner plate, this willingness to mercilessly introspect on the ethics of one's own way of life is inspiring. What will my descendants be embarrassed about? It’s time that Sam Harris’ fellow scientists and public intellectuals start realizing that the ethics of eating meat is an important issue. As each one of them is arguably attempting to contribute to building a just and humane global civilization, they should stop pretending that nonhuman animals are not its citizens. Given advances in neuroscience, biology and evolution, we have known for years that animals have the capacity to suffer. Couple this with our technological abilities to meet our food requirements without relying on animals, our burgeoning knowledge of human nutrition and health (including the impact of animal products on the development of many chronic diseases) and the huge impact the meat and dairy industries have on global warming (arguably our greatest challenge), it should seem quite obvious where our moral compass is currently pointed. As I wrote in ‘The Pollution of Good Ideas":
“…unfortunately arguments for a vegan lifestyle are misrepresented by quantum healers with crystals, recommended by naturopaths and homeopaths, and endorsed by those who claim that broccoli has a vibrational quality that is in-sync with our bodies… As a result, vegan philosophy tends to be viewed as lacking reason and logic, and strongly associated with anti-modern medicine sentiments.”The vegan lifestyle has been hijacked by misinformed hippies in the same way that meditation has been stained by a similar trend of idiocy. Both have been strangled between pseudo-spiritualism and pseudo-science, and almost entirely obscured from the view of rational-thinking people in the process. Harris has attempted to vaccinate (pun intended) spirituality from woo-woo, and his first steps toward advocating veganism are echoing this. However this cannot be achieved alone, and it’s about time that others with a suitably endowed platform come to share the load. Like the New Atheists movement in the early 2000s, it appears we are on the precipice of a similar avalanche in gaining the attention and megaphones of public intellectuals in the question of meat-eating: a "New-Vegans" movement. As I’ll detail below, we are both frustratingly close and far away; many traveling down the road of moral progress have arrived at the destination of veganism intellectually, but not in practice. In a discussion between biologist Richard Dawkins and moral philosopher Peter Singer, Dawkins noted:
“[It] leaves me in a very difficult moral position… I think you have a very strong point when you say that anybody who eats meat has a very strong obligation to think seriously about it and I don’t find any good defense. I find myself in exactly the same position as you or I would have been, well probably you wouldn’t have been but I might have been, two hundred years ago […] talking about slavery… I think what I’d really like to see is people like you having a far greater effect on, I would call it, consciousness raising and trying to swing it around so it becomes the societal norm not to eat meat.”"People like you"? How about people like Richard Dawkins? Michael Shermer, author of "The Moral Arc," tweeted, “Ugh. Watched The Earthlings last night researching moral progress. Feels like moral regress when it comes to animals,” as well as writing an article titled “Confessions of a Speciesist.” However promising these signs were, sadly he has also admitted, “No I’m not a vegetarian but think we should expand the moral sphere to include marine mammals and all primates as a good start.” Lawrence Krauss recently had Peter Singer on stage with him as part of the Origins Project at Arizona State University. Though he started off the event by bragging about wearing vegan shoes, and discussed the ethics of meat-eating at length with Singer (describing the argument for vegetarianism as “powerful”), he only suggested that he might become vegetarian. This kind of moral hypocrisy should be scrutinized and ridiculed accordingly – ridiculed to the point where it would be career suicide for any public intellectual to stubbornly persist with it. Absurdly, Sam Harris has been dragged over the coals for simply pointing out that torture of humans in very rare and in extreme circumstances would be justified (mostly the result of gross misinterpretations of his argument), but his colleagues who openly admit to implicitly supporting systematic torture of non-human animals suffer no such damage to their reputations. The psychologist Steven Pinker, a hero of mine, wrote the brilliant and extensive book "Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes." While impressive in both its length and density, Pinker's book dedicates barely over five pages to the topic of meat-eating and factory farming. Though optimistic in its accounts of declining human-versus-human violence, Pinker says, “These imponderables, I suspect, prevent the animal rights movement from duplicating the trajectory of the other Rights Revolutions exactly. But for now the location of the finish line is beside the point.” What point is that? Human well-being, I guess. The poster boys and girls of atheism, secularism, science and reason have done wonders for so many domains of public discourse. While they fittingly weigh in on many moral questions not restricted to religious indoctrination and its impact on human rights, animal rights has so far garnered little attention. However, the great thing about reason is that it is a tool. Reason does not presuppose its answers, but is rather a process by which conclusions germinate under the light of the best available evidence. The best available evidence currently shows that eating meat and animal products is bad for animals, our health and the environment. Many of the New Atheists and their associated colleagues have realized this; they just need to come forth into the light. Philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris, who has written extensively on morality and its inextricable link to the well-being of conscious creatures, recently addressed the fact that he eats meat. Speaking to psychologist Paul Bloom in a podcast in 2015, Harris admitted:
“…the fact that I participate in a system that does this knowingly (animal factory farming) more or less condemns me as a hypocrite… We are two people who have admitted to participating in a system that is not only in some sense objectively bad, but perhaps so bad as to be the kind of thing that would be on the short list as to be an embarrassment to our descendants.”Happily, in a podcast released earlier this month, Harris has reported that since that statement he has been a “vegetarian… and aspiring vegan.” Given his position as a vocal and persistent champion of reason, I always suspected this day would come. Other than just providing a few more decibels to my small and intermittent efforts to encourage others to consider the implications of what they have on their dinner plate, this willingness to mercilessly introspect on the ethics of one's own way of life is inspiring. What will my descendants be embarrassed about? It’s time that Sam Harris’ fellow scientists and public intellectuals start realizing that the ethics of eating meat is an important issue. As each one of them is arguably attempting to contribute to building a just and humane global civilization, they should stop pretending that nonhuman animals are not its citizens. Given advances in neuroscience, biology and evolution, we have known for years that animals have the capacity to suffer. Couple this with our technological abilities to meet our food requirements without relying on animals, our burgeoning knowledge of human nutrition and health (including the impact of animal products on the development of many chronic diseases) and the huge impact the meat and dairy industries have on global warming (arguably our greatest challenge), it should seem quite obvious where our moral compass is currently pointed. As I wrote in ‘The Pollution of Good Ideas":
“…unfortunately arguments for a vegan lifestyle are misrepresented by quantum healers with crystals, recommended by naturopaths and homeopaths, and endorsed by those who claim that broccoli has a vibrational quality that is in-sync with our bodies… As a result, vegan philosophy tends to be viewed as lacking reason and logic, and strongly associated with anti-modern medicine sentiments.”The vegan lifestyle has been hijacked by misinformed hippies in the same way that meditation has been stained by a similar trend of idiocy. Both have been strangled between pseudo-spiritualism and pseudo-science, and almost entirely obscured from the view of rational-thinking people in the process. Harris has attempted to vaccinate (pun intended) spirituality from woo-woo, and his first steps toward advocating veganism are echoing this. However this cannot be achieved alone, and it’s about time that others with a suitably endowed platform come to share the load. Like the New Atheists movement in the early 2000s, it appears we are on the precipice of a similar avalanche in gaining the attention and megaphones of public intellectuals in the question of meat-eating: a "New-Vegans" movement. As I’ll detail below, we are both frustratingly close and far away; many traveling down the road of moral progress have arrived at the destination of veganism intellectually, but not in practice. In a discussion between biologist Richard Dawkins and moral philosopher Peter Singer, Dawkins noted:
“[It] leaves me in a very difficult moral position… I think you have a very strong point when you say that anybody who eats meat has a very strong obligation to think seriously about it and I don’t find any good defense. I find myself in exactly the same position as you or I would have been, well probably you wouldn’t have been but I might have been, two hundred years ago […] talking about slavery… I think what I’d really like to see is people like you having a far greater effect on, I would call it, consciousness raising and trying to swing it around so it becomes the societal norm not to eat meat.”"People like you"? How about people like Richard Dawkins? Michael Shermer, author of "The Moral Arc," tweeted, “Ugh. Watched The Earthlings last night researching moral progress. Feels like moral regress when it comes to animals,” as well as writing an article titled “Confessions of a Speciesist.” However promising these signs were, sadly he has also admitted, “No I’m not a vegetarian but think we should expand the moral sphere to include marine mammals and all primates as a good start.” Lawrence Krauss recently had Peter Singer on stage with him as part of the Origins Project at Arizona State University. Though he started off the event by bragging about wearing vegan shoes, and discussed the ethics of meat-eating at length with Singer (describing the argument for vegetarianism as “powerful”), he only suggested that he might become vegetarian. This kind of moral hypocrisy should be scrutinized and ridiculed accordingly – ridiculed to the point where it would be career suicide for any public intellectual to stubbornly persist with it. Absurdly, Sam Harris has been dragged over the coals for simply pointing out that torture of humans in very rare and in extreme circumstances would be justified (mostly the result of gross misinterpretations of his argument), but his colleagues who openly admit to implicitly supporting systematic torture of non-human animals suffer no such damage to their reputations. The psychologist Steven Pinker, a hero of mine, wrote the brilliant and extensive book "Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes." While impressive in both its length and density, Pinker's book dedicates barely over five pages to the topic of meat-eating and factory farming. Though optimistic in its accounts of declining human-versus-human violence, Pinker says, “These imponderables, I suspect, prevent the animal rights movement from duplicating the trajectory of the other Rights Revolutions exactly. But for now the location of the finish line is beside the point.” What point is that? Human well-being, I guess. The poster boys and girls of atheism, secularism, science and reason have done wonders for so many domains of public discourse. While they fittingly weigh in on many moral questions not restricted to religious indoctrination and its impact on human rights, animal rights has so far garnered little attention. However, the great thing about reason is that it is a tool. Reason does not presuppose its answers, but is rather a process by which conclusions germinate under the light of the best available evidence. The best available evidence currently shows that eating meat and animal products is bad for animals, our health and the environment. Many of the New Atheists and their associated colleagues have realized this; they just need to come forth into the light.






Oil, money, politics and evil: Our leading Middle East ally is the worst country imaginable






Palestinian says New York Times edited and censored his quotes to shine positively on Israel






January 8, 2016
“The Sopranos” at 17: After watching all six seasons, I’m left with the queasy feeling that the legions of fans of the show have been played






How Margaret Cho revives “Fashion Police”: Performing fashion snark as “a woman of color, as a queer woman, as someone who is plus-sized and very proud of my fat”






“Poor people lose”: “Making a Murderer,” reality television and our shared mythology of a classless society
Over the New Year’s weekend, I binge-watched Netflix’s 10-part documentary series "Making a Murderer," which follows the remarkable case of Steven Avery – a man wrongfully convicted of rape and released after 18 years, only to be rearrested and convicted of murder. The filmmakers, Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi, spent untold hours at home with the Avery clan, who live in a kind of family compound on their scrapyard in rural Wisconsin.
I see a lot of documentaries, but I’ve never seen one about people like the Averys. Watching, I was struck by how rarely a mainstream American film shows how poor people actually live. We see Steven’s mother frying hamburgers, talking on the phone, watching local news coverage of Steven’s trial while making soup. What makes these scenes interesting, even revelatory, is where they occur. Steven’s trailer, his parents’ modest house, look nothing like the set of a family sitcom or its contemporary equivalent, the “reality” show. If you spent your life watching television, you might reasonably conclude that all Americans live like Kardashians or “real” housewives. For poor rural folk, nothing could be less real.
"Making a Murderer" is an exhaustive, sometimes tedious police procedural. It’s also that rare thing in American film, a story about class. For 10 hours, we are presented again and again with the visual contrast between the Averys and everyone else in the courtroom. The prosecutor and defense attorneys are dressed as you’d expect, as are the journalists, the victim’s family and most of the spectators. But Steven Avery’s father comes to court in stiff, brand-new denim overalls, clearly purchased for the occasion. Mrs. Avery wears a kind of flowered smock I haven’t seen since childhood, worn by the elderly ladies who worked in the kitchen at church suppers.
The Avery story is unusual in that it isolates the variable of class from the powerful, and related, question of race. "Making a Murderer" takes place in rural Wisconsin; like the police, the prosecutors and the victim, the Avery family is white. If the Averys were black, their story would become part of the current conversation – long overdue – about racial inequities in policing, the criminalizing of blackness. We’d have a language to explain why police were so convinced of Avery’s guilt, or why his girlfriend was harassed by law enforcement, or how his learning-disabled nephew was interrogated for hours without legal counsel. Micro-aggression, targeting, the culture of incarceration: because the Averys are white, none of these terms seems to apply. The closest we ever get to an accurate assessment of the forces at work comes from Avery himself in the third episode: "Poor people lose," he states simply when confronted with the new charges against him. It's hard to disagree. Yet the fact that we lack any larger language for talking about class cuts to some basic truths about Americanness.
American society is classless, a pure meritocracy: this is part of our shared mythology. My parents believed it. Raised poor, they joined the military, went to college on the G.I. Bill and became schoolteachers. They believed they’d made it, and in a real way, they had. They worked and saved, built a house, sent two kids to college – the sort of incremental mobility that was possible for poor white people (and, thanks to discriminatory lending practices, largely off limits to poor blacks).
In our part of the world, these were not small things. We lived in a little coal town in western Pennsylvania where a union job in the mines was a golden ticket. A miner earned twice what a schoolteacher did – at least until the early eighties, when a miners’ strike paralyzed the town for months. I started junior high in a brand new pair of Nikes of which I was deeply ashamed, because none of my classmates had new shoes. It’s an unease I’ve carried my whole life, the feeling of having been unfairly favored. I wasn’t the smartest in my class, or the most industrious. I didn’t deserve my sneakers, my education or (especially) my good parents, any more than the next kid did.
The coal mines are gone now, the good union jobs a distant memory. The fracking boom has brought trucks and heavy equipment, out-of-state workers and a windfall for tavern and restaurant owners, but so far hasn’t translated into employment for the locals. Wal-Mart is the biggest employer around. Yet even there, in the post-industrial Rust Belt, nobody wants to identify as working class, which seems like joining a losing team. Politicians understand this, which is why they’re always banging on about lifting up the middle class. It’s a basic truth about the American psyche: If you’re an out-of -work coal miner, if you’re stocking shelves at Wal-Mart or living on disability, you still consider yourself middle class.
Culturally, western Pennsylvania isn’t so different from Manitowoc County, where the Averys live. In this election year, many in both communities will vote for Donald Trump, a born-on-third billionaire who pivots around their sore spots. Formerly pro-choice, he’s now declared his opposition to abortion. He’s promised not to take away their guns. Trump’s stance on immigration is perfectly pitched to people who’ve lost their jobs and need a scapegoat, and his loud mistrust of Muslims plays well in communities that don’t have any. He understands how the national conversation about race sounds to poor white people: Black Lives Matter implies, to them, that their own lives don’t matter. Not because they’re racist (though some are), but because they too have been left behind – their communities gutted, livelihoods lost– and there’s no affirmative action for them.
This is how Trump has cast himself, however improbably, as a populist billionaire. Bernie Sanders sings to educated liberals, but when it comes to crossing the class divide, he lacks The Donald’s Sprachgefül. Candidate Sanders holds strong and apparently sincere convictions about economic justice, but he has no common language with the voters who might actually benefit from them. He speaks – frequently and unselfconsciously – about poverty, a word that, to poor people, is roughly as appealing as cancer. Trump’s promises may be as real as reality television, as real as the "Real Housewives," but these are fantasies poor people are accustomed to buying. In his own career as a reality TV star, Trump has played the irascible tyrant (You’re fired!), flexing the kind of power poor people will never experience except vicariously. (Working for an asshole is miserable, but watching one on TV is kind of fun.) Donald Trump has visited their living rooms; he has entertained them, and he does not shame them. He may be an asshole, but he’s an asshole they know.
Over the New Year’s weekend, I binge-watched Netflix’s 10-part documentary series "Making a Murderer," which follows the remarkable case of Steven Avery – a man wrongfully convicted of rape and released after 18 years, only to be rearrested and convicted of murder. The filmmakers, Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi, spent untold hours at home with the Avery clan, who live in a kind of family compound on their scrapyard in rural Wisconsin.
I see a lot of documentaries, but I’ve never seen one about people like the Averys. Watching, I was struck by how rarely a mainstream American film shows how poor people actually live. We see Steven’s mother frying hamburgers, talking on the phone, watching local news coverage of Steven’s trial while making soup. What makes these scenes interesting, even revelatory, is where they occur. Steven’s trailer, his parents’ modest house, look nothing like the set of a family sitcom or its contemporary equivalent, the “reality” show. If you spent your life watching television, you might reasonably conclude that all Americans live like Kardashians or “real” housewives. For poor rural folk, nothing could be less real.
"Making a Murderer" is an exhaustive, sometimes tedious police procedural. It’s also that rare thing in American film, a story about class. For 10 hours, we are presented again and again with the visual contrast between the Averys and everyone else in the courtroom. The prosecutor and defense attorneys are dressed as you’d expect, as are the journalists, the victim’s family and most of the spectators. But Steven Avery’s father comes to court in stiff, brand-new denim overalls, clearly purchased for the occasion. Mrs. Avery wears a kind of flowered smock I haven’t seen since childhood, worn by the elderly ladies who worked in the kitchen at church suppers.
The Avery story is unusual in that it isolates the variable of class from the powerful, and related, question of race. "Making a Murderer" takes place in rural Wisconsin; like the police, the prosecutors and the victim, the Avery family is white. If the Averys were black, their story would become part of the current conversation – long overdue – about racial inequities in policing, the criminalizing of blackness. We’d have a language to explain why police were so convinced of Avery’s guilt, or why his girlfriend was harassed by law enforcement, or how his learning-disabled nephew was interrogated for hours without legal counsel. Micro-aggression, targeting, the culture of incarceration: because the Averys are white, none of these terms seems to apply. The closest we ever get to an accurate assessment of the forces at work comes from Avery himself in the third episode: "Poor people lose," he states simply when confronted with the new charges against him. It's hard to disagree. Yet the fact that we lack any larger language for talking about class cuts to some basic truths about Americanness.
American society is classless, a pure meritocracy: this is part of our shared mythology. My parents believed it. Raised poor, they joined the military, went to college on the G.I. Bill and became schoolteachers. They believed they’d made it, and in a real way, they had. They worked and saved, built a house, sent two kids to college – the sort of incremental mobility that was possible for poor white people (and, thanks to discriminatory lending practices, largely off limits to poor blacks).
In our part of the world, these were not small things. We lived in a little coal town in western Pennsylvania where a union job in the mines was a golden ticket. A miner earned twice what a schoolteacher did – at least until the early eighties, when a miners’ strike paralyzed the town for months. I started junior high in a brand new pair of Nikes of which I was deeply ashamed, because none of my classmates had new shoes. It’s an unease I’ve carried my whole life, the feeling of having been unfairly favored. I wasn’t the smartest in my class, or the most industrious. I didn’t deserve my sneakers, my education or (especially) my good parents, any more than the next kid did.
The coal mines are gone now, the good union jobs a distant memory. The fracking boom has brought trucks and heavy equipment, out-of-state workers and a windfall for tavern and restaurant owners, but so far hasn’t translated into employment for the locals. Wal-Mart is the biggest employer around. Yet even there, in the post-industrial Rust Belt, nobody wants to identify as working class, which seems like joining a losing team. Politicians understand this, which is why they’re always banging on about lifting up the middle class. It’s a basic truth about the American psyche: If you’re an out-of -work coal miner, if you’re stocking shelves at Wal-Mart or living on disability, you still consider yourself middle class.
Culturally, western Pennsylvania isn’t so different from Manitowoc County, where the Averys live. In this election year, many in both communities will vote for Donald Trump, a born-on-third billionaire who pivots around their sore spots. Formerly pro-choice, he’s now declared his opposition to abortion. He’s promised not to take away their guns. Trump’s stance on immigration is perfectly pitched to people who’ve lost their jobs and need a scapegoat, and his loud mistrust of Muslims plays well in communities that don’t have any. He understands how the national conversation about race sounds to poor white people: Black Lives Matter implies, to them, that their own lives don’t matter. Not because they’re racist (though some are), but because they too have been left behind – their communities gutted, livelihoods lost– and there’s no affirmative action for them.
This is how Trump has cast himself, however improbably, as a populist billionaire. Bernie Sanders sings to educated liberals, but when it comes to crossing the class divide, he lacks The Donald’s Sprachgefül. Candidate Sanders holds strong and apparently sincere convictions about economic justice, but he has no common language with the voters who might actually benefit from them. He speaks – frequently and unselfconsciously – about poverty, a word that, to poor people, is roughly as appealing as cancer. Trump’s promises may be as real as reality television, as real as the "Real Housewives," but these are fantasies poor people are accustomed to buying. In his own career as a reality TV star, Trump has played the irascible tyrant (You’re fired!), flexing the kind of power poor people will never experience except vicariously. (Working for an asshole is miserable, but watching one on TV is kind of fun.) Donald Trump has visited their living rooms; he has entertained them, and he does not shame them. He may be an asshole, but he’s an asshole they know.






New twist in Bristol Palin’s baby drama: The abstinence mascot now needs proof he’s the dad
Bristol Palin's custody battle over her new baby girl is getting more intense.
After it was reported that Palin’s alleged baby daddy filed for child support and joint custody of 2-week-old Sailor Grace, the Palin camp and the state of Alaska are now saying —in very different words — that they need proof he's the dad.
As per child custody laws, Sailor’s presumed father, Dakota Meyer, must now take a paternity test to corroborate claims he made in the court filing.
Palin met Meyer in 2013 during the filming of her mother’s reality show, “Amazing America.”
The two were engaged after Meyer proposed at a Rascal Flatts concert in March 2015. The two had subsequent wedding plans that were abruptly called off in May, just a week before the big day. And shortly thereafter, in June, Palin announced she was pregnant.
At the time of the cancelled nuptials, tabloids circulated rumors that Meyer — a Marine veteran and Congressional Medal of Honor recipient — had a “secret wife.” Palin would later refute these claims, saying, “Dakota was legally divorced years ago, as any good reporter could and should have disclosed to readers.”
Palin announced via Instagram on Dec. 24 that she’d given birth a day earlier. She has refused to identify the father.
Further conspiracy surrounded Sailor’s birth, with tabloids claiming that Palin had given birth a month earlier, in November. The rumors stemmed from geotagged Facebook posts that incorrectly placed the Palins’ whereabouts in New Orleans instead of Alaska. In response, Palin Instagrammed a closeup photo of her IV bag, which confirmed her hospital admittance date to be Dec. 22. The photo acted to hush any divergent theories of the date of Sailor’s conception.
Meyer’s 85-year-old grandmother, Jean, told the Daily Mail that “it does hurt [to have to prove paternity]. But that’s just the way the law is. You have to get permission here and permission there.”
Jean, a Greensboro, Kentucky, native, said she’s relatively unfamiliar with Bristol Palin. “I’ve met her, but I don’t really know her,” she said. “But I helped raise Dakota and I do know him. He’s a strong young man and a good one.”
Sailor’s famous grandmother, Sarah Palin, issued her own statement, condemning Dakota. “For many months we have been trying to reach out to Dakota Myers [sic] and he has wanted nothing to do with either Bristol's pregnancy or the baby,” she told Entertainment Tonight.
The elder Palin even went so far as to say that Meyer’s push for joint custody is simply a way for him to “save face.”
David Martin, a rep for Bristol, also weighed in, telling ET, “My values are such that a real American hero doesn't ask for child support.”
Bristol Palin's custody battle over her new baby girl is getting more intense.
After it was reported that Palin’s alleged baby daddy filed for child support and joint custody of 2-week-old Sailor Grace, the Palin camp and the state of Alaska are now saying —in very different words — that they need proof he's the dad.
As per child custody laws, Sailor’s presumed father, Dakota Meyer, must now take a paternity test to corroborate claims he made in the court filing.
Palin met Meyer in 2013 during the filming of her mother’s reality show, “Amazing America.”
The two were engaged after Meyer proposed at a Rascal Flatts concert in March 2015. The two had subsequent wedding plans that were abruptly called off in May, just a week before the big day. And shortly thereafter, in June, Palin announced she was pregnant.
At the time of the cancelled nuptials, tabloids circulated rumors that Meyer — a Marine veteran and Congressional Medal of Honor recipient — had a “secret wife.” Palin would later refute these claims, saying, “Dakota was legally divorced years ago, as any good reporter could and should have disclosed to readers.”
Palin announced via Instagram on Dec. 24 that she’d given birth a day earlier. She has refused to identify the father.
Further conspiracy surrounded Sailor’s birth, with tabloids claiming that Palin had given birth a month earlier, in November. The rumors stemmed from geotagged Facebook posts that incorrectly placed the Palins’ whereabouts in New Orleans instead of Alaska. In response, Palin Instagrammed a closeup photo of her IV bag, which confirmed her hospital admittance date to be Dec. 22. The photo acted to hush any divergent theories of the date of Sailor’s conception.
Meyer’s 85-year-old grandmother, Jean, told the Daily Mail that “it does hurt [to have to prove paternity]. But that’s just the way the law is. You have to get permission here and permission there.”
Jean, a Greensboro, Kentucky, native, said she’s relatively unfamiliar with Bristol Palin. “I’ve met her, but I don’t really know her,” she said. “But I helped raise Dakota and I do know him. He’s a strong young man and a good one.”
Sailor’s famous grandmother, Sarah Palin, issued her own statement, condemning Dakota. “For many months we have been trying to reach out to Dakota Myers [sic] and he has wanted nothing to do with either Bristol's pregnancy or the baby,” she told Entertainment Tonight.
The elder Palin even went so far as to say that Meyer’s push for joint custody is simply a way for him to “save face.”
David Martin, a rep for Bristol, also weighed in, telling ET, “My values are such that a real American hero doesn't ask for child support.”
Bristol Palin's custody battle over her new baby girl is getting more intense.
After it was reported that Palin’s alleged baby daddy filed for child support and joint custody of 2-week-old Sailor Grace, the Palin camp and the state of Alaska are now saying —in very different words — that they need proof he's the dad.
As per child custody laws, Sailor’s presumed father, Dakota Meyer, must now take a paternity test to corroborate claims he made in the court filing.
Palin met Meyer in 2013 during the filming of her mother’s reality show, “Amazing America.”
The two were engaged after Meyer proposed at a Rascal Flatts concert in March 2015. The two had subsequent wedding plans that were abruptly called off in May, just a week before the big day. And shortly thereafter, in June, Palin announced she was pregnant.
At the time of the cancelled nuptials, tabloids circulated rumors that Meyer — a Marine veteran and Congressional Medal of Honor recipient — had a “secret wife.” Palin would later refute these claims, saying, “Dakota was legally divorced years ago, as any good reporter could and should have disclosed to readers.”
Palin announced via Instagram on Dec. 24 that she’d given birth a day earlier. She has refused to identify the father.
Further conspiracy surrounded Sailor’s birth, with tabloids claiming that Palin had given birth a month earlier, in November. The rumors stemmed from geotagged Facebook posts that incorrectly placed the Palins’ whereabouts in New Orleans instead of Alaska. In response, Palin Instagrammed a closeup photo of her IV bag, which confirmed her hospital admittance date to be Dec. 22. The photo acted to hush any divergent theories of the date of Sailor’s conception.
Meyer’s 85-year-old grandmother, Jean, told the Daily Mail that “it does hurt [to have to prove paternity]. But that’s just the way the law is. You have to get permission here and permission there.”
Jean, a Greensboro, Kentucky, native, said she’s relatively unfamiliar with Bristol Palin. “I’ve met her, but I don’t really know her,” she said. “But I helped raise Dakota and I do know him. He’s a strong young man and a good one.”
Sailor’s famous grandmother, Sarah Palin, issued her own statement, condemning Dakota. “For many months we have been trying to reach out to Dakota Myers [sic] and he has wanted nothing to do with either Bristol's pregnancy or the baby,” she told Entertainment Tonight.
The elder Palin even went so far as to say that Meyer’s push for joint custody is simply a way for him to “save face.”
David Martin, a rep for Bristol, also weighed in, telling ET, “My values are such that a real American hero doesn't ask for child support.”






7 of 2015’s most outrageous drug war killings
This is how Ted Cruz wins: Why the formerly unthinkable could really, actually happen
Cruz made the accusation while speaking to a rapt ballroom audience during a luncheon at a conference called “Defending the American Dream,” sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, a non-profit political organization founded and funded in part by the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch. Cruz greeted the audience jovially, but soon launched an impassioned attack on President Obama, whom he described as “the most radical” President “ever to occupy the Oval Office.” (I was covering the conference and kept the notes.)
He then went on to assert that Obama, who attended Harvard Law School four years ahead of him, “would have made a perfect president of Harvard Law School.” The reason, said Cruz, was that, “There were fewer declared Republicans in the faculty when we were there than Communists! There was one Republican. But there were twelve who would say they were Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.”Within seven weeks of becoming Senator, Cruz was a national figure who was being compared to one of the most reviled figures in American politics. He was often compared to McCarthy from that point forward, even including the likes of conservative David Brooks, who found him to be quite a distasteful character:
It’s like the most un-conservative act to come in two weeks into the job and decide the Senate exists for you to take it over. So I think he’s made a lot of enemies. It doesn’t help that he has a face that looks a little like Joe McCarthy, actually. So, you know, I find him a little off-putting.The more establishment figures like McCain and Brooks loathed him, the more the right wing of the party loved him. He became a backroom advisor to the "Freedom Caucus" in the House and he led the charge to shut down the government in 2013. Many on the right attribute their victory in 2014 to his strategic leadership. When he threw his hat in the ring for president, the conventional wisdom was that he was a fringe player along the lines of Michele Bachmann in 2012 and was assumed to be so unpopular within the party that he couldn't possibly raise any money. And even if he could overcome those obstacles he had such a repellant personality that nobody in their right mind would vote for him for president. He was, after all, the reincarnation of Joseph McCarthy, a man whose name is synonymous with political paranoia. That doesn't seem to be happening. In fact, Cruz has shown himself to be a disciplined campaigner and a strategic thinker, managing the rough and tumble of this weird GOP primary campaign better than any of his rivals. He's fended off attacks with aplomb and doesn't seem to have been hurt by them. And as Dave Weigel reported yesterday in the Washington Post, he has not trimmed his ideological sails in the least:
One questioner asked about the alleged influence of the Trilateral Commission and David Rockefeller, two bugbears of conspiracy theorists. "It's a very good question," said Cruz, pivoting to discuss the Medellin national sovereignty case, which is featured in some of his TV ads here. Another questioner asked whether the Federal Reserve was constitutional, prompting a short monologue by Cruz about why America should return to the gold standard. And another questioner asked about the potential threat of Muslim courts issuing their own sharia-based rulings within the United States. "Under no circumstances should sharia law be enforced anywhere in this country," Cruz said. "We should do whatever it takes to prevent that."It doesn't get any more hardcore than that. But Cruz has done something else that hasn't been noticed by most of the press corps. He's lost that Joe McCarthy countenance, and many of his harsh edges have softened. He's given one on one interviews in which he told personal stories that humanized him. He's lightheartedly sparred with Trump and others on social media batting back criticisms with clever bon mots instead of engaging in combat. The Christmas ad that caused such a ruckus when a Washington Post cartoonist portrayed his daughters as monkeys only served to introduce the two darling moppets to many more people than would otherwise have seen them. And rather than get down and dirty with Trump, as the man is obviously baiting him to do, he has maintained a rather stately mein, insisting that he is in the race to speak about serious issues. The contrast with Donald Trump's crude brashness has had the effect of making the awkward Cruz seem almost moderate in affect if not ideology. Meanwhile, polls continue to show a race with Trump at the top, then Cruz coming on strong in second and a cluster of so-called establishment candidates -- one of whom everyone still expects to emerge as the "candidate to beat." And perhaps that will happen as they predicted all along. After all, nobody has voted yet. But that is a unique way to analyze a race in January of an election year. If anyone but Cruz and Trump were in the number one and two position it would be assumed that they were the legitimate leaders and the race would be framed as a race between the two of them with some outside chance of a dark horse making a late move. But because they are both, in different ways, extremists, it's assumed they both represent a minority faction and the "mainstream" Republicans will emerge as the majority. But there's every reason to believe that in 2016 these two may actually represent most GOP voters while the Washington establishment types are the fringe. If that's the case, the establishment is going to have a big decision to make. Do they back the hated Cruz to stop the loathsome Trump? Or do they back the detestable Trump to stop the odious Cruz? What a choice. Early indications are that some DC insiders are still living in hope that one of the establishment types will break through but, still also harbor so much animosity toward Cruz that they'll take the risk of Trump rather than accept him as their leader. But they are in the minority. Jeb Bush, for instance, refused to say that he would vote for Trump if he were to get the nomination. More interestingly, it looks as though some of the mainstream conservative pundits are starting to make peace with the idea that Cruz may end up as the establishment candidate by default. Rich Lowry made this case in Politico by calling into question the conventional wisdom that Cruz is another Goldwater extremist who will necessarily go down in a massive general election defeat. And instead of finding parallels to his aggressive ambition in the repellant Joseph McCarthy, he compares him instead to another awkward, unlikeable politician who nonetheless got millions of people to vote for him for president in one very close loss, one very close win and one huge landslide: Richard Nixon.
Obviously and most importantly, Cruz is not a paranoiac. He is more ideological than Nixon. And he has none of Nixon’s insecurity, in fact the opposite. Nixon went to tiny Whittier College and resented the Northeastern elite; Cruz went to Princeton and Harvard and could be a member of the Northeastern elite in good standing if he wanted to be. But Cruz is cut from roughly similar cloth. He wears his ambition on his sleeve and is not highly charismatic or relatable. In high school, he could have been voted most likely to be seen walking on the beach in his dress shoes. If Cruz wins the nomination, it will be on the strength of intelligence and willpower. He will have outworked, outsmarted and outmaneuvered everyone else.He has a point. Say what you will about Nixon -- and there's plenty to say -- he was a very smart politician. In particular, he overcame the political disability of having an extremely unpleasant personality to win the White House twice. I've written about Cruz's savvy strategy to appeal to the movement conservatives, the Carson evangelicals and the Paul libertarians here at Salon. And everyone knows he's killing Trump with kindness in the hopes of attracting his angry xenophobes and nationalists over to his campaign if Trump falters or they end up being the last two men standing. He's got important billionaires in his pocket. And now it appears that some of the Republican establishment is taking notice of his sharp political acumen and work ethic and are offering him the respect of recognizing that he's very good at what he does. That's the GOP coalition, right there. None of that means that Senator Ted Cruz is not a far right extremist. He is. But he is not just a canny politician, he's also a lucky one. After all, without a maniac like Donald Trump being in the race it's very unlikely he'd be in the position he is today no matter how hard he worked or how well he organized. And a smart and lucky extremist is a very dangerous one.

Cruz made the accusation while speaking to a rapt ballroom audience during a luncheon at a conference called “Defending the American Dream,” sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, a non-profit political organization founded and funded in part by the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch. Cruz greeted the audience jovially, but soon launched an impassioned attack on President Obama, whom he described as “the most radical” President “ever to occupy the Oval Office.” (I was covering the conference and kept the notes.)
He then went on to assert that Obama, who attended Harvard Law School four years ahead of him, “would have made a perfect president of Harvard Law School.” The reason, said Cruz, was that, “There were fewer declared Republicans in the faculty when we were there than Communists! There was one Republican. But there were twelve who would say they were Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.”Within seven weeks of becoming Senator, Cruz was a national figure who was being compared to one of the most reviled figures in American politics. He was often compared to McCarthy from that point forward, even including the likes of conservative David Brooks, who found him to be quite a distasteful character:
It’s like the most un-conservative act to come in two weeks into the job and decide the Senate exists for you to take it over. So I think he’s made a lot of enemies. It doesn’t help that he has a face that looks a little like Joe McCarthy, actually. So, you know, I find him a little off-putting.The more establishment figures like McCain and Brooks loathed him, the more the right wing of the party loved him. He became a backroom advisor to the "Freedom Caucus" in the House and he led the charge to shut down the government in 2013. Many on the right attribute their victory in 2014 to his strategic leadership. When he threw his hat in the ring for president, the conventional wisdom was that he was a fringe player along the lines of Michele Bachmann in 2012 and was assumed to be so unpopular within the party that he couldn't possibly raise any money. And even if he could overcome those obstacles he had such a repellant personality that nobody in their right mind would vote for him for president. He was, after all, the reincarnation of Joseph McCarthy, a man whose name is synonymous with political paranoia. That doesn't seem to be happening. In fact, Cruz has shown himself to be a disciplined campaigner and a strategic thinker, managing the rough and tumble of this weird GOP primary campaign better than any of his rivals. He's fended off attacks with aplomb and doesn't seem to have been hurt by them. And as Dave Weigel reported yesterday in the Washington Post, he has not trimmed his ideological sails in the least:
One questioner asked about the alleged influence of the Trilateral Commission and David Rockefeller, two bugbears of conspiracy theorists. "It's a very good question," said Cruz, pivoting to discuss the Medellin national sovereignty case, which is featured in some of his TV ads here. Another questioner asked whether the Federal Reserve was constitutional, prompting a short monologue by Cruz about why America should return to the gold standard. And another questioner asked about the potential threat of Muslim courts issuing their own sharia-based rulings within the United States. "Under no circumstances should sharia law be enforced anywhere in this country," Cruz said. "We should do whatever it takes to prevent that."It doesn't get any more hardcore than that. But Cruz has done something else that hasn't been noticed by most of the press corps. He's lost that Joe McCarthy countenance, and many of his harsh edges have softened. He's given one on one interviews in which he told personal stories that humanized him. He's lightheartedly sparred with Trump and others on social media batting back criticisms with clever bon mots instead of engaging in combat. The Christmas ad that caused such a ruckus when a Washington Post cartoonist portrayed his daughters as monkeys only served to introduce the two darling moppets to many more people than would otherwise have seen them. And rather than get down and dirty with Trump, as the man is obviously baiting him to do, he has maintained a rather stately mein, insisting that he is in the race to speak about serious issues. The contrast with Donald Trump's crude brashness has had the effect of making the awkward Cruz seem almost moderate in affect if not ideology. Meanwhile, polls continue to show a race with Trump at the top, then Cruz coming on strong in second and a cluster of so-called establishment candidates -- one of whom everyone still expects to emerge as the "candidate to beat." And perhaps that will happen as they predicted all along. After all, nobody has voted yet. But that is a unique way to analyze a race in January of an election year. If anyone but Cruz and Trump were in the number one and two position it would be assumed that they were the legitimate leaders and the race would be framed as a race between the two of them with some outside chance of a dark horse making a late move. But because they are both, in different ways, extremists, it's assumed they both represent a minority faction and the "mainstream" Republicans will emerge as the majority. But there's every reason to believe that in 2016 these two may actually represent most GOP voters while the Washington establishment types are the fringe. If that's the case, the establishment is going to have a big decision to make. Do they back the hated Cruz to stop the loathsome Trump? Or do they back the detestable Trump to stop the odious Cruz? What a choice. Early indications are that some DC insiders are still living in hope that one of the establishment types will break through but, still also harbor so much animosity toward Cruz that they'll take the risk of Trump rather than accept him as their leader. But they are in the minority. Jeb Bush, for instance, refused to say that he would vote for Trump if he were to get the nomination. More interestingly, it looks as though some of the mainstream conservative pundits are starting to make peace with the idea that Cruz may end up as the establishment candidate by default. Rich Lowry made this case in Politico by calling into question the conventional wisdom that Cruz is another Goldwater extremist who will necessarily go down in a massive general election defeat. And instead of finding parallels to his aggressive ambition in the repellant Joseph McCarthy, he compares him instead to another awkward, unlikeable politician who nonetheless got millions of people to vote for him for president in one very close loss, one very close win and one huge landslide: Richard Nixon.
Obviously and most importantly, Cruz is not a paranoiac. He is more ideological than Nixon. And he has none of Nixon’s insecurity, in fact the opposite. Nixon went to tiny Whittier College and resented the Northeastern elite; Cruz went to Princeton and Harvard and could be a member of the Northeastern elite in good standing if he wanted to be. But Cruz is cut from roughly similar cloth. He wears his ambition on his sleeve and is not highly charismatic or relatable. In high school, he could have been voted most likely to be seen walking on the beach in his dress shoes. If Cruz wins the nomination, it will be on the strength of intelligence and willpower. He will have outworked, outsmarted and outmaneuvered everyone else.He has a point. Say what you will about Nixon -- and there's plenty to say -- he was a very smart politician. In particular, he overcame the political disability of having an extremely unpleasant personality to win the White House twice. I've written about Cruz's savvy strategy to appeal to the movement conservatives, the Carson evangelicals and the Paul libertarians here at Salon. And everyone knows he's killing Trump with kindness in the hopes of attracting his angry xenophobes and nationalists over to his campaign if Trump falters or they end up being the last two men standing. He's got important billionaires in his pocket. And now it appears that some of the Republican establishment is taking notice of his sharp political acumen and work ethic and are offering him the respect of recognizing that he's very good at what he does. That's the GOP coalition, right there. None of that means that Senator Ted Cruz is not a far right extremist. He is. But he is not just a canny politician, he's also a lucky one. After all, without a maniac like Donald Trump being in the race it's very unlikely he'd be in the position he is today no matter how hard he worked or how well he organized. And a smart and lucky extremist is a very dangerous one.






