This is part of what’s making me (and others) pessimistic:

You can feel the momentum shifting. The Democrats are losing the argument. As Trump doubles down on the worst hand, Democrats continue to act like they don't have to fight because Mueller will come to the rescue. So we're going to lose again, incredibly. https://t.co/spSjAs3RiK

— Elliott Lusztig (@ezlusztig) May 23, 2018

Mueller will produce a report consisting almost entirely of things we already knew, which will be damning enough except that Democrats have normalized his outrages by not hammering home a public argument about what the findings signify. So it will just fizzle out.

— Elliott Lusztig (@ezlusztig) May 23, 2018

I’m pessimistic because it seems it could easily happen that we get a long detailed account of crimes and corruption linked to Trump and/or the Trump campaign, and it won’t make any difference to anything.

Look, I have never understood why or how the Republicans got away with refusing to hold hearings on Merrick Garland, since even the majority party has to follow the rules (I had assumed), and the non-stop brute force violation of all norms has only gotten worse. Trump and Fox News are going to drag us all into the sewer and there we’ll stay until the rising seas devour the remnant.

John Cassidy at the New Yorker says it’s getting worse.

Since Donald Trump entered the White House, American democracy has sometimes been described as dangerously fragile, but that isn’t necessarily true. Having survived for two hundred and forty-two years, American democracy is more like a stoutly built ocean liner, with a maniac at the helm who seems intent on capsizing it. Every so often, he takes a violent tug at the tiller, causing the vessel to list alarmingly. So far, some members of the ship’s crew—judges, public servants, and the odd elected official—have managed to rush in, jag the tiller back, and keep the ship afloat. But, as the captain’s behavior grows more erratic, the danger facing the ship and its passengers increases.

Well if the ship is vulnerable to having a maniac at the helm then it is fragile, however sturdily built it may be. We haven’t had a president like Trump before so we haven’t been forced to realize how helpless we are to stop such a president. We’ve smugly talked about checks and balances because that’s what they told us in school, but nobody told us they don’t actually work if the president and Congress are of the same party. A system that can’t make Trump stop is very god damn fragile indeed.

Worse.

Press secretary Sarah Sanders said that the White House had brokered a meeting at which two key Republican chairmen would hear from the leaders of the Justice Department, FBI and the intelligence community following weeks’ worth of requests for the classified material.

No one from the White House is scheduled to be present, Sanders said — nor, at this point, are any senators or any Democrats, in defiance of a request from the Senate minority leader.

So it’s a Republican meeting to see secret documents from an ongoing investigation. Not a Congressional meeting but a Republican one.

“A lot of people are saying they had spies in my campaign,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “If so, that would be a disgrace to this country. I hope there weren’t, frankly … but some man got paid based on what I read in the newspapers.”

The White House and its supporters have been sandblasting the Justice Department and the FBI for months; the leaders of both law enforcement agencies have steadily been giving ground. Thursday’s meeting is the latest example, although it wasn’t clear precisely what documents Nunes and Gowdy are expecting and whether they will receive them then.

I think we’re doomed. I think they’re going to complete the coup before November.

“It’s really important that we conduct the proper oversight of the executive branch to make sure that power is not or has not or will not be abused,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told reporters on Tuesday.

The House intelligence committee, Nunes, and other lawmakers threatened Rosenstein with contempt of Congress or, potentially, impeachment.

For a while, Rosenstein took a tough line, vowing that DOJ wouldn’t be “extorted,” but the battlefield shifted after the reports about the confidential informant.

Then Trump weighed in more strongly than ever with a “demand” for more information from the Justice Department, and Rosenstein acceded to it Monday. He traveled to the White House for a meeting with Trump, White House chief of staff John Kelly and FBI Director Christopher Wray.

One outcome was an acknowledgment by the Justice Department that its IG, Horowitz, will expand an inquiry he was already conducting into the ongoing Russia investigation to include its use of sources and surveillance.

For Trump’s supporters in the House, that is not good enough. They want the Justice Department to appoint a second special counsel to look into the work of the first, Mueller. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has brought in additional investigators to look into the Russia case but so far has stopped short of agreeing that another special counsel is necessary.

The second outcome was the meeting on Thursday that Kelly has brokered between Hill leaders, the Justice Department and the FBI. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., had urged the Trump administration to include Democrats but none were included in the White House’s announcement.

“The only thing more outrageous than this meeting occurring at all is the fact that it’s now partisan,” Schumer said. “It is crystal clear that Chairman Nunes’ intent is to interfere with the investigation, and Speaker Ryan is allowing it to happen.”

They’re winning. Apparently nothing can stop them.

Scott Pruitt really doesn’t want us to know what he’s doing.

The Environmental Protection Agency is barring The Associated Press, CNN and the environmental-focused news organization E&E from a national summit on harmful water contaminants.

The EPA blocked the news organizations from attending Tuesday’s Washington meeting, convened by EPA chief Scott Pruitt.

EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox told the barred organizations they were not invited and there was no space for them, but gave no indication of why they specifically were barred.

Pruitt told about 200 people at the meeting that dealing with the contaminants is a “national priority.”

Guards barred an AP reporter from passing through a security checkpoint inside the building. When the reporter asked to speak to an EPA public-affairs person, the security guards grabbed the reporter by the shoulders and shoved her forcibly out of the EPA building.

That’s not how any of this works.

Sabika Sheikh’s funeral was yesterday.

Sabika, 17, dreamed of being a diplomat, of working to empower women. A Muslim exchange student from Karachi, Pakistan, she had come to the United States through a State Department-funded study program, excited to leave behind the dangers posed by extremists at home to experience a country that represented all that was possible.

…

Outside the mosque here, long before hundreds of people gathered to mourn, two men wondered what had become of America, their adopted homeland.

“I’m aghast,” said Abdul Khatri, 60. “People come here because they are told there is peace here. You have the right to be protected here. It’s why I came. But to have this happen not in India or Pakistan, but here? We have gotten off track. And it’s been going on too long.”

“Too long,” the other man lamented. “I agree. Too long. But what will we do?”

There it’s suicide bombers, here it’s suicide and non-suicide shooters. Neither one is a very appealing choice. Both are shameful.

The mourners poured into the Masjid Sabireen mosque in this small town about 35 miles from Santa Fe, removing their shoes before stepping inside. Several students from Santa Fe High made the trip. So did Houston’s mayor and two members of Congress. The mayor of tiny Stafford sat down and hurriedly pulled out his phone.

“Can you please make sure all flags in town are flown at [half-staff],” Mayor Leonard Scarcella said into his phone. “Tell him it’s urgent.”

Sabika’s host family from Santa Fe arrived, six children in tow, the mother covering her blond hair with the red prayer shawl she’d received as a Mother’s Day gift from Sabika.

Excuse me a minute. Dusty in here.

Earlier at Arcadia First Baptist Church of Santa Fe, with Abbott in attendance, pastor Jerl Watkins tried to comfort the members of his congregation by telling them that prayer and acceptance of Christian values are the things that will heal this community.

But they aren’t. Plenty of Christians are fanatically pro-gun. Now if by “Christian values” you mean what Bishop Michael Curry talked about on Saturday then – after I point out they’re secular values too – I can agree, but unfortunately not all Christians do see love as the all-important thing.

Then he went on to rant about abortion, so forget it.

Several parishioners told Abbott they were glad he’s not rushing to implement new laws or restrictions on firearms after the shooting, during which a 17-year-old student allegedly gunned down eight students and two teachers with a shotgun and a pistol that police said belonged to his father.

Yes, that’s the important thing, not restricting guns.

I wish Sabika Sheikh were alive and well and looking forward to going home in a few weeks.

Guest post by Lady Mondegreen.

A little while ago, thinking of Jordan Peterson, I flashed on a book I read thirty years ago or so: Klaus Theweleit’s Male Fantasies.

Theweleit, a German sociologist with a Freudian bent, wrote about the men of the Freikorps, paramilitary bands of anti-Communists active in Germany between the World Wars. Many of them went on to be committed Nazis.

The Freikorps had their own subculture, including pulp fiction. Theweleit examined their novels, along with their letters and other documents, and found–brace yourselves for a surprise here–a profound fear of women and sexuality. The subtitle of the first volume of Mannerphantasien is “Women, Floods, Bodies.”

The Freikorps associated women with sex and sex with water and dirt. Rather, “bad” women, sexually liberated women, Red women, were associated with these things–the good German girl, the White Woman, was pure and sexless, Madonna to the Red Woman’s whore.

Theweleit saw in these men’s fantasies a desperate need to keep themselves under control, to fend off the personal dissolution they feared should they succumb to sexual ecstasy. (Via their diaries he found that many of them were sexually anhedonic.)

Jordan Peterson’s proto-fascism has striking similarities to that of the Freikorps men:

Obsession with Communism (Peterson’s house is decorated with Soviet propaganda) – Check

Association of women with chaos – Check

Fear of unregulated, nonmonogamous sex – Check

Preoccupation with Order: Clean your room. Get your life in order. Be CIVILIZED. – Check

And keep in mind these important facts kids:

Hierarchies are basic.

Ultimately, force is how MEN settle things.

This is blood-chilling.

On Monday morning, the White House press office released a remarkable statement detailing violent crimes allegedly committed by members of the criminal gang MS-13. That alone isn’t remarkable; President Trump has been railing against MS-13 for months, using it as a foil to bolster his rhetoric about the risk posed by immigrants to the United States.

What was remarkable about the statement was the White House’s enthusiastic embrace of the term “animals” to describe those alleged gang members. Over the course of 480 words, the subjects of the statement were described as gang members nine times and as “animals” 10 times. The statement was direct about its aim, titled, “What You Need To Know About The Violent Animals Of MS-13.”

In an official statement from the executive branch. What next? Calling them vermin?

This is not trivial stuff. This is what the Nazis did, what the Serbian nationalists did, what the Tutsis did, what the Khmer Rouge did. Words matter.

This barbaric language is no laughing matter. It may become the template for dehumanization. They’re already stealing the children of immigrants for warehousing on military bases. We’ve seen this show before. Today it’s gang members who are “animals,” tomorrow it’ll be ________ pic.twitter.com/nwS22BkGaD

— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) May 21, 2018

The opening paragraphs of the official White House statement:

WHAT: The violent animals of MS-13 have committed heinous, violent attacks in communities across America.

Too many innocent Americans have fallen victim to the unthinkable violence of MS-13’s animals.

At the State of the Union in January 2018, President Trump brought as his guests Elizabeth Alvarado, Robert Mickens, Evelyn Rodriguez, and Freddy Cuevas, the parents of Nisa Mickens and Kayla Cuevas. Police believe these young girls were chased down and brutally murdered by MS-13 gang members on Long Island, New York, in 2016. Suffolk County Police Commissioner stated that the “murders show a level of brutality that is close to unmatched.”

In Maryland, MS-13’s animals are accused of stabbing a man more than 100 times and then decapitating him, dismembering him, and ripping his heart out of his body. Police believe MS-13 members in Maryland also savagely beat a 15-year-old human trafficking victim. The MS-13 animals used a bat and took turns beating her nearly 30 times in total.

“Oh, you object to Trump’s calling them animals? We’ll give you animals. Suck it up, pansy liberals!”

Glosswitch in the Independent:

If only Shana Fisher had said yes. This is the implication of countless headlines following Dimitrios Pagourtzis’ decision to slaughter her along with nine of her teachers and classmates.

According to a Facebook post by Fisher’s mother, Fisher “had four months of problems from this boy” where “he kept making advances on her and she repeatedly told him no. He continued to get more aggressive”. So a girl endures several months of harassment, until her harasser kills her. How are we supposed to see this?

“Spurned advances spark Texas shooting.” “Texas school shooter ‘killed girl who turned down his advances’.” “Spurned advances provoked incident at Santa Fe high school.”

What I’m saying. The Danish cartoonists who drew Mohammed didn’t “provoke” riots; the cartoonists and writers at Charlie Hebdo didn’t “provoke” their own murders; Salman Rushdie didn’t “provoke” the fatwa on him; my dear friend Taslima Nasreen didn’t “provoke” the riots and treats that target her; the atheist bloggers murdered in Bangladesh didn’t “provoke” their own murders; Shana Fisher didn’t “provoke” that murderous boy.

The message, in case you’ve missed it, is that Fisher’s rejection – her “spurning” – of Pagourtzis is what caused his murderous rampage…

There’s something truly depressing about finding the world view of a killer reflected in the reporting of his crimes. Then again, belief that women and girls exist to tend to the sexual and emotional needs of men and boys is everywhere. It does not confine itself to those murky message boards where incels, MRAs, PUAs or whatever the latest misogyny hate tribe call themselves have decided to congregate.

If it did it wouldn’t keep turning up in headlines.

Male pride rests on the delusion that females can always be dominated (or “persuaded”, as it is so often recast). It is a delusion that is poisoning the minds of boys, creating a sense of grievance – and actual pain – where there should be none. For all the bullshit we hear from the Jordan Petersons of this world, there is no possible social arrangement in which men and boys can be guaranteed the willing, uncontested sexual and emotional labour of women and girls. You can brainwash, harass and threaten girls all you want, but even in the most extreme of circumstances they will carry on having minds of their own. It’s far easier and kinder to change the expectations of boys.

I believe this can be done, but not in a world which seeks to guilt-trip dead girls for their failure to pander to the male ego. And what, one wonders, would have happened had Shana Fisher said yes? How long can a woman serve as a buffer to absorb male disappointment with the world? And when she starts to flag, isn’t she always the first to go?

…

There is nothing Shana Fisher could have given that would have been enough. We can, however, challenge the rage and entitlement she faced. We can all raise our voices to echo her “no”.

NO.

Really?

Really??

There's now a White House Military Office coin for the upcoming Trump Kim Jong Un summit. The North Korean dictator is referred to as "Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un." pic.twitter.com/tFAmE813Y1

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) May 21, 2018

Sometimes the rage and disgust is overwhelming.

In a case involving the rights of tens of millions of private-sector employees, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, delivered a major blow to workers, ruling for the first time that workers may not band together to challenge violations of federal labor laws.

Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said that the 1925 Federal Arbitration Act trumps the National Labor Relations Act and that employees who sign employment agreements to arbitrate claims must do so on an individual basis — and may not band together to enforce claims of wage and hour violations.

5 to 4. Guess which 5 and which 4. Mitch McConnell should burn in hell.

“The policy may be debatable but the law is clear: Congress has instructed that arbitration agreements like those before us must be enforced as written,” Gorsuch writes. “While Congress is of course always free to amend this judgment, we see nothing suggesting it did so in the NLRA — much less that it manifested a clear intention to displace the Arbitration Act. Because we can easily read Congress’s statutes to work in harmony, that is where our duty lies.”

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the four dissenters, called the majority opinion “egregiously wrong.” She said the 1925 arbitration law came well before federal labor laws and should not cover these arm-twisted, “take-it-or-leave it” provisions that employers are now insisting on.

The inevitable result, she warned, is that there will be huge underenforcement of federal and state statutes designed to advance the well-being of workers.

“[T]he edict that employees with wage and hours claims may seek relief only one-by-one does not come from Congress,” Ginsburg writes. “It is the result of take-it-or-leave-it labor contracts harking back to the type called ‘yellow dog,’ and of the readiness of this Court to enforce those unbargained-for agreements. The FAA demands no such suppression of the right of workers to take concerted action for their ‘mutual aid or protection.'”

She urged Congress to correct the court’s elevation of the arbitration act over workers’ rights.

Please tell us more about why the white working class is so in love with Trump.

The ruling came in three cases — potentially involving tens of thousands of nonunion employees — brought against Ernst & Young LLP, Epic Systems Corp. and Murphy Oil USA Inc.

Each required its individual employees, as a condition of employment, to waive their rights to join a class-action suit. In all three cases, employees tried to sue together, maintaining that the amounts they could obtain in individual lawsuits were dwarfed by the legal fees they would have to pay as individuals to bring their cases under the private arbitration procedures required by the company.

The employees contended that their right to collective action is guaranteed by the National Labor Relations Act. The employers countered that they are entitled to ban collective legal action under the Federal Arbitration Act, which was enacted in 1925 to reverse the judicial hostility to arbitration at the time.

The NLRA was a hugely important piece of the New Deal, and a piece that enraged the employer class. It was after the act was passed that the CIO was formed and then the auto industry was unionized (over resistance, often of the violent kind). It’s disgusting to see us take another huge step backwards.

A study by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute shows that 56 percent of nonunion private-sector employees are currently subject to mandatory individual arbitration procedures under the 1925 Federal Arbitration Act, which allows employers to bar collective legal actions by employees.

The court’s decision means that tens of millions of private nonunion employees will be barred from suing collectively over the terms of their employment.

Please tell us more about liberal “elites” and how it’s all their fault.

The DoJ is jumping because Donald said “jump.”

In a statement, the Department of Justice said it would ask the Inspector General “to expand the ongoing review of the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] application process to include determining whether there was any impropriety or political motivation in how the FBI conducted its counterintelligence investigation of persons suspected of involvement with the Russian agents who interfered in the 2016 presidential election.”

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein added that “if anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action.”

Or maybe it’s not so much jumping as allowing Trump to make a fool of himself, because there is no infiltration or surveillance to find.

The people in charge of news headlines and first paragraphs and the like really need to stop doing this:

Spurned advances provoked Texas school shooting, victim’s mother says

“She provoked me so I killed her and nine other people.”

Also? Simply saying no to a guy’s invitation or request is not “spurning” anything. It’s just not accepting an offer you don’t want. Women are allowed to do that. Women are allowed to say no. Women are allowed to say no without being killed or raped or beaten up or blamed for it. Women are not walking talking merchandise that is there for the use of other, more important people called “men” – women are themselves people, and they are allowed to determine for themselves whether they want to be friends or lovers with Mr X.

A teenaged boy who shot and killed eight students and two teachers in Texas had been spurned by one of his victims after making aggressive advances, her mother told the Los Angeles Times.

That’s not a thing. Being “spurned” is not a thing. Making it a thing just buys into the “incel” logic that women have no right to say no.

Sadie Rodriguez, the mother of Shana Fisher, 16, told the newspaper that her daughter rejected four months of aggressive advances from accused shooter Dimitrios Pagourtzis, 17, at the Santa Fe high school.

Fisher finally stood up to him and embarrassed him in class, the newspaper quoted her mother as writing in a private message to the Times.

Reuters could have headlined and written this story as being about Pagourtzis’ four months of harassing Fisher, culminating in his murder of her and nine others after she (clearly in desperation) publicly told him to stop.

He’s a guy who shot up a school, yet Reuters presents it as culpable that Fisher said no to his aggressive demands. Isn’t it just barely possible that he has an unpleasantly belligerent and demanding personality? And that she had glaringly obvious reasons to say no to him? Quite apart from the fact that she gets to say no for any reason or none, because she is a person and not public property.

Oh good, now Playboy is telling us how to feminism. Thank god; we’ve been wondering all along how we could do it more Playboyishly.

"How can we move forward with an educated, true version of feminism when the media pushes watered-down feminism, led by a fictional celebrity narrative, without actual answers or—god forbid—solutions to our ongoing, uphill battle?"

Read the full story. https://t.co/qbKYgqCQc8 pic.twitter.com/ApnOIiMV2h

— Playboy (@Playboy) May 16, 2018