thebulwark--2020-08-17--A Sweltering Pandemic Summer

A Sweltering Pandemic Summer

Were it possible to ask the country , “ So , how was your summer ?
” the only possible answer would be : “ Not great .
In fact , it was terrible.
” Pandemic illness , economic collapse , social distancing , and stifling mask-wear has a way of taking the fun out of the season of sun .
With multiple studies showing that a more realistic and better organized response by federal and state governments could have dramatically reduced suffering and death , it is doubtful that the epidemic had to unfold the way it did .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ strong prima facie case to be made that our current increasingly dire health and economic straits are the product primarily , if not exclusively , of our ongoing partisan divide and the way that it distorts our politics and governance .
One only needs to spend a little time with the testing and case data from across the country to see this pattern .
As we approach fall , states governed by moderate to liberal , technocratic governors of both parties are in a much better position to respond to the threats and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ governed by Republicans , who are taking their pandemic management cues from President Trump ’ s leadership .
There is an arc of states running from Maine to Wisconsin who suffered the worst of the outbreak in the early months of the pandemic that appear , for the moment , to have the upper hand in battle against COVID-19 .
The West Coast and Pacific states place second in this analysis , where conditions have deteriorated slowly and unevenly slowly over the summer , with crushing blows against the virus followed by sudden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the U.S. , including the South , Great Plains and Mountain West , have largely seen the virus slip the leash in their states despite having the benefit of observing what it could do in places like New York , New Jersey , Illinois and Michigan .
After reviewing state-by-state testing , hospitalization , and mortality rates it seems clear that for much of the country the initiative is fully on the side of the virus .
If COVID behaves like other respiratory viruses , when temperatures start to drop our sweltering pandemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prelude to an even more difficult and tragic fall .
How did we , the wealthiest and most technologically advanced nation in the world , a country with an unrivaled biomedical capacity , get here ?
The answer is surprisingly prosaic : badly flawed politics and governance at the national and state and local levels .
To arrive at this conclusion , I reviewed the basic data about state testing sorted by the political orientation of the party that holds the governorships and state legislatures .
In 21 states , these offices and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 15 states run by Democrats .
The remaining states are divided with one party holding the governorship and the other the legislature .
( For the purposes of this discussion , I ’ m counting Nebraska with its nonpartisan , unicameral legislature , and Alaska , with a tie in one legislative chamber , as unified Republican states .
The District of Columbia is included as a Democratic-controlled jurisdiction ) .
As shown in the chart below , since May , the Republican “ trifecta states ” – governor and both houses of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have seen a four-fold growth in positive COVID tests .
Democratic-trifecta states , that during the summer months were recovering from the sky-high infection rates of the early outbreak , saw their positive counts fall dramatically .
In states where government is divided between the parties , summer COVID positive test growth falls between the two .
Since averages reveal and conceal , it ’ s important to look at the performance of individual states as well .
The chart below compares the larger ( in terms of population , positive cases or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ states in terms of the trajectories of their positive COVID test results between May and early-August .
The most salient feature of this data is how the positive rates of states under full GOP control went up and mostly stayed up .
While a number of the Democratic-controlled and split-control states touched similar peaks , they have managed their way down to something that begins to approach a tolerable degree of spread .
The highest of the non-GOP states , California and North Carolina , currently have about half the positive rate of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ common an approach to epidemic management that can most generously be called “ uneven ” : late to impose shutdowns , reluctant to require , or in some cases even permit localities to require , masking , and favoring economic restarts over disease control .
The GOP-controlled states above , and many of the others not shown in the chart who share their orientation toward pandemic management , are going into the fall season with a powerful headwind of spreading disease .
How important are these numbers ?
Epidemiologists are ( almost ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and prone to arriving at different conclusions .
Some believe we have passed through the worst of the epidemic because actual exposure and infection rates are likely so much higher than the recorded numbers suggest , some saying on the scale of 10-to-1 .
If that ’ s true , perhaps these states have made a significant down-payment on herd immunity which may limit future infection and illness .
The Southern , Midwestern , and Plains states are effectively betting this is the case .
Who knows ?
COVID ’ s a “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right !
But there is another , less hopeful , scenario .
When the virus hit New York City , it was still winter and the disease spread widely and lethally beginning in January before federal , state , and local leaders clearly grasped and responded to the threat .
This , combined with serious mistakes in handling nursing homes , caused staggering losses requiring a near-total economic lockdown to contain the disease .
By contrast , much of the rest of the country has had its initial encounter with COVID during the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ respiratory viruses , seasons matter a lot .
Virtually every respiratory illness tends to spread faster and more lethally during the winter months .
Influenza , for instance , virtually disappears during the spring and summer in the northern and southern hemispheres .
For reasons we don ’ t fully understand , these viruses cause more disease and more severe disease during the colder months .
Recent developments in Melbourne , Australia and New Zealand , where it is deep winter , ought to pique our interest in this regard .
In 1918 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pandemic was 12-times larger than the spring/summer wave .
COVID , thank God , does not have the lethality of that influenza although it isn ’ t as far off as we first believed , either .
If COVID follows a similar seasonal pattern , it is possible we might see a significantly higher peak in the fall/winter than what we saw over the past few months .
The greater the degree of community spread underway as we enter the colder months , the more cases we are likely to see .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : Is COVID-19 , now entrenched throughout the country , a viral bomb set to go off as the mercury falls and the school year begins ?
We don ’ t know for certain but the possibility helps explain why key government figures like Deborah Birx , Anthony Fauci , and Robert Redfield are issuing increasingly dire warnings about the fall – even at the risk of crossing the President .
If anything ’ s been demonstrated conclusively since the pandemic started , it ’ s that hard-eyed realism is what ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is where political and governance questions become critical .
Over the past three months , you can find red states with blue governors ( Kentucky ) that have struggled , and you can find blue states with red governors who have done reasonably well at avoiding disaster ( Maryland and Massachusetts ) .
What ’ s vanishingly rare ( Mike DeWine ’ s Ohio being the lone exception ) is a state with unified Republican control that has not seen their COVID caseloads rise dramatically , or even explode , during the summer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ take the basic , necessary steps to contain the illness : lock-down , mask-up , and follow social distancing .
And it isn ’ t just elitist DC commentators who think these states have a governance problem ; voters are sending the same message .
The Republican governors in Arizona , Texas , and Florida have all seen their approval ratings collapse based on the perceived failures of their COVID responses .
These do not compare well with governors in places like Michigan , New Jersey , Connecticut , whose approval ratings have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the viral threat .
What explains the reluctance of red state elected officials to take the obviously necessary steps against COVID ?
There ’ s little doubt that President Trump ’ s hold over the rank-and-file of his party , and the way it limits the ability of state and local officials to respond to the pandemic , is a key factor .
None of these governors can afford , for purposes of day-to-day decision-making and their longer-term political prospects , to have daylight between themselves and the Trump-controlled GOP populist wing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no red state Republican governor can openly dispute much less defy without sizable political repercussions .
It ’ s been easier for these leaders , with the consent and encouragement of their base voters , to try to wish COVID away .
Which tells you a lot about what ’ s wrong with American politics today and especially with the Republican party .

Were it possible to ask the country, “So, how was your summer?” the only possible answer would be: “Not great. In fact, it was terrible.” Pandemic illness, economic collapse, social distancing, and stifling mask-wear has a way of taking the fun out of the season of sun.
With multiple studies showing that a more realistic and better organized response by federal and state governments could have dramatically reduced suffering and death, it is doubtful that the epidemic had to unfold the way it did. In fact, there’s a strong prima facie case to be made that our current increasingly dire health and economic straits are the product primarily, if not exclusively, of our ongoing partisan divide and the way that it distorts our politics and governance.
One only needs to spend a little time with the testing and case data from across the country to see this pattern. As we approach fall, states governed by moderate to liberal, technocratic governors of both parties are in a much better position to respond to the threats and opportunities of the coming months than those governed by Republicans, who are taking their pandemic management cues from President Trump’s leadership. There is an arc of states running from Maine to Wisconsin who suffered the worst of the outbreak in the early months of the pandemic that appear, for the moment, to have the upper hand in battle against COVID-19. The West Coast and Pacific states place second in this analysis, where conditions have deteriorated slowly and unevenly slowly over the summer, with crushing blows against the virus followed by sudden flares.
That’s the good news.
Leaders in the rest of the U.S., including the South, Great Plains and Mountain West, have largely seen the virus slip the leash in their states despite having the benefit of observing what it could do in places like New York, New Jersey, Illinois and Michigan. After reviewing state-by-state testing, hospitalization, and mortality rates it seems clear that for much of the country the initiative is fully on the side of the virus. If COVID behaves like other respiratory viruses, when temperatures start to drop our sweltering pandemic summer may turn out to be a prelude to an even more difficult and tragic fall.
How did we, the wealthiest and most technologically advanced nation in the world, a country with an unrivaled biomedical capacity, get here?
The answer is surprisingly prosaic: badly flawed politics and governance at the national and state and local levels. To arrive at this conclusion, I reviewed the basic data about state testing sorted by the political orientation of the party that holds the governorships and state legislatures. In 21 states, these offices and bodies are controlled by Republicans compared to 15 states run by Democrats. The remaining states are divided with one party holding the governorship and the other the legislature. (For the purposes of this discussion, I’m counting Nebraska with its nonpartisan, unicameral legislature, and Alaska, with a tie in one legislative chamber, as unified Republican states. The District of Columbia is included as a Democratic-controlled jurisdiction).
As shown in the chart below, since May, the Republican “trifecta states” – governor and both houses of the legislature held by the GOP – have seen a four-fold growth in positive COVID tests. Democratic-trifecta states, that during the summer months were recovering from the sky-high infection rates of the early outbreak, saw their positive counts fall dramatically. In states where government is divided between the parties, summer COVID positive test growth falls between the two.
GOP Controlled Dem Controlled Divided Control May to August positive COVID test growth factor 4.09x 1.97x 2.34x
Since averages reveal and conceal, it’s important to look at the performance of individual states as well. The chart below compares the larger (in terms of population, positive cases or both) GOP-, Democratic- and split-control states in terms of the trajectories of their positive COVID test results between May and early-August.
Low Peak Current Florida 2.3 19.6 17.7 Texas 4.7 24.2 23.7 Arizona 6.5 27.6 11.2 California 4 8 6.7 New York .9 32.9 .9 New Jersey 1.3 47.1 1.7 North Carolina 5.2 12.7 6 Massachusetts 2.1 29.4 2.1 Maryland 5 26.3 5
Source: Johns Hopkins COVID Tracking Project
The most salient feature of this data is how the positive rates of states under full GOP control went up and mostly stayed up. While a number of the Democratic-controlled and split-control states touched similar peaks, they have managed their way down to something that begins to approach a tolerable degree of spread. The highest of the non-GOP states, California and North Carolina, currently have about half the positive rate of Arizona.
The red-state governors share in common an approach to epidemic management that can most generously be called “uneven”: late to impose shutdowns, reluctant to require, or in some cases even permit localities to require, masking, and favoring economic restarts over disease control. The GOP-controlled states above, and many of the others not shown in the chart who share their orientation toward pandemic management, are going into the fall season with a powerful headwind of spreading disease.
How important are these numbers? Epidemiologists are (almost) like economists, deep in the data and prone to arriving at different conclusions. Some believe we have passed through the worst of the epidemic because actual exposure and infection rates are likely so much higher than the recorded numbers suggest, some saying on the scale of 10-to-1. If that’s true, perhaps these states have made a significant down-payment on herd immunity which may limit future infection and illness. The Southern, Midwestern, and Plains states are effectively betting this is the case. Who knows? COVID’s a “novel” virus. They might be right!
But there is another, less hopeful, scenario. When the virus hit New York City, it was still winter and the disease spread widely and lethally beginning in January before federal, state, and local leaders clearly grasped and responded to the threat. This, combined with serious mistakes in handling nursing homes, caused staggering losses requiring a near-total economic lockdown to contain the disease.
By contrast, much of the rest of the country has had its initial encounter with COVID during the warmer spring and summer months. With respiratory viruses, seasons matter a lot. Virtually every respiratory illness tends to spread faster and more lethally during the winter months. Influenza, for instance, virtually disappears during the spring and summer in the northern and southern hemispheres. For reasons we don’t fully understand, these viruses cause more disease and more severe disease during the colder months. Recent developments in Melbourne, Australia and New Zealand, where it is deep winter, ought to pique our interest in this regard.
In 1918, the fall wave of the influenza pandemic was 12-times larger than the spring/summer wave. COVID, thank God, does not have the lethality of that influenza although it isn’t as far off as we first believed, either. If COVID follows a similar seasonal pattern, it is possible we might see a significantly higher peak in the fall/winter than what we saw over the past few months. The greater the degree of community spread underway as we enter the colder months, the more cases we are likely to see. The question that hangs over us is this: Is COVID-19, now entrenched throughout the country, a viral bomb set to go off as the mercury falls and the school year begins? We don’t know for certain but the possibility helps explain why key government figures like Deborah Birx, Anthony Fauci, and Robert Redfield are issuing increasingly dire warnings about the fall – even at the risk of crossing the President.
If anything’s been demonstrated conclusively since the pandemic started, it’s that hard-eyed realism is what’s most necessary to combat it. This is where political and governance questions become critical. Over the past three months, you can find red states with blue governors (Kentucky) that have struggled, and you can find blue states with red governors who have done reasonably well at avoiding disaster (Maryland and Massachusetts). What’s vanishingly rare (Mike DeWine’s Ohio being the lone exception) is a state with unified Republican control that has not seen their COVID caseloads rise dramatically, or even explode, during the summer of 2020 because they have refused to take the basic, necessary steps to contain the illness: lock-down, mask-up, and follow social distancing. And it isn’t just elitist DC commentators who think these states have a governance problem; voters are sending the same message. The Republican governors in Arizona, Texas, and Florida have all seen their approval ratings collapse based on the perceived failures of their COVID responses. These do not compare well with governors in places like Michigan, New Jersey, Connecticut, whose approval ratings have jumped markedly due to their aggressive responses to the viral threat.
What explains the reluctance of red state elected officials to take the obviously necessary steps against COVID? There’s little doubt that President Trump’s hold over the rank-and-file of his party, and the way it limits the ability of state and local officials to respond to the pandemic, is a key factor. None of these governors can afford, for purposes of day-to-day decision-making and their longer-term political prospects, to have daylight between themselves and the Trump-controlled GOP populist wing. Any position the President stakes out no red state Republican governor can openly dispute much less defy without sizable political repercussions. It’s been easier for these leaders, with the consent and encouragement of their base voters, to try to wish COVID away. Which tells you a lot about what’s wrong with American politics today and especially with the Republican party.


thebulwark--2020-08-17--The Making of Stephen Miller

The Making of Stephen Miller

Hatemonger Stephen Miller , Donald Trump , and the White Nationalist Agenda by Jean Guerrero William Morrow , 323 pp.
, $ 28.99 Chilling words delivered with a flicking tongue and dead eyes .
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prematurely balding pate shining over a long face that seems to smile only when inflicting pain .
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a figure in dark clothes tailored to sharp , narrow lines .
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relentless driving sentences like long , serrated knives .
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We all know who we ’ re talking about , right ?
In her new book , Hatemonger , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of this Nosferatu of the West Wing—down to his “ long , articulate fingers that fit a man often depicted as a behind-the-scenes puppeteer.
” Of course , Stephen Miller is the sort of person who relishes his detractors ’ hyperbole .
He has been cultivating a cartoon villainy since puberty .
He has fashioned himself into what people opposed to the Trump administration describe as a dream enemy .
Since the dawn of our era of “ American carnage , ” Miller has survived all the generals , adults-in-the-room , old cronies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a senior adviser for policy to President Donald J. Trump .
His influence on immigration policy and the nation ’ s racial climate will be long-lasting .
If , inshallah , the Trump administration ’ s legacy rots away and vanishes like the soft tissue of some prehistoric shark , the sharp teeth that remain in the fossil record will likely belong to Stephen Miller .
In the last several months of impeachment , pandemic , and economic collapse , Miller hasn ’ t surfaced in public as much as he did in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He doesn ’ t give as many interviews anymore or show up television as often .
And he did not avail himself of the opportunity to speak to his biographer .
Jean Guerrero , in her decade-long career in journalism , has covered America ’ s borderlands , mixed cultures , and migrant peoples .
She has drawn out the individual stories and traumas that follow from executive orders and white papers in Washington .
For this book , she sought to understand the architect of some of the most disturbing policies she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her quest to understand , she seems to have spoken to everyone who came in contact with Stephen Miller , from Santa Monica to Duke University to Washington—elementary-school classmates , domestic workers , old girlfriends , right-wing mentors , nearly forgotten relatives , baffled government officials , and other sources high and low who were frightened into anonymity .
The title “ Hatemonger ” might seem sensational or overdramatic , but it is clinically precise .
Miller acquires , packages , commercializes , and touts hatred as surely as a fishmonger peddles haddock @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emails .
Hatemonger delves into Miller ’ s adolescence and childhood and deeper into his extended family and ancestry .
Guerrero notes the irony of Miller ’ s Jewish refugee ancestors who were spared pogroms and death camps by the grace of an open door to the United States .
Those generations had faded away by the time Miller ’ s parents established themselves in upper-middle-class security in California .
Miller ’ s father , an imperious lawyer and litigious real estate investor ( hmmm ) did very well through the 1980s and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1985 .
In the course of the 1990s , however , the family ’ s fortunes changed and the elder Miller ’ s politics shifted from conventionally Democratic to economically Republican to combatively right-wing .
Guerrero ’ s reporting reveals that the Miller family experienced a profound financial and social dislocation as lawsuits and earthquakes pummeled the family business .
As Stephen Miller made the transition to Santa Monica High School , the family was uprooted from a wealthy enclave to the margins of a “ largely Latin American neighborhood.
” Guerrero reminds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ politics in the ’ 90s .
On the national stage in 1992 , immigration hawk Pat Buchanan issued his declaration of “ culture war.
” In southern California , progressive multicultural initiatives were on the march and they were met by a ferocious white reaction .
In addition to literal explosions from wildfires and earthquakes , the state hosted ferocious battles over state services for illegal immigrants ( Governor Pete Wilson ’ s Prop 187 ) , bilingual education , and affirmative action .
And there was the matter of the police beating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Angeles riots .
Oh , and there was a flare-up in white-supremacist terrorist groups and racial tensions among students , even at the mostly affluent Santa Monica High School .
The young Miller found himself swimming in an environment of money and status layered over by liberal pieties .
He was alienated from the upper crust and contemptuous toward Hispanic students , whom he saw as the beneficiaries of unwarranted solicitude .
One of the central insights of Hatemonger is the ample evidence that , like so many people , Stephen Miller ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been established in high school .
Many of his exploits—such as insisting that students should be free to litter when custodians are paid to clean up—have been well documented already .
Miller ’ s first brush with wider notoriety came with a ginned-up controversy about the Pledge of Allegiance at Santa Monica High after 9/11 .
He went on the Larry Elder Show , a mainstay of southern California conservative talk radio , first as a caller and then as a guest invited “ almost whenever he wanted to come on the air @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mind , ” according to Elder .
In those broadcasts , Miller spoke much as he does now , about anti-American PC tendencies at his school .
When a classmate confronted Miller about distortions and dishonesties in his radio remarks , she told Guerrero he said “ It doesn ’ t matter what the truth is , but how it makes people feel.
” Miller would ride that proposition all the way to the White House .
From the beginning , Miller seems to have had a talent for friendship with men who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the role of earnest , young patriot truth-teller for Larry Elder .
That connection brought Miller into the orbit of David Horowitz , the New Left firebrand turned “ second thoughts ” conservative firebrand .
Like Pat Buchanan , the controlling metaphor for Horowitz ’ s political activism has long been war .
Rhetorical battle , enemies , weapons , hate , rage , war , and more war .
Horowitz ’ s “ School for Political Warfare ” was a good fit for young Stephen Miller .
Miller told Horowitz “ he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ household and realized those political views were wrong .
Horowitz could relate.
” The elder radical against radicals “ thought of Miller as a ‘ second thoughts warrior ’ like himself , someone who had been brought up in one ideology and , upon second thought , decided the opposite was true.
” Members of Miller ’ s extended family were standard-issue Democrats , but Guerrero ’ s reporting indicates that Miller ’ s father had become a strident right-winger before Stephen Miller left elementary school .
Guerrero doesn ’ t explicitly suggest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , with Horowitz , Miller was warping his persona to place himself more snugly under an influential man ’ s wing .
At Duke University , Stephen Miller established himself in a now-familiar contrarian position .
He harangued fellow students , faculty , and staff with acidic words .
Deans and university administrators deal with thousands of arrogant young activists in the course of a career .
Guerrero talked to one who thought Miller ’ s vehemence and certainty was not unusual but “ it didn ’ t seem to matter what information @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was always playing to another audience .
The conservative movement was always a loose , sprawling web of ideologies and personalities that contained multitudes and contradictions galore .
For long periods , it was a fecund marketplace of ideas , dynamic and adaptable .
But on the margins , there has always been a furtive trade in such half-cooked exotica as “ race realism ” and Christian Reconstructionism .
Before he left Duke , Stephen Miller spent time with peddlers from such dark corners .
Regardless of his post-Duke representations , it is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now-infamous white nationalist/supremacist Richard Spencer .
Miller and Spencer hosted a debate featuring onetime National Review contributor Peter Brimelow , an English immigrant and author of the 1995 book Alien Nation : Common Sense About America ’ s Immigration Disaster .
Brimelow went on to found VDARE , an anti-immigration , white-nationalist-friendly website , foundation , and think tank .
Brimelow , Spencer , and Miller may have represented different strains of toxic right-wing thought , but their connection led to a potent cross-fertilization .
A Duke student who saw a lot of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Duke lacrosse case unfolded during Miller ’ s time at the school .
Eventually , the falsely accused jocks were exonerated and some justice was served .
Miller had been , more or less , on the right side of the controversy .
His on-campus and off-campus media advocacy established his name far beyond Duke , and he soon took his notoriety—and his influences—to work in Washington .
David Horowitz helped Stephen Miller land a job on Capitol Hill , eventually finding him a slot with Alabama senator Jeff Sessions .
Guerrero documents @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arguments and strategies between Sessions , Horowitz , and anti-immigration think tanks and policy wonks .
That web of connections successfully befouled the last attempt at comprehensive immigration reform during the Obama administration .
From that time through the appearance of Donald Trump , Miller was the tireless superspreader of soundbites , strategies , policy prescriptions , and rhetoric around immigration restrictionism .
The informal network , which encompassed Steve Bannon and his Breitbart crew , passed around links to white-nationalist material at websites like American Renaissance and Peter Brimelow ’ s VDARE @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of white identity politics .
When Donald Trump rolled down the golden escalator and started his populist march to the White House , Miller and his friends ensured their networks and their ideas were along for the ride .
Guererro details how Miller has circumvented norms and chains of command to push for the most ruthless available options in curtailing illegal and legal immigration .
Embedded in Hatemonger are some lessons in how not to fight against the machinations of Stephen Miller .
Revisiting the “ caravan ” of migrants that Trump tried @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2018 elections , Guerrero reveals that one of the most chaotic and dangerous moments came at the urging of American activists who visited migrants in Tijuana and told them to “ storm the border , passing out flyers that read in Spanish : ‘ Open the border or we ’ ll shut it down !
All of us must be allowed to enter !
’ The handouts .
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were written in the first-person plural , as if by the Central Americans themselves , but were in fact a product of By @ @ @ @ @ @ @ group.
” The migrants who followed their instructions tried scaling fences only to be met by barbed wire and tear gas .
Guerrero makes clear the exploitative and counterproductive nature of some on the far left .
At times , though , she might be too accepting of the supposed harmlessness of some of the left ’ s identity politics .
One of Miller ’ s lifelong enemies has been the student group “ MEChA , ” formerly known as the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlán ( the Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nationalist student movement that has held strange notions of a racial homeland in the southwestern United States and a creepy motto : Por La Raza todo .
Fuera de La Raza nada ( “ within the race , everything ; outside of it , nothing ” ) .
Then again , as troubling as that is , perhaps racial nationalism of the left is not as much of a threat right now as its right-wing counterpart : As Miller has been prosecuting his continent-wide macroaggression against brown people , MEChA has been consumed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over internalized heteronormativity and other pressing concerns .
More troubling is a terrible line of thought that Guerrero repeats unchallenged that was voiced by one of Miller ’ s Duke student foes : “ I am haunted by the knowledge that we could have shut Stephen down at the moment of his becoming , had we been more interested in the psychic and material health of the marginalized peoples with whom we shared our campus than in the doctrine of liberalism.
” Just how might they have “ shut Stephen down ” ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ In due time , I ’ m sure that Miller and his alt-right allies would also be happy to dispense with the remaining niceties of liberalism , including free speech and tolerance .
Since Donald Trump ’ s inauguration , Stephen Miller has been the embodiment of the administration ’ s de facto motto : “ Malevolence Tempered by Incompetence.
” His arrogance and ignorance have led to missteps and self-inflicted setbacks .
His rhetoric has alienated , and his influence has undermined the core missions of the Department of Homeland Security ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he has persisted , adapted , and continued his long march through the federal bureaucracy .
Unlike his boss , Miller seems to have been learning on the job as he works the levers of government .
Guerrero writes , “ Miller knew when to push and when to yield .
He had a knack for political maneuvering.
” Somehow he has survived all the Trump world defenestrations .
He has benefited from his talent for friendship and his use—and well-timed disposal of—benefactors .
Trump may see Miller as a direct line to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ never tell him to adjust his tone or ease up on the “ Mexican rapists ” to win over swing voters .
As strongmen and malefactors around the world have discovered , Donald Trump is easily manipulated .
Miller learned the tricks .
Guerrero explains that “ Miller observed early that to survive in Trump ’ s orbit , he would have to ally himself with Trump ’ s beloved daughter Ivanka and her husband , Jared Kushner.
” Miller ventured out of his immigration monomania to help Ivanka and Jared with their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ publicly tussling with “ Javanka , ” Miller knew when and how to shiv his latest mentor .
As Miller walked with Trump one day , he was overheard telling his boss , “ Your polling numbers are actually very strong considering Steve won ’ t stop leaking to the press and trying to undermine Jared.
” Bannon was soon gone .
A victim of the art of political warfare , it would seem .
Steve Bannon has called himself a “ Leninist.
” Like Miller , Horowitz , and others , Bannon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like Trump , liked “ killers ” who , in Horowitz ’ s phrase , “ take no prisoners.
” It ’ s performative , a lurid echo of the worst of the far left—especially when it comes from David Horowitz—but it ’ s not just a metaphor .
People who use war-like rhetoric tend to extend the imagery and widen its use .
It is a thrilling role-playing game .
But , at some point , mere words lead to action .
After all , if the stakes are so high , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shouldn ’ t we be willing to fight by any means necessary ?
We have all too many examples of individuals and small groups taking up the battle cry .
They have moved beyond violent symbolism and started deploying real bullets and pipe bombs and speeding weaponized cars .
And , even more troubling , it seems the front-line federal officers can be susceptible to that contagion of ruthlessness .
Donald Trump is not an ideological leader .
His initiatives are crude and his execution lazy .
Stephen Miller is still a very @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Guerrero in Hatemonger , Miller does have a vision , an obsession if not a group of principles .
And he is anything but lazy .
Regardless of the outcome of the coming election , Stephen Miller and his allied forces will march on .
Whether he is feeding apocalyptical racial paranoia from the White House or outside , Miller will be the one to watch in the coming years .

Hatemonger
Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda
by Jean Guerrero
William Morrow, 323 pp., $28.99
Chilling words delivered with a flicking tongue and dead eyes . . . prematurely balding pate shining over a long face that seems to smile only when inflicting pain . . . a figure in dark clothes tailored to sharp, narrow lines . . . relentless driving sentences like long, serrated knives. . . . We all know who we’re talking about, right?
In her new book, Hatemonger, journalist Jean Guerrero provides a full portrait of this Nosferatu of the West Wing—down to his “long, articulate fingers that fit a man often depicted as a behind-the-scenes puppeteer.”
Of course, Stephen Miller is the sort of person who relishes his detractors’ hyperbole. He has been cultivating a cartoon villainy since puberty. He has fashioned himself into what people opposed to the Trump administration describe as a dream enemy. Since the dawn of our era of “American carnage,” Miller has survived all the generals, adults-in-the-room, old cronies, and rank opportunists. He remains a senior adviser for policy to President Donald J. Trump. His influence on immigration policy and the nation’s racial climate will be long-lasting. If, inshallah, the Trump administration’s legacy rots away and vanishes like the soft tissue of some prehistoric shark, the sharp teeth that remain in the fossil record will likely belong to Stephen Miller.
In the last several months of impeachment, pandemic, and economic collapse, Miller hasn’t surfaced in public as much as he did in the first years of the administration. He doesn’t give as many interviews anymore or show up television as often. And he did not avail himself of the opportunity to speak to his biographer. Jean Guerrero, in her decade-long career in journalism, has covered America’s borderlands, mixed cultures, and migrant peoples. She has drawn out the individual stories and traumas that follow from executive orders and white papers in Washington. For this book, she sought to understand the architect of some of the most disturbing policies she had seen from the ground. In her quest to understand, she seems to have spoken to everyone who came in contact with Stephen Miller, from Santa Monica to Duke University to Washington—elementary-school classmates, domestic workers, old girlfriends, right-wing mentors, nearly forgotten relatives, baffled government officials, and other sources high and low who were frightened into anonymity.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
The title “Hatemonger” might seem sensational or overdramatic, but it is clinically precise. Miller acquires, packages, commercializes, and touts hatred as surely as a fishmonger peddles haddock and cod. Jean Guerrero has the emails.
Hatemonger delves into Miller’s adolescence and childhood and deeper into his extended family and ancestry. Guerrero notes the irony of Miller’s Jewish refugee ancestors who were spared pogroms and death camps by the grace of an open door to the United States.
Those generations had faded away by the time Miller’s parents established themselves in upper-middle-class security in California. Miller’s father, an imperious lawyer and litigious real estate investor (hmmm) did very well through the 1980s and his son Stephen’s birth in 1985. In the course of the 1990s, however, the family’s fortunes changed and the elder Miller’s politics shifted from conventionally Democratic to economically Republican to combatively right-wing.
Guerrero’s reporting reveals that the Miller family experienced a profound financial and social dislocation as lawsuits and earthquakes pummeled the family business. As Stephen Miller made the transition to Santa Monica High School, the family was uprooted from a wealthy enclave to the margins of a “largely Latin American neighborhood.”
Guerrero reminds readers of the combustible atmosphere of California politics in the ’90s. On the national stage in 1992, immigration hawk Pat Buchanan issued his declaration of “culture war.” In southern California, progressive multicultural initiatives were on the march and they were met by a ferocious white reaction. In addition to literal explosions from wildfires and earthquakes, the state hosted ferocious battles over state services for illegal immigrants (Governor Pete Wilson’s Prop 187), bilingual education, and affirmative action. And there was the matter of the police beating of Rodney King and the vast Los Angeles riots. Oh, and there was a flare-up in white-supremacist terrorist groups and racial tensions among students, even at the mostly affluent Santa Monica High School.
The young Miller found himself swimming in an environment of money and status layered over by liberal pieties. He was alienated from the upper crust and contemptuous toward Hispanic students, whom he saw as the beneficiaries of unwarranted solicitude. One of the central insights of Hatemonger is the ample evidence that, like so many people, Stephen Miller’s template for life seems to have been established in high school. Many of his exploits—such as insisting that students should be free to litter when custodians are paid to clean up—have been well documented already. Miller’s first brush with wider notoriety came with a ginned-up controversy about the Pledge of Allegiance at Santa Monica High after 9/11. He went on the Larry Elder Show, a mainstay of southern California conservative talk radio, first as a caller and then as a guest invited “almost whenever he wanted to come on the air to talk about whatever was on his mind,” according to Elder. In those broadcasts, Miller spoke much as he does now, about anti-American PC tendencies at his school. When a classmate confronted Miller about distortions and dishonesties in his radio remarks, she told Guerrero he said “It doesn’t matter what the truth is, but how it makes people feel.” Miller would ride that proposition all the way to the White House.
From the beginning, Miller seems to have had a talent for friendship with men who could help him. First he played the role of earnest, young patriot truth-teller for Larry Elder. That connection brought Miller into the orbit of David Horowitz, the New Left firebrand turned “second thoughts” conservative firebrand. Like Pat Buchanan, the controlling metaphor for Horowitz’s political activism has long been war. Rhetorical battle, enemies, weapons, hate, rage, war, and more war. Horowitz’s “School for Political Warfare” was a good fit for young Stephen Miller.
Miller told Horowitz “he’d grown up in a liberal household and realized those political views were wrong. Horowitz could relate.” The elder radical against radicals “thought of Miller as a ‘second thoughts warrior’ like himself, someone who had been brought up in one ideology and, upon second thought, decided the opposite was true.”
Members of Miller’s extended family were standard-issue Democrats, but Guerrero’s reporting indicates that Miller’s father had become a strident right-winger before Stephen Miller left elementary school. Guerrero doesn’t explicitly suggest this, but it seems clear that, with Horowitz, Miller was warping his persona to place himself more snugly under an influential man’s wing.
At Duke University, Stephen Miller established himself in a now-familiar contrarian position. He harangued fellow students, faculty, and staff with acidic words. Deans and university administrators deal with thousands of arrogant young activists in the course of a career. Guerrero talked to one who thought Miller’s vehemence and certainty was not unusual but “it didn’t seem to matter what information you gave him.” It seems Miller was always playing to another audience.
The conservative movement was always a loose, sprawling web of ideologies and personalities that contained multitudes and contradictions galore. For long periods, it was a fecund marketplace of ideas, dynamic and adaptable. But on the margins, there has always been a furtive trade in such half-cooked exotica as “race realism” and Christian Reconstructionism.
Before he left Duke, Stephen Miller spent time with peddlers from such dark corners. Regardless of his post-Duke representations, it is clear that Miller worked closely with the now-infamous white nationalist/supremacist Richard Spencer. Miller and Spencer hosted a debate featuring onetime National Review contributor Peter Brimelow, an English immigrant and author of the 1995 book Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster. Brimelow went on to found VDARE, an anti-immigration, white-nationalist-friendly website, foundation, and think tank. Brimelow, Spencer, and Miller may have represented different strains of toxic right-wing thought, but their connection led to a potent cross-fertilization.
A Duke student who saw a lot of Miller up close observed:
Some people want money, some people want power, some people want influence, some people want women, some people want scientific discovery and a lot of people run around not knowing what they want. Stephen very clearly wanted the tears of his enemies—and then went out and got them.
The infamous Duke lacrosse case unfolded during Miller’s time at the school. Eventually, the falsely accused jocks were exonerated and some justice was served. Miller had been, more or less, on the right side of the controversy. His on-campus and off-campus media advocacy established his name far beyond Duke, and he soon took his notoriety—and his influences—to work in Washington.
David Horowitz helped Stephen Miller land a job on Capitol Hill, eventually finding him a slot with Alabama senator Jeff Sessions. Guerrero documents how Miller served as a courier for arguments and strategies between Sessions, Horowitz, and anti-immigration think tanks and policy wonks. That web of connections successfully befouled the last attempt at comprehensive immigration reform during the Obama administration. From that time through the appearance of Donald Trump, Miller was the tireless superspreader of soundbites, strategies, policy prescriptions, and rhetoric around immigration restrictionism. The informal network, which encompassed Steve Bannon and his Breitbart crew, passed around links to white-nationalist material at websites like American Renaissance and Peter Brimelow’s VDARE. It was an electronic wet market of white identity politics.
When Donald Trump rolled down the golden escalator and started his populist march to the White House, Miller and his friends ensured their networks and their ideas were along for the ride. Guererro details how Miller has circumvented norms and chains of command to push for the most ruthless available options in curtailing illegal and legal immigration.
Embedded in Hatemonger are some lessons in how not to fight against the machinations of Stephen Miller. Revisiting the “caravan” of migrants that Trump tried to use as a weapon in the 2018 elections, Guerrero reveals that one of the most chaotic and dangerous moments came at the urging of American activists who visited migrants in Tijuana and told them to “storm the border, passing out flyers that read in Spanish: ‘Open the border or we’ll shut it down! All of us must be allowed to enter!’ The handouts . . . were written in the first-person plural, as if by the Central Americans themselves, but were in fact a product of By Any Means Necessary, a US-based left-wing group.”
The migrants who followed their instructions tried scaling fences only to be met by barbed wire and tear gas. Guerrero makes clear the exploitative and counterproductive nature of some on the far left.
At times, though, she might be too accepting of the supposed harmlessness of some of the left’s identity politics. One of Miller’s lifelong enemies has been the student group “MEChA,” formerly known as the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlán (the Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán). It is a ’60s-vintage nationalist student movement that has held strange notions of a racial homeland in the southwestern United States and a creepy motto: Por La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada (“within the race, everything; outside of it, nothing”). Then again, as troubling as that is, perhaps racial nationalism of the left is not as much of a threat right now as its right-wing counterpart: As Miller has been prosecuting his continent-wide macroaggression against brown people, MEChA has been consumed in an internecine struggle among its sub-factions over internalized heteronormativity and other pressing concerns.
More troubling is a terrible line of thought that Guerrero repeats unchallenged that was voiced by one of Miller’s Duke student foes: “I am haunted by the knowledge that we could have shut Stephen down at the moment of his becoming, had we been more interested in the psychic and material health of the marginalized peoples with whom we shared our campus than in the doctrine of liberalism.”
Just how might they have “shut Stephen down”? The onetime classmate, who is now
a race and gender studies scholar, says Miller derives his power from liberalism, specifically the doctrine of free speech. “The assumption that you should have every idea available to you and you can pick and choose . . . that’s the problem.”
In due time, I’m sure that Miller and his alt-right allies would also be happy to dispense with the remaining niceties of liberalism, including free speech and tolerance.
Since Donald Trump’s inauguration, Stephen Miller has been the embodiment of the administration’s de facto motto: “Malevolence Tempered by Incompetence.” His arrogance and ignorance have led to missteps and self-inflicted setbacks. His rhetoric has alienated, and his influence has undermined the core missions of the Department of Homeland Security (which include pandemic defense). But he has persisted, adapted, and continued his long march through the federal bureaucracy. Unlike his boss, Miller seems to have been learning on the job as he works the levers of government. Guerrero writes, “Miller knew when to push and when to yield. He had a knack for political maneuvering.”
Somehow he has survived all the Trump world defenestrations. He has benefited from his talent for friendship and his use—and well-timed disposal of—benefactors. Trump may see Miller as a direct line to his base. And Stephen Miller will never tell him to adjust his tone or ease up on the “Mexican rapists” to win over swing voters.
As strongmen and malefactors around the world have discovered, Donald Trump is easily manipulated. Miller learned the tricks. Guerrero explains that “Miller observed early that to survive in Trump’s orbit, he would have to ally himself with Trump’s beloved daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner.” Miller ventured out of his immigration monomania to help Ivanka and Jared with their pet projects. When Steve Bannon started publicly tussling with “Javanka,” Miller knew when and how to shiv his latest mentor. As Miller walked with Trump one day, he was overheard telling his boss, “Your polling numbers are actually very strong considering Steve won’t stop leaking to the press and trying to undermine Jared.” Bannon was soon gone. A victim of the art of political warfare, it would seem.
Steve Bannon has called himself a “Leninist.” Like Miller, Horowitz, and others, Bannon loves those martial metaphors. Bannon, like Trump, liked “killers” who, in Horowitz’s phrase, “take no prisoners.” It’s performative, a lurid echo of the worst of the far left—especially when it comes from David Horowitz—but it’s not just a metaphor. People who use war-like rhetoric tend to extend the imagery and widen its use. It is a thrilling role-playing game. But, at some point, mere words lead to action. After all, if the stakes are so high, if one reversal will end America, shouldn’t we be willing to fight by any means necessary?
We have all too many examples of individuals and small groups taking up the battle cry. They have moved beyond violent symbolism and started deploying real bullets and pipe bombs and speeding weaponized cars. And, even more troubling, it seems the front-line federal officers can be susceptible to that contagion of ruthlessness.
Donald Trump is not an ideological leader. His initiatives are crude and his execution lazy. Stephen Miller is still a very young man. As captured by Jean Guerrero in Hatemonger, Miller does have a vision, an obsession if not a group of principles. And he is anything but lazy. Regardless of the outcome of the coming election, Stephen Miller and his allied forces will march on. Whether he is feeding apocalyptical racial paranoia from the White House or outside, Miller will be the one to watch in the coming years.


thebulwark--2020-08-17--Biden’s Policy Agenda Is Bold But Not Radical

As Joe Biden heads into a presumably unifying convention buoyed by his prudent yet historic choice of Kamala Harris , those still worried about his political skills , or ambitions if elected , can look to the specifics of his agenda .
Issue upon issue , he has crafted a program that responds to the urgency of a socially ruinous pandemic , while avoiding the left-wing poison pills which might cost him crucial voters .
This not only enhances his prospects of winning but of getting something done .
Taken together , his plans are an aggressive but practical response @ @ @ @ @ @ @ society .
Exhibit A is healthcare .
Biden proposes to expand the public option by adding it to the exchanges created by Obamacare , increasing the subsidy which helps the uninsured buy coverage , and lowering the eligibility age for Medicare to 60 .
But despite pressure from his left , he refuses to endorse a single-payer system that would eradicate the private health insurance valued by millions of Americans .
Instead , Biden has melded universal pre-K , childcare , and eldercare into a program—costing $ 775 billion over ten years—with a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their families , and those who provide them with essential care .
Critically , he stresses how quality care—or its absence—impacts the economy .
As his campaign website elaborates : “ The pandemic has laid bare just how hard it is for people in this country to find access to quality caregiving they need for themselves , or to juggle the responsibilities of working and also caring for family members.
” The campaign estimates that the plan will help create 5 million additional jobs , including new caregiving positions and opportunities filled by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lost his first wife and a daughter in a car wreck that injured his two sons , Biden draws on his own experience to engage today ’ s struggling families : “ I know how hard it is to be a single dad who has to work with two young sons at home .
I know what it means to bring your aging parent into your home to take care of them in her final years .
I ’ ve done both .
And it ’ s hard .
And it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just trying to make ends meet.
” Biden ’ s plan also addresses the dilemma of seniors who would prefer to live at home rather than in often substandard senior facilities , but can not afford to do so—a problem that the pandemic has spotlit .
Finally , Biden promises child-care workers and preschool teachers better pay , health benefits , and the ability to unionize .
By emphasizing that we all have a stake in helping families , Biden prioritizes the stability , security , and cohesion which undergirds societal health .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to low-income schools and districts , enabling them to pay teachers more , establish preschool programs , and make advanced coursework like AP classes universally available—aid particularly critical for schools financially ravaged by the pandemic .
His plan would provide free college for families earning less than $ 125,000 a year—avoiding Bernie Sanders ’ s costly gift of free college for those who can afford it .
Further , Biden would boost funding for community college—that building block of upward mobility—and double Pell grants which help the disadvantaged attend college .
By these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ expand educational opportunity for those who need it most .
For working-class Americans , Biden proposes to redress the 40-year imbalance between employers and workers , increasing the federal minimum wage to $ 15 an hour while , if possible , repealing the provisions of federal law that allow states to pass “ right-to-work ” laws—thereby protecting the right to organize .
He also promises to “ create a cabinet-level working group that will solely focus on promoting union organizing and collective bargaining in the public and private sectors.
” Those who object @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of working families—and how damaging this is to our economic and social fabric .
Perhaps equally contentious , but politically savvy , is Biden ’ s plan to bring back jobs by investing in American technology , manufacturing , and research—a response to Trump ’ s ill-advised tariffs and economic xenophobia .
Particularly arresting is his proposal during the primary season to renegotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership , a potential bulwark against Chinese economic dominance of Asia which Trump foolishly abandoned .
Its revival , if crafted to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ support .
Another grave inequity exposed by the pandemic is the yawning wealth gap between whites and minorities , conspicuously African Americans , which leads to a host of related social pathologies .
Biden calls for investing $ 30 billion in a business-opportunity fund for black , brown , and Native American entrepreneurs , and tripling the goal for federal contracting with minority businesses .
The coronavirus also underscores America ’ s housing insecurity , as well as a principal component of the wealth gap—homeownership .
Biden ’ s ambitious housing agenda begins @ @ @ @ @ @ @ program to ensure that all eligible families benefit .
Further , Biden would use federal transportation funding to leverage changes in regulatory barriers to building affordable housing , often of medium to high density .
The latter , no doubt , inspired Trump ’ s charge that Biden would “ destroy ” the suburbs .
But Biden ’ s proposals should be considered against the history of federal policies which encouraged redlining—thereby excluding many blacks from receiving mortgages , and black neighborhoods from federal housing assistance .
Effectively , Biden would reverse decades @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Let Trump , if he chooses , make his charge explicit : “ Joe Biden is bringing blacks to your neighborhood.
” Finally , Biden would create an emergency housing support program , and institute a refundable tax credit of up to $ 15,000 to help families purchase their first home .
In a country where family wealth is founded on homeownership , this is an investment in our overall economic health .
As the physical evidence of its ravages proliferates , climate change is no longer a concern largely confined to progressives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shows , a majority of voters across the demographic and ideological spectrum understand that it is real ; that human beings have contributed to it ; that we need to respond more proactively ; and that Trump has failed to do so .
Here , as elsewhere , Biden has walked a careful line calculated to maximize support .
As a practical politician , he has opposed a total ban on fracking—dangerous in electorally crucial Pennsylvania—and declined to explicitly sign off on the Green New Deal .
Instead , he put together a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ John Kerry and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , charged with crafting a unifying agenda .
The result , far more ambitious than Biden ’ s original proposals , was summarized by the Washington Post as an “ aggressive and extensive plan that called for the elimination of carbon pollution from the electric sector by 2035 , for the U.S. to rejoin the international Paris climate accord and spend $ 2 trillion over four years to boost renewables and create incentives for more energy-efficient cars , homes and commercial buildings.
” This has helped rally the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the Post reports : “ Biden has framed his climate plan as a jobs program , making clear that he is prepared to pour unprecedented resources into transitioning the United States away from fossil fuels as part of the effort to boost an economy battered by the pandemic.
” Biden ’ s message on climate policy , the Guardian elaborates , is “ vote to put Americans back to work installing millions of solar panels and tens of thousands of wind turbines , making the steel for those projects , manufacturing electric @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from US ports.
” Finally , Biden proposes to channel 40 percent of the money he would spend on clean energy to historically disadvantaged communities .
On the contentious issue of immigration , Biden avoids brain-dead sloganeering about abolishing ICE or decriminalizing the border .
But he is also well aware that he lacks fervent support among many Hispanics .
Accordingly , he proposes to end family separation , provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants , protect ‘ Dreamers , ’ and invest $ 4 billion in Guatemala , Honduras and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the conditions which caused a desperate mass migration north .
That may sound familiar .
But if Biden can accomplish these things—and with a Democratic majority in Congress , he might—it would be an historic breakthrough in our attenuated legislative logjam over immigration .
Finally , there is an issue second only to the pandemic in our national consciousness at the moment : discriminatory law enforcement and unwarranted violence against African Americans .
Here , smartly , Biden opposes “ defunding the police.
” Instead he would increase support for community policing , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ police misconduct , create a national roster of police officers who have abused their authority , and end cash bail and mandatory minimum sentences .
These are meaningful proposals which could attract broad support in a public newly awakened to the corrosive inequities in our criminal justice system .
If elected , Biden will not be able to pass every policy he proposes ; no president can .
And with respect to funding his ambitions , he remains artfully unspecific .
But he has laid down his marker : Like Franklin Roosevelt , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ consequential president who helps America surmount difficult times .
In 2021 , nothing less will do .

As Joe Biden heads into a presumably unifying convention buoyed by his prudent yet historic choice of Kamala Harris, those still worried about his political skills, or ambitions if elected, can look to the specifics of his agenda.
Issue upon issue, he has crafted a program that responds to the urgency of a socially ruinous pandemic, while avoiding the left-wing poison pills which might cost him crucial voters. This not only enhances his prospects of winning but of getting something done. Taken together, his plans are an aggressive but practical response to the social inequities that weaken our society.
Exhibit A is healthcare. Biden proposes to expand the public option by adding it to the exchanges created by Obamacare, increasing the subsidy which helps the uninsured buy coverage, and lowering the eligibility age for Medicare to 60. But despite pressure from his left, he refuses to endorse a single-payer system that would eradicate the private health insurance valued by millions of Americans.
Instead, Biden has melded universal pre-K, childcare, and eldercare into a program—costing $775 billion over ten years—with a cohesive theme: helping vulnerable Americans, their families, and those who provide them with essential care. Critically, he stresses how quality care—or its absence—impacts the economy.
As his campaign website elaborates: “The pandemic has laid bare just how hard it is for people in this country to find access to quality caregiving they need for themselves, or to juggle the responsibilities of working and also caring for family members.” The campaign estimates that the plan will help create 5 million additional jobs, including new caregiving positions and opportunities filled by Americans liberated to seek them.
Having lost his first wife and a daughter in a car wreck that injured his two sons, Biden draws on his own experience to engage today’s struggling families: “I know how hard it is to be a single dad who has to work with two young sons at home. I know what it means to bring your aging parent into your home to take care of them in her final years. I’ve done both. And it’s hard. And it’s hard for millions of Americans who are just trying to make ends meet.”
Biden’s plan also addresses the dilemma of seniors who would prefer to live at home rather than in often substandard senior facilities, but cannot afford to do so—a problem that the pandemic has spotlit. Finally, Biden promises child-care workers and preschool teachers better pay, health benefits, and the ability to unionize.
By emphasizing that we all have a stake in helping families, Biden prioritizes the stability, security, and cohesion which undergirds societal health.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
Similarly, Biden would triple federal aid to low-income schools and districts, enabling them to pay teachers more, establish preschool programs, and make advanced coursework like AP classes universally available—aid particularly critical for schools financially ravaged by the pandemic. His plan would provide free college for families earning less than $125,000 a year—avoiding Bernie Sanders’s costly gift of free college for those who can afford it.
Further, Biden would boost funding for community college—that building block of upward mobility—and double Pell grants which help the disadvantaged attend college. By these carefully targeted initiatives, he means to expand educational opportunity for those who need it most.
For working-class Americans, Biden proposes to redress the 40-year imbalance between employers and workers, increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour while, if possible, repealing the provisions of federal law that allow states to pass “right-to-work” laws—thereby protecting the right to organize. He also promises to “create a cabinet-level working group that will solely focus on promoting union organizing and collective bargaining in the public and private sectors.” Those who object to such measures should consider how mercilessly the pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of working families—and how damaging this is to our economic and social fabric.
Perhaps equally contentious, but politically savvy, is Biden’s plan to bring back jobs by investing in American technology, manufacturing, and research—a response to Trump’s ill-advised tariffs and economic xenophobia. Particularly arresting is his proposal during the primary season to renegotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a potential bulwark against Chinese economic dominance of Asia which Trump foolishly abandoned. Its revival, if crafted to satisfy organized labor, might attract bipartisan support.
Another grave inequity exposed by the pandemic is the yawning wealth gap between whites and minorities, conspicuously African Americans, which leads to a host of related social pathologies. Biden calls for investing $30 billion in a business-opportunity fund for black, brown, and Native American entrepreneurs, and tripling the goal for federal contracting with minority businesses.
The coronavirus also underscores America’s housing insecurity, as well as a principal component of the wealth gap—homeownership. Biden’s ambitious housing agenda begins by fully funding the federal housing voucher program to ensure that all eligible families benefit. Further, Biden would use federal transportation funding to leverage changes in regulatory barriers to building affordable housing, often of medium to high density. The latter, no doubt, inspired Trump’s charge that Biden would “destroy” the suburbs.
But Biden’s proposals should be considered against the history of federal policies which encouraged redlining—thereby excluding many blacks from receiving mortgages, and black neighborhoods from federal housing assistance. Effectively, Biden would reverse decades of embedded discrimination against African Americans. Let Trump, if he chooses, make his charge explicit: “Joe Biden is bringing blacks to your neighborhood.”
Finally, Biden would create an emergency housing support program, and institute a refundable tax credit of up to $15,000 to help families purchase their first home. In a country where family wealth is founded on homeownership, this is an investment in our overall economic health.
As the physical evidence of its ravages proliferates, climate change is no longer a concern largely confined to progressives and the young. Increasingly, polling shows, a majority of voters across the demographic and ideological spectrum understand that it is real; that human beings have contributed to it; that we need to respond more proactively; and that Trump has failed to do so. Here, as elsewhere, Biden has walked a careful line calculated to maximize support.
As a practical politician, he has opposed a total ban on fracking—dangerous in electorally crucial Pennsylvania—and declined to explicitly sign off on the Green New Deal. Instead, he put together a task force on climate, co-chaired by John Kerry and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, charged with crafting a unifying agenda.
The result, far more ambitious than Biden’s original proposals, was summarized by the Washington Post as an “aggressive and extensive plan that called for the elimination of carbon pollution from the electric sector by 2035, for the U.S. to rejoin the international Paris climate accord and spend $2 trillion over four years to boost renewables and create incentives for more energy-efficient cars, homes and commercial buildings.”
This has helped rally the support of climate activists. Beyond that, the Post reports: “Biden has framed his climate plan as a jobs program, making clear that he is prepared to pour unprecedented resources into transitioning the United States away from fossil fuels as part of the effort to boost an economy battered by the pandemic.”
Biden’s message on climate policy, the Guardian elaborates, is “vote to put Americans back to work installing millions of solar panels and tens of thousands of wind turbines, making the steel for those projects, manufacturing electric vehicles for the world and shipping them from US ports.” Finally, Biden proposes to channel 40 percent of the money he would spend on clean energy to historically disadvantaged communities.
On the contentious issue of immigration, Biden avoids brain-dead sloganeering about abolishing ICE or decriminalizing the border. But he is also well aware that he lacks fervent support among many Hispanics.
Accordingly, he proposes to end family separation, provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, protect ‘Dreamers,’ and invest $4 billion in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador over four years to ameliorate the conditions which caused a desperate mass migration north.
That may sound familiar. But if Biden can accomplish these things—and with a Democratic majority in Congress, he might—it would be an historic breakthrough in our attenuated legislative logjam over immigration.
Finally, there is an issue second only to the pandemic in our national consciousness at the moment: discriminatory law enforcement and unwarranted violence against African Americans.
Here, smartly, Biden opposes “defunding the police.” Instead he would increase support for community policing, reform qualified immunity in cases of alleged police misconduct, create a national roster of police officers who have abused their authority, and end cash bail and mandatory minimum sentences. These are meaningful proposals which could attract broad support in a public newly awakened to the corrosive inequities in our criminal justice system.
If elected, Biden will not be able to pass every policy he proposes; no president can. And with respect to funding his ambitions, he remains artfully unspecific. But he has laid down his marker: Like Franklin Roosevelt, he intends to be a pragmatic but consequential president who helps America surmount difficult times.
In 2021, nothing less will do.


thebulwark--2020-08-18--Pro-Democracy Protests Expose GOP’s Hypocrisy as Trump Remains Silent

In 2009 , protests broke out in Iran .
Millions of people marched in the streets , demanding political rights , in what came to be known as the Green Movement .
Protesters were shot at .
Many died .
More were arrested .
Most of them were tortured .
The protesters—I was among them—found encouragement in the supportive messages that flowed in from leaders around the world .
But the Obama administration did nothing to support us .
At first , President Obama said nothing ; then , after several days passed , he criticized the state violence against @ @ @ @ @ @ @ utter a word in support of our cause , instead just blandly said “ we respect Iranian sovereignty and want to avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran.
” For years , Republicans hammered the Obama administration over it .
Paul Ryan attacked the Obama administration in his vice presidential debate with Joe Biden .
The moment came and passed , but that hammer kept being hit .
One critic of Obama ’ s response to the Green Movement was Donald Trump .
“ Why , ” he tweeted in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nothing for the Iranian protesters ?
” And in a YouTube video posted around the same time , Trump said this : So , let ’ s judge Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans against their own words .
How well have they encouraged democratic protesters around the world since coming into office ?
In December 2017 , another round of protests broke out in Iran .
Smaller in numbers , those protests were much more intense and violent .
( One of the leaders of the 2017 protests was handed a death @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protests went on for weeks , getting more violent as time passed , getting suppressed more violently by the regime .
Two years later , in November 2019 , yet another round of protests erupted in Iran .
This time the protests were larger , more intense and more violent .
There was real hope that something could come out of them .
Friends I spoke to , who participated in the protests , said that there was a chance that the regime could fall .
But the regime disconnected the internet nationally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with each other .
Many people were killed by the security forces , including children .
Several of the arrested protesters are awaiting execution .
Meanwhile , the Iraqi and Lebanese peoples protested the same regime that the Iranians were protesting : the regime in Iran .
They were complaining that Iran had corrupted their politics and undermined their fragile democracies through its empowerment of proxy militias .
In Lebanon , the government fell , only for a more pro-Iran government to come into power .
In Iraq , the protests were crushed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2019 , pro-democracy protests broke out in Hong Kong .
These protesters have been fighting for a year and are being crushed by the Chinese Communist Party ’ s ( CCP ) security forces .
Footage of Hongkongers singing “ The Star-Spangled Banner ” and waving the U.S .
Flag was seen all over media .
This past June , the CCP passed and enacted the Hong Kong national security law , ending the “ one country , two systems ” rule that had been in effect since the British government left Hong @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new law , the protests are ending in a total victory for the CCP , and protesters are being arrested .
Finally , last week , mass protests erupted in Belarus , Europe ’ s last dictatorship .
They are still getting larger .
Belarusians are objecting to a fraudulent presidential election .
The Belarusian dictator , Alexander Lukashenko , is seeking help from Vladimir Putin on the grounds that “ if Belarus collapses the entire post-Soviet space will follow , ” a welcomed event .
The Trump administration has done little to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ president has tweeted a few times about some of them .
But serious action is almost entirely absent and even the lip service is perfunctory .
Taiwan , Germany , Australia , and the United Kingdom have offered refugee status for Hong Kong residents , while Trump has not .
They told me if another Green Movement happened , President Hillary Clinton would let it be crushed yet again .
Funny , that .

In 2009, protests broke out in Iran. Millions of people marched in the streets, demanding political rights, in what came to be known as the Green Movement. Protesters were shot at. Many died. More were arrested. Most of them were tortured. The protesters—I was among them—found encouragement in the supportive messages that flowed in from leaders around the world. But the Obama administration did nothing to support us. At first, President Obama said nothing; then, after several days passed, he criticized the state violence against the protesters but didn’t even utter a word in support of our cause, instead just blandly said “we respect Iranian sovereignty and want to avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran.”
For years, Republicans hammered the Obama administration over it. Paul Ryan attacked the Obama administration in his vice presidential debate with Joe Biden. The moment came and passed, but that hammer kept being hit.
One critic of Obama’s response to the Green Movement was Donald Trump. “Why,” he tweeted in October 2011, did Obama “do nothing for the Iranian protesters?” And in a YouTube video posted around the same time, Trump said this:
If Obama would’ve backed the people of Iran two years ago when that county had a big, big problem—and the protesters were making headway . . . we wouldn’t have any problems in Iran. . . . That country would’ve been turned over so fast, instead he abandoned those people.
So, let’s judge Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans against their own words. How well have they encouraged democratic protesters around the world since coming into office?
In December 2017, another round of protests broke out in Iran. Smaller in numbers, those protests were much more intense and violent. (One of the leaders of the 2017 protests was handed a death sentence just last month.) The protests went on for weeks, getting more violent as time passed, getting suppressed more violently by the regime.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
Two years later, in November 2019, yet another round of protests erupted in Iran. This time the protests were larger, more intense and more violent. There was real hope that something could come out of them. Friends I spoke to, who participated in the protests, said that there was a chance that the regime could fall. But the regime disconnected the internet nationally, so the protesters could not communicate with each other. Many people were killed by the security forces, including children. Several of the arrested protesters are awaiting execution.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi and Lebanese peoples protested the same regime that the Iranians were protesting: the regime in Iran. They were complaining that Iran had corrupted their politics and undermined their fragile democracies through its empowerment of proxy militias. In Lebanon, the government fell, only for a more pro-Iran government to come into power. In Iraq, the protests were crushed by an Iran proxy.
In March 2019, pro-democracy protests broke out in Hong Kong. These protesters have been fighting for a year and are being crushed by the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) security forces. Footage of Hongkongers singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” and waving the U.S. Flag was seen all over media. This past June, the CCP passed and enacted the Hong Kong national security law, ending the “one country, two systems” rule that had been in effect since the British government left Hong Kong in 1997. Because of the new law, the protests are ending in a total victory for the CCP, and protesters are being arrested.
Finally, last week, mass protests erupted in Belarus, Europe’s last dictatorship. They are still getting larger. Belarusians are objecting to a fraudulent presidential election. The Belarusian dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, is seeking help from Vladimir Putin on the grounds that “if Belarus collapses the entire post-Soviet space will follow,” a welcomed event.
The Trump administration has done little to help any of these protests. The president has tweeted a few times about some of them. But serious action is almost entirely absent and even the lip service is perfunctory. Taiwan, Germany, Australia, and the United Kingdom have offered refugee status for Hong Kong residents, while Trump has not.
They told me if another Green Movement happened, President Hillary Clinton would let it be crushed yet again. Funny, that.


thebulwark--2020-08-18--Motion Smoothing Is an Abomination

Motion Smoothing Is an Abomination

Now that we ’ re all trapped in our homes , we have been pressed into service as our own chefs , hair stylists , and movie projectionists .
I can not help with the other two ( I don ’ t cook and am bald ) , but I am here to help you with your streaming movie presentation .
Here ’ s my number-one suggestion : turn off your television ’ s motion smoothing setting .
It ’ s wrong for technical , aesthetic , and moral reasons .
And you ’ re doing a disservice to yourself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ artists by leaving it on .
When artists create a movie , it is carefully designed to run at a certain light level and with calibrated color .
But for marketing reasons , television manufacturers have an incentive to push the brightness and color saturation well outside these calibrated bounds .
This has the obvious effect of making the movie brighter and more saturated than it was supposed to be , but it creates a new sneaky problem with motion .
Almost all movies and dramatic television are created using the standard frame @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This is a very low frame rate relative to people ’ s vision , which isn ’ t really fooled into thinking it ’ s seeing real-life motion until the frame rate goes above 120 frames per second .
But the choppiness of this low frame rate is greatly reduced if the light level on screen is lower .
In fact , there is an upper limit to the permitted brightness on movie theater screens for this very reason .
When images are presented too brightly , the 24 frame-per-second flicker , also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cause a lot of discomfort .
So now there is a problem : TV manufacturers want a brighter image from sets displayed on shelves at Target and Best Buy , often ten times brighter than the intended level for movies .
This helps catch the eye of would-be customers .
However , the resulting images will hurt their prospective customers ’ eyes , which is considered a bad idea .
Their solution to this problem is to layer another technical fix on top of the already misadjusted brightness and color : motion smoothing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is simple : we have 24 movie frames for every second , and we need more , so we make more .
The television thus creates five “ frames ” from every real frame of the movie .
To do this , the images on a series of adjacent frames of the movie are studied by the computer in the television to look for objects moving in different directions at different speeds .
If the same object is seen from one frame to the next , the computer will create frames in between @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or pose into the next .
This creates a 120 frame-per-second output ready to go to the screen .
This kind of processing is called an “ optical flow ” algorithm , and it is used in machine vision , video compression , and other computational imaging applications .
The technical problem with this technique is that it is , basically , bonkers .
The real world is not composed of simple objects sailing across the screen uninterrupted and with perfect clarity for the computer to detect and animate .
When objects on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ objects , the processing will often fail to properly render the point of intersection , with both objects “ melting ” into each other rather than passing .
Mathematically speaking , this class of algorithm is referred to as an “ ill-posed problem , ” meaning there can be no uniform solution .
More simply , there just is no way to reliably create more data than you started with .
Often the resulting motion is just very strange .
The computer in our television has to do two things : cut the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ try to figure out how to animate each of these objects to create new “ frames ” between the real frames of the incoming movie .
This process is very much like cutting pictures out of a magazine and then moving them around by hand , except that it is being done by a computer with no real-world understanding .
This can lead to horrific and sometimes amusing errors .
A very simple example is to have one object moving in front of another .
The computer will very often get confused by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to figure out which objects were destined to go in front of other objects , and then the animation of these pictures has to take into account the overlap .
In the original footage here , the car is passing behind some bushes and a mailbox : When the motion smoothing algorithm tries to understand this picture , it fails spectacularly to figure out which parts of the image are bushes ( moving rapidly to the left ) and which parts are the car ( stationary with respect to the picture ) .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ as the computer flails around trying to figure out this scene ; the result looks a bit like a car if John Carpenter ’ s Thing had tried to mimic it .
In short , this is a technically impossible problem for every possible real-world situation , even this very simple one , and any fully-automated motion smoothing system is guaranteed to have difficulty .
For the sake of argument , let ’ s pretend the motion processing algorithms worked perfectly .
In fact , for many scenes , motion smoothing does its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ engineers have hidden the worst of the mathematical problems under layers of if/then rules .
The end result is a very high frame rate , smooth image with no strobing .
The problem is that this will change the underlying feel of the movie dramatically , stripping away a “ veil ” that had previously been in place between the real world and the action of the movie .
It reduces the fantasy and sweeping cinematic language into a made-for-tv documentary , dramatically changing the emotional impact of the material .
This is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” : Soap operas were traditionally shot to videotape at 60 frames-per-second , rather than film at 24 frames per second like almost all other dramatic television .
The pejorative nature of the phrase—soap operas are cheap and tawdry by their very nature—and its widespread application to this “ advance ” should tell us everything we need to know about the real-world impact of motion smoothing .
But , again for the sake of argument , let us assume that the technology works perfectly and the viewer is enjoying the ultra-smooth computer-generated images @ @ @ @ @ @ @ should be disabled because it distorts the artistic intent of the content .
While 24 frames per second has been the standard frame rate for over 100 years , current filmmakers could choose a different frame rate if they wished , and some have ( see : Ang Lee ’ s Gemini Man or Billy Lynn ’ s Long Halftime Walk ) .
But mostly the standard frame rate is chosen because it has an important role in the language of cinema , and it was the choice of the filmmaker to use @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if they wanted to use motion smoothing for streaming , they could do so in a supervised way prior to the streaming service sending it to the viewer .
But they don ’ t .
It ’ s very much like colorizing black and white movies : it ’ s a distortion of the artist ’ s vision without their consent .
So what are you to do ?
Well , in most televisions it can be turned off in the picture settings .
Different vendors have different names for the option , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just Google your model ’ s options .
But this brings up another point : why in the world do these televisions have so many options ?
The televisions are all calibrated for brightness and color at the factory , and it would be possible for them to be fully calibrated with no adjustments whatsoever except for overall brightness , which could be pretty automatic .
There is hope for the future , however .
Many televisions already have some sort of calibrated movie mode you can select , but there ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Alliance has put together something called “ Filmmaker Mode , ” which will set all the color and motion settings to calibrated levels to reproduce movies as close to the filmmaker ’ s intent as possible .
There are many vendors who have signed on to this initiative , and soon we ’ ll see systems advertising this mode .
In the meantime , everyone is left to sorting through manuals and websites to try to get the settings right .
If you ’ re serious about good image quality , I highly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ using it to adjust the settings correctly .
One very good option is the Spears & Munsil Disc , and they have a new HDR UHD Blu-ray version available as well .
These won ’ t help you get motion processing turned off , but they will help get the brightness correct so that the strobing won ’ t hurt your eyes .

Now that we’re all trapped in our homes, we have been pressed into service as our own chefs, hair stylists, and movie projectionists. I cannot help with the other two (I don’t cook and am bald), but I am here to help you with your streaming movie presentation. Here’s my number-one suggestion: turn off your television’s motion smoothing setting. It’s wrong for technical, aesthetic, and moral reasons. And you’re doing a disservice to yourself, your guests, and your favorite artists by leaving it on.
When artists create a movie, it is carefully designed to run at a certain light level and with calibrated color. But for marketing reasons, television manufacturers have an incentive to push the brightness and color saturation well outside these calibrated bounds. This has the obvious effect of making the movie brighter and more saturated than it was supposed to be, but it creates a new sneaky problem with motion.
Almost all movies and dramatic television are created using the standard frame rate of 24 frames per second. This is a very low frame rate relative to people’s vision, which isn’t really fooled into thinking it’s seeing real-life motion until the frame rate goes above 120 frames per second. But the choppiness of this low frame rate is greatly reduced if the light level on screen is lower. In fact, there is an upper limit to the permitted brightness on movie theater screens for this very reason. When images are presented too brightly, the 24 frame-per-second flicker, also known as “strobing,” will cause a lot of discomfort.
So now there is a problem: TV manufacturers want a brighter image from sets displayed on shelves at Target and Best Buy, often ten times brighter than the intended level for movies. This helps catch the eye of would-be customers. However, the resulting images will hurt their prospective customers’ eyes, which is considered a bad idea. Their solution to this problem is to layer another technical fix on top of the already misadjusted brightness and color: motion smoothing.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
The basic idea behind motion smoothing is simple: we have 24 movie frames for every second, and we need more, so we make more. The television thus creates five “frames” from every real frame of the movie. To do this, the images on a series of adjacent frames of the movie are studied by the computer in the television to look for objects moving in different directions at different speeds. If the same object is seen from one frame to the next, the computer will create frames in between that animate that object from one position or pose into the next. This creates a 120 frame-per-second output ready to go to the screen. This kind of processing is called an “optical flow” algorithm, and it is used in machine vision, video compression, and other computational imaging applications.
The technical problem with this technique is that it is, basically, bonkers. The real world is not composed of simple objects sailing across the screen uninterrupted and with perfect clarity for the computer to detect and animate. When objects on screen pass in front of other moving objects, the processing will often fail to properly render the point of intersection, with both objects “melting” into each other rather than passing. Mathematically speaking, this class of algorithm is referred to as an “ill-posed problem,” meaning there can be no uniform solution. More simply, there just is no way to reliably create more data than you started with. Often the resulting motion is just very strange.
The computer in our television has to do two things: cut the images up into different objects and then try to figure out how to animate each of these objects to create new “frames” between the real frames of the incoming movie. This process is very much like cutting pictures out of a magazine and then moving them around by hand, except that it is being done by a computer with no real-world understanding. This can lead to horrific and sometimes amusing errors. A very simple example is to have one object moving in front of another. The computer will very often get confused by this, because it’s difficult to figure out which objects were destined to go in front of other objects, and then the animation of these pictures has to take into account the overlap. In the original footage here, the car is passing behind some bushes and a mailbox:
When the motion smoothing algorithm tries to understand this picture, it fails spectacularly to figure out which parts of the image are bushes (moving rapidly to the left) and which parts are the car (stationary with respect to the picture).
The car is split apart and melted as the computer flails around trying to figure out this scene; the result looks a bit like a car if John Carpenter’s Thing had tried to mimic it. In short, this is a technically impossible problem for every possible real-world situation, even this very simple one, and any fully-automated motion smoothing system is guaranteed to have difficulty.
For the sake of argument, let’s pretend the motion processing algorithms worked perfectly. In fact, for many scenes, motion smoothing does its technical job reasonably well, and clever engineers have hidden the worst of the mathematical problems under layers of if/then rules. The end result is a very high frame rate, smooth image with no strobing.
The problem is that this will change the underlying feel of the movie dramatically, stripping away a “veil” that had previously been in place between the real world and the action of the movie. It reduces the fantasy and sweeping cinematic language into a made-for-tv documentary, dramatically changing the emotional impact of the material. This is sometimes called the “soap opera effect”: Soap operas were traditionally shot to videotape at 60 frames-per-second, rather than film at 24 frames per second like almost all other dramatic television. The pejorative nature of the phrase—soap operas are cheap and tawdry by their very nature—and its widespread application to this “advance” should tell us everything we need to know about the real-world impact of motion smoothing.
But, again for the sake of argument, let us assume that the technology works perfectly and the viewer is enjoying the ultra-smooth computer-generated images. I still argue the motion smoothing should be disabled because it distorts the artistic intent of the content. While 24 frames per second has been the standard frame rate for over 100 years, current filmmakers could choose a different frame rate if they wished, and some have (see: Ang Lee’s Gemini Man or Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk). But mostly the standard frame rate is chosen because it has an important role in the language of cinema, and it was the choice of the filmmaker to use it in their art. Further, if they wanted to use motion smoothing for streaming, they could do so in a supervised way prior to the streaming service sending it to the viewer. But they don’t. It’s very much like colorizing black and white movies: it’s a distortion of the artist’s vision without their consent.
So what are you to do? Well, in most televisions it can be turned off in the picture settings. Different vendors have different names for the option, and sometimes it’s easiest to just Google your model’s options. But this brings up another point: why in the world do these televisions have so many options? The televisions are all calibrated for brightness and color at the factory, and it would be possible for them to be fully calibrated with no adjustments whatsoever except for overall brightness, which could be pretty automatic.
There is hope for the future, however. Many televisions already have some sort of calibrated movie mode you can select, but there’s even better news coming. The UHD Alliance has put together something called “Filmmaker Mode,” which will set all the color and motion settings to calibrated levels to reproduce movies as close to the filmmaker’s intent as possible. There are many vendors who have signed on to this initiative, and soon we’ll see systems advertising this mode.
In the meantime, everyone is left to sorting through manuals and websites to try to get the settings right. If you’re serious about good image quality, I highly recommend getting a calibration Blu-ray disc and using it to adjust the settings correctly. One very good option is the Spears & Munsil Disc, and they have a new HDR UHD Blu-ray version available as well. These won’t help you get motion processing turned off, but they will help get the brightness correct so that the strobing won’t hurt your eyes.
Happy viewing!