UPDATED: "Anticipatory Obedience"

Anticipatory obedience is a term I was unfamiliar with until reading an article in The Guardian.

[I]n On Tyranny, Tim Snyder’s bestselling guide to authoritarianism. Snyder defines the term as “giving over your power to the aspiring authoritarian” before the authoritarian is in position to compel that handover.

It appears that is precisely what has happened at The Washington Post. The newspaper's editorial board had drafted its endorsement of Kamala Harris for U.S. president, but then its owner, Jeff Bezos, intervened and forbade it. It appears that Bezos, who also owns Amazon and Blue Origin, wants to make sure that if Don Trump wins the race, his businesseses, which compete for government contracts, will thrive.

Within hours of making that decision, 

high-ranking officials of [Blue Origin] briefly met with Trump after a campaign speech in Austin, Texas, as the Republican nominee seeks a second presidency.

Trump met with Blue Origin chief executive officer David Limp and vice-president of government relations Megan Mitchell, the Associated Press reported.

Meanwhile, CNN reported that the Amazon CEO, Andy Jassy, had also recently reached out to speak with the former president by phone. 

Those reported overtures were eviscerated by Washington Post editor-at-large and longtime columnist Robert Kagan, who resigned on Friday. On Saturday, he argued that the meeting Blue Origin executives had with Trump would not have taken place if the Post had endorsed the Democratic vice-president as it planned.

The was additional fallout.

 In their criticism of the Post’s decision on Friday, former and current employees cite the dangers to democracy posed by Trump, who has openly expressed his admiration for authoritarian rule amid his appeals for voters to return him to office.

The former Washington Post journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, who broke the Watergate story, called the decision “disappointing, especially this late in the electoral process”.

The former Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron said in a post on X, “This is cowardice with democracy as its casualty”.

The cartoon team at the paper published a dark formless image protesting against the non-endorsement decision, playing on the “democracy dies in darkness” slogan that the Post adopted in 2017, five years after its purchase by Bezos. 

The Post was actually the second major paper to veto a presidential endorsement. 

The Post’s non-endorsement came shortly after the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, refused to allow the editorial board publish an endorsement of Harris.

Unfettered and fearless journalism has always been crucial to stable, well-functioning democracies. With the craven, self-serving sycophancy of people like Bezos and Soon-Shiong, it is clear that America's drift toward authoritarianism is no longer limited to the unhinged MAGA  crowd. As a consequence, all are diminished and endangered.

UPDATE: In today's (Oct.29) Star, Andrew Phillips writes:

The point is that by ordering their papers to stop short of endorsing Trump’s opponent the owners are showing weakness in the face of a candidate who has made clear he’s prepared to violate every norm of democracy. Make no mistake: Trump will take advantage. “If Trump sees a sign of weakness,” former Post editor Martin Baron told the New Yorker over the weekend, “he’s going to pounce even harder in the future.” 

The Wealthy Really Are Different From The Rest Of Us

Despite the over-generalization of my title, it is clear to me that many of rich really are different from the rest of us, not just in terms of their material status, but in the way they relate to the world around them. Yet they fail to recognize their spiritual aridity.

In Matthew, 19:24, Jesus says: "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."

Now, while some interpret that strictly to mean entering heaven, progressive theologians such as Marcus Borg suggest that it has a very real application in the here and now. The kingdom of God involves communion with our fellow human beings and the world in which we live, a world thirsting for social, economic and environmental justice. When we pursue those goals, say people like Borg, we are entering the Kingdom of God. The wealthy have a harder time of it, probably, because their wealth serves to isolate them from that communion.

And so the rich folk of California have quite a journey ahead of them. According to The Washington Post, despite the terrible drought that pervades the state, they don't think that the state-imposed water restrictions should apply to them:

Drought or no drought, Steve Yuhas resents the idea that it is somehow shameful to be a water hog. If you can pay for it, he argues, you should get your water.

People “should not be forced to live on property with brown lawns, golf on brown courses or apologize for wanting their gardens to be beautiful,” Yuhas fumed recently on social media. “We pay significant property taxes based on where we live,” he added in an interview. “And, no, we’re not all equal when it comes to water.”

Yuhas lives in the ultra-wealthy enclave of Rancho Santa Fe, a bucolic Southern California hamlet of ranches, gated communities and country clubs that guzzles five times more water per capita than the statewide average. In April, after Gov. Jerry Brown (D) called for a 25 percent reduction in water use, consumption in Rancho Santa Fe went up by 9 percent.

The attitude expressed above seems like a clear challenge to Michael J. Sandel's thesis in his book, What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, wherein he asks if there are indeed moral and social limits to what wealth should give a person access to.

Thus far, many of the 3100 residents have ignored the water restrictions, but as of July 1, more substantial financial penalties, and even restricted or terminated access to water, will be imposed. This is leaving them feeling most aggrieved:

“I think we’re being overly penalized, and we’re certainly being overly scrutinized by the world,” said Gay Butler, an interior designer out for a trail ride on her show horse, Bear. She said her water bill averages about $800 a month.

“It angers me because people aren’t looking at the overall picture,” Butler said. “What are we supposed to do, just have dirt around our house on four acres?”

Other wealthy communities are feeling similar outrage:

“I call it the war on suburbia,” said Brett Barbre, who lives in the Orange County community of Yorba Linda, another exceptionally wealthy Zip code

“California used to be the land of opportunity and freedom,” Barbre said. “It’s slowly becoming the land of one group telling everybody else how they think everybody should live their lives.”

Jurgen Gramckow, a sod farmer north of Los Angeles in Ventura County, agrees. He likens the freedom to buy water to the freedom to buy gasoline.

“Some people have a Prius; others have a Suburban,” Gramckow said. “Once the water goes through the meter, it’s yours.”

Clearly, the concept of shared sacrifice for the collective good is an alien one to some people. But to be fair, of course, that is an attitude not limited to one part of the socio-economic strata, is it?

Is the Washington Post Even Trying Anymore?

My brother sent me a link to a photo-essay in The Washington Post said to depict an Israeli airstrike in Gaza.

It's a nice story as these things go. The homeowner receives a friendly call from Israelis telling him to get out of the building immediately as it's about to be attacked. The fellow gets all his family and relatives out to safety. No one killed, no one injured, building destroyed. No harm, no foul - sort of.


Except, if you look carefully at the photos, something isn't right. This looks doctored, staged. Photo 1, shown here, is said to show a bomb just before it hits a house in Gaza City.



Photo 2 is captioned, "Residents of central Gaza watch as an Israeli bomb drops on a house."



Photo 3 is said to show a strike by a missile fired by an Israeli F-16.



Photo 4 is said to show smoke rising from the demolished building.




What do you see in those pictures? Photo 1 shows what appears to be a laser-guided bomb, a 500-pounder, just a second before impact. Look at the street scene. Find the lightpost on the left side with a tire on it and use that for your frame of reference. Notice the off-white van and the yellow car in the street.


Photo 2, the van and car have disappeared. In their place are two rows of tires apparently blocking the street. There appears to be a crew on the sidewalk to the right with another tire, apparently unconcerned.



Photo 3, a wider street scene shot from a safer distance showing the fireball of the missile. Again the tires are in place.



Photo 4, the tires are gone but that van and yellow car are back.



How did the tire crew know that this particular house was going to be targeted? The owner said he had a matter of minutes from the warning call until the arrival of the first bomb. How do you get the tire crew and the tires deployed on site with no advance warning?



Why did they have to use the same prop van and prop yellow car, posed side by side, in the before and after photos? That just beggars belief. I think what we're seeing here is second-rate propaganda intended to further the narrative that Israel isn't targeting Palestinian civilians. Close, but no cigar.

MoS, the Disaffected Lib