In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

I've kept ruminating on the quote from C Wright Mills that appeared in the Washington Post piece I linked in yesterday's post: “[The power elite] are in command of the major hierarchies and organizations of modern society. They rule the big corporations. They run the machinery of the state and claim its prerogatives. They direct the military establishment. They occupy the strategic command posts of the social structure, in which are now centered the effective means of the power and the wealth and the celebrity which they enjoy.” But to that I added another, from Mills's The Power Elite : [T]he focus of elite attention has been shifted from domestic problems, centered in the ‘thirties around slump, to international problems, centered in the ‘forties and ‘fifties around war. Since the governing apparatus of the United States has by long historic usage been adapted to and shaped by domestic clash and balance, it has not, from any angle, had suitable agencies and tradi...

I mentioned the influential sociologist C Wright Mills in yesterday's post, but later I discovered an op-ed in the Washington Post that discussed him in some depth on Monday. (For some reason, it's not behind their paywall, so anyone can read it.) There are clear parallels between today’s populist right and the new left movement that exploded in the 1960s and 1970s. C. Wright Mills, a sociologist at Columbia University, was that movement’s intellectual godfather. Consider a passage from his 1956 bestseller, “The Power Elite,” a polemical attack on the structure of America’s institutions that would inspire a generation of new left activists: “[The power elite] are in command of the major hierarchies and organizations of modern society. They rule the big corporations. They run the machinery of the state and claim its prerogatives. They direct the military establishment. They occupy the strategic command posts of the social structure, in which are now centered the effect...

This is the question that pestered me all weekend. I just don't think you'd have to tweak Waldorf too hard to come up with William Barr, especially with the turned-down-mouth, lips-pulled-in expression of disgust that he's most commonly made during public appearances with Trump. His latest gig as surrogate for Merrick Garland on questions about the Mar-a-Lago raid raises the continuing question for me that he never took the position of Attorney General under Trump in good faith -- I suspect there was actually a back-channel deal among Barr, McConnell, Romney, and assorted other Senate RINOs to confirm him in 2019 on the basis that, like Jeff Sessions, he wouldn't actually implement Trump policies. I would also go a little farther and suggest that Barr isn't so much an apologist for Garland as he is an apologist for the deep state. In fact, I would suggest that the example of Barr is a refutation of the notion that the deep state is some sort of conspiracy theor...

As reported by CNN, A federal judge threw a wrench Monday in the Justice Department investigation into potential mishandling of documents from former President Donald Trump's White House by granting his request for a special master to review evidence seized from his Florida home last month. The win for Trump temporarily prevents the Justice Department's investigative team from accessing the thousands of documents -- some of which are marked as classified -- taken from Mar-a-Lago. US District Judge Aileen Cannon cleared the way for a third-party attorney to review all the seized materials, not just for documents covered by attorney-client privilege -- the circumstance in which special masters are usually used -- but also for potential executive privilege concerns, a move the Justice Department has said would be "unprecedented." Good news for Trump, right? Well, not so fast! Never Trumper Andrew McCarthy at the National Review manages not just a glass-half...

When I posted on the unhappiest-looking guy in public life, William Barr, yesterday, I wasn't aware that Trump and his people would respond to Barr's Friday comments about the Mar-a-Lago raid. As it turns out, their response is remarkably substantive, and it actually throws the question back to Barr. (The photo above is from yesterday's story at the Epoch Times on the response; it was taken at the event on June 1, 2020 in which Trump and other officials walked from the White House to the burned-out St John's Episcopal Church across the park following a BLM riot. You can see how on board Barr was with the event, although in hindsight, the walk, simply displaying support for our institutions in the face of disorder, was entirely appropriate.) The Epoch Times story notes, “I can’t think of a legitimate reason why they could be taken out of the government, away from the government, if they’re classified,” [Barr, ] who was attorney general during the Trump and Ge...

I was originally going to title this post, "Why Is William Barr So Angry?" but after Thursday's Dark Brandon speech, I realized everyone's angry, not just William Barr. Still, just before I changed my title, I was searching the web for images of an angry William Barr, and I discovered there are a lot of them. A lot of them. Barr is basically a professional angry guy. Let's look at his background. According to Wikipedia, William Pelham Barr (born May 23, 1950) is an American attorney who served as the 77th and 85th United States attorney general in the administrations of Presidents George H. W. Bush and Donald Trump. Born and raised in New York City, Barr was educated at the Horace Mann School, Columbia University, and George Washington University Law School. From 1971 to 1977, Barr was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency. He then served as a law clerk to judge Malcolm Richard Wilkey of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia C...

Here's Biden's problem, and I think it's clear enough that even he recognizes it. The slimmest of Democrat majorities in Congress have shielded him from investigations over the past two years. If he loses either house in the November elections, Republicans will control key oversight committees with subpoena power, which will at best threaten his prospects in 2024 -- but there are potential avenues of investigation that could reach a "Nixon standard". This phrase has come up in connection with potential Trump offenses that could have been uncovered in the Mar-a-Lago raid (but so far have not) -- but I'm not the only one who's seen parallels between Nixon and Biden as well. A quick web search suggests that there's never been a clear definition of a "Nixon standard" for impeachment, but of course, Nixon was never impeached, so his case can't be a precedent anyhow. Nevertheless, legal scholars in the Clinton impeachment came up with this ...