If Democrats Win In November, Will There Be A Reckoning With Trump?
By William Rivers Pitt

November is coming. I know, because a tree told me. The stout maple outside my office window has grown a beard of red, like the first flecks of gray in a young man's whiskers. The trees outside Donald Trump's windows aren't changing yet -it's a muggy 81 down there compared to my foggy 58 -but to crib a line from Melville, it is already a damp and drizzly November in his soul.

The 2018 midterm elections are six weeks and an eyelash away. It will be another two months after that before the 116th Congress is sworn in. If the political prognosticators are right about November and the ultimate constitution of that new legislative body, the next three months may well be the last peaceful ones Trump will ever know. It is hard to say for certain if he knows this, but you'd think he must have at least an inkling. How could he not? Even Fox News can read a poll number.

Currently, there are 240 GOP-controlled seats in the House of Representatives. One hundred of those seats are within striking distance of being won by Democratic candidates, with 60 either in deep peril or already doomed to defeat. The Democrats need to pick up 24 seats in total to claim majority power. Those numbers are all you need to know about why House Speaker Paul Ryan abruptly decided to call it a career and go home.

The chance of Republicans maintaining majority control of the Senate is definitely better, but is no longer the cakewalk it appeared to be a few short months ago. To secure that chamber, the Democrats will have to pitch the electoral equivalent of a perfect game, and November is a cold month for baseball.

With the gruesome Jon "Not A Factual Statement" Kyl temporarily filling the seat left open by the late John McCain, Senate Republicans currently maintain a minuscule majority. Democrats must win or defend 12 seats -Texas, Tennessee, New Jersey, Florida, West Virginia, North Dakota, Nevada, Indiana, Montana, Wisconsin, Missouri and Arizona -to take the Senate, and more than a few of those races are long shots at best. For all that, it is a goofy year for electioneering; if the so-called "blue wave" crests high enough, there are some who think even Mississippi might be in play. Stranger things have happened.

For the moment, let's lay aside a discussion on the Senate and focus instead on the House, where their prospects are far better. What will happen if they recapture the Speaker's gavel? In recent history, we've seen Democrats celebrating victory with, "Hooray, we won! Let's be Republicans now!" If they take the stronger path, however, the fruits of victory could be substantial indeed.

"Get ready," writes Lesley Clark for McClatchy News. "If Democrats take control of a chamber in the November election, expect a flood of hearings, investigations, probes and special commissions starting in January. Democrats on two government watchdog House panels say Republicans have stifled and blocked nearly 75 lines of inquiry into various Trump policies and issues. Democratic members of Congress are already at the starting gate, ready to pounce."

The immediate change will be visible and dramatic. Nancy Pelosi will seek to replace current House Speaker Paul Ryan, who is taking his ball and going home after denouncing the poisoned political atmosphere he was instrumental in creating. If there is a genuinely muscular showing by progressives in November, however, Pelosi may have a contest on her hands if she wants her old position back. However that shakes out, whoever does wind up holding the gavel will have a (D) after their name.

All the committee chairmanships will flip. Barring some legislative swap meet between House Democrats, Eliot Engel will replace Ed Royce on Foreign Affairs, Maxine Waters will replace Jeb Hensarling on Financial Services, Jerrold Nadler will replace Bob Goodlatte on Judiciary, Elijah Cummings will replace Trey Gowdy on Oversight and Government Reform, and the indefatigable Adam Schiff will replace Devin Nunes on Intelligence.

For Donald Trump, the switch from Nunes to Schiff will be the equivalent of finding out his most trusted bodyguard has been replaced by a bull shark. Devin Nunes spent the last two years being all places at once in his effort to derail and destroy his own committee's investigation into Russian collusion by Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. Schiff, for his part,has been waiting in the tall grass with all the subpoenas he has not been allowed to issue. Once seated, a newly minted Chairman Schiff will release them like a horde of angry bees.

The change will be equally dramatic on the Oversight Committee, where Trey Gowdy has spent his chairmanship turning down dozens of motions for subpoenas put forth by Democrats. During the Trump years, Gowdy has allowed a grand total of exactly zero subpoenas to be issued. (This is a swooning departure from his days as chairman of the preposterous Benghazi Committee, when he issued no less than 13 subpoenas while investigating President Obama and Secretary Clinton.) This no-subpoena norm will change virtually overnight when Elijah Cummings takes Gowdy's seat.

"If Democrats win the majority in November," said Cummings this past August, "we would finally do what Republicans have refused to do, and that is conduct independent, fact-based, and credible investigations of the Trump Administration to address issues like the security clearance process, conflicts of interest, the numerous attempts by Republicans to strip away healthcare from millions of Americans, postal service reforms, prescription drug pricing, and voting rights."

Specifically, these newly minted House committees are likely to investigate:

the question of Russian election collusion;
corruption within the Trump Organization and Trump Foundation;
the location and content of Trump's infamous tax returns;
Jared Kushner and the process of security clearances;
the refusal of the White House to produce vital policy documentation;
the administration's ghastly response to Hurricane Maria and the ongoing plight of Puerto Rico;
corruption among Trump's Cabinet secretaries;
the process that led to immigrant children getting ripped out of their parent's arms at the southern border.

"We need to attack the problem of corruption we see in the administration and do our oversight," Adam Schiff recently told The New York Times. "But Democrats are mindful of the fact that if we want to stay in the majority, we have to show that we are responsibly governing."

That is code for "We're not talking about impeachment right now because impeachment is a long shot thanks to the Senate so don't say impeachment out loud, OK?" Personally, I'd like to see the entire Trump administration put into orbit around Neptune, but that's probably why I'm not in charge. In any event, the Democrats haven't won anything yet except a bunch of polls. If they do win in November, there is no guarantee they will do what is required to begin salvaging this ridiculous state of affairs.

I got out of the prediction business two years ago when I discovered, along with most every other political analyst on the planet, that my divining rod was badly bent. What will be will be, the song says, and anything else is conjecture. However, impeachment is on the table along with all manner of other things whether Nancy Pelosi likes it or not. At a bare minimum, the nation and the world may be three short months away from bearing witness to something unseen for far too long: oversight, investigation and perhaps -gasp -a reckoning.
(c) 2018 William Rivers Pitt is a senior editor and lead columnist at Truthout. He is also a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of three books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know, The Greatest Sedition Is Silence and House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation. His fourth book, The Mass Destruction of Iraq: Why It Is Happening, and Who Is Responsible, co_written with Dahr Jamail, is available now on Amazon. He lives and works in New Hampshire.

Why I'm Betting On Millennials, This November 6th
By Robert Reich

Millennials (and their younger siblings, generation Z's) are the largest, most diverse and progressive group of potential voters in American history, comprising fully 30 percent of the voting age population.

On November 6th, they'll have the power to alter the course of American politics - flipping Congress, changing the leadership of states and cities, making lawmakers act and look more like the people who are literally the nation's future.

But will they vote?

In the last midterm election, in 2014, only 16 percent of eligible voters between the ages of 18 and 29 bothered.

In midterms over the last two decades, turnout by young people has averaged about 38 points below the turnout rate of people 60 and older. Which has given older voters a huge say over where the nation is likely to be by the time those younger people reach middle age and the older voters have passed on.

I'm not criticizing younger non-voters. They have a lot on their minds - starting jobs, careers, families. Voting isn't likely to be high on their list of priorities.

Also, unlike their grand parents - boomers who were involved in civil rights, voting rights, women's rights, the anti-Vietnam War movement - most young people today don't remember a time when political action changed America for the better.

They're more likely to remember political failures and scandals - George W. Bush lying about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction; Bill Clinton lying about Monica; both parties bailing out Wall Street without so much as a single executive going to jail.

Most don't even recall when American democracy worked well. They don't recall the Cold War, when democracy as an ideal worth fighting for. The Berlin Wall came down before they were born.

Instead, during their lives they've watched big money take over Washington and state capitals. Which may explain why only about 30 percent of Americans born in the 1980s think it "essential" to live in a democracy.

Many young people have wondered if their votes count anyway, because so many of them live in congressional districts and states that are predictably red or blue.

Given all this, is there any reason to hope that this huge, diverse, progressive cohort of Americans will vote in the upcoming midterms?

My answer is, yes.

First, the issues up for grabs aren't ideological abstractions for them. They're causes in which Millennials have direct personal stakes.

Take, for example, gun violence - which some of these young people have experienced first-hand and have taken active roles trying to stop.

Or immigrant's rights. Over 20 percent of Millennials are Latino, and a growing percent are from families that emigrated from Asia. Many have directly experienced the consequences of Trump's policies.

A woman's right to choose whether to have a baby, and gay's or lesbian's rights to choose marriage - issues Millennials are also deeply committed to - will be front and center if the Supreme Court puts them back into the hands of Congress and state legislatures.

Millennials are also concerned about student debt, access to college, and opportunities to get ahead unimpeded by racial bigotry or sexual harassment.

And they're worried about the environment. They know climate change will hit them hardest since they'll be on the planet longer than older voters.

They've also learned that their votes count. They saw Hillary lose by a relative handful of votes in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

They've been witnessing razor-thin special elections, such as Conor Lamb's win by a few hundred votes in the heart of Pennsylvania Trump country, and Hiral Tipirneni's single-digit loss in an Arizona district Trump won by 21 points in 2016.

They know the importance of taking back governorships in what are expected to be nail-bitingly close races - in states like Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Kansas. They're aware of the slim but increasingly real possibility of taking back the Senate. (Who knew Ted Cruz would be so vulnerable? Who even knew the name Beto O'Rourke?)

As doubtful as they these young people are about politics, or the differences between the two parties, they also know that Trump and his Republican enablers want to take the nation backwards to an old, white, privileged, isolated America. Most of them don't.

In my thirty-five years of teaching college students, I've not encountered a generation as dedicated to making the nation better as this one.

So my betting is on them, this November 6th.
(c) 2018 Robert B. Reich has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. His latest book is "Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few." His web site is www.robertreich.org.

American Anomie
By Chris Hedges

The French sociologist Emile Durkheim in his classic book "On Suicide" examined the disintegration of social bonds that drive individuals and societies to personal and collective acts of self-destruction. He found that when social bonds are strong, individuals achieve a healthy balance between individual initiative and communal solidarity, which he called a "life-sustaining equilibrium." These individuals and communities have the lowest rates of suicide. The individuals and societies most susceptible to self-destruction, he wrote, are those for whom these bonds, this equilibrium, have been shattered.

Societies are held together by a web of social bonds that give individuals a sense of being part of a collective and engaged in a project larger than the self. This collective expresses itself through rituals, such as elections and democratic participation or an appeal to patriotism, and shared national beliefs. The bonds provide meaning, a sense of purpose, status and dignity. They offer psychological protection from impending mortality and the meaninglessness that comes with being isolated and alone. The shattering of these bonds plunges individuals into deep psychological distress that leads ultimately to acts of self-annihilation. Durkheim called this state of hopelessness and despair anomie, which he defined as "ruleless-ness."

Ruleless-ness means the norms that govern a society and create a sense of organic solidarity no longer function. The belief, for example, that if we work hard, obey the law and get a good education we can achieve stable employment, social status and mobility along with financial security becomes a lie. The old rules, imperfect and often untrue for poor people of color, nevertheless were not a complete fiction in the United States. They offered some Americans-especially those from the white working and middle class-modest social and economic advancement.

But the capture of political and economic power by the corporate elites, along with the redirecting of all institutions toward the further consolidation of their power and wealth, has broken the social bonds that held the American society together. This rupture has unleashed a widespread malaise Durkheim would have recognized.

"When society is strongly integrated," he wrote, "it keeps individuals in a state of dependency, holding them to be in its service and consequently not permitting them to dispose of themselves as they wish. Society is thus opposed to them escaping from their obligations towards it through death. ... The bond that attaches them to their common purpose attaches them to life; and, in any case, the high goal towards which their gaze is turned alleviates the suffering that they feel from life's troubles. Finally, in a coherent and vital community, there is a continual exchange of ideas and feelings from all to each and from each to all which is like mutual moral support, so that the individual, instead of being reduced to his resources only, participates in the collective energy and draws on it when his own is exhausted." The reconfiguring of American society into an oligarchy and the collapse of our democratic institutions have left most of the population disempowered. The elites, predatory by nature, have discarded all restraint. "The state of disorganization, or anomie, is thus reinforced by the fact that passions are less disciplined at the very time when they need stronger discipline," Durkheim noted of the avarice of the rich.

"It is not for nothing that so many religions have celebrated the benefits and the moral value of poverty," Durkheim wrote. "This is because, of all schools, it is the one that best teaches man to restrain himself. By obliging us to exercise constant discipline over ourselves, it prepares us to accept collective discipline with docility, while wealth, by exalting the individual, constantly risks awakening the spirit of rebellion that is the very fount of immortality."

The political process, as the research by professors Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page underscores, no longer advances the interests of the average citizen. It has turned the consent of the governed into a cruel joke. "The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence." This facade of democratic process eviscerates one of the primary social bonds in a democratic state and abolishes the vital shared belief that citizens have the power to govern themselves, that government exists to promote and protect their rights and interests.

The economic structures, like the political structures, have been reconfigured to mock the belief in a meritocracy and that hard work leads to a productive and valued role in society. American productivity, as The New York Times pointed out, has increased 77 percent since 1973 but hourly pay has grown only 12 percent. If the federal minimum wage was attached to productivity, the newspaper wrote, it would be more than $20 an hour now, not $7.25. Some 41.7 million workers, a third of the workforce, earn less than $12 an hour, and most of them do not have access to employer-sponsored health insurance. A decade after the 2008 financial meltdown, the Times wrote, the average middle class family's net worth is more than $40,000 below what it was in 2007. The net worth of black families is down 40 percent, and for Latino families the figure has dropped 46 percent.

The economic disparity and political dysfunction have been exacerbated by the collapse of the judicial system, as Matt Taibbi writes in his book "The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap." There is aggressive criminalization of the poor while the ruling elites are protected by high-priced lawyers and non-enforcement or rewriting of laws. Amid selective enforcement of laws in the ruleless society, the high rollers on Wall Street and in wealthy enclaves are not prosecuted for possessing and ingesting illegal drugs but the poor are thrown into prison and must forfeit all their property for being caught with small amounts of the same drugs. HSBC, the world's seventh largest bank by total assets, after admitting to laundering $800 million for Central and South American drug cartels, was slapped with largely symbolic fines and a deferred prosecution agreement, which is the legal equivalent of a get-out-of-jail-free card. The poor, meanwhile, are hounded, arrested and fined for absurdly criminalized activities such as not mowing their lawns, loitering, selling loose cigarettes, carrying open containers of alcohol or "obstructing pedestrian traffic"-which means standing on a sidewalk. These fines are used to fill state and county budget shortfalls resulting from corporations and the wealthy fixing the rules to avoid paying meaningful taxes, if they pay taxes at all. This virtual tax boycott by the rich has broken yet another social bond, the idea that everyone contributes a significant portion of his or her income to make the society function.

The elites, who sacrifice nothing for society and are not held accountable for their criminal behavior, live in what Taibbi calls a "stateless archipelago." They are empowered to pillage the nation, amass obscene wealth and wield unchecked political and legal control. The result has been the obliteration of the primary social bonds that, however biased in favor of the white majority, held the nation together.

The shattering of these bonds has left tens of millions of Americans adrift. Society, Durkheim wrote, is no longer "sufficiently present for individuals." Those cast aside can participate in the society, as Durkheim wrote, only "through sadness." The self-destructive pathologies that plague the United States-opioid addiction, morbid obesity, gambling, suicide, sexual sadism, hate groups and mass shootings-rise out of this anomie. My new book, "America: The Farewell Tour," is an examination of these pathologies and the anomie that fuels these self-destructive behaviors.

Durkheim noted that the poor have lower rates of suicide. The poor know the rules are rigged against them. James Baldwin made much the same point when he wrote that African-American men are less prone to a midlife crisis than white men because they are less susceptible to the myth of the American Dream. Most African-Americans learn very early in life that there are two sets of rules. But white Americans, because of white supremacy, are more susceptible to the myth, and therefore more infuriated when that myth is exposed as a con. This, I suspect, is why nearly all mass shooters and members of right-wing hate groups, along with a majority of supporters of Donald Trump, are white men.

Capitalism, Durkheim wrote, is antithetical to creating and sustaining the relationships that are vital to social bonds. Capitalism rewards those for whom relationships are transactional and temporary. Relationships under capitalism are mercenary. They are part of the scheme for personal self-advancement and require the oily manipulation of others. To advance in a capitalist system it is necessary to build and then discard a series of ultimately hollow relationships. These empty relationships-and you can see them on display at any business gathering-contribute to the collective anomie and disintegration of social bonds.

Capitalism may cater to a natural desire among many for self-enrichment, but you don't want this belief system to dominate society. Capitalism rewards single-minded narcissists and often con artists devoid of empathy and incapable of remorse. It rewards those focused exclusively on personal gain and self-aggrandizement. These dedicated capitalists often lack the capacity to form meaningful bonds, seeing in other people tools for commodification and exploitation. Once a capitalist class achieves complete control, as it has in the United States, it dismantles the structures that make social bonds possible, seeing in them an impediment to profit. The more concentrated wealth becomes, as with corporate capitalism, the more damage it inflicts on society, sending jobs to overseas sweatshops and leaving American workers underemployed or unemployed.

Karl Marx saw alienation as a positive force, one that estranged workers from the means of production and moved them to question the structures of power, educate themselves about their exploitation, and revolt. But for Durkheim this alienation, or anomie, is debilitating. It is, he wrote, "a collective asthenia" that drains us of energy and will. It manifests itself in self-loathing. We may indeed understand what is happening around us, Durkheim argued, but we lack the ability to free ourselves from the despair, frustration and rage that cripple our lives.

"Our actions require an object outside of themselves," Durkheim wrote. "It is not because we need to sustain the illusion of some impossible immortality: it is because it is implicit in our moral being and it cannot be lost, even partially, without that moral being losing its reason for existence. There is no need to demonstrate that in such a state of collapse the slightest cause for depression can easily give rise to desperate acts. When life is not worth living, everything becomes a pretext for ridding ourselves of it."

"For individuals are too closely involved in the life of society for it to be sick without their being affected," Durkheim added. "Its suffering inevitably becomes theirs."

President Trump is not a product of the theft of the Podesta emails, James Comey or racism-although he and many who support him are racists-or Russian bots. Demagogues arise from failed democracies plagued by ruleless-ness and anomie. They tell an enraged population what it wants to hear and crudely, to the delight of the betrayed, ridicule the elites who sold them out.

Removing Trump from office without confronting the ruleless-ness and anomie that define the lives of tens of millions of Americans would do nothing to restore democracy. In fact, it would probably consolidate the power of a Christianized fascism that cloaks itself in a cloying piety and false morality. Vice President Mike Pence, because he is a creature of the Christian right and has ingested its protofascist ideology, would probably be worse than Trump if he gained the presidency.

The left, like most critics of Trump, personalizes our decay. It focuses myopically on Trump, who is the symptom, not the disease. It spits back the thought-terminating cliches about the Russians stealing our elections while it refuses to examine the deep wounds within the society, wounds exacerbated when the Democratic Party under Bill Clinton sold out working men and women. If we do not heal these wounds, if we do not restore the social bonds shattered by predatory corporate capitalism, when the next financial crisis arrives-and it will arrive-this collective anomie will explode. Frightening demons, harnessing these dark, self-destructive pathologies, will rise from the depths of the ruleless morass.

See part one of Hugh Hamilton interviewing Chris Hedges about his new book, "America: The Farewell Tour" (via YouTube).
(c) 2018 Chris Hedges, the former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times, spent seven years in the Middle East. He was part of the paper's team of reporters who won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of global terrorism. Keep up with Chris Hedges' latest columns, interviews, tour dates and more at www.truthdig.com/chris_hedges.

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