OCTOBER 2021 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

ANNOUNCEMENT: Ted Cruz, Rudy Giuliani, Tucker Carlson AND Louis Gohmert are four irredeemable evildoers who have appeared repeatedly as monthly IGGY candidates and winners (Carlson and Gohmert appear again this month). In a quiet ceremony after picking up dog shit in my backyard, I inducted the four of them in the Phronesis Hall-of-Shame. This means that their ignominious actions and utterances will not appear in any future IGGY listing. Their membership is well-earned—and long overdue.

Near misses for induction included Senators Mitch McConnell and Ron Johnson, Representatives Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Mo Brooks, and Marjorie Taylor Green, and Governors Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott. Strong future contenders include Senators Mike Lee, Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema. Feel free to recommend additional worthy candidates.

1. Representative Elise Stefanik. House Republican Conference chair Elise Stefanik wouldn’t dare call out Jan. 6 insurrectionists and their failed attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. After all, that’s how she got her current gig. So, she’s instead stooping to calling undocumented immigrants the actual insurrectionists—and echoing a white supremacist conspiracy theory in the process.

“Radical Democrats are planning their most aggressive move yet: a PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION,” Elise for Congress claimed in one Facebook ad last week, according to Zachary Mueller of America’s Voice. “Their plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.” Just days later, Stefanik doubled down.

“After national press attention condemning Stefanik's use of the white nationalist 'replacement theory' in her Facebook ads warning of an ‘election insurrection’ ... she has doubled down and is STILL running these ads,” Mueller tweeted. “In total, Stefanik paid Facebook to show these xenophobic dog-whistle ads to over a million Facebook users, all but 5% of whom lived outside New York with the majority being over the age of 55,” he wrote last week. “Stefanik is not using these ads to communicate a message to voters in her district,” he notes. “Instead, she is targeting older Americans across the country who react positively to online racialized fear-mongering.” Replacement theory seems to resonate.

This white supremacist belief has more recently found a home on Fox News via Tucker Carlson. It also found a home among the House Republican caucus way before Stefanik’s disgusting ads, echoed by Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry in April.

“For many Americans,” The Washington Post reports Perry said during a hearing on Central American migration, “what seems to be happening or what they believe right now is happening is, what appears to them is we’re replacing national-born American—native-born Americans to permanently transform the landscape of this very nation.” Like the Post noted, never mind that it was Perry, like Stefanik, who sought to “transform the landscape of this very nation” by supporting overturning the election. Facts, smacts.

Among the national press attention that slammed Stefanik’s ads came from her hometown newspaper, which “offered a scathing response” to her rhetoric, HuffPost reported. “Quite a choice of words, of course, considering that the country is still suffering the aftershocks of the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington by supporters of Mr. Trump who tried to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election,” The Times Union Editorial Board said. “The Harvard-educated Ms. Stefanik surely knows the sordid history and context of this.”

That suggests that Stefanik should know better, and indeed, Stefanik is on the record criticizing Trump in the past. “In fact, at times Stefanik sounded practically like a Never Trumper, as she called on Trump to recognize that Russia had attacked the 2016 election to help him, urged him to release his tax returns, and assailed him for his comments about women,” Mother Jones reported in May. Some might argue that Stefanik is a weathervane adjusting to whatever winds are necessary to hold onto power. Or maybe, just maybe, Stefanik’s now finally showing us exactly who she is.

SEPTEMBER 2021 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

Sorry this is arriving late, I was out of town.

1. Senator Ron Johnson. Even before the January 6 insurrection by supporters of former President Donald Trump, Senator Ron Johnson was pushing the Big Lie that Trump was somehow cheated out of a second term.

As chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Wisconsin Republican used the December 16 session to raise doubts about the legitimacy of the 2020 election. In a lengthy, if largely fact-free, statement to the committee, he claimed that alleged irregularities could be grouped into three categories: “1) lax enforcement or violations of election laws and controls, 2) fraudulent votes and ballot stuffing, and 3) corruption of voting machines and software that might be programmed to add or switch votes.”

“In the time we had,” Johnson babbled, “it was impossible to fully identify and examine every allegation. But many of these irregularities raise legitimate concerns, and they do need to be taken seriously.”

That declaration was, of course, false. So outrageous was the senator’s hearing that The New York Times headlined its report, “The election is over, but Ron Johnson keeps promoting false claims of fraud.”

No surprise there. Johnson is the king of false claims—on everything from Covid-19 cures to tax-policy votes that invariably end up benefiting the senator and his campaign donors.

Johnson’s amplification of the Big Lie fostered the fantasy that the presidency was being stolen from Trump. Now, however, there’s reason to believe that Johnson’s been knowingly lying about the Big Lie.

On Sunday, when he spoke at a Republican event in Wisconsin with Lauren Windsor, a progressive activist who posed as a conservative and taped a conversation with Johnson, the senator said, “I think it’s probably true that Biden got maybe 7 million more popular votes. That’s the electoral reality. So to just say for sure that this was a stolen election, I don’t agree with that.”

Windsor is a self-described “progressive pugilist swamp-slayer” who has gained prominence over the past decade with multiple exposés of conservative hypocrisy, and, as executive producer of the political web show The Undercurrent, has distributed a tape of the conversation on social media. Johnson said during what he apparently thought was a private conversation, “There’s nothing obviously skewed about the results.” He even told Windsor that Trump lost because he had underperformed as compared to other Republicans. “If all the Republicans voted for Trump the way they voted for the Assembly candidates, he would have won,” said the senator. “He didn’t get 51,000 votes that other Republicans got, and that’s why he lost.”

Still, Johnson continues to peddle Trump’s Big Lie—even going so far as to support a bogus audit of the election results that has been promoted in recent weeks by Trump-aligned Wisconsin legislators. The audit will cost Wisconsin taxpayers $680,000.

Let us hope that Johnson’s big lie will follow him like stink on a skunk when he seeks a third term—should he decide to run.

AUGUST 2021 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Rep. Dan Crenshaw Rr-Tx) and Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark). Republican lawmakers spent the entirety of the Donald Trump administration hunting for and condemning government whistleblowers. Sen. Lindsey Graham, Sen. Rand Paul, Reps. Nunes and Takeyourpick—they all sternly warned of the threat posed by anonymous government figures coming forward with a new possible crime Trump or his team seemed to be committing. But that was then, and this is now, and if you're talking about whistleblowers willing to squeal about Secret Scary Wokeness hopping through government hallways or putting up sinister new motivational posters, that's different. That's the sort of stuff Fox News lives for.

Continuing the Republican tradition of pretending at maximum manly toughness while thumping through life with shows of weaponized gutlessness, it's Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw and Arkansas's Sen. Tom Cotton leading a new charge against Rampant Theoretical Wokeness in our nation's tough manly military. Crenshaw announced it on Twitter with suitable turgidity: "We won't let our military fall to woke ideology," he puffed. The Crenshaw-Cotton response is a new "whistleblower webpage" where you can "submit your story" of being, um, exposed to Wokeness. He promises to expose the "spineless military commanders" who have failed to oppose "progressive Pentagon staffers" who "have been calling the shots."

This feels a tiny bit like Biff and Taller Biff demanding the military oppose civilian control and "call the shots" themselves, but we're probably imagining that. Both Republicans have shown a truly stellar understanding of our military's structure and enforced limitations in the past, which is why most of America knows their names despite neither Biff showing much success in any government sphere that does not involve self-promotional shitposting.

Crenshaw and Cotton's push here is part of a larger Republican attack on the military for perceived anti-conservatism, and immediately follows a Sen. Ted Cruz bit of buffoonery in which he compared the turgid manliness of Russia’s military recruitment posters, under Vlad Putin, to the "woke, emasculated military" of the United States.

It's an organized Republican campaign to portray the military as "weak" so that conservative-minded changes can be made. Crenshaw and Cotton's quasi-populist, more-quasi-fascist goal is to ignite partisan battles within the military command itself—the promise to "expose" commanders that do not oppose Crenshaw-identified "woke" policies makes that clear enough—so that the military can be purged of conservatism's enemies in the same manner that Trump's allies purged whistleblowers, watchdogs, and perceived critics from civilian government agencies.

With Crenshaw's crude attempt, however, it was evident what was going to happen next. First, Crenshaw was going to start collecting some painfully butthurt stories from conservative soldiers upset that their new commander is a womanfolk or whatever, and after months of sorting through all the ones too obviously racist or sexist or ridiculous to put his name to will come up with some that Tucker Carlson can print out and roll around in on live television.

Second, it was a certainty that Crenshaw’s little form was going to be absolutely overrun by Americans trolling Crenshaw with frightening incidents of "wokeness" that may or may not have been culled from movies, television shows, or their own imaginations.

REVISITING THE HIROSHIMA MYTH

By Ronald T. Fox

Hiroshima After the Bomb 

In previous Phronesis posts about the atomic bombing of Japan, I challenged conventional wisdom in the United States that the use of atomic bombs forced Japan to surrender, thus ending the war. I referred to this as “The Hiroshima Myth.” In my post, I left little doubt that I believed Truman’s decision was motivated not by a desire to end the war quickly in order to avoid a bloody invasion of the mainland, but to end it before the Russians would enter the war and extend their influence throughout East Asia. I also argued that Japan’s decision to surrender was motivated more by fear of Russia’s invasion than the atomic bomb and Truman’s promise of a “reign of ruin” from the sky.

Since my original post in 2015, I have dug deeper into the historical record and have come to understand that Truman’s decision, and the Japanese response, was more complicated. Useful for my rethinking was Marc Gallicchio’s book, Unconditional: The Japanese Surrender in World War II.

I now believe that while the atomic bombs were not the driving force in ending the war, they played a larger role than I originally acknowledged. It was both the Russian entry into the war and the atomic bombings, along with Japan’s deteriorating military and economic situation, that motivated the country to accept a slightly modified version of “unconditional surrender.” Evidence points to both the bomb and the Russian entry into the war as necessary conditions for Japan’s acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration. At the same time, my additional readings reinforced my belief that Truman was thinking beyond Japan, to the American-Soviet rivalry in the post-war world, when he decided to shun diplomacy and pursue a quick military ending of the war.

What follows is a complete revision of my original essays. I will post the revision, on the 76th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, in three parts. Part I covers Truman’s decision to use atomic bombs on Japan. Part II explores the Japanese Decision to surrender. In Part III, I speculate on the enduring legacy of the Hiroshima Myth. Part II will be posted tomorrow and Part III the next day.

PART III. THE LEGACY OF THE HIROSHIMA MYTH

By Ronald T. Fox

THE LEGACY OF THE HIROSHIMA MYTH

Parts I and II examined distortions of truth surrounding the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These distortions formed a mythology about the bombings that has become deeply embedded in the collective American conscience. Part III offers my thoughts on the legacy of the Hiroshima Myth.

Enduring American allegiance to the Hiroshima Myth—or, conversely, our collective failure to confront its truth—has had a profound impact on the United States, both at home and abroad. Perceiving the atomic bomb as the decisive weapon necessary to end World War II helped create a conviction that nuclear weapons could serve a useful military purpose. Americans came to embrace them as essential protectors of our nation. To be safe, we needed to stockpile nuclear weapons and be prepared to use them, a belief that would spark a massive nuclear arms race in the ensuing decades. Accepting the Hiroshima Myth meant accepting nuclear weapons as a fact of national and international life.

The United States has refused to renounce the first use of nuclear weapons, even if their use risks the end of human civilization. Ask yourselves: would this refusal be the U.S. stance if Americans did not so forcefully believe that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the winning weapons that forced Japan to surrender?

The belief that the bomb killed thousands to save millions imparted a moral righteousness to the bomb that today translates into a collective American numbness to matters of mass destruction, even genocide. Almost anything is permissible if used to “save American lives.” This numbness, along with our belief in American exceptionalism and the decisiveness of military power, helps explain why the US is prone to deploying extensive force and using increasingly destructive weapons against perceived international enemies, however non-threatening they may appear to the reasoned mind.

JULY 2021 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

The recent spike in Covid delta variant cases, and associated deaths, and continued refusal of many Republican faithful to get vaccinated, dominated the July news cycle. At the risk of kicking a dead horse in the mouth, I will confine the July nominations to GOP absurdities on the subject.

NOTE: Also, as you will notice the presence of some frequent IGGY candidates, perhaps it is time, as one Phronesis reader suggested, to retire some of these repeating absurdists to the Ignominious Absurdity Hall-of-Shame, thus joining original inductee Donald Trump. Expect a new induction ceremony in the near future. If you have any IGGY HOS recommendations, please let me know.

1. Tennessee Republican Lawmakers. Ever wondered how far the GQP will push the limits of anti-science?  Look no further than the state of Tennessee.  Straight from the files of “you can’t make this up,” some Republican lawmakers were so aghast at commercials encouraging children to get Covid vaccines (which is a great idea, by the way, of addressing the low vaccine rates we are still struggling with), that they are saying we should just cancel the Health Department.

Some Tennessee Republican lawmakers accused the Tennessee Department of Health of "guilt-tripping" kids to take the Covid-19 vaccine. Rep. Scott Cepicky, (R) Culleoka, motioned to "dissolve" the department altogether over the accusations.

Cepicky said the department's vaccine campaigns featuring children "peer pressure" them into taking the vaccine.

"When you have advertisements like this with a young girl with a patch on her arm all smiling, we know how impressionable our young people are and wanting to fit in in life," Cepicky said.

How terrible!  It’s bad enough teens have to fend off aggressive advertising from tobacco, alcohol, vapes, and big pharma, now we are taunting them with lifesaving, pandemic-busting vaccines!

At the source of this conflict (allegedly) is the state’s “Mature Minor Doctrine” allowing health care providers to treat children age 14+ without parental consent.  These advertisements may brainwash teens into getting health care against the wishes of their science-denying parents!  The horror!

The worst part?  This wasn’t just some off-the-cuff comment that will be ignored and forgotten.  The issue is scheduled to be brought back up in July.  Republicans have a strangle-hold on the state, and so far, only democrats and health officials have spoken up in opposition to the plan.

It may be time for us to move.

PART II. WHY DID THE JAPANESE SURRENDER?

By Ronald T. Fox

WHY DID THE JAPANESE SURRENDER?

It is conventional wisdom that the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, along with Truman’s threat to launch a “reign of ruin” on Japan the likes of which the world had never seen, forced the Japanese Supreme Council (consisting of the six top members of the government—The Big Six) to accept the Potsdam Declaration demanding its “unconditional surrender.” Assessing the validity of this claim requires looking at the war situation from Japan’s perspective. Were the atomic bombings, and the threat of more to come, the main reason Japan’s Supreme Council decided to surrender? To answer this question, it is necessary to examine the timing of the surrender decision as well as how the top Japanese political and military leaders saw their strategic options in August of 1945.