Coup

Trump boasted Sunday he tried to overturn the 2020 election.

While our first president to stage a coup, Trump is by no means the first plutocrat to do so.

That dishonor is shared by the leaders of the American Liberty League, a cabal of CEOs that included J.P. Morgan, Jr., Irénée du Pont, Robert Clark, and the then-heads of General Motors, General Foods, and Birds Eye.

The year was 1933. The target was FDR.

Inaugurated in March, FDR had promised a "New Deal" to help lift the nation out of depression. A boon to working men and women, as well as the unemployed, the New Deal incensed the nation's CEOs, who labelled the patrician FDR a "tyrant" and "traitor to his class."

FDR wasn't in office month when the Liberty League sprang into action. 

It plotted to recruit a popular Marine Corps general, Smedley Butler, to lead a half million angry veterans in a march on Washington, with the goal of removing FDR from the White House at the barrel of a gun. 

The League's leaders were ready to spend $30 million to supply the veterans Remington Rifles—the equivalent of $500 million today.

But General Butler, a patriot, would have none of it and exposed the League's plot to the FBI. He also shared before a Congressional committee the details of what the newspapers called the "Wall Street putsch."

The Congressional committee's final report, delivered 11 months after FDR's inauguration, stated that the committee had "received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country.

"There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient."

Thirty-four years later, the committee chair, Rep. John McCormack, told a reporter, "We were in the depths of a severe depression, and we had a good man, Roosevelt, in the White House. 

"The plotters definitely hated the New Deal because it was for the people, not for the moneyed interests, and they were willing to spend a lot of their money to dump Mr. Roosevelt. 

"If General Butler had not been the patriot he was, and if they had been able to maintain secrecy, the plot certainly might very well have succeeded."

HAT TIP: Thanks to Ann Ramsey for pointing me to this forgotten bit of history.

Impressed

"I'm impressed."

With snark being our default reaction to everything, perhaps we don't say it often enough.

The verb impress, meaning "to have a strong effect on the mind," entered English in the 14th century.

Its root was the Latin impressus, meaning "stamped," "indented," or "imprinted."

A marvelous event impressed you, stamping its mark on your mind.

A second, less joyous meaning of the verb arose two centuries later.

During wars in the 16th century, when the king needed to fill the ranks of the Royal Navy, he would press seafarers—usually sailors with the merchant fleet—into naval service. 

The king in fact claimed the permanent right to impress sailors any time he chose.

To do so, he would dispatch "press gangs" to roam the coastal towns. The press gangs were little more than bands of brutal thugs, led by ruthless naval officers. Often they'd snatch any man they spotted—regardless of seafaring experience.

To be "impressed"—a fearsome event—meant to be "kidnapped into the service."

The practice of impressing men into the Royal Navy lasted well into the 19th century, when crown service was made voluntary.

The Future of Face-to-Face is Now

A lackluster CES earlier this month prompted Fortune to question the appeal of live trade shows.

CES' organizer "will unquestionably hail it as a success and tout the benefits of face-to-face interaction despite the pandemic," Fortune observed. "And, in many ways, it’s hard to argue against that."

The sparsely populated event, however, underscored the fact that exhibitors can no longer be expected to spend tens of thousands—if not millions—of dollars merely to meet a handful of buyers; and that attendees can no longer be expected to hop cross-continental flights, merely to meet a few suppliers.

"While the sponsors of these events are eager to bring them back, the attendees are a lot less certain," Fortune said. Given the hesitancy, "it’s valid to ask if they're worth it."

My take is that, with the advent of the virtual meeting, live events' future hangs in the balance.

They may not be worth all the fuss and bother.

To keep live events worthwhile—and better than their virtual cousins—organizers must find new ways to assure not only participants' safety, but their ROI. 

The latter is something organizers haven't had to do—and something they may not be able to do.

For the harsh truth is, while virtual events are far from great, they're good enough. 

They allow buyers and sellers to connect, while eliminating almost all of the downside risks inherent in live events.

And in a risk-averse world, that says a lot.

Live events may be history, unless organizers find ways to reduce participants' risks.

Not one day, but now.

Above: Conference at Night by Edward Hopper.

The Supermoms Assemble

O Columbia! the gem of the ocean,

The home of the brave and the free,

The shrine of each patriot's devotion,
A world offers homage to thee.

Thy mandates make heroes assemble,
When Liberty's form stands in view.

Thy banners make tyranny tremble,
When borne by the red, white, and blue.

— Thomas á Becket

Across the nation, a new American hero is emerging: the Supermom.

Uninformed and dogmatic, she is as great a threat to democracy as any Proud Boy.

Perhaps greater.

She is, after all, your mom.

The extreme right is enlisting Supermoms to oversee elections and run for local offices. 

Supermoms have their own PAC, Moms for Liberty, too; and have been singled out by Trump operatives for cultivation.

The Supermoms' goal is to turn back the clock 180 eighty years to the time "Columbia the Gem of the Ocean" was penned.

Back then, God was in his heaven and all was right with the world. 

Columbia was indeed the gem of the ocean, which meant you needn't worry about porn or pervs or gang violence or uppity Blacks, Jews, Latinos, Asians, Muslims, Queers, and Feminists.

Supermoms claim they are "fighting for the survival of America" by galvanizing parents to defend their rights against tyrants.

Of course, the tyrants in their sights are all Democrats—most especially those of color.

In the past few months, Supermoms in Arizona, Colorado, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania have organized state-wide door-knocking campaigns to uncover phantom voters; launched forensic audits of the 2020 election results; and lobbied state lawmakers to scrap all voting machines, so they can count the votes in future elections. 

And just this week, Supermoms on a Tennessee school board banned Maus because it's "vulgar," while Supermoms on school boards in Nebraska, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming banned hundreds of books authored by Blacks.

In more ways than one, fiery Supermoms compose America's 21st century Luftschutz.

The Luftschutz was an all-volunteer civil defense league founded by Hermann Göring in 1933. At its peak, more than 22 million Germans belonged, many of them women.

Organized by local air raid wardens, the Luftschutz trained its members to place sandbags, fight fires, clear rubble, and respond with first aid in the event of aerial bombings and gas attacks. The wardens claimed the Luftschutz's purpose was Selbschutz (self- protection).

The darker purpose of the Luftschutz, however, was to recruit average German citizens into the Nazi party, which was a minority party in 1933. Göring understood that if you just let moms wear cool hats and attend gatherings, you could count on their silence when the time came for the Final Solution.  

Supermoms may consider themselves simply "concerned" soccer moms protecting their precious children, but they're in the grip of fascists.

That makes them wholly to be feared.

Above: Frau im Luftschutz! Nazi poster by Ludwig Hohlwein. 1936.

Values: Masturbatory Marketing

 Greed is not a financial issue. It's a heart issue.

— Andy Stanley

Spotify's unconscionable decision to keep Joe Rogan and drop Neil Young proves what I've long thought about tech corporations' self-professed "values."

They're pure, unadulterated snake oil.

Spotify's video on values includes a Latino marketing manager claiming "we do not approve any sort of campaign that we don't believe in."

How's that for masturbatory marketing?

Obviously, her statement is bullshit—or, worse, Spotify believes in Joe Rogan's relentless antivaxxer messaging.

Let's stop the "values" marketing malarkey and get back to basics. It may play to Millennials, but it's bullshit.

The hard truth is: Spotify believes in one thing and one thing only.

Profit.

Pure and simple.

HAT TIP: Neil Young deserves everyone's thanks for spotlighting Spotify's horrendous hypocrisy. Thank you, Mr. Young.

POSTSCRIPT, JANUARY 29: Since Neil Young's ultimatum to Spotify, his greatest hits album has rocketed into the Top 5 on Apple Music, and Spotify has lost $4 billion in market value."

POSTSCRIPT, FEBRUARY 3: Neil Young has been joined in his boycott of Spotify by Crosby, Stills and Nash.

POSTSCRIPT, FEBRUARY 7: Spotify's CEO confirmed the company won't "silence Joe," even though he spouts the N-word as well as disinformation.