A Newsletter With An Eye On Political Media from The American Prospect
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A NEWSLETTER WITH AN EYE ON POLITICAL MEDIA

Do We Really Need to Appreciate Coup Expertise?

CNN's interview with self-proclaimed coup-meister John Bolton,
assessing the January 6th insurrection, airily passed over some horrific
U.S. misdeeds.

There are countless reasons why it is almost always a terrible idea for
the U.S. to plot, carry out, or even cooperate with a political coup in
a foreign nation. Among the most relevant are:
* It involves murdering people.

* It undermines democracy.

* It empowers torturers and murders and kleptocrats.

* It usually engenders more coups.

* It makes the local population hate us and act accordingly.

* It provides our adversaries with propaganda victories.

* It demands a great deal of presidential lying and therefore undermines
our own democracy.

* It almost always makes the original situation worse.

I go into detail about the U.S. role in coups that took place in Iran in
1953; Guatemala in 1954; Indonesia, 1957 and 1964; the Republic of the
Congo, 1960; the Dominican Republic, 1965; and Chile in 1973, in my 2020
book Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie-and Why Trump Is Worse
.

One thing about coup-plotting is that if you know about it, you are
"in the loop"-a distinction that is even more coveted than money
inside the Beltway (and its geographic and ideological environs).
Journalists are supposed to report on coups when they find out about
them, but as often as not, they decide to sit on the story lest they be
accused of "endangering national security." What's more, it's
frequently the case that the kind of journalists who are brought into
the inner circle are those who see their responsibility less as
informing the public than working hand in glove with those in power to
engineer consent
. My late
friend I.F. Stone

put it this way: "You've really got to wear a chastity belt in
Washington to preserve your journalistic virginity. Once the secretary
of state invites you to lunch and asks your opinion, you're sunk."

With all that in mind, the spectacle of John Bolton bragging to CNN's
Jake Tapper, "As somebody who has helped plan coups d'etat-not
here, but, you know, other places-it takes a lot of work, and that's
not what [Trump] did
,"
was both revealing and revolting.

The "savvy
"
Mr. Tapper initially let Bolton's admission go, but later returned to
it. Tapper evinced no issue whatsoever with the idea of a government
official who claims to support democracy pursuing an explicitly
anti-democratic policy and bragging about it; rather, the question he
pursued was whether or not one "has to be brilliant to attempt a
coup." He asked whether these were "successful coups," though of
course he did not define what that meant (How many dead? How many
tortured? For how many years was democracy destroyed?). The two men then
bantered about whether, as Tapper put it, there was "other stuff
you're not telling me." Bolton responded, "I think-I'm sure
there is." Ha. Ha.

Like Tapper, The New Yorker's Susan Glasser found the whole exchange
awfully amusing. "This is a priceless exchange
," she tweeted,
"and it seems that John Bolton has a point: pulling off a successful
coup isn't a walk in the park ..." (Note, I don't think Glasser
was referring to the people routinely jailed, tortured, exiled, and
denied all human and political rights when describing the "walk" in
this "priceless exchange.") Meanwhile, also on CNN, Chris Cillizza
did not disappoint his many fans by giving his opinion that Bolton did
not give Trump nearly enough credit
.
And in New York magazine, Jonathan Chait apparently forgot the true
meaning of the word "gaffe"-at least among the savvy-when he
denied that Bolton had made one
.
Michael Kinsley defined the term for all time when he observed: "A
gaffe is when a politician tells the truth-some obvious truth he
isn't supposed to say
."
And Bolton's was a "gaffe" for the ages. Just see here
.

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The Times has been focusing on the disinformation beat of late, but when
I try to read the stories as someone with an open mind, and we here at
Altercation have sought to follow this coverage
,
I find their stories are often more confusing than illuminating. I came
across this tweet
from Mark
Jacob that one wishes journalists would take to heart: "Stop saying,
'Our politics are so divisive.' Say instead, "A major political
party is trying to overthrow our democracy.'"

This story, for instance, about the Biden administration's caving in
to right-wing pressure rather than allow the Department of Homeland
Security to monitor disinformation and warn people about the dangers it
may inspire, by Steven Lee Myers
and Eileen Sullivan
, "Disinformation Has
Become Another Untouchable Problem in Washington
,"
is all about "partisan politics," as well as "the country's
deepening partisan and geographical divides

over issues like abortion, guns and climate change." It is not about
how Republicans must all lie and lie and lie some more if they have any
hope of being nominated for higher office-or even retaining the
offices they presently enjoy. There's a good quote at the end, though:
"We're basically at this point unable to have a calm discussion
about this problem," said Paul Barrett, deputy director of the Stern
Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University. "And
there's a weird, circular, looping-around effect. The problem itself
is helping make us unable to talk about the problem."

And in "The Fight Over Truth Also Has a Red State, Blue State Divide
,"
Myers and Cecilia Kang evince
a similar problem regarding the same issue when looking at it from a
state level. It seems that in places like Alabama, where Republicans
rule, legislators want to ensure that people are free to lie on social
media, no matter what the potential ill effects, say, up to and
including violent insurrection, their lies may result in. But yet again,
"in this deeply polarized era, even the fight for truth breaks along
partisan lines." Here the concern is not that such lies undermine the
foundation of democracy and could easily form, instead, a foundation for
fascism. Rather it is that they "could reinforce information bubbles
in a nation increasingly divided

over a variety of issues-including abortion, guns, the
environment-and along geographic lines."

In addition to Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina, West
Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, and Alaska are all seeing "right to
lie" laws pushed by Republicans in state legislatures. Florida Gov.
Ron DeSantis is concerned about "authoritarian companies" that have
sought to mute conservative voices. "Voters have a palpable fear of
cancel culture and how tech is censoring political views," said Chris
Hartline, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

This is also yet another example of how bad Democrats are at politics.
"Cancel culture" is far more prevalent on the right than on the
left. Indeed, DeSantis-I'll say it, the likely Republican 2024
nominee-is its national champion
.
"In blue states," Myers and Kang write, "Democrats have focused
more directly on the harm disinformation inflicts on society, including
through false claims about elections or Covid and through racist or
antisemitic material that has motivated violent attacks like the
massacre at a supermarket in Buffalo

in May." But hey, both sides do it ...

I keep seeing Eric Clapton trending on Twitter, with people attacking
him because they don't like his views on vaccines. I find this
profoundly foolish. First of all, people who get their medical
information from aging British guitarists are themselves morons. Second,
Eric had a terrible personal experience with the two shots he got.
Third, give the guy a break, his young child fell out of a window and
died. (People are actually making jokes about that.) Fourth, he's done
a lot of good in the world with his addiction center and his willingness
to auction off so many of his guitars and to organize concerts to
support its treatment for people who can't afford it. Fifth, Eric may
not be the guitarist he was, but there is no moral lesson to be drawn
from that fact. Nobody is forcing anyone to go to his concerts. But
anyway, literally all of the above ought to be beside the point when it
comes to listening to his past music, which if you have any taste at
all, you cannot help but admire, as it is often terrific, tasteful,
thoughtful, emotionally resonant, and rarely pyrotechnical save when
that is called for. (That ended with Cream.)

If you want evidence of his brilliance as a guitarist and dedication as
a bluesman, I suggest you listen to his latest release of the 1995 film
and CD Nothing but the Blues. It was recorded in San Francisco during
Eric's 1994 tour supporting From the Cradle, the album of blues
originals by the likes of Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy,
etc. The music is excellent-Eric always pays for the best musicians
available. The film has been upgraded to 4K (executive producer, Martin
Scorsese) and there's an expensive "Super Deluxe Edition" that
comes with the documentary on Blu-ray, the soundtrack on both 2-LP vinyl
and CD, a bonus CD with four extra tracks, a hardcover book, a numbered
lithograph, and a whole bunch of tchotchkes, including a poster, a
guitar string set, custom guitar picks, and even an exclusive bandana.
But the focus is, as it should be, on the music. Here
is the man playing
(allegedly) Willie Dixon's "Groaning the Blues," here
on Elmore James's "It
Hurts Me Too," and here
on "Have You Ever Loved a Woman," which I always thought Eric wrote
about Pattie Harrison, but turns out to have been written by Billy Miles
and merely adapted for that purpose.

See you next week.

~ ERIC ALTERMAN

Become A Member of The American Prospect Today!

Eric Alterman is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn
College, an award-winning journalist, and the author of 11 books, most
recently Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie-and Why Trump Is Worse
(Basic, 2020). Previously, he wrote The Nation's "Liberal Media"
column for 25 years. Follow him on Twitter @eric_alterman

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