Midrange Weekly February 15
Your Weekly Round Up On What’s Got The Midrange Staff’s Attention
Midrange Staff @midrangeyvr
Welcome back to Midrange Weekly- we hope your Valentine’s Day was as fulfilling and rewarding as you had dreamed, and failing that that your local store has some cheap chocolate on sale. To those that somehow (magic?) emerged victorious over the dating game and made it to parenthood, happy Family Day as well. For the rest of us, just take the stat holiday win. Lots happening this week, not the least of which was Trump’s historical impeachment trial and acquittal. While this was not the outcome many of us hoped for, perhaps now he will maybe, finally go away, if only briefly before the inevitable launch of Trump TV. That new Britney doc is making us re-examine our turn of the century media literacy (that’s good!) and fashion choices (that’s bad!), that lady from The Mandalorian turned out to be kind of awful, and the fractious schism between those that like the snow and those that hate snow threatens to end relationships across Vancouver. We want our pandemic park beers already!
If I Have To Type The Word Unconstitutional One More Time I’m Gonna Lose It
While it may have been a depressingly foregone conclusion that Trump would be acquitted at the end of his second impeachment trial, it’s still pretty frustrating. The corrupt assurances of being let off the hook by his obsequious and mendacious cadre of cowardly senators was so accepted that he didn’t even need to bother to show up. The whole thing has been infuriating, from Trump’s defence lawyers and their rambling incoherence, to their trite decrying of cancel culture (it’s always cancel culture, even when we are talking insurrection), to blaming the democratic prosecutors alleged lack of preparation for their own inability to answer questions about their client, whom they have had unlimited access to for these proceedings. They even floated the false flag antifa argument and said the whole thing really wasn’t that bad. In an act of corruption that even in the year 2021 is shocking, republican senators Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee actually huddled with Trump’s defence lawyers outside of the senate chambers to game out a strategy. That is some fucking nerve let me tell you. This is where the verisimilitude of a courtroom proceeding is actually kind of important- the senators are literally supposed to be the jurors for this thing, and yet they conspired with Trump’s goons to map out the pretext for their inevitable verdict.
Despite the house impeachment managers damning and thoroughly descript case documenting Trump’s two month long campaign of disinformation and agitation that catalyzed the insurrection, the republicans were too complicit in the seditious conduct to ever acknowledge that Trump was at fault. However there was no getting around the facts clearly articulated by the prosecution. Senators struggled to watch the footage of the attack, some of them simply skipped out on it even. The same senators that on the day of the attack begged Trump to call off the horde now paradoxically claimed that he had no control over them. Others tried to argue that the attack was planned for days, suggesting that Trump couldn’t have incited an event that was already in the works; this lazily ignores that his impeachment and subsequent trial covers months of manipulation and radicalization dating back to the summer, not just Jan 6. In other words, no matter what mental or contextual gymnastics the GOP awkwardly contorted themselves in to, their arguments were laughably half hearted and anaemic. Without any logical or moral standing to fall back on, the republicans did what they often do- hide behind technicalities.
Nearly all of the republican senators, 45 out of 50, stated on record that the impeachment trial was unconstitutional on the grounds that one cannot impeach a president- or any officer- that has already left office. They argued they had no mandate to administer a trial, therefore Trump cannot not face such a censure from the senate. This is a very convenient argument! Funny how Mitch McConnell recessed the senate, preventing the trial to happen while Trump was still in office, and only reconvened it to consider the matter after Trump had fled to his self imposed exile in Mar-a-lago. However the assertion that it’s unconstitutional to impeach a president after leaving office doesn’t hold up to even the slightest scrutiny no matter what context you approach it from. This is affirmed by the majority of constitutional scholars that have weighed in on the matter and it’s worth looking at why.
The first thing to consider is that there is actually precedent for impeachment after the person in question had vacated their position. In 1876 Secretary Of War (a position that was a precursor to Defense Secretary) William Belknap was under investigation by congress over corruption charges. Seemingly ready to face the writing on the wall and read the room, Belknap tendered his resignation to President Grant. Even after that the House of Representatives still impeached him. Dating back even earlier to 1797 is the case of North Carolina Senator William Blount whom was under investigation for treasonous activities, helping the British seize American land. Blount was swiftly expelled from the senate but afterwards a formal impeachment trial still occurred to ensure the disgraced representative could never hold office again. Still not convinced? Try asking none other than Trump himself because apparently he agrees with this assessment. The now ex president was recently busted for resurfaced campaign footage from Feb 2020 in which he boasted that Obama should be impeached for prior alleged transgressions during his own tenure. Basically, pick any century you want in American history and there’s precedent for impeachment after leaving office.
Don’t want to go with American history? One could also infer some crucial guidance from the fact that British Law dating back to the American Revolution stipulated that impeachment post departure was legitimate. This is noteworthy because for all the moral grandstanding against the evils of monarchism, the US constitution bases a lot of its organization and granular bureaucracies around its British precursor. Defenders of Trump try to point to the section on impeachment in the constitution not being definitive either way on the contentious matter, but its not mentioned because the notion of impeachment after vacating a position was largely acknowledged as so obviously within the legislature’s mandate due to that being the case in other countries that it didn’t need to be mentioned. Furthermore, one of the few details that the somewhat sparse and vague articles of impeachment make explicitly clear is that when the house votes to impeach, a trial must be convened immediately. No caveats, no asterisks, no conditional reprieves; it must happen, and it must be the senate that conducts it. While this is enough to render the unconstitutional argument void, it’s worth rearticulating another crucial and related point. Trump was impeached by the House Of Representatives while in office. That happened while he was still president, and it doesn’t matter if the subsequent trial happens after he’s gone, it just has to happen.
If one is feeling intellectually rigorous, or just wants to play devil’s advocate, you could consider the hypotheticals in the scenario where impeachment after a person left office actually isn’t constitutional. If a person could not be impeached after leaving office then at the onset of a career ending investigation, or the initial proceedings of impeachment, that person could simply resign and thusly be inoculated from such consequences, and then be free to run again at next opportunity. Under these contexts a president in their lame duck interregnum period, where they wait for their replacement who bested them in a preceding election to be inaugurated, could simply do whatever they want. Embezzle money, bribe officials, start wars, incite an insurrection and then simply run out the clock to avoid any consequences or recompense. In what universe does that make any kind of sense? Were impeachment off the table after a person leaves office, it would render the very concept and practice more or less toothless.
Even with these all of these points, there’s no argument against the notion of unconstitutionality more damning than the one republican senators tacitly made themselves in voting to acquit Trump- they voted. If the whole process were unconstitutional as they professed, then their only course of action in keeping with their assertion would have been to recuse themselves from the trial and boycott the vote. If they don’t have a legal mandate to conduct this trial then they don’t have a say either way if Trump is guilty or not. By voting not guilty, they are implying that yes, this legal question is within their constitutional mandate and obligation to take a position on. In doing just that they have revealed how craven and bad faith the question of constitutionality they put forth always was. Of course when, if ever, did a Trump supplicant ever offer any kind of argument in good faith? At least they are on brand. -Tristan
The Absolute Nerve Of These PS5 Scalpers
The gaming nerd in me may be but a frail spectre compared to what it once was in my youth, but that side of my constitution can still compel me to some righteous indignation every now and then. Such was the case when I learned of a recent Forbes interview with PS5 scalpers. Reading the article elaborates that many of these scalpers are unhappy with their public image. The cynical, opportunistic, and astonishingly greedy class of online saboteurs and digital hostage takers don’t like being treated as the leeches on society in which they are? Sad! Really, the hubris and delusional martyrdom from the individuals interviewed is pretty galling. The notion they that would dare try and gaslight the public with a counter narrative of their communal and market value and paint themselves as victims of undue animus is one of the stupider arguments I’ve heard in some time.
PS5 scalpers, like those of any high demand/ low quantity item (concert tickets, designer sneakers, other freshly launched counsels), use sophisticated bots to interact with retail websites, or as noted in the article sometimes even directly with servers themselves at lightening fast speeds. Designed to bypass security protocols that ensure they aren’t robots as well as the quantity per transaction limits, online scalpers can often snatch up the entire stock of a retailer’s allotment of something like PS5s before a human could ever possibly complete the transaction process. With the bot deploying scalpers- referred to as cook groups- hording much of the stock themselves, they then resell the PS5s to desperate would be owners at egregiously inflated costs, netting them a healthy profit in the process. If this all makes said scalpers sound like astoundingly greedy dick bags that contribute nothing to society, that’s correct! These people are parasites in a sense that you can almost construe as literal.
This assessment would appear to hurt the feelings of our poor misunderstood scalpers. The person interviewed, enigmatically going only by Jordan, claims his operation, like so many others was just a way to keep some fellow enthusiasts employed during these economically uncertain times. “I mainly just try and help others now, that’s all that really matters to me. The whole group came about near the start of the first UK lockdown and it makes me so happy that I can help people make some extra money for themselves”, he said, masquerading as some kind of economic Robin Hood. This is the classic just trying to make a buck argument; that all morally onerous conduct is secondary to pursuit of wealth. All of us are just trying to make a buck. Grocery store clerks, drug dealers, doctors, hit men. The idea that a person is successful in something doesn’t insulate them from the ethics of a situation. This isn’t complicated.
“There seems to be A LOT of bad press on this incredibly valuable industry and I do not feel that it is justified, all we are acting as is a middleman for limited quantity items”, is a thing this person actually said on record. Jordon’s economic analogies are preposterous, revealing either his annoyingly simplistic understanding of market infrastructure, or hoping that we are all that dumb. He argues that he and his cook groups are merely a middleman, just like a grocery store that sells products they buy from farms.
“Essentially every business resells their products. Tesco, for example, buys milk from farmers for 26p or so per litre and sells it on for upwards of 70p per litre. No one ever seems to complain to the extent as they are currently doing towards ourselves.”
Likening himself to the Tesco in his example is a clearly false equivalency. Something like a farm that produces eggs orients their entire business model to the production and quality of said product, not on actually distributing it. That’s where a grocery store comes in. They have the infrastructure by design and mission to get these products to the people. There is a market based logic in them buying from the farmers and then selling at a profit. In the case of the PS5 Sony would be equivalent to the farmer and online retailers the distribution networks; that’s the key point, all of these online retailers that are getting their stock swiped by scalpers already had the resources and infrastructure to distribute these products to consumers. There is no need whatsoever for an additional layer of middlemen as Jordan puts it to get these products to people. He’s not the distributor in this analogy, there already was one. His role is completely superfluous at best, and malignant at worst (and more accurately).
What’s more, by employing super human fast bots he prevents many people from simply purchasing these items, making them even harder to find and more expensive. He claims to be helping people find high demand/low quantity items but he is tautologically contributing to that scarcity, not helping alleviate it. Jordan claims to have received death threats from disaffected gamers within his community, which to be clear is absolutely never okay. No PS5 or any material item in the world is worth threatening a life over, but it’s also not worth gouging people over especially in a pandemic. Scalpers can screw many of us over just to make a buck as it were, or they can do something valuable and hope to rehabilitate their public image. They don’t get it both ways. -Tristan
Understanding The Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Putin Saga
Does the name Alexei Navalny ring a bell?
Don’t worry if it doesn’t, because up until a few days ago, I had no idea who he was either. But, as the week progressed, news of the man, and his saga, kept creeping into my news feed. Curiosity eventually took over and so I began to read up and investigate what was up. So let’s get started.
The basics
Russia is controlled by Vladimir Putin. You should know this. He’s been the President since 1999, well essentially. He stepped down for four years between 2008–2012 and became Prime Minister. He only did this because he had too, due to the Russian constitution limiting a President to only two consecutive terms. More on this in a sec.
The following comes from Masha Lipman, a Moscow-based political analyst who has written extensively on Putin’s regime. This is from an interview she gave last year to The New Yorker:
“One way to look at it is that, when Putin first came to power, he inherited Russia in a state of misery and turmoil. And he undertook to consolidate power in the Kremlin by weakening all these formally defined institutions of power. He brought back stability and he was able to deliver prosperity because of the high and rising price of oil. At that point, he was certainly concerned a great deal about being fully in control, and he was able to reinstate that control for himself. However, he was also concerned about things such as a national development, economic growth. And he was able to balance his top priority of political monopoly with socioeconomic goals of national development and economic growth.
In 2011 and 2012, the economic growth slowed down. He could no longer deliver as generously as he had before. And, also in 2011 and 2012, he faced mass public protests. That was the first important turning point, when, actually having faced the challenge of mass protests, he tilted the balance quite strongly in favor of control and away from national development and economic growth. And this tilt became even stronger in 2014, when he made arguably the riskiest move in his whole career and annexed Crimea. This came at a cost, of course, of Western sanctions and a slowdown of the economy. And again he sacrificed those goals for the sake of control within and the concept of sovereignty abroad, which Putin thinks should be totally unbound. Nobody should be able to dictate to Russia what to do. Nobody should be able to bend its will and to bend its policy.”
Fundamentally, Putin runs a pseudo dictatorship. He has full power, but wants to appear somewhat democratic. This whole saga begins and ends with him.
She continues with the following:
“Sadly, there’s been a great deal less freedom in Russia in the past few years and, recently, zero tolerance of his political opposition. The government has become more repressive. However, this has not turned Russia into a country where everyone lives in fear. I would say that, actually, compared to the Soviet period — and as a person of a certain age, I can compare it easily with the way it felt in the seventies and early eighties in Russia — I would say Russian people have a great deal more capacity for private pursuits of various sorts, as long as they are not political, in academics, in art, in literature. Politics, of course, is understood rather broadly in Russia. But I think there are more opportunities for consumption, for making money, for engaging in leisure, and favourite pastimes, etc. Foreign travel, of course, as well. So, in this sense, even critics of the regime would admit that the capacity for private pursuits remains fairly broad.
There’s reluctance to organize, as I mentioned earlier, around a political cause, a political leader, or form a political party or a movement. And this protest being limited to a particular cause or a locality is beneficial for the government. It is not true that the government doesn’t care what people feel or think. But the government certainly does not regard the people as a force to reckon with. A factor, yes, but not a force.”
This is where Navalny comes in. He’s Russia’s official opposition leader and a supreme troll of Putin. Usurping his grip on power is near impossible, but Navlny doesn’t balk at the challenge. He posts hilarious and extremely detailed videos on YouTube challenging Putin’s life and riches in cunning ways. His most recent video reached over 100 millions views. This video by DW News details many of the ills Navalny currently faces.
A bit of backstory.
As per the New York Times:
“Methodical and uncompromising, Mr. Navalny, 44, has spent almost half his life trying to unseat Mr. Putin. Often deemed rude, brusque and power hungry, even by other Kremlin critics, he persisted while other opposition activists retreated, emigrated, switched sides, went to prison or were killed. It increasingly became a deeply personal fight, with the stakes — for Mr. Navalny and his family, as well as for Mr. Putin and all of Russia — rising year by year.
But with his daring return to Russia after surviving a Kremlin-sanctioned assassination attempt last summer — and with a lengthy prison sentence all but certain — he has been transformed. No longer the gadfly, Mr. Navalny is now an international symbol of resistance to Mr. Putin and the Kremlin elite, the leader of a growing opposition movement.Mr. Navalny is now behind bars himself, having been sentenced this month to more than two years in prison for violating parole on a 2014 embezzlement conviction that Europe’s top human rights court ruled was politically motivated.”
This past Friday, Navalny was in court once more on charges of slandering a Russian Second World War veteran. It’s complete bogus. Nevertheless, his saga is gripping in that you want someone like Navalny to win and take down the feared President. His angle rings true in so many ways. Putin rules with his oligarchs — the rich barons who run Russia. Together they form and rule the country how they see fit. If opposed, you die or go to jail. It’s that simple. Rules don’t apply. As reported last year by The New Yorker:
“Last week, Vladimir Putin announced sweeping changes to the Russian constitution. Shortly afterward, the Prime Minister and his government resigned; there is no doubt that they did so at Putin’s behest. (On Monday, Putin formally submitted the constitutional changes and fired the country’s prosecutor general.)
Putin’s tenure as President is not supposed to extend beyond 2024, and the changes were widely seen as an attempt to extend his hold on power for as long as he deems fit.”
Navalny has no chance at power here. He knows this, but he soldiers on regardless. You have to respect that. He’ll either die in prison or he’ll be murdered one day. Putin always wins and that’s what’s scary here. How we continue to live in a world where dictators still reign free. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, Kim Jong-un of North Korea, Rodrigo Duterte of the Phillipines, Xi Jinping of China are all examples of how easily a country can lose its democracy to a demagogue. The US just went through their own version of this. Luckily they circumvented such a fate long term. January 6th is a testament to how close they came.
But to avoid is to understand and it’s why it’s good to know who Alexi Navalny is. Fear is what they want. Thankfully men like him are not afraid.
I count my lucky stars I live in Canada everyday. Trudeau’s a dork, but at least he’s chill. - Jamie
FLUX FIVE
This Week:
Marcel “Her’s” 2016 Marcel Single
David Axelrod “Everything Counts” 1974 Heavy Axe
Gotan Project “Celos” 2006 Lunatico
Hanna Cohen” Return Room 2019 Welcome Home
Jack Jacobs ”I Believe” 1976 I Believe It’s Alright Single
Enjoy! - Mick
Things From The Internet We Liked
Tha Wolf On Wall St Is Oddly Relaxing Hip Hop
With a name like that you might think the track by The God Fahim and Your Old Droog would be a furiously scathing indictment of American avarice and immiseration. While the subject matter is appropriately dire, its massaged tones and unperturbed style from the duo makes for an unexpectedly warm and cozy kind of vibe.
On Valentine’s Day, We Are All Tina Belcher
Nothing says romance better that Bob’s Burger’s resident awkward 13 year old Tina Belcher. What she lacks in grace, confidence, or even basic motor skills, she makes up with her staunch devotion to erotic fan fiction and her passion for whatever boy is closest to her. Today we celebrate Tina.
New Music From Ripley Johnson And His Solo Project Rose City Band
One of the best guitarists around, the frontman of widely revered psych bands Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo, Ripley is back with a third album in as many as years. Have a listen to his latest single. Record drops on May 22nd. Americana at its finest.
The Auteur Theory Isn’t A Good Enough Excuse For The Conduct Of Directors
In light of the recent cascade of new allegations of abuse against Joss Whedon, and the exhumation of previous ones, Courtney Enlow over at Gizmodo has a thoughtful and highly relevant article regarding the myth and manipulation behind Auteur Theory in cinema. For generations the idea that a film was the vision and product of a singular person’s ideas- usually of the director- laid the framework for absolving them of how they treated other members of their team to achieve it. This burden and abuse was more often than not aimed at female actors, and the article re-litigates and interrogates the pernicious actions of famous directors such as Kubrick and Hitchcock whose images have been sanitized and laundered through their own historical importance to shield them from the scrutiny of how they treated others on set. Highly recommend reading material.