On Saturday, veteran cable news host Greta Van Susteren tweeted, “A friend just called me and said, ‘have we hit rock bottom in nastiness of political discourse?’ I said ‘we can only hope…I hope there is not further down to go.’ :)” That struck me as an unrealistic hope at this moment, and I playfully responded, “Has Trump taken a vow of silence?” Van Susteren replied, “Apparently your tweet was likewise an effort to lower that ‘rock bottom’ :).” I took that smile emoji to signify this was no more than a gentle poke. I used to appear regularly on-air with her, and we’ve always been collegial. But her tweet suggested that holding Donald Trump responsible for the debasement of the political discourse and the ongoing threat to American democracy is contributing to the rock-bottoming of the United States. Was this another example of insidious both-siderism?

With Trump and his gang, there is no bottom. That became a cliché a long time ago. And we see it daily. The descent never stops. On Saturday night, Trump held another one of his worship-me cult rallies in Georgia. He acknowledged that after the election he pressured Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, to overturn the results. (No big deal, right?) And he exclaimed to the crowd of fanatics that the bogus review of the vote count in Arizona that was completed last week showed “we won…at a level that you wouldn’t believe.” This was yet another brazen Trump fabrication. The review (which did not follow standard procedures) was conducted by a company with no experience in election auditing that was handpicked by Republicans, and still it found no significant changes in the vote count. In fact, the firm ended up with a vote tally slightly more favorable to Joe Biden. Trump was conning his devotees, abusing their misplaced faith in him, further radicalizing them, and reinforcing the Big Lie that the election was stolen from him. They believed him. They cheered. With craven and cowardly Republican officials remaining silent, Trump is pushing millions to have no faith in American elections. At the same time, Republicans in states across the country are conspiring to seize greater political control of the systems for vote counting and certifying. (And some true conspiracy nutters are in charge.)

We are watching a slow-moving but steady assault on democracy. In plain sight. And the bottom hasn’t been reached.

Meanwhile, the Trump crazies keep getting crazier. I’m sorry but there is no polite way to say that. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) recently claimed that immediately after the election last November, someone from the “CIA fraud department” informed him that between 450,000 and 700,000 ballots in Arizona had been “altered.” Uh, there is no “CIA fraud department.” At the Trump rally, conspiracy theorist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) shouted that the Democrats “are communist,” and she asserted, “they’re forcing their communism through the corporations.” (Lenin would be proud.) Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser who’s become a QAnon favorite, pushed a similar line at a Christian right event, exclaiming, “We will never give this country up to communism. Never!” In another venue, Flynn stated that COVID-19 vaccinations were being added to salad dressing. “These people are seriously thinking about how to impose their will on us in our society and it has to stop,” he warned. (It’s possible Flynn had in mind a report that researchers at the University of California, Riverside, are studying whether it’s possible to use edible plants to deliver vaccinations. But you’d think that the former head of intelligence at the Pentagon would have better reading comprehension skills and be more careful with information.) And Eric Trump almost went full QAnon, signing up to give the keynote speech at an anti-vaccination conference next month featuring leading figures in the Q movement. (He told The Daily Beast he would only be there to talk “about the accomplishments of the 45th President of the United States.”) By the way, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) this weekend endorsed the so-called “Replacement Theory” promoted by white supremacists (Democrats are bringing undocumented immigrants into the United States to replace white people) and assailed the Anti-Defamation League as a “racist organization” for calling on Fox News to dismiss host Tucker Carlson for championing this noxious notion.

And there’s this: After the sham Arizona review’s findings were released, Jarome Bell, a retired Navy chief petty officer who is running for Congress in Virginia, called for executing Trump’s foes: “Audit all 50 states. Arrest all involved. Try all involved. Convict all involved. Execute all involved.”

Bell calls himself an “America-First, Conservative Republican.” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) endorsed him when he ran—and lost—in 2020. This year he’s received Michael Flynn’s stamp of approval. So far, there's no sign of any Republicans denouncing Bell for demanding these executions.

It is nearly impossible to keep up with the lunacy.

I would tell Van Susteren’s friend that the problem is not increasing nastiness; it is growing irrationality blended with creeping authoritarianism. Only one side violently attacked the Capitol and let Trump off the hook for inciting the insurrectionist riot. (And now we know that Trump had a full plan for overthrowing the election.) Only one side is threatening to undo future elections. Only one side is encouraging know-nothing resistance to vaccination and masking and creating a false frenzy over critical race theory. Only one side is racing to the bottom on all these fronts, and Trump is whipping the horses. The first step in confronting the dangerous situation at hand is to acknowledge all this. Even if that comes across as nasty.

My intent is not to pick on my old friend Greta. But the road to hell may well be paved with both-siderism—or a reluctance to identify the devil in the driver’s seat. An unwillingness to call out who is culpable for the current threat to American democracy will certainly speed our descent to the bottom…or whatever lies below it.

The Watch, Read, and Listen List

Worth. The last few weeks were full of reflections spurred by the 20th anniversary of 9/11. (I produced two.) That made it an appropriate time for Netflix to release Worth, a feature film chronicling the story of Kenneth Feinberg, the special master of the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund. Feinberg, a sharp and tad arrogant lawyer who was once chief of staff for Sen. Ted Kennedy, had the unenviable task of figuring out how much should be paid to the 7,000 or so 9/11 victims and their survivors. The heady question at the center of Feinberg’s task: how much is a life worth? That sounds like a philosophical query. But Feinberg, admirably played by Michael Keaton brandishing a Boston accent, must come up with concrete numbers. He’s a VSL man—that’s the abbreviation for a common term in this line of work: the value of a statistical life. Is the life of a window washer worth the same as that of a millionaire stockbroker? The film dramatizes this arduous task by placing Feinberg in a running duel with Charles Wolf, whose wife was lost in the attack. Stanley Tucci portrays Wolf, a calm but fierce advocate who cannot accept the algorithm-based formula Feinberg concocts and who organizes other survivors to oppose Feinberg’s fund. (If 80 percent of the claimants don’t join the fund, it won’t work, and a chaotic flood of drawn-out lawsuits will ensue.) The film’s driving force is this face-off between Feinberg and Wolf, each a thoughtful fellow and, coincidentally, an opera buff. It is a delight to watch Keaton and Tucci duel with each other, as the deadline for participation in the fund draws near. If you paid attention to this story back in the day—and if you didn’t—you’ll know the ending. But this is the sort of movie where the drama is not in the resolution but in how it is reached. No surprise, Feinberg comes to understand there’s more to life than VSL. That might sound a bit hackneyed. But Keaton makes watching Feinberg’s transformation worthwhile.

“Kidnapping, assassination and a London shoot-out: Inside the CIA's secret war plans against WikiLeaks.” If you missed this stunning scoop from Yahoo News reporters Zach Dorfman, Sean Naylor, and Michael Isikoff, click now. It’s a bizarre and disturbing account of how the CIA plotted to kidnap WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from Ecuador’s embassy in London after WikiLeaks in 2017 began publishing top-secret CIA hacking tools—collectively known as “Vault 7.” This was the largest data breach in CIA history, and it infuriated CIA chief Mike Pompeo. He wanted action, and the agency proceeded to concoct schemes to abduct Assange. The CIA even weighed whether to assassinate Assange. These plans included consideration of possible gun battles with Russian operatives whom the CIA thought were themselves conspiring to snatch Assange to bring him to Moscow. Though eventually nothing happened to Assange, it’s a wild tale of skulduggery. And there’s an odd bounce in all this. Donald Trump won the 2016 election—and Pompeo became CIA director—in part because of Moscow’s attack on the presidential contest. That clandestine operation was critically assisted by Assange’s WikiLeaks, which eagerly disseminated the politically sensitive material swiped from Democrats by the Kremlin’s hackers. And WikiLeaks did so in a manner intended to cause maximum harm to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. (Assange even pushed a phony cover story to protect the Kremlin—hinting that a murdered Democratic Party employee named Seth Rich, not the Russians, was the source of the pilfered Democratic material.) After the election, Trump should have sent Assange a fruit basket. Yet less than a year later, Assange was on the Trump team’s hit list. Literally.

While I have you, check out this strange story from my colleagues at Mother Jones that reports on how a former political operative for Sen. Rand Paul and one of Trump’s favorite historians allegedly funneled $25,000 from a Russian businessman into Trump’s 2016 campaign. The businessman apparently got a meeting with Trump in return. It’s just one more instance of a weird Russia connection for the Trump camp. The operative and the historian were indicted last week on charges of orchestrating an illegal campaign donation.

Speaking of Trump and Russia, if you need more proof irony is dead, here’s an email Trump’s campaign recently sent out:

Correction

In the last issue of This Land, I errantly noted that President Dwight Eisenhower overthrew the government of Iraq. Dumb mistake: it was Iran. It was another Republican president who created a mess in Iraq.

Read Previous Issues of This Land

September 25, 2021: What do Common, Leonard Bernstein, and Dwight Eisenhower have in common?; Dumbass Comment of the Week; the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

September 21, 2021: The Trump-Russia scandal denialists are taking another desperate stab at gaslighting you; Netflix’s The Chair nails the assignment; and more.

September 18, 2021: Hey Marco Rubio and Glenn Greenwald, this is the real problem with Milley, Trump, and nuclear weapons; Dumbass Comment of the Week (did Barack Obama really kill rock ’n’ roll with racial politics?); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™ (a new toy!); and more.

September 14, 2021: Will the new Bill-and-Monica television series spur a reappraisal of the Clinton scandal?; a stunning new Holocaust movie you can’t see—yet; one of the best articles ever about a family and its dog; and more.

September 11, 2021: How Trump’s conspiracy theories are killing people in West Virginia and elsewhere; more 9/11 reflections; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Special Confederacy Edition); a look at HBO’s very odd White Lotus; MoxieCam™; and more.

September 8, 2021: 9/11 plus 20: a remembrance and a thank-you; the chilling climate crisis warning in HBO’s Reminiscence; and more.

September 3, 2021: Texas shows how Trumpism has become fascistic vigilantism; Dumbass Comment of the Week; Rock ’n’ Roll Flashback (how I was popped by Iggy Pop); MoxieCam™; and more.

August 31, 2021: How a 1954 analysis perfectly explains today’s Republican Party; on his new album, James McMurtry captures the spirit of Warren Zevon; and more.

August 20, 2021: Yes, there are laws Trump may have broken while trying to overturn the election; Dumbass Comment of the Week (special Afghanistan edition); the Mailbag (should we report on Trump’s inane remarks?); MoxieCam™; and more.

August 16, 2021: The Afghanistan debacle: How Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden bamboozled the American public; the “Banana King” of Wellfleet, Massachusetts; and more.

Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at thisland@motherjones.com.