HONG KONG RIOTERS ARE NOT LES MISERABLES

     A mob of self-indulgent, selfie-taking Han millennials have traumatized the heretofore superior city of Hong Kong (known as the "SAR", or Special Administrative Region) with some two months of non-stop rioting and wreckage.  Almost instantly, clueless members of both U.S. parties in Congress finally found a cause they could join hands on:  glorifying and supporting these marauding Hong Kong hordes as though they were revolutionary heroes.  Naturally, it is a misguided, ill-informed cause.

     Whether out of sheer ignorance or a diffuse animosity towards China, the West's political and media elites have reflexively embraced Hong Kong's rioters as though they were the heroic, revolutionary waifs of Les Miserables.  Indeed, the Hong Kong herd has even gone so far as to sing -- laughably out of key -- that show's popular anthem, Can You Hear the People Sing, as though they were kindred spirits with Eponene and Marius.  As though.

                                                    

         Eponene was not among the Hong Kong millennial heroes

     Alas, the Hong Kong rioters' Western cheering section has overlooked or ignored a critical aspect of the now two-month long uprising -- i.e., it has all the features of an anarchist revolution.  Which is especially odd, since it takes place in one of the most thriving, prosperous, and attractive cities in the world.

     When an organized force engages in attacks on a government's  law enforcement personnel and their headquarters; smashes their way into the government's legislative headquarters to vandalize it; shuts down a city's subway and traffic systems, thus preventing the citizenry from getting to work or engaging in ordinary commercial activities; occupies the city's international airport, forcing the cancellation of flights for extended periods of time and subverting the city's economy; and seizes and beats journalists and other citizens on mere suspicion of surveillance activity; then that mobilized force is engaged in a form of revolution.  What color it takes is anyone's guess.

     If the Hong Kong marauders acknowledged their revolutionary status and accepted the consequences, it would be one thing.  On the contrary, however, they expect to be treated like a harmless band of frolicking youth, even while they engage in violent and grossly disruptive insurgency.

     The most famous Chinese revolutionary of them all, Mao Zedong himself, aptly explained:  "A revolution is not a dinner party."  But Chairman Mao's admonition is entirely lost on Hong Kong's generation of snowflake revolutionaries, who would have dropped out of the Long March even before it crossed the Hunan border.

     Thus, the Hong Kong insurgents whine and squeal like wounded sheep when the beleaguered police have the temerity to meet their violent operations with even minimal force. After a single demonstrator suffered a "severe eye injury" when the police fired a beanbag projectile -- quelle horreur! -- the insurgents wailed as though PLA tanks and mortars had opened indiscriminate fire on thousands.  Apparently, the rioters and their Western cheerleaders insist that not even minimal means of force can be used by police in responding to marauding mobs occupying the city's airport and lifeline to the world.  What do they expect, after all, canapes and cocktails?

     As this is written, there are some signs that the mass protest is losing momentum.  More and more ordinary Hong Kong citizens are insisting that "enough is enough."  Whether the protests will whither away any time soon, however, remains to be seen.  

     Although protest leaders have offered a tepid apology for the disastrous consequences of the airport seizure, they continue to insist that the City must accede to their primary demands, including: the removal of Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam; the release and exoneration of all protesters arrested for criminal offenses; an investigation of the police response to the uprising (but not the uprising itself!); and a repudiation of the factual declarations that the demonstrators engaged in "riots."

     Inasmuch as the Hong Kong government (not to mention Beijing) will certainly continue to reject these unrealistic demands, continued demonstrations can be expected to plague Hong Kong.  The key question is whether the insurgents now recognize that they must tone down their demonstrations to a level that is tolerable to both the SAR and Beijing, not to mention ordinary Hong Kong citizens.

     Heretofore, Xi Jinping has deemed it prudent to withhold direct intervention by the PLA or other mainland forces, in recognition of the howls of outrage that would issue from the U.S., UK, and other Western governments and media if such action occurs.  Nonetheless, it is doubtful that Xi's patience is inexhaustible.  

     The severe chaos and lawlessness transpiring in Hong Kong -- which is after all part of China -- do not reflect well on Xi's image as a forceful Helmsman (and successor to Mao) in Beijing.  There might well be hard-liners on the Standing Committee of the Politburo, or in the PLA, who are looking over Xi's shoulder with repressed frustration.  Thus, continued extreme provocation by the insurgents in Hong Kong might yet force Xi's hand towards intervention as a matter of political self-preservation.

     Western governments, and U.S. congressmen, seemingly bent on provoking China with ill-considered declarations of support for continued insurgency, would do well to consider the potentially disastrous consequences of their feckless grandstanding.

     Before the recent disruptions, Hong Kong has enjoyed the reputation of one of the most prosperous, efficient, and advanced cities in the world.  It ranks seventh in the world, for example, in Human Development Index (HDI), compared to No. 13 for the U.S.  Its economy has been ranked as the most free and competitive in the world.  It ranks at or near the top in such worldwide statistical indices as STEM scores, IQ averages, public safety, and life expectancy.

     This is the "oppressive" environment that the heroic Hong Kong militants are recklessly subverting with their prolonged campaign of disruption and defiance.  

     Meanwhile, posturing U.S. politicians encourage the demonstrators in expanding their objectives from the reasonable goal of spiking the extradition legislation (which they have accomplished) to the wholesale reformation of the Hong Kong government into a Western-style democracy.  However desirable that might be in theory, it is simply unfeasible under current realities.  Indeed, pushing for such unrealistic demands may result in less, rather than more, freedom for the people of Hong Kong.

     Hong Kong is part of China as a matter of national sovereignty.  China, while no longer a genuinely communist state, retains a totalitarian political system even while it embraces a mixed economic system with a heavy dose of capitalism.  Yet China has heretofore tolerated a degree of personal, economic, and cultural freedom in Hong Kong that exceeds not only that allowed in Mainland China but, indeed, in most countries in the world.  The excesses of the Hong Kong millennial mobs run the risk of undermining, rather than expanding, Hong Kong's overall prosperity and personal (if not political) freedoms.

     Addendum:  A report just published by Reuters demonstrates by its own terms that the establishment Western media is publishing fake news to create the mythology that the Hong Kong marauders have the overwhelming backing of HK citizens.  The report is headlined:  "Hong Kongers rally against government under stormy skies." [emphasis added]  But if one reads to the end, the story itself confirms instead that a far larger crowd (either 476,000 (claimed) or 108,000 (police est.) gathered to show support for the SAR government and the police than gathered to support the millennials continuing protest against the government (either 22,000 (claimed) or 8,300 (police est.).  This is merely one of countless stories demonstrating that the mainstream western media are skewing and twisting this story to portray the insurgent mobs as the virtuous voice of the Hong Kong people overall, while portraying the admirably restrained police response as though it were the Czar's dragoons crushing the innocent starving masses with sabres in a scene from Dr. Zhivago.  It is an open question whether the PRC-controlled outlets like People's Daily and Xinhua might actually be providing more accurate coverage on this story than the Western media.

KAREN CARPENTER'S POSTHUMOUS CONQUEST OF CHINA

           SR has devoted many posts to documenting the undervalued legacy of the Carpenters, the sibling musical duo (Karen and Richard) who were the leading American pop recording artists of the 1970's -- and, during the period of 1973-75, probably the most successful pop/rock recording artists in the world.  Apart from the fact that the Carpenters' story is simply a significant piece of 20th Century cultural history, the derogatory treatment of their music and legacy by elements of America's cultural cognoscenti (e.g., the group's perverse exclusion from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) has motivated SR to refute the false assumptions and biases behind that mistreatment.

            An ironic aspect of this story is the glaring contrast between the disparaging treatment of the Carpenters by critics and hipsters in the U.S., even while the duo and their music have enjoyed sustained popularity and great stature on the global level. 

            The Carpenters ' legacy remains especially strong in Japan and the United Kingdom (the second and third largest music markets in the world), where their albums have enjoyed strong sales well into the 21^st century and where a remarkably large number of television documentaries (on both BBC and NHK) have been devoted to Richard and Karen's musical history, especially the latter.  As previously documented here, the Carpenters' enduring popularity is also particularly strong in the countries of East Asia, most notably the Philippines, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, and, as we elaborate below, the People's Republic of China (PRC).

            Further evidence of the Carpenters' sustained global impact is found in albums devoted to their music by contemporary artists from all points of the globe.  Dami Im, the Korean-born Australian sensation of the 2016 Eurovision song contest, recorded an album aptly entitled "Classic Carpenters," which reached No. 3 on the Aussie charts and sold strongly in South Korea as well.  In Brazil, popular songstress Isabella Taviani released a tribute album called "Carpenters Avenue" in 2016.  And in 2009, a cohort of top Japanese pop/rock artists recorded yet another Carpenters' tribute album called "Yesterday Once More – Tribute to the Carpenters."

            Yet the most extraordinary and significant example of the Carpenters' international impact is found in, of all places, the People's Republic of China.

                                             

       

     Deng opened the airwaves and Karen's voice came floating into China

          SR has previously explored this subject.  It initially drew our attention as something of a piquant cultural anomaly.  Who would imagine, after all, that the pop tunes produced by a pair of unsophisticated Southern California suburban siblings in the 1970's would come to captivate the masses in a country and a culture literally world's away from Downey, California?  Yet that is exactly what occurred, in the midst of China's emergence from the cultural dark ages of the Maoist Era and its soul-crushing Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

            Unfortunately, the paucity of hard data on internal developments in China during the immediate post-Maoist era -- let alone data on an esoteric topic like the introduction of Western popular music -- has made it difficult to document the impact of the Carpenters music in China with much specificity.  Because SR believes that impact has genuine historical and cultural significance – after all, reliable Chinese sources have gone so far as to assert that "Karen Carpenter was the beginning of the [cultural] opening of China" – this post attempts to document Karen and the Carpenters' musical conquest of the world's largest nation with the best available information (mostly culled from Internet postings). 

            This extensive information establishes that the Carpenters, and especially their global hit song, "Yesterday Once More," were the most popular and influential sources of Western music in China for a period of at least 25 years – i.e., roughly 1985 to 2010.  Outlined below is a chronological documentation of the background and progression of this remarkable cross-cultural phenomenon, and its surprising effect on the world's largest nation.

      Karen Carpenter sings "Yesterday Once More" at Tokyo's Budokan, 1974

1973 – Hits in Hong Kong

            By 1973, the Carpenters were firmly established as pop superstars, and their popularity had extended internationally to such countries as the UK, Japan, and Australia.  In that same year, the Carpenters achieved an enormous breakthrough in several East Asian markets, notably Malaysia, Singapore, and especially Hong Kong.  As documented in Billboard magazine's periodic listing of international pop charts, no less than three Carpenters' singles reached No. 1 on the Hong Kong hit parade in 1973:  I Won't Last a Day Without You (No. 1 for 6 weeks!); Sing; and Yesterday Once More.  At that time, Hong Kong was still a British Crown Colony and thus not part of Chinese sovereignty.  Nonetheless, its population was overwhelmingly Chinese.  It is fair to say that the Carpenters' early success in Hong Kong presaged their subsequent popularity in Mainland China years later.

1976 – End of the Cultural Revolution and Death of Mao

            Starting around 1966, China had been immersed in the political, social, and cultural madness of Mao Zedong's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR).  While hordes of fanatical Red Guards ran rampant brandishing Mao's Little Red Book, much of the nation was forcibly preoccupied with abject subservience to the demands of the Maoists as a matter of mere survival.  The only forms of music or other entertainment allowed were those which extolled Maoism and the GPCR, such as the militant anthem, "The East is Red," or the "Communist Internationale."  Under the iron hand of Mao's wife and PRC cultural dictator, Jiang Qing, China was purged of all Western cultural influences, including even classical music.

            By 1976, the GPCR had run its course, and Jiang Qing and her leading GPCR cohorts (notoriously known as "The Gang of Four") were themselves purged.  The ban on Western classical music was lifted, although it would be years (see below) before China's gates were opened wider to accept various forms of contemporary and popular Western music.

            1976 also saw the death of Chairman Mao himself, which would clear the way for a more pragmatic and permissive group of leaders to assume power in China.

1978-1982:  The Reforms of Deng Xiaoping.

            Around 1978, the historical Chinese pragmatist, Deng Xiaoping, began to assume de facto leadership of the PRC (he never assumed the highest titular leadership posts, but preferred to lead from the background).  Under Deng's pragmatic reform programs, the totalitarian control of all aspects of life imposed by Mao was substantially reduced.  In particular, communist economic doctrine was jettisoned in favor of a system that not only permitted, but encouraged, a considerable amount of capitalism, free enterprise, and profit-seeking.  Although Deng's reforms did not extend to the purely political realm (i.e., China remained a strictly one-party state), they did abandon the Maoist's harsh restrictions on the entry of Western culture, including popular music.  It is evident, however, that most Western music probably entered China through unofficial, irregular back-channels, rather than through orthodox commercial transactions.

1983:  The Untimely Death of Karen Carpenter.

            After a lengthy struggle with the then little-known eating disorder, anorexia nervosa, Karen Carpenter died on February 4, 1983.  Among the many tragic aspects of Karen's early death was that she never lived to realize the enormous global impact of the beautiful music that she and her brother, Richard, had given the world.

               

1984:  Success of YOM Album in Hong Kong and first infiltration into Mainland China; UK/PRC Agreement for Reversion of Hong Kong

                In October, 1984, A&M Records released a commemorative 2-disc Carpenters album entitled "Yesterday Once More," after the hit single of that name that was also the lead-off song on the album.  The album was an international success.  As shown on Wikipedia's entry on the album, it was certified Platinum in the U.S., Japan, the UK, and, curiously, "China."  The source listed for the Platinum certification in China was BPI, the British Phonographic Industry.  It is highly doubtful, however, that BPI would be in any position to certify sales of the YOM album in China itself;  in 1984, it is highly doubtful that there were regular commercial sales of Western recordings in China at all, let alone any systematic tracking or ranking of such sales.  It is pretty clear, therefore, that BPI's reference to the Platinum certification of YOM for "China" really referred to Hong Kong, which was then still a British Colony.

            Nonetheless, it is quite probable that the popularity of the YOM album in Hong Kong led to its infiltration into Mainland China, which was then lowering the barriers to such foreign cultural imports.  This proposition is reinforced by the appearance of reports (see below) that the Carpenters' music, and YOM in particular, had achieved great popularity in Mainland China by the mid-1980's, i.e., around 1985.

            A related major event of 1984 was the Sino-UK Joint Declaration, whereby the UK committed to the reversion of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty by 1997.  The inescapable reality of Hong Kong's forthcoming reversion to China undoubtedly opened the door to increased interchange of commerce, products, and culture (including musical recordings) between Hong Kong and the PRC.

1985/Mid-1980's:  Carpenters and YOM lead Western songs gaining popularity in China.

            An article published in the Shanghai Star in 2002, discussing the mid-1980's period when Western music was just gaining increased entry into China, reported as follows:

                        "The first foreign voice that captivated the Chinese audience was Karen Carpenter.  College students recorded her songs from one tape to another, spreading her voice further and further.  A widely-used English language teaching textbook even took one of her songs as a listening text."  Pop Rhythm Rolls On, Shanghai Star (Jan 3, 2002) [emphasis added].

            In 1988, an article posted on the LAT web archive stated:    "[In China], John Denver and Karen Carpenter are bigger stars than the Rolling Stones."  P. Goldstein, China's Age of Innocence in Rock (Nov. 13, 1988).

            An article published in 2004 in the Chinese Business Newspaper Weekend Standard contained an especially authoritative testimonial to the origins of the Carpenters' (especially Karen's) popularity in China.  The article opened with the following:

                        "If I were a Carpenter I'd be bigger than the Beatles in China.   Way bigger. . . .  When I'm on the mainland not a day goes by that I don't hear some version of Yesterday Once More, or as most Chinese seem to call it, 'Sha-la-la,' in reference to the chorus."

            The article's author was an American cynic who was completely puzzled by the Carpenters' popularity, so he consulted a knowledgeable Chinese-American musician and reporter named Kaiser Kuo, an expert on (and participant in) the growth of modern Western music in China.  Mr. Kuo completely demolished the author's anti-Carpenter assumptions, explaining as follows:

                        "[The Carpenters] dwarf the Beatles in popularity.  Part of it is simply that The Carpenters Greatest Hits was about all there was back then. . . . That and some old John Denver that they could legally distribute.

                        "Yesterday Once More is the first tune on that compilation, and while Carpenters connoisseurs might prefer Rainy Days and Mondays or Superstar, that was the tune that really stuck with people.

                        "That aside, people in China uniformly love Karen's deep, sultry voice.  It stood out then and stands out now as something totally unlike the vocal stylings of any Chinese singer.  The very simple melodies are also appealing.  My very cool, very hip friends who listen to metal, to hardcore hip-hop, to whatever, still profess a love for the Carpenters and can't imagine that they're sort of a joke to most Westerners."  Every sha-la-la-la Still Grinds, Weekend Standard (Nov. 6-7, 2004) [emphasis added].

            A 2008 article by a UC Irvine professor named Jeffrey Wesserstrom outlined his Top Five List of what he considered the "Weirdest Rock Music Moments with Chinese Characteristics."  No. 2 on this list was, "The Carpenters hit it big in China in the mid-1980's," as to which he noted, "[T]heir music seems to have had even greater staying power than [John] Denver's."  (Author's Note:  John Denver is generally recognized, along with the Carpenters, as the most popular Western recording artists in China during the introductory post-Maoist years.)

1998:  Newsweek's Shanghai article; remarkable testimony of Yu Lei.

            In 1998, Newsweek magazine published an article entitle The Rebirth of Shanghai as part of its report on "The New China."  The article featured the remarks of one Yu Lei, who was then a 29-year-old reporter for the Shanghai Star.  Mr. Yu's recollections are worth recording at some length:

                        "When he [Mr. Yu] was a kid, he recalls, Western arts and media were still banned in China, so one of his teachers recorded an American song off the shortwave radio.  Huddling the students behind closed doors, and warning them not to tell anyone, the teacher wrote the lyrics on the blackboard and taught the class to sing along.  It was dangerously exciting, the lure of forbidden fruit.  But what struck Yu most was the sweetness of the melody, the purity of the singer's voice.  The singer was Karen Carpenter, who shortly became one of the first Western performers sanctioned in China.  Years later, as the Filipino band at the Gap shinga-linga-lings into the Carpenters' Yesterday Once More, Yu can still hear the sweet strains of revolution.  Karen Carpenter, he declares, "was the beginning of the opening of China."

            Jan. 14, 1998:  A Chinese internet posting of this date lists YOM as the No. 1 all-time Western song in China.  Numerous other unofficial internet postings by Chinese bloggers similarly list YOM as the No. 1 English language song favored by the Chinese.  E.g., Pa Mak Recommended: the most classic of Ten English Language Songs (March 23, 2014); Top 10 English Songs favored by Chinese (July 7, 2009).

2003:  Karen Carpenter "is insanely popular" in China.

            An Internet blog posted in September 2003, "The Road to China, Ch. 4, Moon Festival," included the following commentary on the state of then contemporary music trends in China:

                        "[T]he airwaves here are filled with a mix of classical and modern Chinese music, all of which, as a whole, is the most beautiful music one can hear on any continent.  About the only American artists that I encounter consistently are the Back Street Boys, N Sync, and Karen Carpenter (who is insanely popular even now).  [emphasis added].

2004:  Chinese music-lovers "revere the Carpenters."

            Novelist Donald Gallinger noted as follows in an October, 2004, journal entry, included in his article, Memoirs of China:  The Chinese and Karen Carpenter (Apr. 4, 2009):

                        "The Chinese people all know Western pop music.  But they particularly revere the Carpenters and it is not unusual to hear 'Yesterday Once More' booming out of the shopping mall sound systems.  I cannot tell you the number of times I've heard that song swirling around restaurants and bars. . . . [I]t is also not unusual for Chinese youth to begin singing along with the Carpenters."

2005:  YOM is Embedded in Everyday Chinese Cultural References

            A report on the women's badminton competition in China's 10^th National Games in the Oct. 8, 2005, edition of Xinhuanet (Kunshan, East China), illustrates how YOM is so well known in China that reporters assume that casual references to the song will be immediately understood by Chinese readers.  The report included the following such references:  "If Hunan wins over Guangdong, it could only remind people of Karen Carpenter's famous song 'Yesterday Once More.' . . . The biggest hurdle preventing Hunan singing 'Yesterday Once More' happily would be the question of injuries on 'old' top players."

2007:  The China Drive Survey; a Critical Cynic's Astonishment

            In 2007, the popular Chinese radio station China Drive conducted a survey asking listeners to name the first foreign song they recall hearing in China.  Well over 50% of the listeners responded that the Carpenters' Yesterday Once More was that song.  China has a population of about 1.4 billion people.  If the China Drive survey was in any way representative of the nation, the number of Chinese people who have heard and recalled YOM is indeed enormous.

            That same year, an anti-Carpenter cynic who taught college classes in China ruefully acknowledged the Carpenters' enormous popularity there, even while deploring it.  The Country That Taste Forgot (Internet blog, March 30, 2007).  The author reported that YOM, John Denver's Country Roads, and the Eagles' Hotel California were the most popular songs in China; that his students loved YOM; and that the Carpenters' music was ubiquitous in the town where he taught.

2009:  The Carpenters are revered in Mainland China.

            An American blogger in Beijing, A. E. Perkins, confirmed the Carpenters' continued popularity and stature in China some 25 years after their music's initial entry.  A. E. Perkins, China and the Carpenters, Beijing Review (Oct. 15, 2009).  As Perkins wrote:

                        "If there is something about mainland China which I never expected before, and absolutely amazes me now, it is the connection its citizens have with the music of the Carpenters. . . .  I encounter evidence almost every day that mainland Chinese have a special place in their minds and hearts for Richard and Karen Carpenter."

            Noting that the Carpenters originally became the top-selling musical act in the U.S. back in the 1970s, Perkins added:  "That makes it all the more remarkable that they are so revered in mainland China."

2010:  Carpenters Tribute Band is Hottest Ticket in Beijing and Shanghai.

                                                                             

   Laurie Briggs of the Karpenters tribute band that drew huge crowds in China                                     
            So-called tribute bands, who give concerts attempting to duplicate or approximate the sound and look of legendary rock bands of the past, have enjoyed considerable success in the U.S., the UK, Canada, and various countries in East Asia.  There have been quite a few Carpenters tribute bands in recent years, probably the most prominent of which is a UK-based group styling themselves The Karpenters.  One internet blog reported as follows on the enormous success of this group's Carpenters tribute shows in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, where they reportedly outdrew Whitney Houston.  Tribute Act are Big Stars in China (March 1, 2010):

                        "[I]t has taken just one gig to make the Karpenters hot property with the Chinese public.  Such is the clamor in the Far East for tickets to see Laurie Briggs perform as her alter-ego Karen Carpenter, the Pudsey-born singer is now out-selling Whitney Houston.

                        "Laurie, along with Jason Scott, aka Richard Carpenter, and six other members of the act will sell out massive venues in the country's major cities.  They fly out in April for a ten-date televised tour which takes them to Beijing and Shanghai.

                        "Their big break comes after they played at the Hong Kong Convention Center in November to a capacity 5,500 audience – a feat U.S. diva Whitney Houston could not get near.  Laurie told the YEP:  'We were told that Whitney struggled to sell half as many tickets when she performed at the same venue. . . .  It just goes to show how much the people over there love the Carpenters that a tribute act can attract so much attention.

                        "The Carpenters have long been revered by people of all ages in China and the Far East."

            Another contemporaneous internet report confirmed the enormous success of this same Carpenters tribute band and the Carpenters continuing popularity in China (Gig of the Year, Froog's Blog (May 12, 2010; emphasis in original):

                        "Long ago, I remarked upon this country's strange obsession with Karen Carpenter.  She was one of only a handful of Western music stars to get any exposure in China in the 1970s, and is probably the one most fondly revered to this day (it's a tossup between her and John Denver).  Hence, the May Day visit to Beijing of English cover band The Karpenters was the most anticipated gig of the year (decade, millennium) for many local music fans, and the tickets were therefore stratospherically expensive."

2013:  YOM Still on Top.

            An Internet posting of Feb. 19, 2013, by one Yansong Sun, discussed the remarkable continued popularity in China of John Denver's "Country Roads" and the Eagles' "Hotel California."  He then clarified, however, that YOM (along with "Say You, Say Me") was even more popular and remained one of the two "most popular English songs in China."

2015:  Carpenters and the Terracotta Warriors in Xi'An.

            Author Charles Cottle provides a fitting conclusion for this history with an article recording his 2015  visit to Xi'An in Central China to see the famous Terracotta Warriors statues (some 8,000 of them!).  C. Cottle, Karen Carpenter and the Terracotta Warriors, Century Life (Internet blog, Aug. 8, 2015).  He records his experience having breakfast at his Xi'An hotel when the staff thoughtfully turned on some background music they thought he would enjoy – none other than the Carpenters' YOM.  Cottle recalled:

                        "On hearing Karen Carpenter sing these lyrics, I sat transfixed.

                        "Several years have passed since I sat atop that hotel listening to Karen Carpenter sing while I gazed over the city of Xi'An.  Yet the passage of time has not erased the connection between her and the terracotta warriors.  If I think of her, I think of them.  In my mind they are forever linked.  And whenever I see images of the cold-faced, yet life-like, terracotta warriors, I am immediately reminded of the sweet, sweet voice of Karen Carpenter."

                                                ***

          There are many more similar reports and stories documenting the story of the Carpenters musical "conquest" of China, but the reader has probably seen enough.  Although much of the evidence is informal and unofficial, the diversity and broad time-range of these testimonials confirm the fact:  the Carpenters' music, particularly YOM, was the most popular and influential pop music in the world's largest nation during a period of roughly 25 years (1985-2010) -- i.e., the period when Western music gained a foothold in China in the wake of the repressive Maoist era.

          Some may consider all this merely esoteric cultural trivia, of no great significance.  Others, however, may agree with SR that the impact of the Carpenters' music in China was indeed quite significant for many reasons, including the following:

          1.  It brought an infusion of refreshing musical sunshine to millions of people who had lived under the stifling cloud of Maoist repression for some 50 years.

          2.  It made a notable contribution to the overall liberalizing influence of Western culture that helped nudge China in the direction of a more open and permissive society (outside the strictly political realm).

          3.  It supports the proposition that music which is tuneful, melodious, and harmonic, especially when sung by an especially beautiful voice, has greater universal appeal across national, linguistic, and cultural barriers than fad or esoteric "message" music (like rap, grunge, or acid rock), the appeal of which is often "lost in translation."

          4.  It reinforces the Carpenters' status as one of the most popular and influential musical groups of the 20th Century on the global or international level.

           

THE RACIAL RADICALISM OF KAMALA HARRIS

                It was only a matter of time before the legion of leftist lunatics seeking the Democrat presidential nomination was divided between front-runners and laggards by political, financial, and media realities. 

                Although some 22 or 23 motley candidates remain in technical contention, the polls, media coverage, and contribution data seem to have reduced the field even at this early stage to four realistic leading candidates:  Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Bernie Sanders.  Some would add the Rainbow Mayor of embattled South Bend, Peter Buttigieg, but he is now much closer to the hapless 2 percenters in the polls (he's at about 5% nationally) than he is to the four leaders (who range from three now clustered at 12-15% to leader Biden at 29%).  Such early polls can be sharply misleading if relied upon for precise outcome projections, of course, but here we are only talking about a gross division between the broad categories of leaders and laggards.

                Beyond this general division, however, influential elements of the Democrat-Left and its mainstream media arm seem to have settled upon one candidate in particular as their early favorite, despite Biden's lead in the polls:  Senator Kamala Harris of California.  Even some influential Republicans, like ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, have touted Harris as the likely Democrat nominee.

                In a sane and sensible political environment, Harris would hardly seem to have the right stuff for a front-running presidential candidate.  On the national stage, she has little to show in terms of experience or accomplishment:  Barely two years of utterly undistinguished service as a U.S. Senator.  Period.  No significant legislation or successful policy initiative bears her name, and whatever senatorial prominence she had gained before seeking the presidency derived solely from her obnoxious, ill-tempered, and duplicitous outbursts in contentious committee hearings. 

                                                                         

                                                                                     lousalvador.home.blog
         Harris is closer to Al Sharpton than she is to reasonable positions on race.

                Similarly, her earlier service as Attorney General of California was at best undistinguished and at worst inept and dishonest.  Among other derelictions, she refused to take any position on a package of major criminal sentencing-reform initiatives which a strong attorney general would have pounced upon, one way or the other; she notoriously failed to prosecute Steve Mnuchin's California bank, OneWest, despite evidence "suggestive of widespread misconduct," while later accepting Mnuchin's donations to her senatorial campaign; and she arrogantly refused to defend Proposition 8, a 2008 ballot measure resoundingly approved by California voters affirming that marriage is solely between a man and a woman, leaving the measure undefended in federal court and effectively overriding a crucially important vote of the people.

                But actual accomplishments and effective leadership experience are not the qualities the Democrat Left favors in seeking presidential candidates.  If they were, Barack Obama would not have been the Democrats' nominee in 2008, when his sparse qualifications were eerily similar to those now presented by Kamala Harris. 

                Rather, today's Democrats are obsessed with considerations of race, gender, leftist ideology, and rabid hostility towards President Trump and his supporters in choosing their leaders.  Moreover, the Democrats have abandoned any reliance upon the ameliorating qualities of tactful charm and conciliatory style (as opposed to substance) that enabled Obama to conceal his leftist orientation from the clueless middle of the electorate in 2008 and 2012.  Current candidates like Harris, Warren, and Sanders have made it clear they are in no mood to charm or conciliate the roughly one-half of America's populace who support President Trump.  Quite the contrary.

                In this environment, the ascendancy of Kamala Harris as the anointed favorite of the Democrat and Media Left seems almost inevitable.  She is a photogenic female who flies the colors of black ethnicity, even though she is more Asiatic Indian than Black American (her father descends from Jamaican Blacks and her mother from Asiatic Indians).  This ethnic ambiguity does not seem to trouble genuine Black Americans from considering her one of their own – although the jury is still out on that --  while it enables her to extend her minority/ethnic appeal to South Asian-Americans. 

                Thus, Harris punches both the women's and minority cards.  This in itself gives her near-decisive advantages over the white male and white female candidates, not to mention over the single significant black male candidate, Senator  Booker of New Jersey.  Further, Harris fervidly endorses all the Left's favored social and sexual issues, like unlimited abortion, homosexual predominance, and the subordination of female privacy and modesty to the demands of trans-sexual intruders (i.e., she supports the radical legislation making sex or gender a matter of personal election, rather than biological reality, for purposes of federal law).  She also advocates the legalization of prostitution.

                But for whatever reason, powerful elements of the Democratic establishment, its hard-left political base, and especially the leftist mainstream media seem determined to anoint Sen. Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee -- and then assure her election "by all means necessary."

                If this grim prospect doesn't shock and infuriate all sane and sensible Americans, it should.  Because Kamala Harris, plain and simple, is a radical, afro-racist, anti-white, left-wing virago.  She should be allowed no closer to the presidency than earth is to the Crab Nebula.

                Harris's obsession with radical race-based programs and policies that benefit blacks and penalize whites (and in some cases Hispanics and East Asians as well) is open, unambiguous, and utterly unapologetic.

                She apparently believes that her race-focused approach will ingratiate her with the Democrat-Left base, yet fail to offend the moderates and independents needed to win a general election.  She is probably right on the former point, but the latter is dubious.  If not, we are in for difficult times indeed.

                Harris was one of the first and foremost of the Democrat candidates to openly support the spiteful, divisive, outdated, and obscenely unfair proposal of so-called economic reparations for slavery.  A reparations program for a slavery system that the White Americans of the Union dismantled with their blood, sweat, and treasury over 150 years ago would be unworkable, dysfunctional, unjust, and racially incendiary.  That is why even liberal advocates of race-based remedies (like President Obama) rejected reparations long ago as a hopelessly unworkable delusion – until its recent resurrection from the policy graveyard by afro-racist radicals and, subsequently, by pandering presidential candidates like Kamala Harris.

                Harris doesn't care that such reparations would forcibly transfer money (via taxes) from lower- and middle-class whites, Hispanics, and East Asians who had nothing to do with slavery to wealthy blacks (like herself) who were born a century or more after its abolition.  Millions of the putative black recipients of reparations have thrived and prospered in a legal and governmental system so far removed from slavery that blacks have long been systematically favored over whites under affirmative action and preference programs governing employment, education, housing, and extension of credit.  Harris completely discounts over fifty years of such government preferences and multi-billion-dollar grant and subsidy programs that have already benefitted millions of blacks (including those descended from slaves) without resorting to the unworkable and divisive procedures that would be entailed by a vindictive reparations program.

                As though her advocacy of reparations were not radical enough, Senator Harris has further proposed the resurrection of the insidious school busing programs that most Americans (blacks included) had considered rightfully dead and buried. 

                Harris brought the moribund busing issue back to life with a cheap shot against Mr. Biden in the Democratic debate, where she sanctimoniously portrayed herself as some kind of California Rosa Parks, bravely integrating segregated schools in, of all places, Berkeley, California.  The leftist media and political establishment swooned and gave her great plaudits for this subterfuge, when she should have been sharply condemned for her bald-faced fraud and hypocrisy.  The Berkeley schools were simply not segregated, and Ms. Harris' bus rides to a good public school had all the danger and drama of a suburban princess riding her bus to the Montessori School.

                Apart from falsely portraying herself as a brave heroine of desegregation, Harris's support for forcibly busing children from their natural neighborhood schools into distant and sometimes dangerous schools represents another example of her brazenly wrong-headed anti-white ideology.  Until extreme racial pandering gained prominence in the current democrat presidential campaigns, forced busing to achieve some desired level of racial balancing had been decisively rejected (and largely forgotten) not only by politicians, courts, and policymakers but also by both white and black parents.  It is a measure of her racial radicalism that Kamala Harris would advocate the resurrection of such a toxic and divisive policy, with reckless disregard for its divisive and damaging consequences.

                Not content with her incendiary advocacy of renewed racial busing, Harris further upped the racial ante by proposing an enormous, budget-busting program of race-based housing subsidies for blacks.  Specifically, Harris proposes to spend $100 billion of taxpayer funds to help black families buy the homes of their choice.  See https://www.bizpacreview.com/2019/07/07/kamala-harris-bribes-black-voters-100-billion-in-taxpayer-money-for-housing-772368. 

                As Harris explained her plan:  "After generations of discrimination, it’s time to give Black families a real shot at homeownership. . . . If we eliminate racial wealth disparities in homeownership rates, median Black wealth would grow $32,113 per household, and the wealth gap between Black and white households would shrink 31%.”  In fact, the federal government has been discriminating in favor of blacks in housing policy for decades, not the other way around.  It was ill-conceived government programs to eliminate minimal credit standards – e.g., through the Community Reinvestment Act -- to facilitate black home ownership that were largely responsible for the disastrous housing and financial bubble crisis of 2008-09.  Now Harris wants to do it all again, at catastrophic cost to taxpayers and the economcy, all in furtherance of her egregious political pandering to black democrats and their leftist cheerleaders.

                Even while this post was being written, Harris has proposed yet another multi-billion dollar race-based program in her seemingly inexhaustible pandering to black voters and the guilt-ridden, self-hating white leftists.  As though trillions for reparations and $100 billion for black housing were not enough extravagance, Harris now promises to invest an additional $60 billion in historically black colleges (HBC's) – schools that already receive an enormous amount of federal financial support even while they often discriminate against non-blacks.  But Harris was still not done spending your money to buy herself more votes.  Before the ink was dry on her HBC give-away plan, she announced an additional $12 billion for so-called "entrepeneurship" programs devoted to the black community.

                Needless to say, the expenditure of these absurdly astronomical amounts of federal funds on handouts to the 13% black portion of the population is nothing less than fiscal and budgetary insanity – wholly apart from the resentment and discord it would incite among elements of the population who would pay for the very programs that exclude them on racial grounds.  Yet the reckless and radical Senator Harris seems utterly oblivious to the disastrous consequences inherent in her proposals.

                In that respect, a critical thread that runs through Harris's racialist proposals is her utter disregard for the constitutional standards that limit such programs. 

                Government grants or preferences based on racial classifications are subject to the equal protection standards of the Fourteenth and Fifth Amendments.  Specifically, such programs must be narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling government objective under settled Supreme Court precedents, notably the 1995 case of Adarand v. Pena.  Harris's race-based proposals are unlikely to satisfy these constitutional standards.  Merely granting generalized benefits to blacks, or seeking to remove generic disparities between white and black wealth or income, do not constitute compelling government objectives under the governing precedents; in any event, Harris's grossly overinclusive programs are anything but "narrowly tailored." 

                Although Harris is an experienced lawyer and former state attorney general, she appears wholly oblivious of the demanding constitutional standards that her race-based programs must satisfy.  As a demagogue of the left, however, Harris scorns the rule of law and the Constitution whenever it stands in the way of her pandering political proposals.

                A final racial issue that Senator Harris exploits is the mindlessly repeated falsehood that the death penalty discriminates against blacks.  As Harris has stated, "“As a career law enforcement official, I have opposed the death penalty because it is immoral, discriminatory, ineffective, and a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars."  Specifically, she claims that black and Latino defendants are more likely to be executed than white defendants. 

                Piling on the demagoguery, Harris has further stated:  “The symbol of our justice system is a woman with a blindfold.  It is supposed to treat all equally, but the application of the death penalty — a final and irreversible punishment — has been proven to be unequally applied.”  She therefore promises, if elected, to support abolition of the federal death penalty.

                But as repeatedly demonstrated on this blog and elsewhere, Harris's claim that the death penalty is discriminatorily applied against blacks is patently and demonstrably false.  Not only false, but the opposite of the truth.

                What makes Harris's phony claim especially disturbing is that the facts which contradict it are so emphatically clear and readily available.  One need only click on the easily accessible databases of the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) to confirm that for at least the last three decades the death penalty has been imposed disproportionally against whites rather than blacks.

                Simply put, for decades blacks have consistently committed slightly over 50% of U.S. murders (the only crime for which the death penalty is constitutionally permitted), yet represent only about 33% of those executed.  Recent years have emphatically reinforced this pattern of disproportionate execution of white defendants in the U.S.  In 2016, for example, out of 20 total executions in the U.S., 18 were white.  See BJS, Captal Punishment, 2016, Table 2 (April 2018).  Year after year, the pattern confirmed by BJS and FBI data is the same:  Blacks commit slightly more than half of U.S. murders, but white defendants predominate among those executed.  Yet racial agitators like Kamala Harris persist in perpetrating the canard that the death penalty is disproportionately imposed on black and minority defendants.  It is a Big Lie of grotesque proportions.

                On issue after issue – reparations, forced busing, privileged federal handouts for blacks, and race-based death penalty demagoguery – Kamala Harris pursues radical programs and policies that expressly favor blacks at the expense of the blameless non-black citizens who must fund or endure them.  If this does not constitute racist politics, it is hard to imagine what would.  At a time when the country is already burdened by toxic racial divisions, the nomination or election of this deeply divisive radical would be disastrous.

EX-DOJ FLASH-MOB'S BOGUS LEGAL PROTEST

                  On May 6, a purported "Statement by Former Federal Prosecutors" (FFP Statement) was released to bolster assaults on President Trump tied to the notorious Mueller Report.  The statement was organized by a Democrat-dominated anti-Trump organization called Protect Democracy.  Among the rabid Never-Trumpers associated with this group is the notorious Watergate felon and turncoat, John Dean, which tells you all you need to know about the group that instigated this duplicitous broadside.

                Since the media trumpeted the statement as though it were the thoughtful declaration of a latter-day Madison or Mason – rather than a partisan press release instantly endorsed by an Internet flash mob of Justice Department pensioners – a word is in order to place this misleading document in perspective.  It is, in fact, merely the latest in a series of similar anti-Trump productions, organized and orchestrated by Protect Democracy – and signed by a similar cast of characters.

                The statement purports to present the opinion of 400 or more "former federal prosecutors"  – meaning DOJ attorneys who once prosecuted criminal cases in federal courts – that the facts presented in the Mueller Report would warrant the pursuit of multiple felony charges against President Trump for obstruction of justice.  The statement acknowledges, however, that under the authoritative opinion of DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel (where this writer formerly served as a Senior Counsel) a sitting President is not indictable.  Since the FFP Statement thus represents nothing more than the ineffectual fulmination of these former feds on a theoretical issue outside their purview, the question arises why they considered it necessary to put in their two cents?  The answer, of course, is that the statement's purpose is political, not legal.

                                                                         

      Protect Democracy's Legion of ex-DOJ Lawyers mobilized as quickly as a Flash Mob

                A highly experienced and credentialed Attorney General, who has ultimate authority to determine the issue, has carefully concluded that the Mueller Report does not provide the basis for an obstruction prosecution against the President (wholly apart from his constitutional immunity).  Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein – hardly a Trump sympathizer -- joined him in that conclusion.  Attorney General Bill Barr has been confirmed as Assistant Attorney General for OLC (an elite office which is a proving ground for Supreme Court Justices), Deputy Attorney General, and twice as Attorney General.  Few attorneys in U.S. Government history, if any, can match those credentials.  The notion that this highly accomplished legal giant needs instruction from a nondescript horde of functus officio DOJ careerists is risible.

                In any event, the origins, integrity, and authenticity of the FFP Statement are deeply suspect for a variety of reasons.

                Initially, the very first sentence of the FFP Statement is false.  It declares:  "We are former federal prosecutors."  But anyone who takes the considerable trouble to locate and decipher the statement's organic list of signatories will find that many of the signers were merely garden variety DOJ attorneys or bureaucrats who were not prosecutors.  The signers include, among many other non-prosecutors, attorneys in the following eclectic positions:  Intelligence Analyst, GS-14; Professional Responsibilities Adviser; Assistant Director, Office of Legal Education; Health Care Fraud Coordinator; Office of U.S. Trustee attorney; LEAA Administrator; various generic INS lawyers and immigration judges; purely civil attorneys from the Tax, Civil Rights, and Environment and Natural Resources Divisions;  Attorney Adviser;  Office of Pardon Attorney; and any number of undistinguished characters who described themselves with nothing more revealing than "Attorney," "Trial Attorney" or "Trial Counsel."  

               How or why such defunct legal bureaucrats are deemed qualified to denigrate the determination of a remarkably accomplished and experienced Attorney General  and former OLC Chief is anybody's guess.  In any event, it is evident that the FEP Statement's assurance that the authenticity of signers was "vetted to the best of our ability" is meaningless.

                The sheer duplicity of this collective legal salvo is further underscored by the utterly unprofessional – and suspicious -- circumstances surrounding its production, circulation, and endorsement.  

                The mainstream media would have us believe that hundreds of former prosecutors each closely analyzed the Mueller Report and reached a professional determination that the President was indictable.  The reality is that an eclectic digital throng of retired DOJ lawyers merely "clicked" their endorsement of the Project Democracy statement in the functional equivalent of hitting the "Like" button on a Facebook posting.

                The Mueller Report is an extremely complex and elaborate 448-page legal document painstakingly compiled by a team of experienced attorneys following a lengthy and arduous process.  It was released on April 24 of this year.  The FFP Statement, with its hundreds of "signers" already rounded-up, was released only twelve days later, on May 6.  It is unclear (and undisclosed) exactly who drafted the statement; one suspects it was attorneys associated with Protect Democracy, inasmuch as that group "organized" the statement and orchestrated its circulation.  In any case, a close and careful review of the Mueller Report would have to be completed before drafting or endorsing the statement if even minimal professional standards were to be maintained.

                We are thus expected to believe that, within this tight time frame, some 300- 400 attorneys – many or most of whom are likely employed in post-government practice – each obtained, reviewed, and analyzed the lengthy Mueller Report and formed an independent professional conclusion that its findings warranted a felony indictment of the President.

                This is absurd and simply not believable.  It is one thing for the Attorney General and Deputy AG -- who had the official responsibility, resources, and staff support to do so – to review the Mueller Report over a period of days and render their opinion that no prosecution was warranted.  They had, moreover, been officially overseeing and monitoring the matter for months.

                But the notion that some 400 attorneys of widely varying experience, expertise, and resources would all have the time, capacity, and legal ability to fully review and competently dissect the voluminous Mueller Report in this very tight time frame is risible.  The review and competent analysis of this dense, multi-faceted tome is simply not a task that would readily be undertaken outside one's professional obligations – let alone under such a demanding time frame.

                Rather, it is quite evident that the signers of the FFP Statement constituted a legal flash-mob who quickly and eagerly accepted Project Democracy's invitation to endorse the statement, at face value, with a click of their mouse.

                It is important to note in this respect that Project Democracy solicited signers with the following indiscriminate invitation:  "If you are a former federal prosecutor and would like to add your name below, click here."  There was no requirement or suggestion that would-be "signers" should even have read the Mueller Report, let alone analyzed the legal questions it raised, before clicking.  There can thus be little doubt that most signers read no further than the statement itself before adding their names.  In other words, the statement was supported by hundreds of approving "clicks" rather than by hundreds of considered legal opinions. 

                In fact, the FFP Statement was merely the latest of Project Democracy's campaign to mobilize the support of disgruntled DOJ attorney-pensioners in support of its anti-Trump agenda.  Just last December, a suspiciously similar document was organized by that same group, this time claiming that a suspiciously similar cohort of "400 Justice Department alumni" had signed a statement declaring they were "disturbed" by the President's appointment of Matthew Whitaker as Acting Attorney General to replace the hapless Jeff Sessions. 

                The anti-Whittaker protest argued that the "Constitutional process" required the President to appoint the Senate-confirmed official next in the line of succession – i.e., presumed anti-Trumpist Rod Rosenstein -- instead of Whittaker.  But the Supreme Court made short work of the ex-DOJers' objections when it summarily rejected the constitutional challenge to the Whittaker appointment.

                It should surprise no one, moreover, that there is extensive overlap between the signers of the FFP Statement on the Mueller Report and the signers of the Whittaker Statement (on a very quick check I confirmed that at least 1/3 of a random sample of the FFP signers had also signed the Whittaker Statement).  Could it be that Project Democracy has a computerized master list of reliable anti-Trump "DOJ Alumni" whom it can count upon to quickly endorse whatever partisan screed it wishes to release?  You be the judge.

                Far from a considered legal review of the Mueller Report by hundreds of former prosecutors, the FFP Statement embodies the opinion of a Protect Democracy advocate or some other unknown attorney which was then hastily endorsed by much the same horde of ex-DOJ pensioners  that similarly endorsed Protect Democracy's failed objection to the Whittaker appointment.  The likelihood that all the members of this crowd actually read and legally analyzed the Mueller Report and its prosecutorial considerations is nil.

                As demonstrated by legal stalwarts like Alan Dershowitz, Andrew McCarthy, and Attorney General Barr – each of whose legal acumen dwarfs that of the anonymous scrivener who drafted the FFP Statement and the mediocrities who signed it – the President's executive powers under Art. II of the Constitution negate any claim that he obstructed justice in responding to the Mueller investigation's efforts to destroy his presidency.  As Mr. McCarthy described Mr. Barr's sound basis for concluding that no obstruction charge against the President was warranted (National Review.com, Apr. 18, 2019, emphasis added):

                                "That is why Barr laid out the facts that the president could have shut down the investigation but did not; that he could have asserted executive privilege to withhold information from the investigation, but instead made numerous witnesses and well over a million documents available to the special counsel; and that – reportedly according to Mueller – the president sincerely felt frustrated that the investigation was unfairly undermining his presidency. The point is that these facts so cut against the idea of corruptly impeding an investigation that it is inconceivable the prosecutor could prove an obstruction case beyond a reasonable doubt."

                Similarly, the distinguished Prof. Dershowitz explained that, in order for any of President Trump's actions outlined in the Mueller Report to constitute actionable obstruction, "The act itself has to be illegal.  It can't be an act authorized under Article II of the Constitution."  When asked whether the President's firing of FBI Director Comey, for example, could amount to obstruction of justice, Dershowitz tersely responded:  "It's not even a close case."  The same goes for the other possible obstructions fabricated by Mueller's team of Democrat and leftist advocates.  

               The President had every right to exercise the full range of his Art. II powers to defend the viability of his presidency against the subversive assaults being waged against it.  That is not obstruction of justice.  Rather, to paraphrase Art. II, sec. 3 of the Constitution, it is merely "tak[ing] care that the Laws be faithfully executed."  Even so, he refrained from imposing restraints on the Mueller inquisition that would have been within his constitutional authorities. 

                The unknown drafter(s) and motley signers of the FFP Statement either do not understand, or do not wish to recognize, that the President's constitutional authority under Art. II of the Constitution is flatly incompatible with the obstruction theory they so eagerly endorsed to undermine the Trump Presidency. 

                But apart from the legal and constitutional flaws in the statement orchestrated by Protect Democracy, the profoundly misleading characterization of its nature, substance, and authenticity should not be allowed to pass unrefuted.  Rather than presenting the considered professional opinion of hundreds of former federal prosecutors, the statement embodies nothing more than the reflexive, partisan endorsement of an Internet flash-mob of eclectic attorneys who hastily responded to Protect Democracy's click-bait.