Welcome to week two of Fighting Words, a newsletter about the things that got me steamed this week. Plus, some culture and trivia and fun.

Item one: Bull, Durham

That’s John Durham, the special prosecutor appointed by then–Attorney General Bill Barr to get to the bottom of the deep-state conspiracy against Donald Trump. And boy, has he hit bottom. Well, I take that back. There’s always a new bottom with these people.

If you don’t watch Fox News, you may be blissfully unaware that the biggest news story of the week by far—bigger than Putin, bigger than Ukraine, bigger than Kamila Valieva’s drug test and stumble, bigger than Elon Musk comparing Justin Trudeau to Hitler over the clampdown on the trucker protest—is the “revelation” that “proof” has “emerged” that Hillary ordered a spying operation on Trump’s 2016 campaign. We know this because John Durham said so in a recent filing. The filing (this is all insanely convoluted; The New York Times did a pretty good job of unwrapping it in this piece) does talk about White House data examined by a technology company (legally, under contract with the government). But that relationship dated to 2016, when Barack Obama was president.

There’s a lot more to it. If you’re partial to such rabbit holes, I invite you to dive in. It’s one of the more hilariously baroque tales of Clintonian perfidy you’ll find. It’s all garbage. But of course, it’s all taken as holy writ on the right. Trump suggested last week that certain Clinton aides should be executed. Congressman Jim Jordan agreed that at a different time in our history, their crimes “would have been punishable by death.” Yes. Death. What time in our history would that be? The Salem Witch Trials?

Keep an eye on this. Durham, who has so far brought one indictment against one person on one count, has carte blanche to keep going forever, seemingly, unless current Attorney General Merrick Garland cuts him off, which, well, we’ll see. This story may not have the power to move swing voters, but it helps Trump rebut any and all allegations about him cheating or spying.

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Item two: San Francisco gets it right

San Francisco voters overwhelmingly recalled three school board members this week over … well, what? This is a matter of debate, but more level-headed assessments indicate that the three beefs the voters had with the members were best ranked as follows: (1) Covid/closures/masks, (2) changing a prestigious high school from merit-based admissions to a lottery, and (3) changing the names of some schools, including removing the names George Washington and Abraham Lincoln (and Dianne Feinstein, which I found rather less troubling) from them.

I heard some commentators try to argue that this whole fracas proved how woke the Democrats have become and what a crazy cultural politics cliff the party is driving off. But wait. Doesn’t this outcome prove precisely the opposite? Sure looks that way to me. School administrators fail to attend to their first duties and go off and try to do some very political and controversial (but secondary) stuff, and the voters punish them. And not the voters of, you know, Birmingham, Alabama: the voters of San Francisco! And it wasn’t close. In all three cases, more than 70 percent of the voters favored recall. As did the liberal Democratic mayor.

This outcome is in fact a rather encouraging sign of mental health among the Democratic rank and file. It is also, however, another sign, and this one coming from a presumably very liberal electorate, that parents really want their kids in school and (if at all possible) not wearing masks. I’m still not sure this is a great idea from a public health point of view. But from a political point of view, it’s pretty clear, and it’s hard to imagine Democrats running on anything else this fall, unless yet another dangerous variant rears its head.

Item three: Because this is what fascists do

That is, they take allegations made against them, and they turn them around and appropriate them to their own advantage, telling their followers that what the rest of the world sees as an immoral disgrace, they must wear as a badge of honor.

Here’s the latest case in point:

That, of course, is the infamous image of Missouri Senator Josh Hawley last January 6, pumping his fist at the Capitol insurrectionists. Now his campaign is selling the above coffee mug—raising money, in other words, off his gesture cheering the violent disruption of the peaceful transfer of power within the government of the United States. It’s $20. Corporate donations to Hawley have plummeted, so he had to think of something, I guess.

Something to think about: What with Sarah Palin’s epic humiliation in a New York courtroom this week, where her libel suit against the Times was easily tossed, the Embarracuda has gotten more press this week than in ages. Most of it has properly focused on the legal drubbing she took. In addition to that, she’s dating some ex-New York Ranger. I didn’t even remember that she got divorced from Todd. But she did. Or rather, he divorced her. Back in 2019.

This week’s quiz

Nonpolitics–general interest quiz of the week: I’m going to name below three sets of five people. They are famous in their own way, in their selected pursuits, but not exactly first-tier world famous. You identify their pursuits.

S.Z. Sakall, Una Merkel, Franklin Pangborn, Beulah Bondi, Charles Coburn

Giorgio de Chirico, Méret Oppenheim, Dan Flavin, Raoul Dufy, Lyubov Popova

Carol Kaye, Hal Blaine, Tommy Tedesco, Vinnie Bell, Leon Russell

And finally, and this will be a recurring theme, this week’s geography question (cuz I like geography!): Rank these U.S. cities from easternmost to westernmost: Atlanta, Chicago, Cincinnati, Louisville, Memphis, Milwaukee.

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—Michael Tomasky, editor

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