Today I read a report of the involvement (I suppose we can’t call it collaboration) of Facebook and Twitter in Russian attempts to destabilize the U.S.A. Of course Twitter, like so many of its clients, is trying to evade responsibility for the content of twitters. The article quoted an expert’s opinion that “Twitter functions more like a broadcast network. People say things and everyone can hear it. When false informaltion is stated, people can jump on false statements and challenge it.” Note that she said “false statements,” not mistaken statements, and “false statements” are very often the malicious and are the same as LIES. And I must ask: does no one bear responsibility for creating and spreading lies? Broadcast networks can be held to some extent accountable for creating and/or spreading lies, though Fox and the limbaughs get away with a great deal. But twitters, with their option for anonymity can spread lies with no adverse consequence to the liars. This anonymity is the mask behind which internet trolls lurk, along with Russian agents and anyone else up to mischief. I do not know how we can go on if liars cannot be detected and face no adverse consequences. The blessings of democracy are too often used to subvert it. We have pushed “freedom of speech” beyond any reasonable limit and opened a way for the sick and the malicious.
Politics
21 IX 2017: Who left the door open at the White House?
Someone left a door open at the White House and Trumpy got out. I saw a headline that said: “No other U.S. president has talked to the UN like this before.” There are good reasons for that! This embarrassment lately inflicted on our now notorious country is bad enough, but far worse is the peril that comes when a thoughtless big-mouth lets his emotions run riot on the internantional stage. Putin & Co. have achieved through this one election what decades of cold-war effort sought for in vain. The U.S. is now disabled, maybe even crippled.
19 IX 2017: Church Militant
So the Theological College across the road from Catholic University has withdrawn its invitation to Fr. James Martin to speak to its alumni. It seems this was done not in response to pressure from the bishops, but at the behest of agitators public and private who live for homophobia. Theological College has never been known for critical or independent thinking, but their caving in to losers (to use President Trump’s word) with homegrown websites and maniacs that shriek over the telephone suggests that T.C. has just about hit bottom. I looked up the “Church Militant” website and found it packed with 1950s re-runs of various kinds. Like Car Talk, they have a Shameless Commerce Division called STORE, and you can buy yourself a cool tee shirt there or a Church Militant coffee mug.
14 VIII 2017: Platitudes can’t prove he’s not a Nazi
Trump will have to come up with more than the placebos and platitudes of his two statements about Charlottesville to show he is not a Nazi. The first statement was worse than none, and the second statement was just boiler plate. I believe that he made his declaration with tongue in cheek. He was reciting formulae and platitudes so banal as to cause no problem for the alt-right, leaving them to believe that “Trumpy had to say something out of Sunday school so as to calm the squeamish, but we know he’s still on our side.”
What could Trump do to make his denunciation of racism and violence credible? He could clear his own house of crypto-Nazis. He could get rid of Steve Bannon, his Ernst Roehm, and Bannon’s minion, Sebastian Gorka, and get rid of Stephen Miller, the Joseph Goebbels of the Trump Whitehouse.
If Trump would rid himself of these and other deplorables his declaration might become credible.
9 VIII 2017: “Fire and fury …”
People seem unable to find a model for Trumpy’s new slogan, “Fire and fury,” and conclude he came up with it on his own. My take may be far-fetched, but I am reminded of “sound and fury, signifying nothing,” and Shakespeare used this phrase to describe “a tale told by an idiot.” But what if the President of the U.S. is an idiot?
25 VII 2017: Harangue from Der Führer at BSA Jamboree
Trump recently provided another glimpse of his ignorance of/disregard for American democratic institutions when he tried to turn the Boy Scouts’ Jamboree into a Hitler Youth rally.
17 VI 2017: Gypsy Rose Trump
It occurs to me that Mr. Trump’s game is really striptease. He doesn’t come clean about anything, but holds everyone’s attention by coy hints and partial disclosures, stripping off now his gloves, now his nylons and throwing his tweets to the audience, to feed vain hopes of some complete and truthful disclosure to come. It is a waste of time waiting for him to behave honestly, for that is contrary to his beliefs.
Mouth-of-Newt is back in the news today, claiming that “the King can do no wrong.” Why won’t the mainstream media ignore Newt also, and leave it to Fox Schmooze to transmit his wisdom to his intended audience?
15 VI 2017: Mouth of Newt
Newt Gingrich, like the weed in the crack in the concrete that keeps popping up, is mounting a Twitter campaign against the Special Counsel. I suppose the Archtwitterer of Washington is mobilizing all his acolytes, even the notorious ones. Newt is getting too old for this and should settle in with Mrs. Newt III at the Vatican and carry her purse around.
15 VI 2017: Another gas attack from Rep. Steve King
Well, some more stinking gas has bubbled up from the congressional sewer as Rep. Steve King is seeking to maintain his lock on the idiot vote back home in Iowa. He has stretched the old reflex response “Whatever it is, blame Obama” to apply to the recent shooting in D.C. If thoughtfulness and common sense were among the criteria for participation in the American democracy, this dimwitted son of Iowa would not be allowed to vote, let alone serve in Congress.
30 V 2017: Lawyered up!
So Humpty Trumpty is deploying Michael Cohen, his ‘personal lawyer,’ as his mouthpiece. Cohen comes from the same disreputable background as Trump, so Trumpy will have a lawyer to whom he can really open up without embarrassment.
It’s getting to look a lot like Watergate … The United States will have to go through another extended water torture through investigation by leaks. Trumpy will turn over no documents, even if they had not already been destroyed. Why can’t he be a man and a patriot and disclose everything so that we can get past this a.s.a.p.? For the big difference between this and Watergate is that Nixon was an almost competent president, something Trump could never pretend to be.