Politics

21 III 2017: Arkansas sinking lower still

We can all feel relieved that Rep. Mickey Gates will no longer be afraid in Arkansas’ Capitol (see blog entry for 7 III 2017). The newspaper reports that Arkansas’ governor has signed a bill that will allow concealed handguns in the Capitol, in public buildings, in state colleges, and certain select saloons. Finally!

The same paper reported another manifestation of Arkansas’ refinement. Next month Arkansas will be executing eight men within a 10-day period. Why the rush? One of the three ingredient chemicals used in executions is about to expire. Some fear that due to the rapid succession of the executions the prison staff is likely to botch a few of them, due to stress or inexperience, and leave the victim on a gurney for a lingering death. No need for all this. They should have Rep. Mickey and his friends in the legislature shoot the prisoners. Surely a bullet in the brain is a quicker and less humiliating death than unreliable chemical injections, with all the ghoulish rites that attend them, and if he has a pistol with an 8-round magazine, just one legislator could do this job, and in a lot less time than two weeks.

20 III 2017: New look, old world

I was away and sequestered last week at an ACTS retreat. We were allowed no cell phone, no i-pad, no TV or radio, and were given time and isolation in which to take a new look at our lives, ourselves. So on Sunday I returned to the unreal world predisposed to take a fresh look at it, to see it anew. Well, I checked the news and found that “the world was the old world yet.”

How many more investigations, how many failed lies is it going to take to convince people that Trump is as crooked as a dog’s hind leg? Of course, there is an invincible ignorance among the hard-core Trump cultists. This is common in all kinds of cults: the cult leader can be convicted of crime after crime, caught out in sin upon sin, and the cultists will remain loyal because they choose not to accept simple truths. They know how they FEEL and prayer and fasting cannot exorcise them.

The case of the Republican Party is otherwise. They knew from the beginning that Trump was a stinker and tried to distance from him. But as he grew in popularity and power, one after another somehow found his/her way to get on the Trump bandwagon, heedless of how much they might be shamed and perverted by his company. Now that they have shown the country their true character, they see Trumpism as their only claim to leadership, as the linchpin to their position of power, and they will fight for Trump, just as Republicans of old fought for Nixon, until disgust or fear made them dump him.

 

16 III 2017: Who is brainwashed?

Republican Senator James Inhofe has declared that the EPA is “brainwashing our kids.” How, I have to ask, can he call anyone brainwashed? Sen. Inhofe is from Oklahoma. If he wants to avoid appearing ridiculous, he must speak in public only in Oklahoma to the brainwashed folks there.

10 III 2017: Trumperbund rallies

The news has reported from a recent meeting at the White House that the President is going to bring intense pressure to bear on Congress to support Trump-Ryan Care:

“Trump said he will have football stadium events in states where he won by 10-12 points and he is going to dare people to vote against him,” a source at the meeting said.

He wants to hold football stadium events, mass celebrations of mindlessness, pep rallies where he can work up his fans and bask in their adulation? Haven’t we seen this sort of thing before?

8 III 2017: Trump a Russian saboteur?

My associate Massimo is excitable and too quick to draw conclusions. For example, he maintained that the Bush administration was responsible for 9/11 because (cui bono?) they benefitted from it more than anyone. Now he is wondering if Trump is a Russian plant, imbedded in the American government to undermine and if possible destroy the United States. He thinks that the Russians have something on Trump. Not the prostitutes and pee-pee business; there’s no handle for blackmail there since lots of playboys do that sort of thing. Rather, Massimo believes the answer might be found in the Trump income tax records. Has collaboration with Russian capital saved Trump from financial embarrassment or even collapse? Did the immensely wealthy Putin pick up some of Trump’s debts? Has Trump invested in lucrative and semi-legal Russian enterprises?

But Massimo’s surmise that Trump may be under the Russian thumb is not based on these speculations about the cause of his subservience, but because of what Trump has done during the election campaign and in office. He created broad fissures in American society by appeals to racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, religious bigotry, in short, by appeal to any fear of the other or imagined grievance. He has mesmerized the media by his absurdist behaviors. He has so frightened the dominant Republican Party that they back him up, much as the German right wing backed up Hitler. He is collaborating with Congress to sabotage the public health system. He has closely identified himself with a variety of right-wing crazies, acting on their advice and information they provide; he has encouraged and enabled their anti-social pathologies and thus created a new political party loyal to him alone. He plans to destroy the American economy with his Great Wall, military buildups, tax cuts to the rich and corporations, and abolition of international trade. He has declared war on the environment, removing any legislation or agency that would inhibit the all-out polluters. He has attacked the press and the intelligence agencies so that his regime can work in tightly maintained secrecy. He has begun a program of mass deportations, using his secret police, the enlarged ICE, to arrest, imprison, and deport people without due judicial process. He has appointed a cabinet that consists mostly of incompetents or subversives He has systematically alienated America’s neighbors and traditional allies. So reasons Massimo. As Kellyanne might say, “I hope it’s not true.”

7 III 2017: The State Legislators, for their next act …

Congress may be self-serving and stupid, but they can always point to state legislators to show us how crazy deliberative bodies can be. I’ve read that Oklahoma state senator John Bennett, a compulsive Muslim baiter, has imposed “extreme vetting” (a Trumpism?) that includes a religious test on any Muslims who want to see him. Why would any Muslim want to see him? If people in Oklahoma ever find out what Islam really is, they are going to be embarrassed. Right now, they probably believe it is whatever this two-bit demagogue tells them.

Then in Arkansas, Rep. Mickey Gates does not feel that the metal detectors and armed guards of the state Capitol are adequate protection. So he wants to bring his gun to work. He’s proposed that legislators licensed to carry a concealed pistol be allowed to bring their weapons into the Capitol and other public facilities (with the exception of prisons!). Is being a legislator in Arkansas really such a hazardous job, or does Rep. Gates simply want to have his pistol, like his pecker, with him at all times. I have long felt that many gun fanatics can’t tell their pistols from their peckers and are resolutely determined that the Feds will have to wrest both from their cold, dead hands.

5 III 2017: Trump: The Early Years

Little has ever been brought forward about Donald Trump’s years in elementary school. We know that he has an ivy-league degree, that he has the best words, etc., etc., but what was he like in his formative years? A psycho-historian I know might attempt to draw inferences about Mr. Trump’s schooldays from his behavior as an adult, along the following lines: Donald was a very unhappy and unpopular child. His ostentation of his expensive toys and outfits, his bragging about his father’s great wealth, and his pretensions to athletic and intellectual prowess probably alienated the other children, with the result that they avoided and ignored him. This would have led to a grave psychological crisis the gravity of which is suggested by the anti-social behaviors he would develop at that time. He would become an insolent braggart, constantly asserting and invariably exaggerating his successes. He would live in a dream-world in which he was ever superior, ever victorious, and this would lead to a pathological aversion to truth, probably with psycho-somatic manifestations, e.g., breaking out in hives whenever compelled to tell the truth. His fierce resentment of the children who recoiled from him very likely turned him into a bully (he was probably large for his age). Moreover, he is likely to have been hyper-sensitive to any real or imagined slight, and could let no insult or criticism pass without an immediate retort, however inappropriate. Nor was that enough, for constant resentment probably made him unable to let go of any imagined insult, and, holding a grudge, he would never cease looking for an opportunity to avenge himself. He would have had a deep resentment against schoolmates who were popular, whose fine qualities were generally recognized. Hence he may have developed a propensity to paranoia, as he imagined that this or that popular student, envying his own obvious precocity, was conspiring with others somehow to deny him a chance to succeed and win the recognition he deserved.

I do hope that Mr. Trump did not have so terrible a childhood as all this would suggest, for the woeful consequences for the United States and the world would be terrifying.