15 VIII 2022: Trump a flight risk?

On Politico, Jennifer Bendery quoted Trump’s whine about his passports: “In the raid by the FBI of Mar-a-Lago, they stole my three Passports (one expired), along with everything else,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social. “This is an assault on a political opponent at a level never seen before in our Country. Third World!”

She goes on to report: “It’s not clear why the FBI may have taken his passports or why he apparently has three of them. Trump said one was expired; it’s possible that he has a regular non-expired passport in addition to a second special issuance passport as  a former U.S. president.” (emphasis added)

No, it’s not clear why the FBI took Trump’s passports — however many. But if the Bureau were investigating ordinary criminal activity, they might take care to keep the subject of the investigation from leaving the country, especially if he had considerable assets and property overseas. One can imagine that, if worse came to worst, the subject of the investigation may be facing time in prison. And one can imagine that if it comes to that, the subject of the investigation might consider departing the United States for a foreign country made hospitable by his gift of stolen U.S. government documents.

15 VIII 2022: Awash with unconditional love

Trumpworld is awash in unconditional love. Makes no difference what Donny does, we love him just the same! The font of this unconditional love seems to be Trump’s love for himself. Self-satisfied is too limp a term to describe Donald. He has a love of self so obsessive that it denies existence to anything that might trouble another, less focused person.  The rest of Trumpworld may not be so adept at manipulating reality, but their love is ready to ignore his imperfections, and the elite are quick to attack anyone who points them out. Indeed, truculent assertion of Trump’s impeccability is the mark of Trumpworld’s virtuosos.

Trump shows unconditional love for his followers in his perennial refusal to criticize any of them for anything, however loony or criminal, and especially in his moving declaration to the insurrectionists of Jan 6th, “we love you, you’re very special.” 

In short, Trump is infatuated with himself, and infatuated with any who are infatuated with him. This love is religious in its intensity.

12 VIII 2022: He’s a hoax, he is sleazy, and he’s a bitch

A headline on CNN reports Trump again charging his critics with behavior more characteristic of him. “Trump Calls Nuclear Documents Claim a ‘Hoax,’ Describes FBI as “Sleazy.” Now we all know that Trump is a lifelong hoax. “Sleazy” is a good enough description of Trump, though he is, in fact, far beyond sleazy. 

Trump is misusing language in another of his ringing denunciations when he calls this FBI investigation a “witchhunt,” a paranoic term he always uses to describe any inquiry into his behavior. Accuracy, however, requires that an enquiry into Trump be called a “bitchhunt.”

The news is full of reports of Republicans instigating to violence (just like Jan 6) and of far-right advocacy of violence against the FBI and the government generally. Though the violent fringe of the neo-fascists often lurk behind pseudonyms or codewords, every effort must be made to identify these sociopaths so that they can be prosecuted for their advocacy of violence. 

Americans often confuse “free speech” with unregulated speech, unregulated by truth, reason, or law. But any authentic idea of a right to freedom of speech must include some limitations. The right must be balanced by associated duties, among them the duty that we not abuse the right. Otherwise, “right” just means license.

11 VI 2022: Rant Paul, again

Sen. Rand Paul has denounced the search warrant at Mar a Lago as “an attack on the rule of law.” This is the same irrational slogan we’ve been hearing from other Republicans and neo-fascist media people. I am surprised to see Rand Paul only repeating what other Republican apologists are saying, for he is usually a bit more eccentric about everything. I predict that the Republican mouthpieces will ditch this line of apology so they won’t be saying the same thing as Rand Paul.

12 VIII 2022: Trump a stand-up guy, for now

Donald Trump showed the stuff he’s made of when questioned at New York. Most guys would take the Fifth three, maybe four times, but Trump, always the biggest and best, took the Fifth four hundred times. No one told him there would be so many questions on the quiz, so he copied and multiplied the answers of other gangsters. And he’ll never rat out anybody — at least for the time being. He is saving inside information about his co-conspirators for his plea bargaining.

9 VIII 2022: The Raid on Mar a Lago

I am hearing people on the news referring to the “F.B.I. raid” on Mar a Lago and making much of the fact that serving a search warrant on a former president is unprecedented. And I want to point out:

It wasn’t a raid. It was a serving of a court-approved search warrant. I guess Trumpworld’s life on the margins of criminality has led them to think in terms of “raids,” as in G-men breaking into a speakeasy and yelling “This is a raid!”

Yes, serving a search warrant on an ex-president was unprecedented, but it is unprecedented for us to have a ex-president who is a criminal.

Trump denounces the Democrats for “weaponizing” the Dept. of Justice. Here is another case of Trump accusing others of doing things of which he himself is guilty. Trump tried to coerce the Dept of Justice to participate in his “Stop the steal” conspiracy. His stooge inside the Department, the criminal-lawyer Jeffrey Clark, drafted fraudulent letters for the D.O.J. to send to state legislatures in an attempt to overturn the election. I guess that was not weaponizing.

Workers in the right-wing lie factory in the media and a lot of Republican blow-hards are incandescent in their horror and sense of sacrilege as they zealously denounce the search of Mar a Lago. I’m sorry, but Trump does not have diplomatic immunity, he is not the Pope, not a God-anointed King, he is not in any way sacrosanct. He is a common criminal.

29 VII 2022: Grandiose or what?

One Todd Rokita, Attorney General of the State of Indiana, has undertaken an “investigation” into Dr. Caitlin Bernard’s treating a 10-year-old rape victim. He has been challenged by Dr. Bernard’s lawyer and an angry public, but The Attorney General insists that “The baseless defamation claim and other accusations are really just attempts to distract, intimidate and obstruct my office’s monumental progress to save lives.” Put more correctly, it’s his “monumental progress” towards kissing the ass of anti-abortion fanatics, towards making a fool of himself, and towards bringing the law into contempt. I could think more of the contemptible people who are trying to “take back” America if they would find better flunkies than Attorney General Rokita.

27 VII 2022: The “Bannon” Look

Now I’m worrying that Steve Bannon will not be allowed to maintain his skid-row style when he is in jail. He has embodied the “I don’t give a shit” look, providing a model and encouragement for men who are similarly disposed. The extent to which he is imitated can be seen in very many of the Capitol rioters of Jan 6th. More than that, Steve’s slovenly chic style is part of his persona, indeed, part of his message, and I think that forcing Steve to wash his face and shave would be a violation of his freedom of speech.

22 VII 2022: Archetypes of the Attack on the Capitol

While watching the hearings of the Jan 6 Committee, I kept wondering what was Trump’s fantasy of The March on the Capitol that he was setting in motion.

Was he dreaming of something like the March on Rome in October 1922 of Mussolini and his fascist paramilitary Blackshirts? Their threat of violence caused the terrified King to dismiss the legal government and make Mussolini the Prime Minister!

Or was he encouraged by Hitler’s attempted coup d’état, the Beerhall Putsch of 1923. Hitler had gathered around him his supporters, the disgraced retired general Erich Ludendorff, along with Ernst Roehm and his paramilitary Brownshirts. It was Ludendorf who rallied the Putsch at a moment of hesitation by shouting “We will march!!” The ensuing march, led by Hitler and Ludendorf, met unexpected government resistance and the coup failed. However the leaders of the Putsch were given trifling sentences. They soon resumed where they’d left off, met little resistance, and enslaved Germany.

Or, I wonder if Trump was caught up in Sergei Eisenstein’s glorification of the Bolshevik Storming of the Winter Palace, the seat of Russia’s provisional government, in his film October: Ten Days that Shook the World. Eisenstein shows revolutionary mobs fighting and killing guards and forcing their way into the Winter Palace. Once inside, the horde rampages through the palatial halls and long corridors. They kill anyone who resists, plunder the wine cellar, seize the members of the government, and vandalize the living quarters of the Tsar and his family. (see youtube.com/watch?v=tQ9GCi4Gjso). The attack on the Winter Palace in Eisenstein’s movie and the behavior of the mob depicted there are sadly similar to Jan 6’s Storming of the US Capitol.

Mussolini led his March on Rome — well, not really, but he was photographed with the marching Blackshirts — and as Il Duce became the dictator of Italy. Hitler suffered a setback on the march of his Beerhall Putsch, but the resistance he met and negligible consequences he faced only delayed and did not prevent his eventual dictatorship. Bolshevik leaders let the mob achieve their goal of bringing down the Provisional Government by inciting them to attack the Winter Palace. 

They wouldn’t let Trump lead The March on the Capitol. So he sat back while the mob was doing his work. What consequences will he face? If tried at all, will Trump be acquitted like General Ludendorf, or if convicted, will he, like Hitler, be given five years reduced to eight months in cushy confinement, to go on to self-identify as a martyr, and continue to poison the United States even after his death?

17 VII 2022: Don’t let the states decide

I encounter apropos of Roe v. Wade and any number of other issues the right-wing slogan: “Let the states decide.” Various arguments are made in favor of so-called “states’ rights,” most of them self-serving and spurious. I will make only a few points about this:

1) if it had been left to the states to decide, some Southern states would have continued slavery until the beginning of the twentieth century;

2) if it had been left to the states to decide, schools in the South would still be segregated;

3) if it were not for the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, thinly disguised child labor would be commonplace;

4) if it were not for federal environmental regulations the ruin of our country would have gone much farther than it has ;

5) most state legislatures are notorious for the wrong-headedness and outright foolishness of members who seem to have been elected because they are incompetent;

6) how many state legislatures are free of corruption?????