24 VI 2022: A far from perfect union; Clarence the Mole

Well, the end of Roe v. Wade has come sooner than I anticipated. Do you suppose the announcement of this beginning of the end of the United States was delayed to coincide with the climax of the Jan 6 Hearings? 

Anyway, we are on our way to a renewed division of the United States into slave states and free states. The U.S., already retrograde and rogue under Traitor Trump will slip even farther and appear more like an Islamic state or a Jewish state. Of course, the U.S. cannot qualify as a “Christian state,” because in so many aspects of its life and laws it has never been recognizably Christian. Moreover, I’m sure our slave states will not be dealing with all their unwanted babies in a truly Christian way. 

At the center of all this damage is the silent justice, Clarence Thomas. He was appointed to the Court some thirty years ago and has lurked silently in the shadows until the emergence of the Trump Court. He is not unlike a “mole” hidden in a nation by its enemy. The Mole avoids detection for years until, under the right circumstances, he executes his long-planned program of sabotage.

23 VI 2022: Dred Scott for our times

The latest opinions of the Supreme Court and the earlier leaked “pre-opinion” about Roe v. Wade incline me to think that our Court is headed for a place in history alongside the “Dred Scott” Court of 1857. Chief Justice Roger Taney, the author of the infamous majority decision in the Dred Scott case, was the first Catholic to serve on the Supreme Court. His current successors are the club of conservative Catholics on the Court, Alito, Barrett, Kavanaugh, Roberts, and Thomas. It seems very likely that these justices are going to set aside Roe v. Wade and leave it to the individual states to regulate abortion. This will increase the already extreme polarization of our society and will divide the country as starkly as did the Dred Scott Decision.

18 VI 2022: Petty Tyrant of Worcester MA

Catholic Bishop Robert McManus of Worcester MA, a chronic huffer and puffer, has struck a blow for authoritarianism by forbidding the Nativity School of Worcester to call itself “catholic.” The Nativity School is a middle school that provides tuition-free education for impoverished boys. It raises its own funds and receives no support from the Bishop of Worcester. 

The school has, at its students’ request, been flying the Black Lives Matter and the LGBT flags since January 2021. But earlier in this year the Bishop ordered the school to remove these flags, but, as the Bishop tells it, the school “disregarded my legitimate authority as the guardian and overseer of Catholic education.” And the flags are still there.

The Nativity School plans an appeal against the Bishop’s decree. I wish them luck, but think it would be better for the School to continue on its way and leave the Bishop to go his. No school that would accept Bishop McManus as its “guardian and overseer” could equip students with the courage, ambition, and independence of thought that should characterize graduates of Nativity School.

16 VI 2022: Donald and Delvey

I ended my last entry with a ludicrous connection between Trump and the now legendary hoaxer Anna Delvey. But, upon thought, this connection does not seem wholly silly, since these two are kindred spirits with obvious parallels in their behavior.

Both pretend to have enormous wealth, though Trump is a chronic bankrupt, Delvey is always embarrassed for cash, and neither ever stops stealing.

Both pretend to have a background in high society, but neither has.

Both adjust their assumed personalities to their audience by reconstructing their speech. Trump speaks a coarse version of the vernacular although he boasts of his high-end education, and Delvin, like a chameleon, varies her “accent” from British to German to Russian. 

Both are astonishingly disloyal and rip off “friends” just as they do strangers. 

Both are compulsive and accomplished liars and have no life apart from their cons.

15 VI 2022: Trump cannot not be Trump

I applaud the House Select Committee for the way they are presenting the facts of Trump’s failed power-grab to the American people. I do wonder, however, at the affect of surprise that attends the statements of commentators and analysts about the Committee’s findings.

What would be really surprising would be to learn that Trump did not lie and cheat. I wonder if, after he is released from prison, Netflix will make a series about Trump like the one they produced about another complete fraudster, Anna Sorokin (Anna Delvey).

10 VI 2022: Where is the outrage?

The Jan 6th Committee held its first public hearing last night. The hearing did not reveal much that we have not already known, but its revelations were compelling and incontrovertible. The Insurrectionissimo of Mar a Lago is replaying his taped denials and lies, and, I read, all of the Republican candidates for the Senate in Missouri have echoed their Master’s interpretation of the hearings.

By now we are familiar with this Trumpian reaction to the truth, sc., if you are caught in a lie, just lie louder, lie longer. But I am hoping to see some indignation from sane and honest Americans. Trump did not just get caught with his had in the cookie jar. He has been caught attacking our Constitution and way of life, something no president has ever done before.

Why has no president ever before attacked the Constitution? Because, good, bad, or indifferent, none of them was an enemy of the United States and none of them was an out-and-out criminal. Trump and those close to him are not like us. They do not come from the American mainstream but from latrines in which honesty is a disability and all that matters is personal victory, however obtained.

We must not shrug off Jan 6th and all that led up to it and all that followed upon it. The Insurrection was as great a threat to the United States as Secession, maybe a greater threat, because Secession would have diminished the United States, but the Insurrection threatens it very life. We are still under attack, and if America does not ostracize Trump and his followers, we will have ceased to be America.

6 VI 2022: Pistols at night

There should be no problem about restricting access to assault weapons, since these are only useful for homicide or as a substitute penis. But Republicans know that the insecure and unsure must have their AKs, the more the better, so we can’t get rid of assault weapons. But though assault weapons and other rifles get a lot of attention because of their use in mass shootings, rifles and assault weapons account for only 3% of annual gun murders. Handguns, on the other hand, account for 59% of annual gun murders. 

The AK is a stylish accessory when worn with cammies or other “tactical” costumes, but the pistol is the gun worn by the smartly dressed dude in an urban setting. And cities are the venue not only for night-by-night shootings in the parking lots of barrooms and convenience stores, but also for weekly crowd shootings at Saturday-night parties. These usually large gatherings often include people who cannot control themselves, packing uncontrolled weapons, and making the most of de facto uncontrolled substances. In this ambience a bit of disrespect or get-in-your-face will give rise to on-the-spot duels in which the duelists and sometimes their seconds shoot it out with one another. But unlike the duels of old, these exercises in self-display do not take place by prior arrangement in remote places, but occur suddenly and, by preference, in the middle of a crowd.

Handguns are the weapon of choice for urban shoot-outs. They are easily concealed and easily obtained, both legally and, more often, on the flourishing underground handgun market at home or in an adjoining state. But if howls of outrage and self-righteous struts are evoked by proposals for better controlling AKs, proposal for any effective program to bring handguns under control would overwhelm public discourse in America. Even so, something’s got to be done. Firearm addicts and the people who feed and defend their addiction could be what will bring this country down.

2 VI 2021: Red dioceses, blue dioceses?

I read that the following bishops have barred House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from receiving Communion in their dioceses: Salvatore Cordeleone of San Francisco, Robert Vasa of Santa Rosa, Michael Burbige of Arlington VA, and Joseph E. Strickland of Tyler TX. They claim they are forced to do this because Speaker Pelosi’s views on legalized abortion are contrary to those of the official Catholic Church. Will this trend follow the division of the country according to states that forbid abortion and states that allow it? So, as one might have to go from Texas to Illinois to obtain an abortion, one might have to go from Tyler TX to Chicago IL to receive communion.

2 VI 2022: We was robbed, again, and again, and again, and again

Fox News reports: “Former Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker joined Fox and Friends to address his concerns with a D.C. jury finding former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann not guilty of lying to the FBI. Whitaker pointed to the partisan leanings of the jury members.”

Whitaker, a Trump lackey, served as acting Attorney General from 7 Nov 2018 to 14 Feb 2019. His long experience in the upper reaches of our justice system gave him the prestige and expertise that brought him to Fox and Friends. Anyway, Mr. Whitaker seems to imply that this trial was somehow rigged, as is the case in all of Trump’s disappointments.

However, we may be seeing here an anticipation of Trumpublican refutation of convictions of the Trump co-conspirators — the Trumpies cannot get a fair trial because there were too many liberals and blacks on the jury.