7 VII 2022: Conservatives and slaves

The Conservative Party in the United Kingdom is finally removing Boris Johnson. It has taken them all too long to ditch Johnson, but they have finally united in absolute rejection of this destructive anomaly in British politics. The contrast with the Republican Party in the United States is altogether striking. Trump’s behavior has been much more destructive and far more criminal than Boris Johnson’s, but a majority of Republicans remain enslaved to Donald Trump, their worst enemy.

3 July 2022: Dictators for life?

Haiti’s one time blood-soaked dictator, Papa Doc Duvalier was “elected” President for Life, as had been a number of his predecessors, as have quite a number of dictators world-wide. This title is, of course, a euphemism for Dictator for Life. In the U.S. no elected official in the executive and legislative branches can hold office for life. However, the federal judiciary is dominated by appointees who hold office until retirement or death. This anomalous lifetime tenure in office is intended to free the judges from having to seek re-election and so from subservience to any particular voting base, and supports an indifference to politics that we would expect of an honest judge.

But federal judges are appointed by the President, must be confirmed by the Senate, and are thus the same as all other high-level political appointees except that their terms of service do not end with a change of government. So if a justice of the Supreme Court is nominated because of her/his political orientation, upon the recommendation of an radical political organization (e.g., the Federalist Society), and is hastily confirmed only by the votes of a temporary majority in the Senate, the odds are, it seems to me, that the justice so appointed may continue as a creature of the political faction that brought about his/her appointment and confirmation throughout her/his lifetime term. And if connivance and misfortune create enough justices of this sort to constitute a majority on the Court, we have all that is needed for a judicial dictatorship for life.

30 VI 2022: A census of “Trump world”

I am seeing, as the Jan 6 Hearings progress, more and more references to “Trump World” or “Trumpworld.” This expression is puzzling. What and where is Trump World? One could think that it exists only in Donald Trump’s mind, an imaginary world of shining hyperbole that orbits around King Donald. But as commonly used, the term means Trump and all the more public members of his entourage, Donny Jr. and Eric, Ivanka and Jared, Mark Meadows, Roger Stone, Sean and Laura, Stormy Daniels, Jim Jordan, Steve Bannon, and Trump’s legal team: Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, John Eastman. However, there are many more inhabitants of Trump World than these, and I would like to see them dragged out of the shadows so that we will know their names as well.

Trump’s campaign to retain power has been long-lasting and multi-faceted. Now among Trump’s well known deficiencies are his attention deficit disorder, his disinclination to read anything, his impetuosity, and his furious impatience. These are not the character traits of one who is to design and execute a grand scheme over an extended period of time. I am ready to agree that the Big Lie was actually born of Trump’s lifelong conviction that he is absolutely the best and therefore unbeatable unless someone cheated him. But unless the Big Lie is surrounded and supported by a lot of little lies and little liars it must look like the paranoid delusion it is. Quickly deploying so many vocal supporters and convincing them of the truth of the Big Lie, or, rather, convincing them to pretend that the Big Lie is true, requires a capacity for detailed planning and an organizational ability well beyond Trump’s poor powers. No, Trump had many co-conspirators, many more than we know, in disseminating the Big Lie and organizing and funding the attempted coup. I want to know specifically who were these seditionists, and I want to see them brought to justice along with the more public and less effective members of Trump’s entourage.

28 VI 2022: The Party of Hostile Misogyny

Jill Filipovic published a piece on , “Cruel GOP rhetoric about rape survivors and abortion is far more than words,” that concluded: “The GOP has become the party of hostile misogyny.” I surely agree, though I would have phrased it “has long been,” for misogyny has long been a foundation stone in the Republican base. 

American males and their females suffer from what I would call “gynophobia,” i.e., fear of women, and that fear metastasizes immediately into the anger and hatred of misogyny. And, yes, women of the Republican base are misogynists as well, for they fear, as they ought, that the equality and independence of women will destabilize their privileged world of class consciousness and racial discrimination.

So the pot of misogyny, ipso facto hostile, is always simmering in the U.S.A., just waiting to be brought to a boil by demagogic dog whistles, pseudo-Christian posturing, and declarations of disdain for women like the recent Supreme Court ruling.

27 VI 2022: Human life begins at … we’ll have to get back to you about this.

Quite a few states have seized the opportunity to ban abortion consequent on the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Some had, in fact, seized the opportunity well before the demise of Roe v. Wade by passing so-called “trigger laws,” bans on abortion that were required to take effect immediately upon the repudiation of Roe v. Wade. I guess the reversal of Roe v. Wade came as no surprise to many reactionary state legislatures. I guess you could wonder if they knew that “the fix was in” with the Court.

Now we will see what kind of ban the anti-abortion states will enact or, anticipating the end of Roe v. Wade, have already enacted. The states with trigger laws have banned abortion absolutely, save in the case of peril to the health or life of the mother (and I wonder how long this exception is going to last). Other states have laws on the books that permit abortion during the first 6 weeks of pregnancy, during the first 15 weeks, during the first 20 weeks, and during the first 22 weeks, or until fetal cardiac activity can be detected. No doubt, some of these grace periods in which abortion is permitted will be shortened or eliminated, as legislators compete to seem more radically anti-abortion than their colleagues.

There appears to be some confusion or, perhaps, breadth of opinion about when life begins, some urging that life begins upon conception, others allowing abortion within 6 weeks after conception or 15 weeks or 20 weeks or 22 weeks after conception. The easiest answer to the question of when life begins, when abortion would be murder, is to say “It is my belief that life begins at conception” or, for the politically motivated, to say “Let’s assume that life begins at conception.” Thus, that life begins at conception is both an article of faith and a best guess. But it remains to see the reaction to this of people who don’t share the faith or who are reluctant to make a guessing game of human life?

25 VI 2022: Not a majority decision

The faction that brought about the appointment of Trump’s Anti-abortion Triad does not represent a majority of the American people but is, rather, a clique that manipulates the frightened reactionaries among American voters who are aroused and driven by fear of the end of white domination, the end of Christian hegemony, and, most frightening, the end of patriarchal supremacy. This greatest fear arises from the increasing independence of women, and a crucial part of this independence has been a woman’s ability to obtain an abortion. 

The political opposition to abortion has nothing to do with the unborn. The majority of pro life politicians don’t really care about the lives of the unborn, no more than they care about the lives of anyone born who is not one of themselves. But they “got religion,” i.e., became ever increasingly pro life as a way to hang on to the few voting blocs on which they can always count, frightened males, Catholics, and evangelicals.

Within the pro-life movement there are, of course, many who are motivated by their authentically religious beliefs. But it was not the devout who managed the appointment of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. Rather they were put in place by a clique who seek to retain power by promoting the division of the American people.

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.