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. 

25 V 2022: America’s gun-cult

 It would be toilsome to compose a list of all the plagues that are hastening the ruin of the United States of America, though many come instantly to mind: the plutocracy of oligarchs, gullible materialism of the many, deterioration of public education, blatant and effective demagoguery, the welfare-state, the world’s largest prison system, intractable racism, aggressively resistant patriarchy, entrenched misogyny and homophobia.     

A recent event, however, demands a focus on a vice almost peculiar to the American empire, the cult of the firearm. The slaughter of 22 students and teachers at Uvalde TX by one heavily-armed late adolescent has evoked, in addition to fright, fatigue, and disgust, the usual “thoughts and prayers,” vague calls for firearm reform, and ensuing warnings from panderers on the right that we should not be carried away by some passing horror and grief to enact legislation that might endanger our “gun rights.”     

“Gun rights”?!? No, not gun rights, but GUN CULT. The ownership and abuse of firearms in the United States are so widespread that the United States can scarcely be considered s a civilized country. Gun manufacturers, demagogic politicians, judicial ideologues, fear-mongers of all sorts have combined to turn these ill-defined “gun rights” into a cult founded on the American male’s Peter Pan syndrome and profound sexual insecurity. This cult serves its exponents in many ways: keeps the factories of “merchants of death” humming, rallies gun-crazed one-issue voters, invigorates racism and xenophobia, and perpetuates a fantasy America of individualists so primitive that they need weapons to defend themselves against one another.

Dismantling of America’s gun cult is going to require a lot more than fine adjustment of the firearms regulations. This cult is only a part of a much larger network of primitivist thought and instinct, the influence of which has lately increased so notably. But though only one part, it connects with so many other faults of our society that our success or failure to curb the barbarous firearm cult will provide a very good barometer for predicting the survival or collapse of the American Empire.

21 V 2022: Putin is using Hitler’s playbook

No, I’m not referring here to the many parallels between the countless atrocities that are part of the Putin Army’s tactics and the identical methods pioneered by the Army of the Third Reich in Ukraine 80 years ago. What I mean is the parallels between Hitler’s and Putin’s command and leadership styles. These can be conveniently indicated through a diagram:

A) Hitler has an ex-private’s contempt for his generals.                  

B) Hitler fires or executes generals who do not agree with him. 

C) Hitler assumes the sole authority to make military decisions, even tactical ones.

D) Hitler has his war-room in the Führer bunker in Berlin.

E) Hitler shoots himself.

compared to:

A) Putin has an old KGB man’s contempt for the military.

B) Putin fires the generals the Ukrainians have not already shot.

C) Putin assumes detailed direction of his army.

D) Putin takes refuge in a deluxe, nuclear-proof cavern in the Urals.

E) Putin wonders what to do next and ….

13 V 2022: Another barbarian invasion

Colonel General Alexander Zhuravlyov is repeating in Ukraine the use of Smerch cluster rockets with which he terrorized civilians in Syria when he was on loan to Bashar al-Assad. Putin, following his instinct to amplify atrocity, has brought Colonel General Zhuravlyov home to repeat what he did so well abroad.

It is generally said that the Russian propensity for brutal land-grabbing is due to its conquest and 300-year occupation by the Mongol hordes in the 13th-16th centuries. So, like an abused child become an abusive adult, Russia keeps renewing the cycle of its own abuse in its relationships with its weaker neighbors.

The seizure of Crimea, the invasion of Ukraine, and other displays of barbarism yet to come are parts of the unending sequence of attacks by an uncivilized horde from the East, and Putin is playing the role of Batu Khan. I hope Russia’s current behavior will make the world realize that Russia is not a nation-state, but an unregenerate horde, and that it must be treated as such.

11 V 2022: No more pills?

Today’s Huffpost reports that some of the more dim and ambitious Republicans are talking about using their illegally obtained control of the Supreme Court to eliminate the Federal guarantee of access to contraceptives established by Griswold v. Connecticut of 1965. Amanda Terkel observes in today’s article: “ … if Republicans get what they want ― an overturning of Griswold ― it would kick the issue back to the states and open the door to restrictions or bans on birth control methods, because there would be no federal guarantee of access.”

White male reactionaries and the demagogues that pander to them have a long tradition of preference for wanting to keep issues like slavery, female suffrage, evolution, school segregation, etc. down at the state level where they cannot be compelled by federal law to do what is right. 

I don’t know what could prevent this overturn. It might be necessary to reduce the number of Catholics on the Supreme Court, for Catholics in the male-supremacy museum that gave us the Court’s current College of Cardinals still maintain that birth control is contrary to divine law, natural law, and, if they could have their way, contrary to state law. But how could the number of Cardinals on the Court be reduced? It would require mobilization of all who are disgusted by the growing power of the reactionary oligarchy to create the political energy to impeach Clarence Thomas for unethical behavior, and Samuel A. Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil M. Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett for lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

9 V 2022: Cardinal Alito, a questionable justice, for sure a reactionary politician

The College of Cardinals of the U.S. Supreme Court chose one of their number to write up an opinion that they have been working on since 1973. Politeness requires that we call Justice Alito’s work a draft opinion, however it is not a judicial opinion, but a political manifesto. It is awash in contempt, contempt for modernity, contempt for women, contempt for democracy, and contempt for common sense. 

Inter alia: 1) He offers the fascist-friendly view that so-called rights not mentioned in the Constitution are not really rights. 2) He cackles that a “tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973.” 3) He argues that freedom of choice is not rooted in the Nation’s History and Tradition.

As to #1, Alito’s understanding of the Constitution means that America is “married to a corpse,” to something dead, that cannot grow, but only decay.

As to #2, Those heroes of jurisprudence whom he cites with such approval lived at a time when petty theft was a hanging offense. Sir Edward Coke even wrote a vigorous defense of hanging, drawing, and quartering, the traditional penalty for treason. 

As to #3, Alito invokes “tradition” as if he were a member of the papal curia. Much that is traditional is now forbidden. The United States has an unbroken tradition of black slavery until 1865. We had an unbroken tradition of school segregation until 1954. We have an unbroken, still flourishing tradition of marginalizing non-whites. Our application of law to women continues an ages-old tradition of restriction and exclusion. So, universal suffrage is not rooted in the nation’s history and tradition, but slavery, colonialism, imperialism, racism, and male supremacy most surely are.