14 XI 2021: Justice delayed is justice denied.

Donald Trump continues to delay any reckoning of and with his crimes. He has been getting away with this all his life. I believe that the failure to bring Trump to justice is yet another sign of the collapse of American democratic government. How is the American government to protect itself against those who would destroy it when it is wholly incapable of defending itself? Trump’s lawyers have obtained a stay of the lower court’s opinion, and will now seek a hearing before the appeals court, and if he strikes out there, it’s off to the Supreme Court. If the Trumpites on the Supreme Court enable Trump’s escape from justice, that will be the Republic’s epitaph.

6 XI 2021: A letter from the N.R.A.

I received yesterday a letter from Mr. Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of the N.R.A. The envelope is as interesting as the letter it contained. In lieu of affixed postage in the upper right corner it bore the legend: NONPROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE PAID NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION. 

On the middle right side of the envelope it says, in large black letters: NOTICE OF GUN CONFISCATION. Beneath this, in smaller letters enclosed in a black-line box, we have: “Official notice to named addressee. Delivery authorized under Section 703.1.2.2, United States Postal Regulations.”

Good grief, this piece of mail looks like the real thing, GUN CONFISCATION and “Official notice to named addressee,” that’s me, and they’re coming after my gun!!!

Shaken by this official-looking envelope, we are ready to read Mr. LaPierre’s enclosed exhortation to join the N.R.A. (they are currently offering memberships at a discount at the N.R.A. membership site!). By way of motivation, his letter warns: “For the first time in American history, a powerful gang of federal and state gun-ban politicians, unelected bureaucrats, elitist billionaires, and media propagandists are openly calling for your guns to be rounded up by force.” This sentence is a Trump rally enemy list: gang, gun-ban politicians, bureaucrats, elitists, media! Later comes reassurance: “That’s why gun owners like you need to join NRA right now. NRA is the only national organization that can STOP GUN CONFISCATION.”

Comically shameless demagoguery, but this emetic letter will surely have its intended effect. 

2 XI 2021: The Josh Hawley jukebox

Sen. Josh Hawley is a right-wing juke box. Put in a quarter, and you can select any reactionary golden oldie you like. The “National Conservatism Conference” at which he spoke must have pushed the button for “Manhood.” There Josh denounced the idea of “toxic masculinity,” wailed that “manhood” is being treated as a disease, and called for a return to traditional roles — by which I’m sure he means that men give the orders and women obey. I’m sure he was enthusiastically applauded by the attendees at this convention. His topic is a favorite of his audience and he himself embodies what he had undertaken to defend. For Hawley is one of the more notable examples of latter day toxic masculinity as manifested in his desperate ambition and energetic deceit and menu of the right-wing Top Ten. 

He said something to the effect that men are being so side-lined in America that many of them are resorting to idleness, pornography, and (oh Heavens!) computer games. He lamented “Manhood, it seems, is a disease that needs to be defeated.” What can he mean by manhood? The best he can offer is a re-run of a traditional caricature, and this cartoon manhood is, he says, being ground down by persecution. But what he really means is “Yikes, guys, we’re losing control!”

As I look around the world around me, I see no diminution of “traditional manhood,” among men and among women who imitate men. But manhood is not the disease. It’s testosterone poisoning that is the ancient pandemic that we’ve not yet learned to treat.

31 XI 2021: Cash and climate

I’ve been reading about the Biden administration’s effort to assess to what extent oil and gas removed from leased Federal lands is contributing to America’s greenhouse gas production. They want a moratorium on new leases until they can conduct their studies. But a judge in (of course) Louisiana has said they cannot interrupt the leasing of government property to private corporations — I’ve not yet found out why the Judge would give such a perverse judgment. The oil and gas empires are belching their outrage at any disturbance of the sweet deal they have when they lease land that belongs to you and me so they can remove much of the value from it. Their surrogates, sc., the Western congressmen in their employ, are, of course, adding their shrieks to the outcry. It is not clear that the Administration will be able to find and remove abuses from the oil/gas leasing racket.

Some good is being done, e.g., Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) has proposed H.R. 1517 that would raise royalty rates for the first time since 1920. But the oily-gassy people are as slick as their products, and they have spread so much cash around that it will probably be impossible to curb them.

I naively ask why do we allow this leasing of government land, to oil interests, to mining interests, to cattle interests, to timber interests. Great and small corporate enterprises are based on their ability to extract products from Federal land by paying a trifle of what these products are worth. This exploitation of government land amounts to an on-going government subsidy paid to people who are the first tier of the fossil fuels colossus. Looks to me like a rip-off of the American people and an unregulated source of perilous air pollution.

30 X 2021: Stop buying junk!

I read in this morning’s paper that the Halloween and Costume business association has reported that the American people have wasted ten to eleven billion dollars this year on Halloween candy, costumes, and decorations. That’s $10,000,000,000+. If taxes were raised enough to bring in an extra $10,000,000,000+ that could be used for infrastructure, to relieve poverty, to improve health care, or education, these same spendthrifts would wail like banshees. 

What we might call the “holiday industry” has used cheap imported goods to pump up expenditure on holidays that have lost any meaning they once had. This has been facilitated by the out-of-control materialism of Americans, who must acquire, acquire, acquire, even though they are doing so for no reason, even though what they are acquiring is cheap and ephemeral. Next there’s money to be made from Thanksgiving decorations, cardboard turkeys, pilgrim costumes, and the like. And then comes Christmas. And will we be ready? The glut of container ships from the Orient that are backed up at American seaports might check the flow of presents and thus “ruin Christmas.” Indeed, I’m surprised that right-wing entertainers have not claimed that this interruption in the flow of stuff is part of the supposed War against Christmas!

Shouldn’t we have a “don’t waste your money on trash” movement? It may be too late, it may be that Americans are, by their own inclinations and indoctrination by business interests, so addicted to the uninhibited acquisition of things that they cannot stop.

29 X 2021: The new Moloch

In view of the stubborn refusal of parents to be vaccinated and to allow their children to be vaccinated, a friend wondered if parents have ever before been so careless of the well-being of their children. This question brings to mind the ancient cult of Moloch wherein parents would offer their children as human sacrifice to appease that savage deity.

Why won’t parents be vaccinated, won’t allow their children to be vaccinated? One could imagine some rare cases in which arcane religion might forbid vaccination, but I hardly think that it is spirituality that is driving this current revolt against common sense and good citizenship. Most parents behaving in this way are doing so as a sign of their loyalty to Donald Trump. He refused to take COVID19 seriously, and set the pattern for all his followers. He and his administration lied about the danger of COVID19, and contributed to the deaths of 742,000 (and still counting) Americans. His flippant attitude towards COVID19 continues to be the model for the attitude of his slavish mimics in the cult of Trump.

Why won’t they allow themselves to be vaccinated, thus putting themselves and all around them at risk? Why won’t they allow at least their children to be vaccinated, so as to protect their children and their children’s schoolmates from deadly disease? They refuse because they view cooperation in the national effort against COVID19 as a betrayal of Trump, or fear that others of the other Trump cultists would view them as traitors. Parents are ready to sacrifice their children to the Moloch that Trumpworld has become.

28 X 2021: Jeffrey Clark; miscellaneous trash.

News reports that Jeffrey Clark, the Trumpian mole in the Justice Dept who conspirted with the Great Deceiver and others to undo the results of the last election, has got himself a new lawyer. I surely hope that he needs one, for this thoroughly corrupt man tried to destroy our democracy and should be put on trial, and that very soon.

Viewed footage of AG Garland testifying before Senate committee about the memo he had issued urging that attention be given to the attacks and threats made against school board members, teachers, etc., by ignorant parents. The Trumpublicans made a big fuss about it. Sen. Marsha Blackburn embarrassed herself thoroughly as she tried to misrepresent the memo and Ted Cruz spoke up in defense of giving the Nazi salute at a school board meeting.

The same footage contained images of people menacing and threatening school board members with warnings like “We know where you live!” The people doing the menacing and threatening did not impress me as responsible parent types or concerned citizens, but as pitiable people duped through their ignorance and driven by their animal passions. 

TRASH! No one will say it, many won’t admit thinking it, but I’m afraid that “trash” is the appropriate epithet for these and a large part of the Trump base.

25 X 2021: “good old days”

I read that Trump is surprised and angered by Fox News’ running adverts that are not supportive of him. Here’s a quotation from the story on HuffPost: “What good is it if FOX News speaks well of me when they continually allow horrible and untruthful anti-Trump commercials to be run — and plenty of them,” Trump said in a statement. “In the good old days, that would never have happened and today it happens all of the time.” 

Trump should have realized that FOX News is not about Donald Trump, but about making money and doing whatever is necessary to make it. But what struck me most about Trump’s thunderbolt was “In the good old days, that would never have happened ….” 

To what “good old days” is he referring? Stalin’s U.S.S.R., Hitler’s Third Reich, Mussolini’s New Rome? In those regimes nothing whatever could be published that was insufficiently supportive or, heaven forbid, actually critical of the absolute rulers of these regimes.

Trump often speaks of the “good old days” with no specificity at all when addressing his believers. I believe it then means something like “when we ran things,” “when we were in charge,” “when they knew their place,” and so on. But I think that in this case, by “good old days” he means an imagined time in the past or in the future when the Dictator always had his way.