18 VI 2021: Attacks on Chinese-Americans

I have been both horrified and puzzled by the steep upsurge in the verbal and physical assaults on Chinese Americans. Who would behave in this way, and why? I suppose the attacks are due to terrified stupidity and enabled malice, terrified stupidity, because fools in fear of COVID19 lash out at those whom the King of Fools has told them are responsible, enabled malice, because violence-prone, envious, resentful people are always quick to take advantage of any imagined license given them by persons in authority.

Let me end with Mark Twain’s observations on the Chinese and White-Chinese relations in his memoir Roughing It. He writes of the Chinese and the treatment they received in his time.

“They are a kindly disposed, well-meaning race, and are respected and well treated by the upper classes, all over the Pacific coast. No Californian gentleman or lady ever abuses a Chinaman, under any circumstances, an explanation that seems to be much needed in the East. Only the scum of the population do it – they and their children; they, and, naturally and consistently, the policemen and politicians, likewise, for these are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum, there as elsewhere in America.”

16 VI 2021: Trump and D.O.J.

So we’ve learned of the pressure Trump and his helpers applied to the Department of Justice to get it to play along with Trump’s Big Lie.

Did this come as a surprise to anyone at all? If we learn Al Capone has bribed a government official, that too is no news. These crimes are noteworthy, to be sure, but they are not news because they are only what we should expect.

We learn too that it was not only a matter of White House exerting pressure on the D.O.J., but there was also a Quisling at work in the D.O.J. I refer to Jeffrey Bossert Clark, an assistant Attorney General, who seems to have been ready to sabotage the D.O.J. to ingratiate himself with Trump. We should not simply blow off Mr. Clark with a “sleaze will be sleaze” shrug, but investigation is required into his activities at the D.O.J.

4 VI 2021: Trump with Hitler in Argentina?

I heard some speculation online that if Trump is forced to stand trial he will flee the country. (I really don’t care why he leaves, so long as he leaves.)

The thought of Trump in exile made me wonder how the “base” would handle it. And I immediately thought of those die-hard Nazis that maintained that Hitler had escaped the Bunker and was living in Argentina, planning his return to power. Some such fantasy would work very well for the die-hard Trumpies. A large number of them are crazy already so lunacy like this would find a ready audience. And there will be the phone calls from Trump, with “experts” trying to figure out if it is really his voice. And, I imagine, there will be Trump sightings, some even supported by blurry photographs. And it will become a religious test for Trumpies to insist that Donald is down there in Argentina with Adolph planning their returns.

3 VI 2021: Rand Paul crowing on his dung-heap

I read that Senator Rand Paul, in the latest example of his chronically eccentric and obstructionist behavior, is claiming some kind of vindication for himself as a result of the publication of a pile of Dr. Fauci’s emails. Not only that, but Paul says he holds Dr. Fauci “morally responsible” for the COVID19 pandemic. 

I suppose he is claiming some vindication by way of an excuse for the amount of time he wasted showing off when Dr. Fauci testified before the Senate committee. As to moral responsibility, Sen. Paul should avoid making judgements about morality or responsibility, since, as a Trumpublican, he lacks any credibility in these spheres.

2 VI 2021: The Lounge Lizard Speaks

News report:

Criticism circulated of the [new Army recruiting] ads including from conservative media and Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who responded to the ads by tweeting, “Holy crap, perhaps a woke, emasculated military is not the best idea.”

“We have the greatest military on earth, but Dem politicians & woke media are trying to turn them into pansies,” the Texas Republican senator added.

I don’t see how anyone who has groveled before Donald Trump for the last 5 years would want to call anyone else “emasculated.”

30 V 2021: Why did they die?

Memorial Day is here. It is a day to commemorate those who died in America’s wars and to assuage America’s guilt for sending these citizens out to die. We are constantly told that these men were heroes who died to protect our freedom. But how often was this the case? 

The Revolutionary War, War of 1812, the Civil War, and WWII can be said to have been fought to protect our freedom. However, I don’t think our freedom was at risk in ongoing genocidal Indian Wars, or the great landgrab of the Mexican War. The Spanish American War was the beginning of the American Empire, and the ensuing Philippine-America War was a colonial war to tighten our hold on the Philippines by doing away with native government and culture. High Wilsonian ideals were the propaganda for WWI, but the war is more likely to have been fought to stabilize Britain and France so that they could repay, with interest, funds borrowed from American bankers. Of the modern conflicts, the Korean War and the Vietnamese War were fought to maintain American zones of influence in far off Asia. Desert Storm was about oil. We don’t really know who we’ve been fighting in Lasting Freedom and the invasion of Afghanistan, but it is a real stretch to say they’ve been fought to protect American freedom.

In saying this, I maintain the highest respect for those who died in these wars, but their patriotism lay not so much in protecting freedom as in their obedience to the call of a country that exploited them to “protect American interests,” interests that had little to do with freedom and a lot to do with American capital.

29 V 2021: Beginnings of Fascist Rule

Italy: “March on Rome”

Germany: Reichstag Fire

America: Attack on Capitol

The United States is ripe for a fascist takeover. Neo-fascists and opportunistic hangers-on won a big victory through the “Republican” Senate, and they’ll move on from here. 

28 V 2021: Republican mafia doesn’t want to be investigated.

Well, the attempt to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the Siege of the United States Capitol on Jan 6 has failed. It was doomed from the start. Asking Senate Republicans if they want the Insurrection to be investigated is like asking the Corleone Family if they want an investigation of their Don and the rest of the gang.

What do the Republicans have to hide? Quite a lot. Blocking the bipartisan investigation is far more than routine Republican refusal to cooperate. This is a virtual obstruction of justice, and reveals Republicans’ intense fear that their Boss and Republicans in Congress will turn out to have been very much implicated in the attack on the Capitol. 

Comparison of the Republican Party to the Mafia is altogether fitting, for the G.O.P. of today is a gang whose only goal is to hang on to their territory so that they can continue to scam and rob the public and protect the rich. Earlier, it looked like they would resort to anything short of violence to hold on to power. But then Trump, with the connivance of Republicans in the administration and in Congress, attempted a violent rebellion. And now, moving on, some shameless Republicans and unhinged members of the G.O.P. are talking up “armed rebellion” to the suckers that listen to them.

It is time now for a hard look at Section 2385 in Title 18 of the U.S. Code, the Section that forbids and punishes advocating “overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States.”

28 V 2021: COVID19 a test of patriotism

COVID 19 has given us a litmus test for patriotism. I usually avoid the terms patriot, patriotic, and patriotism. As they are commonly used in the United States, these words are meaningless, and when used by neo-nazi factions and political figures they are toxic.

Even so, I will make use of these terms to argue that COVID19 has shown that Trump and his followers, contrary to their abundant pretensions, are not patriots. COVID19 was the greatest danger to the security of the American people. Though Trump knew the danger, he kept knowledge of it secret through the time when he should have been preparing the government and the country to deal with it. Once the gravity of the threat of the plague became obvious, he kept on making light of COVID19 and tried to ridicule and subvert the authority of competent people. His unpresidential, unpatriotic behavior made our country far more vulnerable to the disease and contributed significantly to the deaths of some 589,000 and the infection of 33.1 million Americans. 

Of course, Trump’s attitude and behavior instantly became the model for his devotees among the people. Hence came the anti-maskers who considered refusal to wear a mask to be a sign of solidarity with Trump. Prudent closure by public health authorities of places where people gather and spend money was greeted with outrage, indignation, and contempt for law by ordinary people and by business people and by pandering politicians who would put their fellow citizens’ health and lives at risk to protect the cashflow. Citizens who refuse to protect themselves and their countrymen, who set their own convenience before the general welfare, and place profit before citizenship are not patriots.

Next, when an effective vaccine became available, the lack of urgency and the dismissive attitude of Trump and his spokespersons towards the vaccine made refusal to receive the vaccine another pro-Trump gesture. To Trump’s base we must add the many others who are refusing the vaccine, some because of eccentric reservations, some because of fears that no one thought to allay, some because they are simply too idle to go and receive the vaccine. The delusions and selfishness of these people are preventing or, at least, postponing their country’s recovery from COVID19.

The struggle against COVID19 would have been far more successful if the President had not chosen to make light of the country’s peril and ridicule efforts to contain it. If he had stepped up as a model and advocate for all the public health measures against the disease, the damage done our country by COVID19 would have been dramatically reduced. But he chose to minimize and dismiss the disaster caused by his own grievous irresponsibility and became a major obstacle to the containing of COVID19. Trump’s unwillingness to do his duty as President put our country at serious risk. His example gave rise to mindless resistance to efforts to contain the disease. He and his followers are one of the main causes of the medical disaster we are witnessing.

And the medical disaster is not the only harm done to America by the behavior and demeanor of Trump and his followers. Americans’ vulnerability to demagoguery, their inability to communicate and collaborate, and their stubborn refusal to comply with government regulation and counsel have exposed to friends and foes the immaturity, selfishness, lack of civic values, and even rebelliousness of a large part of the American people. We are living with the consequences of stupid, self-righteous individualism, willful ignorance, and the almost universal assumption that liberty means license. These have corrupted our character and made us enemies of one another. 

25 V 2021: Shh! The children must not know what we did.

The legislatures of our backward states are bubbling with legislation intended to prevent teachers from teaching the truth about American racism. Republican legislators are horrified at the prospect of white students coming to realize the race-centered sins of their ancestors and contemporaries; they affect to be aghast at the prospect of anyone coming to feel guilty or ashamed because of his/her race; and so on and so forth. They intone frightening segregationist slogans that they have exhumed and given some cosmetic treatment for contemporary consumption. 

Of what are they really so afraid? They are afraid that the devil that has infested America from its foundation is about to be exorcised. They are afraid that buried truths that question America’s self-esteem will be laid bare to generations to come. They are afraid of change. The actual fears of these legislators and the voters to whom they appeal can be  summed up in their prayer: “Don’t make me think, don’t make me change.”