NiNi Harris, the distinguished historian of St. Louis, in her book A Most Unsettled State: First Person Accounts of St. Louis During the Civil War provides excerpts from the journal of Louis Philip Fusz, St. Louis resident and secessionist. In the entry for 8 May 1864, Fusz denounces Lincoln for the injuries he believed Lincoln had done to the country. At the end of his list of injuries, however, Fusz corrects himself as follows: “On the moral side I was going to name the debasement of the people, their loss of the spirit of freedom, their baseness, but one thought convinces me that with the mass of Americans, he [Lincoln] is not the cause; that they themselves were in that condition for a long time past and that all their blustering and bragging about their freedom, their self respect, etc. were only loud proclamations to things they felt they possessed no more.” I find these words distressing, for if we substitute Trump for Lincoln, Fusz is describing Americans of our time far more accurately than those of whom he was writing.
3 I 2021: Trump and Graham enslaved
There are two questions that have been on my mind all through the dark years of Trump. The first is “What does Putin have on Trump?” that is, it looks like Putin facilitated Trump’s election because he could compel Trump to act in ways harmful to the national interest and supportive of the Russian dictator.
There were allegations early on that the Russians were holding over Trump’s head some acts of perversion committed during a visit to Moscow. But, as we’ve seen, charges of sexual misbehavior mean nothing to Trump and to his deeply religious base. Did the Russians discover that he had stolen a lot of money in the course of his business dealings? That wouldn’t matter to Trump who is a seasoned grifter, and his base seems to applaud such behavior.
I can only guess, and I come up with four possible explanations of Trump’s behavior.
1) The Russians can prove that Trump committed some very grave crime, perhaps murder or some other crime so abhorrent that even his base would react negatively.
2) The Russians can prove that Trump has had Mafia support, or Trump is liable to prosecution beyond American jurisdiction for criminal acts in international commerce.
3) Maybe Trump owes Putin or people known to Putin a truly fabulous sum of money, so much that he could never repay it, or so much that general knowledge of it and to whom he owes it would finish Trump.
4) Finally, maybe Trump has a crush on Putin and has taken every opportunity to make his beloved look good and everyone else look bad.
But will we ever know?
The second question is
“What does Trump have on Lindsey Graham?”
When Trump took office, this occasionally independent-minded and temperate senator enslaved himself to Donald Trump, seeming to say as did Caliban to Stefano:
Do that good mischief which may make this island
Thine own for ever, and I, thy Caliban,
For aye thy foot-licker.
Was Trump able to blackmail Graham and compel him to obey, virtually altering his personality? There have been queries for years about Graham’s sexual orientation, but that doesn’t matter at all to Graham’s supporters. What could he have done so terrible that its becoming known to the public had to be prevented at all costs?
Maybe Graham’s sin was becoming a slave to his status as prominent senator. Did Trump threated to “primary” Graham? I’m sure he did. Trump will sooner or later have threatened to “primary” everyone. We may never know why Lindsey Graham set career before country and self-respect, but the fact of his doing so is certain.
2 I 2021: Just because a man is crazy …
I read that a former convict, Cody A. Cape of Omaha, under investigation for hunting deer illegally in a federal wildlife refuge, was planning to murder the Federal Wildlife Officer involved in the investigation.
Cape had done prison time, is a scofflaw, is hostile to police, is, to say the least, erratic in his handling of guns, and is obviously mentally unbalanced. Should such a person be allowed to own firearms? Well, common sense says No!
But, come on, this is America, after all, and if we take away Cody Cape’s guns we would in fairness have to confiscate the firearms of thousands upon thousands of gun owners who are just like Cody. We’d have to disarm the so-called militias, disarm the wanna-be “soldiers of fortune” who show up in “tactical” accoutrements making a display of weapons at public events, disarm the throngs of mentally unstable men who roam our inner cities and shoot first and think later, if at all.
I could go on, but let me conclude by saying: If we were to confiscate guns belonging to citizens like Cody Cape, it just wouldn’t be America any more.
31 XII 2020: Hawley re-packaging himself
Josh Hawley, Senator from Missouri (O, blush, Missouri!), is determined to become President of the United States, an ambition so radioactive that he glows. He has not closed his mouth since he was elected and latches on to anything that will get him a mention in the media.
He has tried to sell himself as the Champion of the Common Man against “the elites.” This is a failed pretense, for the claim of a wealthy, Ivy-league elitist like Hawley to identify with the common man is laughable. He claims to be an advocate for “small town values,” though he spent only his early childhood in a small town, and the rest of his life in elitist institutions. So this ambition-driven plutocrat masquerading as a “country lawyer” has proven so unconvincing that Josh is re-packaging himself.
He’s trying to dress up in Trump’s old clothes and present himself now as the Champion of the Bigots and the Crazies. He, along with other unscrupulous Republicans, is competing to win the support of the dregs of Trump’s “base.” His recent announcement that he plans on January 6th to stand up for all the voters who share Trump’s delusions about the late election is ridiculous, but not to the baser elements of the base. So we’re seeing the entry onto the political stage of another demagogue who, like his hero, Mr. Trump, wants not to be President, but to be king.
30 XII 2020: They got Trump started and kept him going
The President’s ever more bizarre behavior raises a question I’ve long wanted to ask. How do his handlers keep him going? I mean the whole circle of handlers, including his physicians. What cocktails of psychotropic drugs have the psychiatrists been creating for him? We can surmise it contains Ritalin, his old drug of choice, but what additions have they made to get him over the breakdowns of his presidency? The present messes Trump is making and the countless messes he has made for the last four years and over the span of his life make it plain that the man is mentally ill.
Whom should we blame for making a madman President? I wouldn’t blame all who have voted for Trump. Some Trump voters are, I’m sure, people of good conscience and good faith. But his calculated appeals to American racism, anti-intellectualism, xenophobia, anti-feminism, selfishness, and swaggering ignorance have been so effective that they must describe the character of very many who voted for him. They love him, because he shares their hatreds. They love him, because he never makes them feel embarrassed about their willful ignorance. They love him, because he has heard their cry “Please don’t make me change! Please don’t make me think!”.
But more sinister, in my view, are the Republicans in Congress. All but a few of them have been absolute Quislings, traitors to democracy. They have exploited Trump’s cancerous popularity for their own selfish ends, and have let the world believe that America is finished, because our President is mad and much of Congress is mad, or considers it advantageous to pretend to be mad.
So the mindless, by voting for him, his handlers, by cajoling him, his physicians, by drugging him, and the politicians, by fawning on him, gave us four years of maniac rule. They have put on display how lazy, feeble, and hypocritical America really is.
7 XII 2020: Republican demagogue Hawley wants to send out welfare checks
Hawley is urging Trump to veto the compromise COVID19 relief bill that Hawley has denounced because it does not include another massive handout. Is this “fiscally responsible” Republican standing up for the needy and advocating a welfare state? No, he is only an hyper-ambitious demagogue who tries to turn anything that comes along to his political advantage, always simulating a concern for the common people. If he craves political success he should keep his mouth closed.
4 XII 2020: Trumpist fanatic at Pentagon
I read a piece this morning about Sturmbannführer Scott O’Grady whom Trump has nominated for a high place in the Pentagon. He and another Trumpian fanatic, Michael Flynn, are dittoing Trump’s Big Lie about the election and calling for him to impose martial law as well.
I suppose Flynn is so grateful for his pardon and O’Grady is so hopeful of the pardon that he will eventually need that they are vying with other Trumpist loonies to sit at the right and left hand of Trump in his Glory. I’m confident of Flynn’s success in this for he has already shown himself to be an accomplished liar. About O’Grady I’m not so sure. He has shown that he is crazy enough to claim a top place, but we’ll have to wait and see if he is a Trump-class liar.
Trump will, no doubt, continue to appoint incompetent ultra-Trumpists to important positions, and so Mr. Biden must immediately conduct a thorough detrumpification program within the government.
3 XII 2020: What a euphemism!!
An article on Politico today begins with the words:
President Donald Trump is considering preemptively pardoning as many as 20 aides and associates before leaving office, frustrating Republicans who believe offering legal reprieves to his friends and family members could backfire. Trump’s strategy, like much of his presidency, is nontraditional.
I am so weary of hearing Trump’s behavior described as “untraditional.” It’s like saying that if I rob my bank instead of cashing a check there, my banking is untraditional. Most of what Trump has done that could be call untraditional is of two kinds. Sometimes he has blundered or offended or broken the law because he did not know any better. More often, what political euphemism calls “untraditional” has been immoral, illegal, or criminal. “Preemptively pardoning”! Does this new kind of pardon, like baptism, forgive all offences? What if Giuliani and Jared and Stephen Miller have been running a secret white slavery ring on the side for the last four years? Would this novel “preemptive pardon” prevent their being prosecuted for white slavery?
We should all have seen this coming. It simply makes sense. If Al Capone had been elected Governor of Illinois, as he left the governor’s mansion on his way to prison he would have issued pardons to his entire gang. That Trump would attempt something like this is only to be expected. I recall it was reported at some point that our “untraditional” leader told his staff to go ahead and break the law because he would pardon them if they were caught. Surely Trump’s gang has been taking it for granted that he will hand out pardons all around on his way out of the White House.
2 XII 2020: I do believe in fairies! I do! I do!
This is the mantra that the children chant in the film of Peter Pan to to revive the poisoned Tinkerbell. The alternative approach, from the stage play Peter Pan, is for the audience to clap if they believe in fairies. That was in Wonderland.
In America for the past 4+ years a substantial portion of the population has been clapping frantically and insisting on their belief in fairies to cope with the reality of President Trump’s psychotic and malicious behavior. And we now hear louder than ever the “I do believe in fairies” and the frantic applause as Trump’s managers, enablers, and followers try to revive Trump and his failed campaign.
Peter Pan is an amusing fantasy. It belongs in Wonderland. Donald Trump’s victory in the 2020 election is an evil fantasy. It belongs in topsy-turvy Trumpland where bad is good, lies are truth, and it’s every man for himself. And just as in Trumpland everything is its opposite, Trump can be said to be dying from the “poison” of democracy.
For me, the truly appalling fact that has emerged from the Years of Trump is that there are so very many people who will cry and keep crying “I do believe in fairies,” and so very many politicians who keep asserting the existence of fairies. Can democracy survive?
29 XI 2020: United States dying from Trump’s Disease
Donald Trump has, I think, been truly representative of perhaps half of the American people, for he shares and by example legitimizes their vices. Both he and they are selfish, anti-intellectual, racist, patriarchists, materialists; they are functionally amoral, anti-social, self-indulgent, self-centered and angry all of the time.
This can be seen clearly in the refusal of large numbers of citizens to accept or cooperate with measures enacted to try to control the spread of COVID19. They are zealous only for their own convenience and so refuse to wear masks. They choose to believe that their unaided common sense is more reliable than those who are truly informed, the scientists and physicians. They believe that their financial interests should be taken far more seriously than efforts to contain the plague. They assert that not wearing a mask and crowding together in bars and sporting events is their choice, that they will take their chances, and those with whom they come into contact will have to look out for themselves. They are unwilling to forego any of their usual pastimes and pleasures in the face of a lethal pandemic. In practical terms, they care for no one except themselves. They are, on the whole, resolutely ignorant, have little comprehension of the biological, sociological, and political aspects of the pandemic, and so view public health measures as only one more effort to inconvenience them.
I have been thinking that it would be appropriate, in the U.S., for COVID19 to called Trump’s Disease, for the President has done more than anyone to allow the disease to prosper and grow. But perhaps Trump’s Disease would be a more appropriate name for the complex of determined ignorance and childish self-centeredness that Trump inspires into the anti-maskers.