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.

26 XI 2020: Kill all the prisoners!

Our psychotic President intends, with the help of William Barr, Attorney General and world-class asslicker, to see how many convicts he can exterminate before he leaves office. In aid of this, I should think, Trump is also re-thinking the method of execution: because there has been difficulty purchasing the poison currently used in murder-by-injection, maybe we should bring back the electric chair or even the firing squad. I am amazed at Trump’s uncharacteristically humane ideas for execution. Most dictators prefer to drop people from airplanes or hang them from the end of a crane or behead them.

And I don’t hear the fair-weather Christians, neither Evangelicals nor Catholics, condemning these upcoming murders. Of course, the Trump Base is keen on capital punishment. They say they want take a life in return for the life that was taken. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” they intone, “it’s in the Bible.” Yes, and it is also rejected by Jesus in the Bible (Matt 5:38-42). Will murdering another person make the person murdered feel any better? Will it make the living feel better? Oh yes, they want “closure for the family,” as if the long-delayed barbaric murder of the killer of a family member will wipe clean the family’s slate of sorrow with the sponge of revenge. 

Another pretense of the enthusiasts for capital punishment is that they want to “see justice done,” to see malefactors “brought to justice.” No, what they want is a legalized revenge, not justice. People carry on about justice as if they knew what is just, thus claiming as their own the divine prerogative. These want to be the arbiters of who deserves to live and who deserves to die, while mindlessly asserting their absolute “pro-life” convictions. It is for people like these that Trump, the Man Above the Law, and his hangmen in his Department of Justice are going to put on a show of not one, but five executions.

23 XI 2020: Will Trump issue a “Nero Decree”?

I came upon an article published on the site of The National WWII Museum entitled “Downfall: Adolf Hitler’s ‘Nero Decree’,” with this explanatory note: “Faced with his regime’s collapse, Adolf Hitler chose to destroy Germany’s infrastructure.”

This article reports that when the Russian armies were surrounding Berlin, Hitler turned against the German people: “For the Führer the impending defeat proved that Germans were simply neither strong nor ruthless enough to do what was necessary to achieve victory. Deeming Germany a failure of a nation Hitler prepared a decree that would seal the country’s collapse with catastrophic finality.”

This decree was entitled “Destructive Measures on Reich Territory.” It ordered the destruction of anything in Germany that might be of use to the Allies: mines, factories, docks, railroads, bridges, and utilities. Fortunately, Albert Speer managed to mitigate this decree and prevent the utter destruction of Germany.

I am frightened by the similarities of that earlier tyrant to Trump’s now that he has lost the election. Trump intensifying his efforts to dismantle America’s democratic government by employment of his by now familiar methods: barrages of lies, threats and coercion, appointment of incompetents, refusal to share crucial information. But what I fear more are the acts of sabotage Trump and his staff are going to commit as the will of the people closes in on Trump. I think we will see destruction of records (evidence) on a massive scale, concealment of important data, more abuse of immigrants, further diminution of America’s standing in the world, more accommodations of the Russians and Saudis, and maybe even the beginnings of a war with Iran. For once Trump comes to accept that he has been rejected by the majority of the American people, whom can he blame except the American people? If he feels he has been checked by the lawful functioning of American democracy, will not his antagonism towards democracy be magnified?

18 XI 2020: Guilty of RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT

Merriam-Webster defines “reckless endangerment” as “the offense of recklessly engaging in conduct that creates a substantial risk of serious physical injury or death to another person.” In my view, President Trump should, when he is no longer president, be prosecuted for reckless endangerment, for he recklessly endangered the people of the United States by failing to inform them about the coming danger of COVID19, by making light of it when it arrived, by obstructing and undermining the efforts of public health professionals to contain the virus, by setting a baneful example of indifference to the health and safety of others. I believe governors who behave in a similar way are also guilty of reckless endangerment of the people of their states. The same applies to officials in local government. From the President down to the mayor or county executive, these are guided by the basest of political considerations. 

Ordinary people carry on about their liberty and their rights when they are required to wear masks, when the sporting events of children are curtailed, when occupancy is restricted, when they are inconvenienced in any way by efforts to contain the virus. Business people resist efforts to limit the risk of spreading disease at their premises. Devotees of Trump consider disease prevention a criticism of their Führer and themselves.

All these aggrieved people, for their various motives, bring pressure to bear on elected officials to restrict efforts to contain this plague, and very many officials succumb to this pressure in fear of displeasing the voters, the businessmen, and their demigod, Mr. Trump.

Of course these people conceal their indifference to the common good by alleging that their “liberty” and “rights” are at stake. In these times, appeals to “liberty” and “rights” are too often the first recourse of minorities, like the evangelicals, the “gun rights” community, bikers against helmets, homophobes, misogynists, tobacco companies, in short any who press their own agendas against the will and welfare of their fellow citizens.

Pundits say that America is a nation divided in two, meaning divided into red and blue communities. I agree that America is a divided nation, but divided into many, many factions, parties, PACs, lobbies, movements, families, individuals who insist on their own way only and show their disdain for the common good. Does America have a death-wish?

13 XI 2020: BS from Justice Alito

Justice Alito who has been agitating to deny gays the freedom to marry is now objecting to restrictions on “liberty” arising from the struggle against COVID19. The news report reads: “‘We have never before seen restrictions as severe, extensive and prolonged,’ he said, and added that the pandemic has resulted in ‘previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty.'” I guess Mr. Justice Alito has not read about the steps taken to control the flu epidemic of 1918 nor about the restrictions imposed during WWI and WWII.

Am I wrong to see here the influence of America’s mistaken notion of liberty? If liberty means the freedom to do whatever you may want, however destructive to yourself or to others, then I guess the restrictions put in place to check COVID19 are restrictions on “individual liberty.” But does individual liberty allow us to drive an unsafe vehicle or to drive while intoxicated? Am I being denied my liberty if I’m forbidden to dump sewage into a creek that runs through my own property? Doesn’t regulation of tobacco, alcohol, firearms, and narcotics sharply curtail individual liberty? And what about the Transportation Security Administration that can inspect our luggage and our bodies?

Justice Alito is very worried about what he perceives as threats to “religious liberty.” Again, the report says: “‘It pains me to say this,’ Alito said, ‘but in certain quarters, religious liberty is fast becoming a disfavored right.'” Well, I think a lot depends on what one means by religious liberty. So I would pose the same sort of questions. Does religious liberty extend to religious assemblies that endanger the congregants and all with whom they come into contact? Does religious liberty allow snake handling, the “circumcision” of girls, “temple prostitutes,” unrestricted use of narcotics in religious services? Does religious liberty allow me to pay no taxes because I think the government is immoral? Does religious liberty allow me to beat my children if my church believes that the male should rule the family? Does religious liberty allow me to force my peculiar ethics and practices on others? What if my church condemns democracy, as the Catholic church did for centuries? Am I allowed to try to subvert democracy?

I’ve no doubt that Justice Alito was presenting his honestly held opinions. I am sorry that they seem to pander to good old American antinomian license and to the prolonged hegemony of certain religions. He has provided a list of the biases that will require him to recuse himself if the major issues of our time are referred to the Supreme Court.

13 XI 2020: Is Trump doing a Hitler parody?

I’ve read about Trump’s laying low in the White House — no mention of his bunker, but I wonder … Then I see in an article that those around Trump are afraid to tell him that he lost the election. 

I thought at once of the Hitler Rants Parodies on the internet. These insert footage from the portrayal of Hitler’s last days in the movie Downfall into new narratives, e.g., Hitler confronts Trump at Coronavirus press briefing, Hitler’s KFC order disaster, Hitler finds out Kanye West is running for president, Hitler debates Biden and Trump, and so on. The footage from Downfall shown most often portrays Hitler losing it in a furious rant.

I wonder if those close to Trump fear a similar eruption from the President. I read rumors that he has been permanently pissed off since losing the election, so they must be accustomed to his irascibility. But I can imagine that they are coddling Trump for fear of touching off something like what you can see at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH7zn52M_BA

12 XI 2020: Will America die of its own delusions?

Today’s newspaper reports that officials in St. Louis County are considering maybe tightening the restrictions now in place because of our apparent inability even to slow the spread of COVID19. Maybe it will be necessary to reduce the maximum gathering size down from the current number of 49! Are they kidding? And maybe reduce allowed occupancy levels of bars and restaurants to 50%. I find this astonishing, for half-measures like this are unlikely to make a bit of difference. Why not require all to wear a masks, why not reduce the maximum attendance at a gathering to the size of a nuclear family? Why not close bars and restaurants for a while?

But then, in the same article, a citizen attending the latest County Council meeting asked “Why do you insist on spreading fear and bullying the residents of St. Louis County.” Thank you, Mr. Trump! A Republican councilman is quoted as saying “to penalize everybody because certain people chose not to heed warnings is somewhat irresponsible from a policy point of view.” A complete misunderstanding of the COVID19 problem! Another Republican councilman warned that tightening restrictions in St. Louis County would drive people to go to other counties where the COVID19 threat is worse. I think we must read between the lines here: Tighter restrictions might drain off some cash from St. Louis County to other counties that are even more remiss. As always, economic considerations come first!

I would like to ask: Is telling the truth about a grave threat to our national security simply “spreading fear”? Is it bullying, is it penalizing if you compel citizens to do their duty to one another and take steps to protect their health and the health of all around them? 

Not telling the truth is a major cause of the crisis we face today. Our President knowingly lied to us when we might have taken steps to prepare for the onset of COVID19. And then, in an attempt to diminish his responsibility for his public health crime, he continued to lie about the severity of the pandemic and ridiculed the safety measures recommended by honest experts.

We would benefit from a lot more fear. I think Americans have developed a false sense of security due to the government’s control of information and due to the propaganda of the financial and commercial communities that is aimed to make us prodigal consumers. We have been brainwashed into believing that as long as we pay our taxes, spend our paychecks, and keep up our credit card payments we are what no human being ever can be, totally secure. So Americans won’t believe that there could come a plague that would be a real threat to US, won’t believe that there is not some medical magic that will take care of the problem at once, and, of course, believe their President because his lies reinforce their false beliefs.

Any honest appraisal of how great a menace COVID19 is to the US would, I think, make talk of “bullying” and “penalizing” seem ridiculous. If we truly feared COVID19 as much as it deserves, we would not worry so much about cash leaving our County. If we really feared COVID19 and if we really thought of ourselves as a civic community, we would work together, would support radical restrictions, would demand the truth, and would not let this plague continue to kill our fellow citizens.