Trump has overruled the testimony given at a congressional hearing by Robert Redfield, M.D., the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Redfield stated that, given the wait for a tested vaccine and sufficient supply of vaccine, it would take until Fall 2021 for the country to get back to normal. Trump hastened to condemn Dr. Redfield, declaring that the poor old Doc “got the message confused … didn’t understand the question.” What he means is “Dr. Redfield did not give the right answer.” In Trump’s view, a vaccine against COVID19 widely distributed is the elixir that’s going to win the election for him, and Trump’s gut tells him that distribution of the vaccine will begin in October, i.e., before the election. And when Trump’s oracular bowels, or, rather, Trump’s desperate needs have spoken, reason, science, and truth are forbidden. Trump has constantly found that his uninformed surmises and self-centered wishes have nothing to do with reality, and his way of getting around this is to get rid of reality. In his Sixth Satire, the Roman poet Juvenal presents a scene in which a woman of the Roman aristocracy on a whim orders the crucifixion. She sweeps her husband’s reasonable and humane objections aside, and proclaims: “Hoc volo, sic iubeo; sit pro ratione voluntas.” = “This is what I want, this my command; let will take the place of reason.”
17 IX 2020: Barr continues attempted destruction of law
Attorney General William Barr has decided, it seems, to let more than his belly hang out. He’s urging prosecution of the Mayor of Seattle. A report of his speech at Hillsdale College where he was speaking on “the constitutional hurdles for forbidding a church from meeting during Covid-19” reports: “‘You know, putting a national lockdown, stay at home orders, is like house arrest. Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history,’ Barr said as a round of applause came from the crowd.”
That he would be applauded for such pandering at Hillsdale College, a hive of religious and political reactionaries, is not remarkable. But his silliness drew a very different response from Rep. James Clyburn: “You know, I think that that statement by Mr. Barr was the most ridiculous, tone-deaf, God-awful thing I’ve ever heard … It is incredible that (the) chief law enforcement officer in this country would equate human bondage to expert advice to save lives.” It once would have been incredible that the Attorney General would say anything so stupid, but this is William Barr, Trump’s attorney, on a retainer paid by the U.S. Government.
Barr rivals Trump and his minions in the spread of misinformation, always with a sanctimonious tone that makes him the darling of the religious right. Indeed, on Sept. 23 Barr is to receive an award at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast for “Exemplary, Selfless and Steadfast Service in the Lord’s Vineyard.” Really? I thought Bill the Hangman had been smashing the grapes. The National Catholic Prayer Breakfast is an annual reactionary binge where people who are more authoritarian than Catholic gather to celebrate their loyalty to the extreme right-wing. Barr’s receiving an award at the Breakfast is as unsurprising and as disgusting as his receiving a big round of applause at Hillsdale.
13 IX 2020: Predictions
I’ve been musing about what might happen if Trump loses the election.
Here are some random predictions:
Even if Biden were to have a landslide lead over Trump, the Trumpists will be yelling for years to come “We was robbed!”
In the interim period between the election and Trump leaving office:
Trumpists’ slogans will be “take the money and run” and “burn it down.”
Government money will flood into Trump properties..
Efforts will be made by legislators and Trumpist judges to make permanent the current distribution of wealth.
Deportation of immigrants of color will be expanded and speeded up.
William Barr will be hired by a posh law firm or become a lobbyist or defect to Russia or be appointed to the Supreme Court.
Trump will organize the largest ever legal defense fund and team to be ready to delay his being sent to jail.
Peace-criminals like Stephen Miller will find refuge in right-wing “think” tanks.
Racist gun-nuts will come out of the woodwork and parade in the cities to menace non-Nazis.
Large numbers of Trump’s minions and of his supporters in Congress will begin declaring they never really liked Trump.
Evangelical clergy who have supported Trump will begin, with crocodile tears, to confess “We have sinned,” and go on as usual.
5 IX 2020: Lions, and tigers, and racial sensitivity training, Oh my!
Well, the Trumpists have patched together a new straw man to burn publicly before his drooling adherents. Someone told him about racial sensitivity training and he immediately recognized it as “divisive, anti-American propaganda.” As always, Trump criticizes others for the very faults of which he is most guilty.
He’s has started this witch-hunt — oops, he’s the only victim of witch hunts. He has started this endeavor through Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget and a graduate of Wheaton College where the Bible is worshipped. Clearly Trump and his Gang are trying to find something that will really spook his uneducated and racist supporters. “Anti-American” Please define. Can’t, because it cannot be defined, and that’s intended. “Anti-American” just sounds inconceivably bad to a certain class of people, as bad as “boys and girls matriculating together at the state university!”
The same is true, I think, of the term “socialist.” Republicans cannot call their opponents “communists” as in years gone by, so they have settled on “socialist.” I don’t think these people would know a real socialist if one walked up and offered them free health care. “Socialist” is dog-whistle for “doesn’t believe in private property” (“Oh my hard-inherited wealth!”) or “believes taxes should be increased so that the government can do what governments are supposed to do” (“Class warfare!”), or “elitists who know what needs to be done telling me what to do!” (“Now that’s really anti-American!)”
4 IX 2020: Imitation the sincerest flattery
Marjorie Taylor Greene is the Republican candidate for Congress in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District. She is certain to be elected because her district is pathologically Republican. She is a sucker for wacky conspiracy theories, she’s a racist, a world-class bigot, and she has, of course, been endorsed by Trump. So she’s got no end of appeal for Georgia voters.
Today I saw a photo of Ms Greene cradling an assault rifle in her arms, the rifle aimed at photos of the women of the left-wing “Squad” in the House of Representatives, this in support of her contention: “We need strong conservative Christians to go on the offense against these socialists who want to rip our country apart.” What really struck me, however, is her minute-man pose which brought Mark McKloskey immediately to mind. I bet Marjorie would stand side-by-side with Mark and Patty and blow those n*****s away.
3 IX 2020: Finding heroes for the rightwing
The Rightwing sometimes has to scrape its shoes to find its heroes. That was clearly the case with the McKloskeys whose apotheosis was staged at the Republican pep rally. The marketing boys and makeup people did quite a job on Get-off-my-lawn Mark and Pistol-packin’ Patty and managed to turn local laughing-stocks into gun-junky poster children. The Missouri Attorney General has tried to squelch local prosecution of the McKloskeys and the Governor of Missouri announced that he would pardon them if they should be found guilty. If these officials knew the law they would not be so anxious, because in the freedom-loving State of Missouri there is no law against being an ass.
Then there’s the other emerging hero of the right, Little Kylie Rittenhouse, who murdered some demonstrators. President Trump spread a little of his very own excrement on Kyle and now all the men in the Trump base who doubt their virility have hastened to embrace this woefully stupid and terminally misguided punk.
2 IX 2020: Vampires just go on and on
I saw in the news that some absurdly rich people are about to spend thirty million dollars on commercials for Trump. Well, that pig does need a lot of lipstick. I see that the manager of this effort is one Chris LaCivita, the man behind the “Swiftboad Veterans for Truth” of 2004 and one of America’s top liars — Trump’s kinda guy. I thought the lying swiftboat veterans and their puppeteer would be hopelessly disgraced by what they had done. But no! I don’t know what has become of the lying veterans, but Mr. LaCivita is doing prospering and now back on center stage. I find it amazing that champion right-wing liars and cheats get caught again and again, but keep coming back, rather like televangelists who can outlive any scandal. Of course, scandal is in the eye of the beholder. The rich right-wingers who employ people like Mr. LaCivita have only contempt for integrity, and are probably champion cheats themselves.
31 VIII 2020: Dare I ask?
Dare I ask these questions?
How much are the pickup-trumpers and the antiPatriots being paid to cause trouble?
I’d bet dimes to dollars that a lot of these people are not provoking violence just for fun or to parade their stubborn ignorance. Somebody’s paying.
Why does the Republican Party keep silence while Trump is provoking violence?
Oh, I think I know the answer to that one. The GOP has long been the part of the wealthy, the worried, and the witless. They’re just keeping to script under Trump’s energetic direction.
Why can’t the Black Lives Matter movement rein in the vandals and professional rioters who are disgracing the movement and playing into Trump’s hands.
I’ll guess. Like the police unions, the BLM people, indeed the black community in general, are afraid to openly criticize any of their members. The cops themselves know who are the sadists, thugs, bigots, and psychotics in their ranks. They lose all credibility with their a-cop-can-do-no-wrong attitude. So too, the black community knows, even if they will not identify them, who are the crime prone and the eternal adolescents in their society. Is the black community going to allow unchecked pseudo-demonstrations and out-and-out riots to halt their current struggle?
21 VIII 2020: Boycott Trump?
I read that people from Trump’s seraglio are trying to get special privileges for Trump at Twitter, the argument being that his Twitter account is unlike those of other Americans because he uses Twitter as President to communicate with the American people. What about those of us who do not have a Twitter account? We’re missing out on these presidential messages.
I wrote to the U.S. Archives and then to the White House in an effort to find out whether Trump’s tweeties are considered state documents and, if so, whether they will be preserved in the Archives in the form in which they were first sent or they would be edited to remove misspellings, bad grammar, obvious stupidities, and lies. I received in reply a lot of run-around and “that’s not our department.”
And now his tweeties are going from offensive to revolting. So I have a proposal. A recent essay made the point that Trump’s call for a boycott of Goodyear, though a bizarre thing for a president to do, is habitual for Trump, part of his lifelong standard operating procedure. So I want to suggest that we all boycott Trump’s tweeties, that is, just don’t read them and ignore the media reports about them. If we continue to read them, we are colluding with a madman and exposing ourselves to a lot of intellectual and ethical obscenity. Of course, the media will continue reporting his tweeties because the media love atrocity stories — reporting Trump’s atrocities is easier than finding out the real news. But in doing this they are playing right into the hands of a blowhard whose working assumption is “There’s no such thing as bad publicity!” So let’s see if we can get a movement going against his free publicity.
20 VIII 2020: Steve Bannon, fallen angel?
Was Steve Bannon a thief before his association with Trump, or did Trump deflower him too. No one who comes into close contact with Trump can remain clean, we know that. Indeed, I don’t think Trump would let anyone get close to him who is not nearly as dirty as he. Anyway, all the time that Bannon’s been posing as a Catholic and trying to take over the intellectually disreputable Dignitatis Humanae Institute in Italy he was being funded by stolen cash.
I’ve always thought that the Wall would make a lot of money for someone, but I was thinking of contractors with bribes in their hands. But Steve got the jump on them with his scam. And what a fool he has made of Trump!