24 X 2019: Where your treasure is, there is your heart also

I think a headline today on CNN’s website describes perfectly what matters and does not matter to our Dictator Trump: “Trump suggests Kurds relocate as US considers deploying armored vehicles to protect oil fields.”

So: Deport the trashy Kurds (we like deportations), but by heaven protect the $ OIL $. 

Trump’s helpful ICE goons can create detention camps for the no-account Kurds, and the lust for oil can continue to rule U.S. policy in the Near East. I will wait to see how Trump reverses his faked withdrawal of U.S. troops from the region. Maybe the Saudis could spare some of the U.S. rent-a-troops Trump has sent them.

I see the House Republican guerilla warriors developing a strategy to defend their King. It is simplicity itself: call truthful witnesses in the impeachment hearings liars. This is their constant game plan, for Trump and the little Trumpies always accuse their critics of the offenses of which he and they are most guilty.

23 X 2019: Rebellion from the right

Today, Rep. Matt Gaetz stopped licking Trump long enough to lead a mob from the psychiatric wing of the Republican party to force their way into a closed-door meeting of the House Intelligence Committee, to demand, in effect, that they be allowed to shut down the impeachment investigation.

Their leader, Gaetz, is desperate to emerge as the chief of Trump’s little helpers. He was attended by Rep. Mo Brooks, a notorious blowhard from way back, and 35+ others, the ass-lickers, the lunatics, and sheep who follow anything.

These retrogressives know that the TRUMP team is losing, so they want to stop the game, and so are displaying the fundamental lawlessness they have in common with Trump. I do hope the Capitol Police will defend the United States against them.

The behavior of these congressmen is frightening. 

Trying to imagine how the future destruction our Government by a reactionary take-over might begin, I thought it might start with reactionaries using ICE to jail their opponents, arrest all the leaders of the military, silence all the media except FOX, and shut down all of the ‘unreliable’ courts. These subversives would then present themselves as a new “American Party” that would select the Dictator who is going to restore America to “the way it used to be.”

But no, I think the assault on the American government could begin with lawless, anti-democratic members of Congress who will shamelessly flout congressional rules and the Constitution to reach their selfish goal. These militant reactionary congressmen know very well that they are nothing without Trump, know that Trump has been caught red-handed and could be impeached and removed from office. They must prevent this at all costs. Hence comes behavior of the sort seen today, behavior that will continue unless sober Republicans restrain these foolish hooligans.

23 X 2019: Trump stars in victim role; Trump rallies his troops.

Trump has begun searching more widely for terms to aggrandize his pathological victimhood. We heard him this week calling himself the victim of a lynching. Soon we will see Trump at the stake instead of Joan of Arc or shot full of arrows in place of Saint Sebastian.  

I read that Trump has ordered his servants to “get tough and fight” on his behalf. What could “get tough and fight” mean in the Bog of Trump except “Tell more lies and bigger ones, too”?

21 X 2019: The terrors of oath-taking

So the news reports that Mr. Russ Vought, the Acting Director of the O.M.B., refuses to comply with the request from the House for a deposition, as does Mr. Michael Duffey, a political appointment at OMB. Vought had earlier defied a House subpoena for details about the missing $400M.

I do not understand how all the Trumpites can get away with this behavior. If the law requires that they comply with requests and obey subpoenas, then the law should be enforced severely to coerce them to do their duty. (A sub-poena surely implies some punishment for non-compliance.) On the other hand, if the law does not require their compliance, then why bother with the requests and subpoenas?

I suppose the ritual of request/subpoena and refusal/rejection may make it evident that refusing faction have something to hide. But this is not really a legal process, but a drama of posing and posturing. But is it not evident that these people are no more than brazen scofflaws who refuse to accept the rule of law?

The investigations of Trump & Co. are far, far more important than the usual party vs. party taffy pull. Democrats have their liabilities, who would deny it? But in the Trump Era the Republican party has thrown over their former ideals of government according to law and have signed on to the Trumpian doctrine that what matters is not the law, but only what you can get away with.

The U.S. has from the beginning in fact been a plutocracy with a supporting democracy. But hitherto the plutocrats, their agents, and the people have agreed on the necessity of everyone obeying our laws. In the Age of Trump, however, all this is changed. We now have a plutocracy standing upon an ochlocracy, sc., an ignorant, sentimental, lazy, resentful mob who will believe whatever they are told. And they are being told and shown that smart people, winners, succeed by ignoring the laws and what they require.

18 X 2019: Trump’s great envy

What is behind Trump’s policy of appeasement of Mr. Erdogan? Did Trump do something scandalous in Istanbul that Erdogan can hold over his head? Maybe. Or maybe a more likely explanation lies in Trump’s adulation of ruthless absolute rulers. He must envy them so! No threat of impeachment for them, no annoying legislature, no independent judiciary, no unpredictable elections, no criticism — it must be heaven.

16 X 2019: Let Trump be Trump, really?

We hear said of Trump a cliché in public life: “Let Trump be Trump.” Well, whoever has been saying this got their wish, for today we had a glimpse of the real Trump at his meeting with congressional leaders – another meltdown. We’ve heard that this sort of thing occurs regularly in the privacy of the White House, but now we are seeing it in the open in temper-tantrums that have become his only form of discourse.

I don’t know why this is. Maybe he awakened one day and decided “No more Mr. Nice-guy,” decided to remove the costume of civilization which has made him uncomfortable for so many years. That may be the case, but I am inclined to think that he is coming more unglued. I think of President Truman’s advice: “If you can’t stand the heat, say out of the kitchen.” Trump is now in the kitchen due to revelation upon revelation of his incompetence and dishonesty. So either he will leave the kitchen by following Nixon’s example and resigning or he will stay in the ever-hotter kitchen and suffer increasingly frequent and severe meltdowns. I am afraid to think what this socio-path may do now.

17 X 2019: Appeasement, contradiction, and cash

Munich in Ankara: Mike Pence, the manikin from Hobby Lobby, met in Ankara with the Turkish dictator, Mr. Erdogan. And they agreed that Erdogan could have part of the Czech, I mean Kurdish territory, with the understanding that Erdogan would exercise self-restraint and by nice to the Kurds. This is impressive for it suggests that Erdogan will be able to overcome centuries of Turkish hostilities against the Kurds.

Just wait and see how nice Erdogan is to the Kurds. He’s going to hold back for five days so that the Kurds can evacuate their country, and then turn loose the kind of atrocities we’ve already seen. This is all dumb-show that tries to maintain the Trumpian pretense that Old Bone-spurs did not sell out our close allies, put them in deadly peril, and put us in deadly peril from a resurrected ISIS. Sending St. Michael to see Erdogan does not even apply enough lipstick to the pig.

I do wonder if the U.S. would be behaving like this if a nascent Kurdish nation were being attacked and there were 5-6 million Kurdish American citizens.

Trump & Gang flip over again: Trump’s slogans of “complete exoneration!” and “no collusion!” had lately been replaced by “no quid pro quo.” That was the case until Trump’s Little Me announced: Of course there was a quid pro quo, dummies! That’s how our sophisticated foreign policy operates. Get used to it!

My God how the money rolls in: Mulvaney also announced that after an exhaustive search it was decided that one of Trump’s babylonian country clubs is the perfect place, the only place in the U.S. for the G7 meeting next year. He assured us that of course the President is not going to make a penny on this (Wink, nudge!).

15 X 2019: Intrusion of popular culture on concepts of political life

Gripe No.1: Tonight the Democratic candidates for president, 12 of them, meet in their fourth debate. Debate is, of course, a euphemism for hullabaloo that is modeled on The Game of the Week.

Active participation in sports in youth and vicarious participation as fans through adult life is omni-pervasive in our society and competitive sports have become America’s paradigm for life. There is very little in human experience that we do assimilate to an athletic game, using the structures and language of sport to view all life as an agon, a combative competition.

This brings me to my point: I see a discouraging similarity of coverage of the debates to coverage of professional sport. We have pre-debate shows to discuss candidates’ earlier performance and to predict who will do best in the debate. Commentary is provided during pauses in the debate. And at the end come the post-debate roundups, evaluation of the debaters culminating in a determination of who was the winner.

This is by way of saying that I think the media trivialize and debase political discourse by turning it into a show, one like the show we know best, professional sports.

Gripe No. 2: I feel the media have bought into Trump’s characterization of those who have disclosed his malfeasance. Just today I read a piece in which figures from the White House who have revealed or are likely to reveal to Congress what they know about the President’s self-serving plots are referred to as snitches, just what Trump wants us to think of them.

Here I will complain not about sports in American life, but about the paradigmatic role of organized crime. So many gangster movies, so many that portray the gangster as an attractive anti-hero! Trump is the Godfather, surrounded by trustworthy capos and soldiers. Whistle-blowers or witnesses before Congress are the informers, snitches, rats who tell the feds the Godfather’s secrets. Trump also describes anyone who criticizes him as a traitor, but he never says traitor to what. To the U.S.A. or to Donald Trump?

But even though Trump thinks like a gangster, behaves like a gangster, and sounds like a gangster, we must not be tricked into treating him as another head of a crime family. Yes, he’s probably guilty of some lowdown crimes for which he should ultimately be prosecuted. But what he has been doing as President is beyond crime. He is breaking his inaugural oath by obstructing justice, condemning the Constitution, and is like Pravda streaming destructive falsehoods.

13 X 2019: Wm. Barr at Notre Dame

Read a report of an address on 11-X by Attorney William Barr, a Roman Catholic, at the University of Notre Dame’s Law School. This confirms my long-held view that Notre Dame and the Notre Dame Network are the Catholic version of the evangelicals, for both assign God and Mammon equal status.

Barr asserted his department’s commitment to religious freedom. I cannot figure out what reactionaries mean by religious freedom. Churches and synagogues are all open for business. EWTN and a chorus of televangelists enjoy perfect freedom on the airwaves. Religious books and magazines are censored only by the religious. The reactionary pep-rally called the National Prayer Breakfast continues unchallenged. Congress begins with a prayer; our national motto was changed to In God We Trust; the cold war slogan “under God” is still in the Pledge of Allegiance. The fact is that many Americans feel that nation, capitalism, patriarchy, and religion amount to the same thing, and reactionary forces never stop urging them to think this way.

Barr says Judeo-Christian values no longer direct our life as a nation. Does he mean those values that let us steal the Indians’ land and murder most of them? that enabled us to make slaves of black people and prolong their slavery for a century after Emancipation? that told us it was o.k. to steal half of Mexico? or that cheered us on as we added the Philippines to our empire by a savage war of repression? The U.S.A. has not been a good advertisement for Judeo-Christian values.

No, the Judeo-Christians have been quite free to live by their values, such as they are. What really has them upset is that they can no longer compel others to accept their values, that they are no longer the state religion, no longer “own” the United States of America. Their constant complaint that religion is ridiculed by “seculars” is unfortunately true, but it might help if the religious would stop doing and saying things that are ridiculous.

12 X 2019: If you find racism you will find Trump

The author Jennine Capó Crucet was invited to Georgia Southern University to speak about her novel Make your Home among Strangers, an account of the difficulties of a first-generation Cuban-American woman at an elite white college, required reading this year for first-year students at Georgia Southern. The issue of white privilege was, of course, prominent in the novel and affected its reception by Georgia Southern students. Some students who, like most Americans, are dimly conscious of color-based privilege, but persist in angry denial, took offense at Ms Capó Crucet’s person, her book, and her discussion of it. This was evident in hostile tweets that were collected by the campus paper, but abruptly deleted, and in the behavior of a group of students who collected around a barbecue grill to burn the frightening novel and, figuratively, its author.

This was a revealing combination! The Spanish inquisition and Nazi mass book burnings re-enacted on a barbecue grill, a symbol of suburban, middle-class America. Of course, many students and the University itself were deeply embarrassed by this outrage. University representatives denounced the burning but asserted that it was protected speech. However, free speech was not protected when the University canceled another scheduled event of Ms Capó Crucet’s visit because it felt it could not guarantee her safety due to open-carry laws.

The commotion began when, after Capó Crucet’s presentation, a student questioned her right to be speaking there and her generalizing about white privilege. Students started shouting against and for the questioner, and of those supporting the questioner some were heard shouting “Trump 2020!”

Three threads stand out here: frantic hostility to exposé of white privilege, abuse of the right to free speech, and open-carry laws preventing free speech. And these are all woven together by “Trump 2020!”