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 had lately been replaced by “no quid pro quo.”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!”

11 X 2019bis: Trump, the Blow-hard Bully

I watched a clip from Trump’s latest Nurembergesque rally. It was the usual logorrhea. But he spent 40 min. of his monologue denouncing and insulting anyone who has lately hurt his feelings. I suppose he thinks he is a puerile Don Rickles. It has reached the point that any who have not been insulted or denounced by Trump had better undertake some self-examination to see where they have gone wrong.

His language is decomposing as the pressures on him increase, and his facial expression consists of sneers, scowls, and snarls. We are now, I believe, seeing and hearing the real Trump. The smart set at his rallies love this sort of thing, but the rest of the country is shamed by it.

11 X 2019: I can beat you up any time

Today CNN ran a wonderful photograph with an article “Romney steps up as Trump tries to trample him.” The photo shows steps leading down from a closed door at, I think, the White House. Romney is descending the steps, looking to his right, towards an American flag there. Trump is at the top of the steps, his arms lifted to his mouth, as if he is shouting something.” Here is what I imagine is going on in the photo: Romney and Trump have had an altercation. Romney has had it with Trump and is leaving the scene and Trump is shouting inane insults at the departing Romney. But Trump is keeping close to the door of his big house so that he can run back inside if Romney turns around and comes after him.

10 X 2019: Executive privilege, non-disclosure, veils thrown over shit

So I read that Donald the Despot may not allow former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch to testify tomorrow. Frankly, I do not understand how he could have the right to prevent her. Are we going to see yet another abuse of “executive privilege”? Trump and Barr buried the Mueller report in “executive privilege.” This document was the result of millions of dollars with of investigation and predictably held some answers to questions the country had been asking. Trump invoked executive privilege to prevent Gordon Sunderland’s testifying. What the hell! We’re not talking about top-secret matters, star-wars stuff or how to track American submarines or how many nuclear devices Israel possesses. Abuse of presidential power is the issue. Does it seem right to anyone that the President is using a supposed presidential privilege to prevent investigation of his own abuse of presidential power?

I read too about the hot tub of sleaze in which Matt Lauer, Harvey Weinstein, and N.B.C. are currently soaking. In the case of N.B.C. a familiar bit of jiggery-pokery is mentioned: non-disclosure agreement. Trump, I recall, made widespread and constant use of non-disclosure agreements to maintain the secrecy of his “sporting life.” Now we see that Trump has simply substituted “executive privilege” for the good old non-disclosure contract. 

Why does Trump have to maintain constant secrecy one way or another? It’s because he is constantly behaving in reprehensible ways.

9 X 2019: Trump near the edge

So that pathetic figure in the White House thinks that he owes nothing to our allies, the Kurds, because they did not fight along with us in WW II. Does he think that the neutral Turks fought alongside us? He might believe they did, for he is as ignorant of history as he is of government.

He is coming closer and closer to losing it altogether. It is reported that he keeps making frantic, menacing phone calls to Mitch McConnell to make sure that the Republicans in the Senate are still backing him. Many of his utterances, viva voce or on Twitter, are, it seems to me, actionable, for he is in a frenzy of slander and libel. 

Will he go off the edge? will he take America with him? I’m sure that by now he is thinking, as Hitler did of the Germans, that we are not tough enough to deserve him. Will he hang on, backed who cannot admit they have erred? Will he get away with all his crimes? If he does, America will have ceased to exist.

What about the Republicans in Congress? Will they, as his abuse and intimidation of them gets even worse, have the guts to give him the shove? Getting rid of Trump will be made especially difficult for the people he has debauched. The Republicans seem to have sworn allegiance to him as the Wehrmacht swore obedience to Hitler. They will have to find a way to distance from him, for if they do not, they will become infamous.

And the American people who voted for him, can they acknowledge their mistake, their having been scammed? Will those who proclaim “He’s my President!” come to realize what such a declaration actually says about themselves? 

8 X 2019bis: Birds of a feather

I read a report of an interview on Ukraine radio of Yurly Lutsenko, sometime Prosecutor General of Ukraine. He told of meetings with Giuliani as part of Rudy’s quest for dirt. It seems Lutsenko and Viktor Shokin, another sometime Prosecutor General, gave Giuliani’s team just what they wanted, dirt on Democrat, dirt on the Bidens, dirt on anyone he might want. What a deal! Problem is, as the article I read reports, “Lutsenko, who left office in August, has changed his account of events surrounding those efforts [sc. of Giuliani’s ‘team’] several times.” This Lutsenko should be recruited for the Trump campaign. His behavior, as reported, has been so absolutely Trumpian.

President Trump is a sleaze-magnet. His own person and behavior are so intensely sleazy as to be a virtual black hole of sleaze. His excesses have drawn to him throngs of sleazy people from all walks of life who have rushed forward to sacrifice their integrity (such as it was) on the altar of Trump. He is persisting in his “Don’t tell ’em nuttin” policy, so we can only guess how sleazy his administration really is. When (and if) we are able to investigate the Trump administration we will find a beehive of sleazes at home and a network of sleazes, like Lutsenko, abroad.

8 X 2019: Immunity precludes responsibility

So, yet another figure from the Trump administration has been forbidden to testify before Congress. At the last minute, Ambassador Gordon Sunderland was ordered not to make his scheduled appearance before three House committees.

No criminal enterprise in the U.S. could get away with this. Someone must at least show up and say “I respectfully decline to testify ….” But Trump’s underlings do not have to do even that to escape telling the truth. 

The administration decides who can testify, decides what documents it will make available to Congress, only after they have been “redacted,” that is to say, only after damaging evidence has been removed. They are shamelessly abusing “executive privilege” to the point of claiming an immunity to investigation usually available only to dictators. This makes a mockery of any pretense to oversight. 

How can this happen? Congress has long been wanting in intelligence and courage. Over many generations they have handed over to the presidency the responsibilities that they found burdensome or scary. This same tendency of Congress is abetting Trump today. The Republican Party, always as disciplined as the Communists, is in lock step tolerating, concealing, defending, and even commending Trump’s malfeasance.

Can our government be saved from the gangsters and wimps who now dominate it?