6 X 2019: The Republican Imagination

I would have been incredulous if anyone were to assert that the Republicans, in Congress or not, are very imaginative people. They seem content to do what they are told to do, sc., block any legislation or destroy any program which the plutocrats who support them could conceivably dislike. Even during the current Trump Catastrophe the Republicans have kept repeating the lines given them by the White House. But a new set of Trump crises has challenged them to work their imaginations and come up with explanations, based mostly conspiracy theories, to explain away Trump’s crimes. They are telling us: “It’s the F.B.I., it’s the C.I.A., it’s the Deep State, it’s the Democrats, it’s the European Union or all of the above who have shared in a brazen conspiracy to obscure Our Trump’s renown.”

These conspiracy theories are by now rather trite. So I want to help by providing some new conspiracy theories. We can say that Trump’s present woes are due to a plot by:

Neo-Stalinists, who are trying to attack Putin by discrediting his close ally, Trump;

the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, who want to make Cardinal Burke president;

White Supremacists, who find Trump’s support of them lukewarm;

Eric Trump, who thinks he is the Trump who deserves the spotlight;

Kim Jong Un, who is bored with Trump and wants a more clever adversary;

International arms dealers, who resent Trump’s generosity with weapons.

These imaginings, I have to admit, are rather lame. Maybe the Republican Party should sponsor a national contest to find the best explanation for future crises as they come along.

5 X 2019: If you don’t play by the rules, you’re going to commit a lot of fouls.

Ever since they made the self-destructive error of nominating Trump we have heard Republicans dismiss his ignorance, his megalomania, his lies, the amazing irregularities of his life, his rudeness, and his 5th-grade speech. They tell us that Trump doesn’t want to do things in the old stuffy Washington way, that Trump is the kind of great leader that can ignore the norms, while he and his gang unleash predatory business interests, destroy legal protections for citizens, wage war on the environment, and wholly undermine national security. Oh, the reactionaries say, that’s just his way. Pay attention to what he does, not what he says. Or is it pay attention to what he says, not to what he does? In any case, they will tell you that as he struggles to turn our Country around Trump has been criticized, unrelentingly ridiculed, persecuted, hounded as has no president in American history.

OK Are Trump’s critics unfair, even cruel? Trump and the people around him are people who believe that following traditional norms and obeying the law is for losers, for chumps. They the kind who never pay full price for anything and maybe do not pay at all. They do what they want or feel they need to do, and if they are ever caught doing something illegal, they will know someone who can fix it for them, or they will hire a mouthpiece as contemptuous of the law as they to make the charge go away or delay the proceedings indefinitely. 

These people live on the border of the law and very often cross over it. As a rule they never risk their own money, but grow wealthy using money they borrow or are given by investors whose capital they may waste or spend down or re-allocate to some other of their own concerns. The more energetic of them always have some ongoing problem with Internal Revenue or with a gaming commission or with the SEC or with U.S. Customs or with fair housing authorities, or with paying off their stupendous loans, or all of these at once.

They blame their being in some kind of trouble all the time on their enemies, on their enemies’ minions in government, on those who envy their wealth, sophistication, and genius. Thus they always present themselves as victims, treated unfairly, indeed, illegally, and their lawyers provide a chorus to echo this complaint.

Our President is from this class of people who live outside-the-law, and that is why once he entered public life and his thoughts and deeds became widely known he is always being criticized and attacked. There is so much in what he does and the way he thinks that richly deserves criticism, and the President, like many in his class, continues and enlarges his anti-social actions and attitudes compulsively. When he feels trapped he lies, and when accused of lying he tells more lies, and as he tells more lies he suborns others to repeat his lies. 

Put simply, he, as others like him, have always done what is wrong, continue to do what is wrong, and will go on doing what is wrong until they are deprived of the ability to do something wrong.

3 X 2019: “Don’t be rude” you snakes, gators, lowlifes, and rats!!

Trump’s press conference yesterday was so depressing. This sufferer from mental illness is our President? I enjoyed his command to the Reuters reporter: “Don’t be rude.” I think he used rude in the way he uses treason, sc., not quite sure what they mean, unaware that he is himself never anything but rude and forgetting that he is the one who colludes with foreigners to subvert American democracy. 

He denied the report that he had a plan to create a snake-and-gator-filled moat along the Gross Wall. The very fact that our president felt he had to deny this report is amazing although not surprising, since it is probably quite true.

He called Adam Schiff a lowlife though this term best describes Trump himself.

Rats will be jumping from S.S. Trump in increasing numbers. The remaining intelligent and competent people in the Trump regime will try to escape the tar and feathers that Trump and those closest to him will be wearing. The incompetents and the wholly compromised will keep on fighting, for Trump is their meal-ticket, and any detailed investigation of him will shine an unwelcome light on them. 

Our poor, poor country! Trump, Pence, Barr, Pompeio, Giuliani, Jim Jordan, Miller, and Graham. What a collection of emetics!

26 II 2019: What does “socialism” mean to American reactionaries?

What if for over a short period, say one week, all the reactionaries and their fellow travelers in the Republican party would stop using the words “socialism” and “socialist”? Let them say what they really mean by these words, if they even know what the words mean. These words have been so long in use by the American right that their only meaning is a bow towards the reactionaries’ list of big lies used to scare the rubes and fundamentalists.

4 I 2019: A haphazard border security.

I see King Trump on various commercials (that is what they are) ranting about “border security,” asserting that the Democrats don’t want border security, so it’s up to King Trump and his “base” to take care of it. No surprise here, for Trump has been using “border security” as a dog whistle for “Keep them brown people from Latin America out of my country.” This is a reminder, if we needed one, that a foundational tenet of Trumpism is Racism. 

But I wonder what about our other borders??? Most of the long Canadian border is said to be very, very porous. Shouldn’t that cause us anxiety?? Does anyone know who are crossing illegally and transporting infernal devices (explosives, marijuana) into the U.S. And the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards are variously porous, with the option for terrorists of using the tide to deliver explosive devices to the U.S.

But if Trump must have this so-called Wall, I say let him pay for it. He’s told us that he is very rich. So if he is so concerned he could privatize the border and put up the Trump Wall.

2 X 2019: Spies, traitors, tattle-tales, snitches

I see these terms used in the Ukraine Storm.

Spies? Spies for whom? Soviet intelligence, Iranian ayatollahs?

Traitor. This is Trump’s favorite term of abuse, second only to “nasty.” I don’t think he knows what traitor means except, in his view, disloyal to Trump. But it was Trump who was attempting to make a secret deal affecting domestic politics with the leader of a foreign power.

Tattle-tales: I hear “Nobody likes a tattle-tale.” This is something out of elementary school, when a tattle-tale reports infractions by other little children. There is more at stake here surely.

Snitches: And I hear “Snitches get stitches.” This saying is used by a criminal underworld to frighten witnesses of crimes from giving evidence. Trump has certainly implied a white criminal’s equivalent in his “what we used to do to traitors.” I believe Trump and his entourage truly believe that the Whistleblower ratted Trump out. But you cannot rat someone out unless there is some misdeed to be ratted about.

As it is, the Whistleblower is neither spy, nor traitor, nor tattle-tale, nor snitch. She/He is, rather, a law-abiding professional public servant who brought a potential crime against our government to the attention of proper authorities. The term “patriot” is much misused by the right-wing. We see it in advertisements, in the trade-names given to firearms, in the names of criminal associations, etc. I think we’ll find that the Whistleblower is an authentic patriot.

1 X 2019: Funny and frightening

Secretary of State M. Pompeo, who we now know was in on the attempt to squeeze Ukraine, won’t let officials from State cooperate with Congress for he will not tolerate his dedicated professionals being interrogated, bullied, etc. Does this mean the Trump-line has changed and is now calling for respect instead of contempt for State Dept. professionals?

An omen?Mitch McConnell says the Senate would have no choice to take up an impeachment of Trump. No choice? Look at how the nomination of Merrick Garland was treated. But I do wonder if, at the end of months of defending Trump they are going, of necessity, of course, throw Trump overboard?

Trump as 3rd World Dictator: CNN presented a very good interview of Lt. Col. Ralph Richards, its two main points: 1) Trump’s throwing out the threat of civil war in a tweet amounts to sedition. 2) Trump is like a 3rd World who must stay in office to avoid inevitable prosecution. Sedition? I think so. He has before this warned of terrible strife if he is not re-elected. I wouldn’t be surprised if the hardcore Trumpites would rise up in arms to keep their Love and Inspiration in office.

Trump’s deal with N.R.A.: It’s reported that Trump and Wayne LaPierre put their heads together at the White House. It is said that they struck a deal that if Trump would back away from gun-control, the N.R.A. would do something for Trump. N.R.A. is now vociferously denying that there was any deal, so the report of a deal is probably true. But I am left wondering what more N.R.A. could do for Trump. Maybe helping with the civil war.

Defenders of Donald Trump remind me of the scene in The Blues Brothers in which Joliet Jake has to make up lame excuses as fast as he can.

29 IX 2019: Trumpite Banner-bearers

We heard today a chorus of Trumpite heavy-hitters. Rudy Giuliani is getting worse, and we’ve heard from Steven (Xyklon-B) Miller, and from that Judas of good government, Lindsay Graham, all labeling Trump’s all who tell the truth about Trump as terrorists, spies, moles, 5th-columnists, and meanies generally. At the same time, they and other Trumpite mouthpieces are trying to portray Donald Trump as the “Suffering Servant” of Isaiah.

I don’t know why the media cannot give us a break from Rudy Giuliani. He’s a cute little guy, and time was when you never knew what he was going to say next, but now he’s become repetitious and the new dodges he comes up with are sillier and sillier. Can’t we leave him alone until he’s called as a witness?

Steven Miller, unelected but official, usually limits himself to callous remarks about poor people. But his Principal Patron and Enabler is on the line now, and so, clad in his usual rental tux of assumed superiority he is attacking the spies, traitors, Hassidim, desperados, sorcerers, Decembrists, et al., who are ganging up on his Leader. Mr. Miller should stick to what he knows, rallying the mob against the immigrants.

I want the same treatment for Lindsay Graham as for Giuliani. Can’t we just let him talk to himself for a while? We know perfectly well what he is going to say, and it makes me, for one, nauseous to see how low a man I once thought maybe a statesman has sunk.

28 IX 2019: Are most right-wingers gas-works? Or have I been listening to the wrong right-wingers?

I just watched a news clip of the testimony [sic] of Thomas Homan, who, when acting director of ICE, transformed the agency from a brown-shirt squad into black-shirt police. Mr. Homan testified before the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship that ICE detention facilities “have the highest standards in the industry” and are “the best facilities in the world.” But when his allotted time for speaking ran out, he kept on motor-mouthing, ignored the Chair’s call to order, and became abusive when she insisted that he stop.

Now, Mr. Homan was probably right in testifying that our gulags are superior to those run by other regimes. But he had to keep talking, had to force his way through his “talking-points.” This is, in my experience, behavior typical of right-wingers on-the-air. Kelleyanne Conway is the best example, but this can be observed in other reactionaries as well, especially low-seniority members of Congress and Trumpites generally. They force their way through their assigned talking-points, each of which says virtually the same thing, and they keep on talking faster and faster to prevent, I guess, any question or examination of what they are saying.

Finally, as one would expect, Fox News [sic] trotted out a lawman, Sheriff Thomas Hodgson, to defend Mr. Homan and denounce congressional mistreatment of testifying lawmen. He did an impressive job considering that he had a limited amount of time to learn his lines.