20 II 2024: Trump a Russian Mole

Disinformation has always been an important weapon of Russia’s KGB and its successor institutions. Calder Walton, in his excellent book Spies: The Epic Intelligence War between East and West, provides this list of the goals of Russian disinformation campaigns conducted against the United States: 

“… to discredit its government, 

delegitimize its institutions, 

disorient or polarize its society, 

and cast doubts on the true account of events. 

undermine the U.S. government’s functioning as a democracy, 

as well as discrediting Western alliances like NATO.”

No Russian spy or mole hidden in the intelligence community has done more than Donald Trump to achieve all of these goals. It does not matter whether he has attacked America and its institutions at the bidding of Putin & Co. or simply because he envies and disdains democracy and the rule of law. The catastrophic results of his disinformation campaigns are the same.

He is a Russian mole planted in the midst of American politics.

19 II 2023: Establishment Catholicism disgraced

The Catholic establishment in New York is throwing a fit because the funeral of a trans activist, Cecilia Gentili, was conducted in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The cathedral authorities had been told only that Ms Gentili is a Catholic, so they allowed the funeral to take place. 

Now higher-ups are howling. Here’s a bit from a statement by the Cathedral’s Rector, Rev. Enrique Salvo:

“That such a scandal occurred at ‘America’s Parish Church’ makes it worse; that it took place as Lent was beginning, the annual forty-day struggle with the forces of sin and darkness, is a potent reminder of how much we need prayer, reparation, repentance, grace, and mercy to which this holy season invites us.”

The coverage goes on to report:

“Rev. Salvo added that the cathedral offered a mass of reparation at the direction of Cardinal Timothy Dolan to atone for the funeral”.

Fr. Salvo is right, “we need prayer, reparation, repentance, grace, and mercy,” because of Fr. Salvo and the wanna-be-pope-politico Cardinal Dolan who have much more to do with “the forces of sin and darkness” than with any authentic church.

10 II 2024: I too smell a rat

Gov. Pritzker says he “smells a rat” in Special Prosecutor Robert Hur’s report on his investigation of alienation of classified documents by Biden, and I too smell a rat. The business about Biden’s age and mental acuity is an obiter dictum that has really nothing to do with Biden’s guilt or innocence. It was wholly inappropriate and there can be, I believe, only one explanation for its inclusion, it is a right-wing dirty trick.

I’m sad to say that I have come to have my doubts about Merrick Garland. I’d thought his apparent dilatoriness and lack of energy in prosecuting traitorous conspirators against the United States’ government were signs of caution. But I am beginning to wonder if they flow from indifference and cowardice.

We have prosecuted the foot soldiers of the Big Lie Conspiracy, but its originator and leader and those who advised him and urged him on are still at large. If Trump and his associates are not prosecuted and condemned for what they have done, the fascist takeover of the United States will continue apace. This sad end of our American government would suggest either that democracy cannot defend itself against its adversaries or that the American people are too sybaritic and childish to maintain a democracy.

7 II 2024: Israeli and Russian Irredentism

Irredentism is the passion, usually exploited by demagogues, to get back what is thought to be a nation’s former property. Russia presents itself as the successor state to the Russian Empires, and cites this as the basis for seizing territories from Ukraine, their pretense of respectability for this aggression being that they are simply taking back what once was the property of the Russian Empires. And, unless Russia’s grab for Ukraine is wholly frustrated, this same irredentism will probably be used to justify Russian invasion of Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Finland, and Poland.

Israel is doing the same thing on the West Bank and in Gaza, claiming a kind of “manifest destiny” for violence on the West Bank by “settlers” who have come to claim what God gave to their distant ancestors and for the police-action destruction of Gaza and deportation of millions of Palestinians.

I cannot see much difference between Israel and Russia. It is time to stop buying into Israel’s endless victimhood and affectation of democratic values and to begin being as tough with Israel as we would be with any other aggressor nation.

20 XII 2023: Trump born a Nazi?

Trump is saying he has never read Mein Kampf. This comes as no surprise, for we’ve learned that everybody’s favorite insurrectionist does not like to read and prefers pictures. Maybe he has often viewed Triumph of the Will.

But just because he hasn’t read Hitler’s work does not mean that he has not been influenced by it. I’m sure that Mein Kampf is the book of every month in the darker depths of Trump World. So if Donald hasn’t read this fascist bible, many of his advisers and supporters will have summarized it for him and urged its applicability to American democracy.

Or, maybe Trump did not have to get his Nazism from Mein Kampf, maybe he is a natural born Nazi, an anima naturaliter Naziana.

16 IX 2023: Immigrants are the new Jews

Donald Trump’s recent attacks on immigrants and his promised efforts to eradicate them from the American soil, bloodstream, etc. make it quite clear that immigrants are to Trumpworld what Jews were for the Nazis. This, in turn, makes it quite clear that Trump truly is a Hitler redivivus.

And the Trump base, Trump’s Sheepstate, can’t get enough of this.

And Trump and his Sheepstate are threats to national security.

12 XII 2023: Suicidal spending

The statistics quoted by Mr. Michael O’Brien in an article in the latest number of America include the following: “About $960 billion: the record amount of U.S. spending between November and December 2023 predicted by the National Retail Federation. Consumers say they expect to spend an average of $875 on gifts and holiday purchases this year.” To this figure we should add that the average household credit card debt is over $7,000, to show that American spending is downright suicidal.

7 XII 2023: No sudden rise in ante-semitism

Some prominent figures in politics, the media, and intellectual life have been expressing their alarm at what they see as a sudden rise in anti-semitism in the United States. However, I would maintain that what we are seeing is a sudden multiplication of expressions of anti-semitism, for anti-semitism has been in America from the start and was recently stimulated when Trump entered politics.