26 IX 2018: Trump knows what he’s talking about!!

In a recent press conference, Trump informed the world that Michael Avenatti is a “lowlife,” and that the matter of Christine Ford et al. is a “con game.” This gives me pause, for I had no bad opinion of Michael Avenatti nor of Christine Ford et al. But when Trump, who usually does not know what he’s talking about talks about lowlife and con game, I have to listen, for his own life has been lowlife and con game little else.

16 IX 2018: Corruption all around

Well, things are going along very much as usual. But who can predict how everything will turn out? What will Trump have to lie about next? How much more complicit can the Republican congress be in Trump’s follies and deceptions? How crooked is Brett Kavanaugh? We cannot know this because the Republican coverup gang will not release all the data. I’m only guessing on the basis of what I’ve seen, but I think that Judge Kavanaugh is as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. His vote on the Supreme Court is already bought and paid for.

29 VIII 2018: Josh Hawley and pseudo-theocracy

The newspaper brings news of a new phase in Ivy-leaguer Josh Hawley’s senatorial campaign. A while back he tried out “Small Town Values.” The cynicism of this prep-school, Ivy-league, affluent phony’s affirming small town values of which he knows nothing was obvious and so this sales pitch was shut down pretty quick. His new slogan is “religious liberty” which, he says, “is under attack in this country.”

Now it seems to me that the opposite is the case. Our society’s freedom from the coercion and duplicity of the pseudo-evangelicals has been under attack and very near destroyed. What Hawley means by religious freedom is the social and political dominance of the “chosen people,” the “real Christians,” just like it was in the good ole days, when brand-x Protestantism was the established church, when we kept Catholics and Jews in their place, when we persecuted foreigners and, at God’s command, slaughtered the Canaanites, sc., the native American.

He thinks preachers ought to be able to pitch politics from the pulpit without losing their church’s tax exemption. I think, rather, that churches should have no tax exemption at all, for this tax exemption amounts to a union of church and state. Moreover, the tax exemption is hardly needed. The mega-churches and tele-churches are awash in cash. The so-called Christian churches are an instrument of the political right and the political right will make sure they are well financed.

I wish Hawley would say what he feels without camouflage: “I am a disciple of Donald Trump. I am exploiting the anti-intellectual and reactionary elements in Missouri in order to gain power.”

27 V 2018: Archbishop Viganò’s smear campaign

The Pope has wisely suggested that all carefully read Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s denunciation for themselves and make up their own minds about it. However, it cannot be taken at face value, but must be read in context. This invective by the notorious homophobe Viganò is just the latest effort of a group of reactionary conspirators, among them Raymond Burke, to “make the Church great again,” i.e., to return it to the 1950s. Pope Francis is their target of choice, in small-circulation right-wing publications, in on-line reactionary web-sites, in lectures to embittered elders and naïve youth, and in whispered conversations in dark corners. I am astonished at the Pope’s patience with these insubordinate, disobedient clerics. Read Viganò’s undocumented, unsupported slurs and gripes carefully, and you will see the tell-tale signs of hatred and malice.

27 VIII 2018: If it acts like a Nazi …

I am struck by the parallels between the Nazi purges of undesirables and the Trump regime’s treatment of immigrants. Immigrants of color have been the traditional scape-goats of the Republican party who have long aroused the ignorant against immigrants. Trump continues this and has set in motion a program of ethnic cleansing. To carry out his ethnic cleansing he has turned ICE into an American SS, agents who hunt down immigrants of color, imprison them in concentration camps called “detention centers,” or as surreptitiously as possible expel them from the United States.

As with the Nazis, Trump is supported in this by a remarkably large number of people who demand a return an “authentic America” that is white, protestant, and patriarchal. Trump’s gross demagoguery encourages their delusions. Delusions, because white supremacy, state religion, and patriarchy are all falling away, as the urgent intensity of current attempts to reassert them make quite clear.

24 VII 2008: Back on the playground again

So Trumpie is going to cancel the security clearances of his critics, even of the ones, I understand, who have no security clearance. Again, we have evidence that “our Favorite President,” has never left the playground. Little Donald, neglected to the point of scorn at home, had hoped that his brilliance and heroic character would be given due attention and esteem on the playground. But it didn’t work out that way for the kid whom nobody likes. Now he’s really mad and is gonna get even with those doubters, even if he has to make a fool of himself to do it.

23 VII 2018: Hand me the disinfectant!

Today I received a text message from Rep. Devin Nunes urging me to get behind “Our President and conservative majority.” What have I done? Why should the despicable Nunes reach out to me? Oh, I know. Some time ago, when Nunes was blathering about impeaching Rod Rosenstein, I sent Nunes an email in which I expressed my conviction that it was he, Nunes, that ought to be impeached, and thus my email address got into his listserve. Rep. Nunes’ behavior since that time has only strengthened my conviction. He is a thoroughgoing Trumpite, an opportunist, and died-in-the-wool sycophant, who finds the truth so awkward that he has to make up lies and conspiracies. I guess I’ll have to soak my iphone in disinfectant overnight.

17 VII 2018: Freudian slip?

Trumpie’s latest. There was a negative left out from his “remarks” (he says he “mispoke”). So, while the world is watching, Trumpie says the opposite of what he means? Maybe Trump intended, for form’s sake, to use a negative, but slipped and said what he really believes. What does it matter? More lies, and such obvious lies, to cover up such obvious weakness and foolishness.

The Trump and Putin Show was like an encounter between two bullies in a schoolyard. Trump, the weaker struts and swaggers and intimidates the other kids, but only when Putin is not around. When Putin, by far the stronger, more ruthless, and more intelligent of the two, is present, the weaker bully is so afraid that Putin will beat him up in front of the other kids that he abases himself before Putin, like a dog in a surrender posture.