12 VII 2018: Contempt FOR Congress

“Contempt of Congress” is used to threaten those who can’t or won’t answer captious questions and cooperate with unalloyed stupidity. But I’m free, so far, to feel and express my contempt for Congress. I watched some of the interrogation of Agent Peter Strzok on TV. The Republicans were sweating and straining to force reality to appear as they wanted it to appear, but Mr. Strzok’s tough and dexterous answers thwarted them at every turn. So three cheers for Strzok! – three raspberries for the Republican marionettes on the committee! I feel annoyed by the silliness of congressmen, as always. But their kissing up to the Trump, the American Nero, makes me feel ashamed.

10 VII 2018: Brett Kavanaugh, the fix is in

Brett Kavanaugh begins his quest for a place on the Supreme Court by telling a Trumpian lie: “No president has ever consulted more widely, or talked with more people from more backgrounds, to seek input about a Supreme Court nomination” The whole point of choosing Kavanaugh is to prevent the judicial branch from bringing Trump to timely justice. This is another axe-blow at the roots of American democracy.

7 VII 2018: Where should we look for barbarism?

CNN reports some of the stated views of Kansas State Senator Steve Fitzgerald, a candidate for the House of Representatives:

“Outside of Western civilization there is only barbarism.”

This very statement suggests he knows much more about barbarism than about any civilization.

“Our Judeo-Christian ethic is what is civilization.”

But wait, he virtually excludes the Judeo- part:

“And that is under attack here and abroad.

It goes by a different name. Christendom. It’s under attack.”

Who does he think he is, Urban II? and here’s that buzz-word Christendomwhich is dog-whistle talk for “us” as opposed to “them.”

“And even speaking about it can bring you under attack.

It has brought me under attack.”

Why do you suppose he was he attacked and by whom? I am a Christian and would gladly attack him because in his speech and attitude he is traducing Christianity and making a laughing-stock of Western civilization.

The article also reports that he maintains that Planned Parenthood is worse than a Nazi concentration camp.

Clearly he must know nothing either about Planned Parenthood or about Nazi concentration camps, but that does not keep him from pontificating like Archie Bunker (remember when Archie was funny?). Mr. Fitzgerald looks like a ready candidate for the unFreedom Caucus. Is he really such so ignorant? or is he cunningly pitching this foolishness to the ignoramuses in his district? I’m afraid he and his constituency bear grievous testimony to the state of American education. Trump and all he represents are only symptoms of the decay of our schools. It is the collapse of our educational system that is undermining American democracy more extensively and more irretrievably than Trump and all his minions.

5 VII 2018: Will Scott Pruitt repent publicly?

Making some kind of public apology has become routine for evangelical preachers and politicians when they get caught sleeping where they should not. If low-down adultery requires that preachers and pols appear in public with wife in tow to apologize, doesn’t sleazy thievery in public office also require some sort of public apology, perhaps with accomplices in tow?

4 VII 2018: A. Naïve retrospective judgements, B. The siege of Khan al-Amar

1948. “Vatican Under Fire for Tapping ‘Anti-Semitic’ Priest to Become Saint” is the headline of an item in today’s Daily Beast that reported “The Vatican is under fire from several Jewish groups for its move to recognize a Polish priest as a saint despite his record of anti-Semitic remarks.” Well, it turns out that “a Polish priest” is August Cardinal Hlond, primate of Poland 1926-1948.

Who are these ‘groups’?? I am weary of this sort of reporting. I want to know who they are, where they are coming from. There is such a thing as fraternal correction, there is also such a thing as slander, telling lies about another to diminish her prestige, and detraction, telling the truth about another with a view to diminishing his prestige. I need to know more about these ‘groups’ if I’m to decide whether this is an instance of fraternal correction or an essay in detraction/slander.

However this may be, I am very weary of the denunciation of admirable figures from the past simply because they did not share all our beliefs, or, rather, our highly selective, self-aggrandizing, and self-serving versions of these beliefs. Contemporaries have set themselves up as inquisitors, seeking in people of long ago traces of some prejudice that is offensive specifically to contemporary liberals, and if found, this prejudice serves as a warrant for the categorial and complete rejection of the past. The glamorous “hermeneutic of suspicion” must to applied, it seems, to all except contemporary illiberal liberals, who alone are sufficiently free of prejudice to sit in judgement on their betters.

 

Today’s Daily Beast also brought a report from Al-Jazeera of the siege of Khan al-Amar, a Bedouin village in occupied East Jerusalem. The invaders have decided to grab some more land by evacuating all the residents and demolishing the village so that the site can be seized by the occupiers. So the occupying troops showed up with the ubiquitous demolition equipment, and beat up and/or arrested those who stepped forward to protest. We’ve seen this pattern in 1940s Europe and now again and again in the contemporary Middle East. The project is the same, sc., to seize the territory, deport or enslave the inhabitants, colonize the newly desolate land, claim it as one’s own, and at last, when the results of the aggression are irreversible, to attempt to palliate the aggression by phony legal maneuvers and appeals to a higher power. And what is odd here is this: one group of semites has forcibly dispossessed another group of semites, seizing their and driving them out or installing them in concentration camps. And yet in the world’s eyes the term anti-semitic applies to a bias against only one of these groups. Isn’t this odd. How did it come about?

30 VI 2018: Encountered in casual reading

“As Nazi pressure continued, now supported from within the government, Schuschnigg tried to rally popular support for Austria’s independence by a referendum. Hitler reacted by alleging an attempt at a fraudulent vote and demanded that Schuschnigg should hand over the government to the Austrian Nazis or face invasion.”

 

28 VI 2018: Trump sells out to Russia

The announced “summit” between Trump and Putin was arranged without informing those democracies that were once our allies. First the rigged election, then America’s unilateral abandonment of the environment, then the G6 where Trump invited the rogue Russians without consulting the others, then the endless Trumpian denials of any significant Russian tampering in his election, next the continuing Republican attack on the Special Counsel, Justice Dept., and any other agency that might bring Trump to justice, and now the secret summit at which Trump will sign over the USA to Putin.

Why does Trump, why does America cow-tow to Putin? Did Putin once sodomize Trump, a fact too embarrassing to be known by any? Does Russia own Trump financially? Trump never has worked well with money. Are the Republicans forcing a rapprochement with Russia …?

However unlike the last sounds, it may be the closest to the truth. The entire drift of right-wing politics since the election and re-election of Obama has been counter democratic, not counter Democratic, but counter democratic, i.e., contrary to democracy itself. We have seen clearly that large numbers of frightened Americans would rather be ruled by a dishonest strong man supported by a spineless, mindless Congress than share power with non-whites and non-Christians, and are willing to be sold out to the Russian Empire to maintain the status quo.

20 VI 2018: How Herodian!

The Trumpite base make me think of King Herod. He knew that a child was being born who was “to rule my people Israel.” (He had to learn this from the chief priests and scribes, since he did not himself read.) From the priests he learned where the future ruler was to be born; from the Magi he learned when; and after being frustrated by the Magi’s treason, sent his own goons to find and “fix” the problem.

Statisticians tell us that soon the U.S. is to be a white minority country and thus at some foreseeable point white hegemony must end. The state religion, a debased Christianity, sees the ongoing crumbling of its own hegemony and swells up like a frog against it. America no longer a white country! America no longer a Christian (variously defined) country! Too much! We are the best armed country on earth, so …. Well, if we can’t just kill them, as we did the native Americans, let’s at least have an enforced shift of populations and drive them out.

Now in this scheme of things, Trump takes the place of Caesar. Caesar rules by exploiting fears, the fears of the televangelists, of religious fanatics, the fears of the decent but woefully undereducated people, the fears of unrepentant racists, even the fears of over-age hippies. Thus he divides and re-divides the people, to make them serve his ends.

I hope my little allegory does not amount to trivialization, for we are in desperate times. The inhumanity of some, the cowardice of many, the indifference of most are turning us into what we used to go to war to prevent. This cruelty, this selfishness, this willful ignorance will soon be punished by what we become.