16 X 2023: How do you stop a motor-mouth?

Politico reports the so-called gag-order that Judge Chutkan has imposed on the traitor Donald Trump. My only complaint is that the gag-order is not more comprehensive.

John Lauro, Trump’s lawyer and second self, acted out, pleaded: “What does somebody do in the face of oppression in a system that now approaches totalitarianism … ?” Of course, it is approaching totalitarianism in large part due to Donald Trump.

Politico also reports “Today really isn’t about gagging me. … It’s an attempt to gag the American people,” Trump wrote, before asking for “a contribution of any amount.”

So Trump is a suffering stand-in for the entire American people, and has been reduced to the point of having to beg for money. I guess the fees he is supposed to pay his vast team of lawyers is swallowing up the money he has stolen over the years.

But just wait and see how little effect the gag-order has. Trump has zero self-restraint and myriad grievances, so he will be driven to keep talking, and when he starts talking, no one, including Trump himself, knows what is going to come out.

14 X 2023: Holy War???

That little cameleon Lindsey Graham is calling Israel’s “punishment” of Hamas a “Holy War.”

I don’t know precisely what he could mean, if he means anything at all specific. In any case, if we look back at the history of “Holy Wars” from the slaughter of the Canaanites onwards,  we see that “Holy War” means a politically advantageous genocide, or virtual genocide, carried out in obedience to what is claimed to be the will of God. 

It seems that, ruthlessly selfish though we are, there are levels of depravity beneath which we cannot sink unless we pretend that “God wills it,” “Gott mit uns,” etc.

 The very concept of a Holy War, a divinely sanctioned war, is blasphemous.

12 X 2023: Both sides are terrorists

It is being said generally that Hamas’ latest assault on Israel was a terrorist attack. Hamas is a pretend army. They do not represent the Palestinian people. They are indubitably stupid terrorists who are doing someone else’s work while drunk on violence and murder 

At the same time, Israel is now practicing its own brand of terrorism, a war of bombs and rockets against civilians and their homes, like the V2 rockets and the carpet-bombing of WW II. 

Both sides are responsible. Both sides should be ashamed of themselves.

If Israel and its foes were to give up their enmity, the entire political scene in the Middle East would change dramatically, and many would lose their influence and be out of a job. I have to wonder whether the mad lust for revenge of both sides rages on because it is continually stimulated by those who benefit from perennial hatred and violence.

30 IX 2023: Many forms of bankruptcy.

The Primatial See of the United States, the Archdiocese of Baltimore, has filed for bankruptcy just in the nick of time to avoid financial responsibility its history of abuse and cover-up that cries to heaven: 150 criminal priests who were given protection and continuing opportunity by church authorities, and 600 victims, victims of priests and church authorities alike. Yes, the church authorities are also to blame, for their long-standing disdain for truth, zeal for coverup, and shirking of their sacred duty to correct and protect.

And why are so many dioceses talking “poor mouth”? Why are parishes being closed? Not enough money, not enough priests, we are told. But why is there not enough money and not enough priests? Does the record of the American hierarchy encourage the faithful to trust them with their money, let alone anything more valuable than money? Is life in a priesthood that is subjected to the American bishops likely to attract the idealistic and prudent?

11 IX 2023: Let us alone (in our ignorance and poverty)

The Great State of Alabama, as George Wallace used to call it, is in rebellion against the Federal judiciary. The Republican legislators are insisting vigorously on their right to jerrymander and deprive black citizens of an effective vote. They along with Republican legislatures of other the states of the old Confederacy are among the most vociferous in asserting their rights (or, to approximate their pronunciations, their raats!).

I have been looking at a ranking of states according to real per capita personal income and guess which are the bottom ten: Oklahoma, Arkansas, Arizona, West Virginia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Idaho, Louisiana, Alabama, and, last and least, Mississippi.

We have here states of the Old South and the South’s Western colonies. These fools, as they cling desperately to the “old ways” and the old white supremacy are, as they say, circling the bowl.

30 VIII 2023: Trump “believed in his heart of hearts”????

The insurrectionists Trump’s latest mouthpiece is now claiming that Trump did no wrong because he “believed in his heart of hearts that he had won the election.” Is this an insanity plea? Trump lost touch with reality and is not responsible for what he did. 

I am ready to believe that Trump is insane, but I surely would not buy this argument.

Or, Trump was mistaken, had been given bad advice. OK.  Say I have a contract to murder Don Corleone. So I killed a Don. But I was shown the wrong photo, and so I mistakenly killed Albert Anastasia. 

So I will plead that I killed Albert by mistake, therefore did not really mean to kill Albert, and therefore should escape any charge.

But I believed it in my “heart of hearts.” 

That’s assuming that I have a functioning “heart of hearts.”

But we all make mistakes. 

True enough. But those of us who are not super-rich or consummate liars have to live with the consequences of our mistakes.

28 VIII 2023: A caption for Trump

Everyone will have seen Donald Trump’s mug shot. I understand that he and his staff devoted some time to practicing what they thought would be an effective pose.

The New Yorker routinely has on its final page an uncaptioned cartoon. Readers are invited to submit a caption for the cartoon, and the best caption is announced in the following week. Trump’s mug shot set me to thinking what would be an appropriate caption for that photo. The first that came to mind was “Somebody used up all the toilet paper.” But this seems a bit déclassé, so I tried to think up something more high-toned, and what I came up with is a line from the film The Wizard of Oz. 

After Dorothy’s welcome by the delegates of the Lullaby League, three pugs dance and swagger up, trying to look as tough as they can, and introduce themselves: 

“We represent the Lollipop Guild, 

     the Lollipop Guild,

     the Lollipop Guild,

and in the name of the Lollipop Guild

we wish to welcome you to Munchkinland.”

I think Trump’s tough-guy photo might qualify him for the Lollipop Guild.

11 VIII 2023: O.J. Trump

I was thinking today that the tone, atmosphere, buzz, etc., around the prosecution of Donald Trump feels somehow familiar, and of a sudden it came to me. Trump is the O.J. Simpson of the 2020s.

Everybody knows that he is guilty. He has a dream-team team of lawyers to assert his innocent victimhood. The public is divided, along race and class lines, into those who wonder why he is not yet in jail, and those who feel that he must be innocent. The struggle is renewed unremittingly in the media for whom Trump has been a gold mine of meaningless tabloid news. And there’s even talk of putting Trump’s trial(s) on television. There’s a big difference, however, in how the cases will play out. O.J. was tried for murder and was later imprisoned for stealing sports memorabilia. Trump stole classified memorabilia, and he will later be imprisoned for a list of crimes.

3 VIII 2023: Pretty Boy Trump?

The continuing popularity of Donald Trump reminds me of the popularity enjoyed by Pretty Boy Floyd, John Dillinger, Bonny and Clyde, and other bandits during the “public enemy” era of the Great Depression. They out-played the Federal Bureau of Investigation and its modern, over-educated G-men. They cultivated a “Robin Hood” mystique — steal from the hated rich, give to the deserving poor — that had nothing to do with reality, but went over big down home. 

There was a popular enthusiasm for these criminals, and why not?. They were anti-government. They shared the universal hatred of the moneyed class. They defied the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, and by doing so reinforced the widely held conviction that otherwise honest people who were forced into a life of crime could rely on their good old common sense and the support of working people to get the better of elitist detectives and prosecutors. Sure, they robbed banks and committed a few homicides along the way, but their crimes are as nothing compared to their zeal for common people. And, then, at the end, their martyr’s deaths at the hands of an enraged establishment! so very poignant!! 

The current Trumpites are basically antinomian. They support not the under-dog, but the outlaw. They consider laws, government, taxes, political and social conventions, rules and regulations of any kind to be cruel repression of America Freedom. And who has been getting away with defying law, government, tax codes, political and social conventions, indeed, every kind of restraint that comes from a sense of decency and civic responsibility, and has been getting away with it all his life? Trump, that lover of the ignorant voter and model of the lawless life.

28 VII 2023: You are not back home, Derrick.

Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis) obviously thinks he is still back at his home in Wisconsin. He caught some Senate pages napping on the floor of the Capitol Rotunda, and, it is reported, spoke to them as follows: “Wake the f— up you little s—-. … What the f—- are you all doing? Get the f— out of here. You are defiling the space you [pieces of s—].” 

Maybe Mr. Van Orden, a father and grandfather, forgot where he was, and assumed he was back in his home in Wisconsin shouting at his grandchildren. Or, another explanation for his behavior: Van Orden is a former Navy Seal, and so is, one is supposed to assume, full of hyper-patriotic zeal, and that’s why he thought he could re-enact Driving-Out-the-Moneychangers.

Golly! If he bellows so angrily and coarsely at Senate pages taking a catnap in the Rotunda, what might he have said to the insurrectionist vandals on Jan 6? Or, would he have been busy shaking hands with them?