June 29, 2017: Impeach and Imprison, , Cries of the Damned, To Obstruct Justice

As the Watergate Scandal was heating up, an increasingly desperate Richard Nixon went to the country holding campaign-style rallies intending to shore up his fast-eroding political support.  These were the days before such events were mere photo opportunities, days when the crowds were attended not by carefully screened party faithful in housed events but in the open streets by anyone caring to attend; days in which candidates and politicians spoke to the congregation instead of singing only to the choir.  About every such gathering, worth its salt, one would often find protesters; and Nixon had just fired Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox fueling a storm of protest along with articles of impeachment in the House of Representatives.   On the periphery of one such Nixon event, late in the fall of 1973, was erected a long banner upon which was printed in stark black and white: “Impeach and Imprison”. 

This simple directive, in plain king’s English, quickly caught on becoming a staple of protestors now camped out round-the-clock on Pennsylvania avenue, many dressed in Nixon masks and prison stripes, holding placards reading “Honk If You Think He’s Guilty” creating a din that kept the president awake nearly night and day.  And, interspersed with this and other messages, one would regularly find placards imploring the country to “Impeach and Imprison”.

Had we done one or the other or, better yet, both, we would now be a far better nation.  Imagine if Nixon had been impeached and convicted.  Better yet imagine had he been removed from office and then made subject of criminal prosecution for obstruction and actually sent to prison.  Would we have had Iran-Contra?  Would Oliver North have been so cock sure that acting in the name of the president put him above the law?   Would we now have a ‘chief executive’ similarly so cock sure that he is likewise sovereign and above the law? 

Times have changed, but not entirely.  Today, Disgustus having fired FBI director James Comey who was investigating this Russian mess, we find ourselves facing a similar crisis but, alas, Pennsylvania Avenue since 9/11 has been closed to street traffic and pedestrians further insulating our ‘leaders’ from the “cries of the damned”. 

There are many facets of this Russian Scandal that need close examination.  From possible collusion with a foreign adversary to win an election; collusion involving everything from the manipulation of voter registration rolls and misinformation campaigns to the possible undermining of U.S. foreign policy, our alliances, and the international institutions that we have put in place as well as the lifting of sanctions against Russia in exchange for such assistance.  There have also surfaced questions about possible bank loans to tRUMP and associates, money-laundering and racketeering.  Some of this has been bubbling to the surface raising questions that demand thorough investigation. 

Comey, of course, had been alerted and put upon the scent of this trail over a year ago by several foreign intelligence agencies and has told Congress that there has been an open investigation into tRUMP and Associates since early summer of 2016.  Why the Director felt compelled to violate Bureau rules and guidelines and speak publicly of the investigation into the Clinton email mess while not informing the nation that the other party’s presumptive nominee was also under FBI investigation—on far more insidious matters—is not, as of this writing, yet clear.  But it had enraged the Democrats, as did his behavior regarding the Clinton campaign last year giving tRUMP the misguided belief that, since it could be said that Comey alone had handed Disgustus the presidency, he could move on Comey at any time with relative if not absolute impunity.  It would at once, so Disgustus thought, satisfy the Democrats and show the nation that Caesar would discipline his own.

Comey, upon his termination and the subsequent savaging of his service in several Disgustus’ “tweet storms”, released a statement that he had taken notes of his several meetings with Disgustus at the White House, notes written down immediately after each event the contents of which were shared with several high-ranking FBI officers so as to establish a contemporaneous record; for Comey did not trust this president to tell the truth.  This led tRUMP to respond—always via anti-social network—that there may be tapes of such conversations, tapes allegedly confirming the Disgustus version of reality.  Of course, the White House eventually confessed, there were no tapes for nothing coming from the White House is ever accurate, nearly everything an exaggeration, fabrication or bold-face lie. Lies intended to intimidate a possible witness, lies intending to call into question the veracity of a witness, lies intended to obstruct justice.   

The ‘tweet-exchange’ however, was enough for the Assistant Attorney General (Attorney General Sessions had long since recused himself from the investigation himself knee deep in the shit), to appoint an “Independent Counsel” to investigate the affair and for Comey to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee to explain his side of the story.

It was a telling performance.  In over three hours of public testimony Comey recalled his meetings with tRUMP and his phone conversations.  He spoke of the Disgustus demanding his personal loyalty, and of asking the Director to call off the Bureau’s investigation of Michael Flynn, tRUMP’s original National Security Advisor who was forced to resign in a hailstorm of revelations about his Russian connections and his being an undisclosed agent of a foreign government (Turkey and, perhaps, Russia) during the campaign, the transition and as National Security Advisor.  On these points Comey demurred.

After several weeks in which Disgustus importuned the Director to call off his dogs and upon learning that the FBI investigation was moving into the financial dealings of tRUMP associates, including at least one principle “White House figure”, Disgustus moved to terminate the Director.  For Comey, an experienced investigator and prosecutor, smelling the smoke was getting too near the fire.

At first the White House said that it was over Comey’s “unprofessional” handling of the Clinton email investigation, but this, as everything else emanating from this White House, proved laughable and made no sense.  For it was just such handling of the Clinton affair coming as it did at crucial points in the campaign that gave tRUMP the presidency.  But, like everything else in this White House, whatever the official line tRUMP would be seen either on “twitter” or on television giving lie the administration’s story; in this case openly admitting within 48 hours in a nationally televised interview that he had intended to fire Comey regardless of Department of Justice recommendations and then rambled on about how fake the Russian story was.  Shortly thereafter, so as do drive ever deeper the impression that he is in the Russian bag, he entertained the Russian Ambassador and Russian press in the Oval Office itself telling the assembled that he had fired Comey so as to put the Russian Scandal behind him.   Here, in short, are at least two open admissions of firing the FBI director so as to impede or end an investigation.  Here, in short, are admissions of obstructing justice.  Here is our very own Caesar Disgustus openly admitting that he has committed an impeachable offense. 

Impeach and Imprison.

May 6, 2017: The Art of the Steal, A Pirate Ship, Plundering The Public Domain.

How does one characterize tRUMP’s cabinet and tRUMP’s White House?  Perhaps one can turn to Winston Churchill for instruction: never have so few known so little about so much.”

                        ----from “The Quotations of Chairman Joe”

One of the great untold stories concerning the election of 2016 is the story of theft.  The story has been overshadowed by the ongoing Russian imbroglio, but it is part of the pattern of larceny of which the Russian Scandal may well be only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.  According to several sources the Scums have, through more stringent voter registration laws and intimidation kept untold thousands, perhaps millions from the polls.  Less publicized was “Operation Crosscheck”, a Rescumlican effort that purged an estimated 7.3 million voters from the rolls, 440, 000 in Michigan alone in a state tRUMP “won” by a mere 10,000.  In Wisconsin over 300,00 were purged with similar results.  Ditto, Ohio and Pennsylvania a state whose governor openly boasted of using such means to deliver a Rescumlican victory in 2016.   One could also throw Florida into the mix and North Carolina as well.  Flip those states and tRUMP is quickly cast into the dustbin of history, a minor wart on the flesh of the republic. How much help the Russians were in aiding this effort or what mischief resulted from their tampering with the rolls remains to be seen but it is doubtful that the collusion between tRUMP and the Russians was limited to mere “opposition research” through the hacking of emails.  Putin must have had more sinister reasons behind extending the hacking into the voter registration rolls, as well as several congressional campaigns.

The Scums certainly did for winning by any means including collusion with our enemies and adversaries has been a Rescumlican modus operandi for some time now.   Since 1968 when Nixon, through backchannels, conspired to thwart the Paris Peace Conference to win election, and Reagan’s campaign negotiating with the Iranians to hold the hostages until after the election, the Scums have had a history of dancing on the thin edge of sedition if not outright treason in order to win election.  They have been amply rewarded for their treachery and now with Disgustus nearly openly admit it.  So confident was tRUMP in this enterprise that, one will recall, he publicly called for the Russians to continue to hack private American citizens, and later openly took to the defense of the Russians thinking nothing of denigrating our intelligence and national security services.  After all, like the Rescumlicans, little Lord Fauntleroy had been taught by repeated experience that the rules don’t apply.

Large scale political larceny.  But to what purpose?   As tRUMP began assembling his cabinet and gathering around him his ‘advisors’ the purpose became increasingly obvious.  Certainly, this assemblage was not intended to advance sound public policy for the Scums despise public policy; certainly, the assembled were not brought together to advance public administration for they possess neither the requisite intelligence nor the experience. Rather, quipped British Comedian John Cleese, “tRUMP is gathering about him the crew of a pirate ship”.  Precisely.

A Secretary of Interior hell-bent on changing environmental regulations, leasing arrangements, and the privatization of the public lands; a Secretary of Education, who has never spent a day in a public school, hell-bent on privatizing our educational system through educational vouchers and spread of private and ‘charter’ schools; a Secretary of Energy deeply committed to fossil fuels and hostile to renewable energy. An Attorney General reversing Obama initiatives to end the privatization of federal prisons.  You get the picture.  Clearly Caesar Disgustus gathered about him a band of pirates hell-bent on nothing less than the plundering of the public domain. 

The “Art of the Deal” has become the “Art of the Steal”.  Large scale political larceny enabling in turn the wholesale plundering of the public domain by appropriating through privatization or the outright selling off the assets of the people to the capitalist pigs he represents. 

That’s the real story behind last year’s election and the rise of our very own Caesar Disgustus. 

April 29, 2017: One Hundred Days, Nothing of Substance, What Indeed.

“Where once sat Kennedy, now shits tRUMP”

                        ----from “The Quotations of Chairman Joe”

Caesar Disgustus has now been upon the throne for one hundred days.  One hundred days in Sodom.  One hundred days during which the sadistic little prick has continually and serially sodomized the republic and, according to a by now well-established pattern, can be found “twitting” away whining and complaining about the “hundred days” benchmark, by which time he was to accomplish “marvelous” and “fabulous” things.   Notwithstanding it was Disgustus himself who set the mark by issuing during the campaign his version of Newt Gingrich’s “Contract on America”.  Now, having accomplished nothing of substance he stands before the nation with a straight face complaining—always complaining—that somehow this standard is “unfair”; a standard set by others designed to diminish his administration.  Disgustus doesn’t need us for that.

The famous roll-out of a health care bill, promising to “Repeal and Replace ObamaCare” was a dud in the house.  No doubt the scums will resurrect it, because they have little choice having energized their ignorant base with false claims for years and promises to repeal and replace.  But the prospect of stripping 22 million people of health insurance has proven a difficult climb.  Disgustus had promised repeal on his first day in office but we now find him whining that “who would have known this would be so complicated?”   The answer is at once obvious: everyone on the planet except the most woefully ignorant.

There have been no major legislative accomplishments.  Progress or, rather, Regress can be seen only in tRUMP’s rescinding of every executive order issued by President Obama, from the re-privatization of prisons, to the use of lead bullets for hunting in federal forests, to promising to refill Guantanamo prison.  There is even a review of Clinton and Obama national forest and monument designations.  Even his most singular accomplishment to date, the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court could only be confirmed by the Senate suspending the rules, thereby completing the theft of a Supreme Court seat held open by the scums refusing to move on Obama’s nomination for nearly a year and, incidentally further enabling our little Lord Fauntleroy by again teaching him that, once again, the rules don’t apply.

Disgustus is animated by expunging when he can and defiling when he must everything Clinton and Obama even to the point, it is alleged,  of engaging with Russian prostitutes in “Golden Showers” on a bed slept in by the Obamas when on a state visit to Moscow.  This petty little man is consumed and animated by nothing more than mendacity and vengeance.

“With malice for all and charity toward none” quipped President Kennedy, paraphrasing Lincoln, and referring to Richard Nixon.    What, my god, would he have to say about the one presently occupying his office?  What would President Kennedy have said about a vicious little “Twit” about to strip 22 million of health insurance?  On this the hundredth anniversary of his birth one must ask: What indeed?  Where once sat Kennedy now shits tRUMP. 

This too is the legacy of the “Generation of Swine”.

March 31, 2017: The Russian Connection, Useful Idiot, Threaten to Sing

The scandal simply will not go away.  No matter how mightily our Caesar Disgustus struggles to obfuscate, mislead, confuse, blame and raise wholly bogus complaints of election fraud, wiretapping, and other nefarious misdeeds by enemies’ and forces real or imagined, the scandal simply will not go away.

Of course, to listen to Disgustus tell it the “Russian Story” is an entire fabrication concocted by the Democrats to explain away, in his words, “losing an election they should have won”.  Like everything else emanating from the mouth of this man there is always a tidbit of truth.  In this case the Democrats should have won, and won hands down were it not for the machinations of forces within the Democratic Party securing the nomination of the only person on the planet capable of losing to this man; and, it is becoming increasingly apparent, forces within the Rescumlican Party reaching from the Kremlin all the way into the highest echelons of the tRUMP campaign and the Rescumlican Party working to ensure the outcome.  

But, it appears, there may be a bit more to the story.  According to several news sources it appears that as early as 2015 foreign intelligence agencies, among them Estonia, Poland, Germany, France, Israel and Australia while monitoring the activities of several principles within the murky world where Russian Intelligence, Russian political leadership and the Russian Mafia combine, were bumping into information regarding contacts between these actors and people associated with the tRUMP campaign.  It was these agencies that first brought this issue to the attention of the FBI and American Intelligence.  Other sources have also surfaced, including the famous “Steele Dossier”, put together by a former British MI6 agent and funded first by an unnamed opponent of tRUMP in the Republican primaries, and later by a Democratic operative.  Much of it today remains unsubstantiated, but much of it has been verified. There is still, however, no word on the veracity of the salacious account involving tRUMP and Russian Prostitutes involving acts of urination known as “Golden Showers”.   What we do know from all of this is that to date at least nine different tRUMP associates have been identified as having contacts with the Russians before and after the election including, it is rumored, tRUMP himself.  Precisely what was exchanged at these meetings is under investigation but, in the words of John McCain, “This is beginning to resemble Watergate and more shoes are bound to fall”.

This much we do know.  All 17 U.S. Intelligence Agencies agree with “High Confidence” (read “Dead Certainty”) that the Russians meddled in our election in order to elect one bombastic, willfully ignorant megalomaniac with a vocabulary of about 700 words and the attention span measured in nanoseconds to the presidency of the United States.  They did so, it is held, because Vladimir Putin, angered by the actions of then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to question the legitimacy of his re-election, was moved to retaliate.   It wasn’t that Putin thought he could win the election, it was that by backing a man this unstable, this vengeful, this paranoid, and animated by this level of complete mendacity he had found a man who promised to shake the political process and, therefore, the legitimacy of the most powerful republic on the planet.  Here was a golden opportunity for tRUMP, win or lose, is in the parlance of Russian Intelligence, a most “useful idiot”.   It is not difficult to imagine the chaos Disgustus would now be wreaking upon the republic had he lost the election.  Can there be any doubt as to his response?  Calling the election “rigged” and “fake”, whining that the office-- which, in the mind of Disgustus, is so rightfully his—could only have been lost by having it ‘stolen’ from him.  Can there now be any doubt that having lost he would be presently barnstorming the country demanding justice and doing everything within the power of “Faux News” and mendacity itself to delegitimize the Clinton administration.  Perhaps, it is feared, there would have been armed rebellion. 

But to WIN the election!  Oh, what a delicious prospect for Putin that would be!  What better candidate could one possibly conjure who, placed at the vortex of political power, is better suited to vandalize and wreak entire havoc upon one’s greatest adversary?  tRUMP’s staggering ignorance alone would almost insure the project.  Add to this his breathtaking incompetence and the stench of his malignant personality and one has the perfect ‘useful idiot’; a vandal capable of nothing save damaging, destroying, defacing, and besmirching virtually everything and everyone about him.  For let there be no mistake about it: anyone who associates with this man is belittled thereby and reputation besmirched. 

Putin, a former head of the old Soviet KGB, knows something about personality profiling.  He also knows something about political power.  He knows that a man with tRUMP’s resources and tRUMP’s personality would make for a very toxic mix, win or lose.  And like any good geostrategist Putin, always thinking at least six steps ahead, found in our Disgustus the perfect foil—a man who, among other things, cannot see beyond his nose much less around any corner.  So, leading his idiot by the nose, Putin helped Disgustus assume the throne. 

The broad outlines are there and the details will, no doubt, be forthcoming.  All our intelligence agencies agree that the Russians interfered in our election.  They hacked into not only the Democratic National Committee and Clinton Campaign Manager John Podesta’s emails but also into the electoral rolls of at least 22 states and several congressional campaigns.  They spread disinformation about Hillary on the anti-social networks Facebook and Twitter.  They may, and probably did, have done much more. 

But what isn’t emphasized in the reporting here in the States is that Disgustus, upon receiving this aid and comfort from our adversary began to change policies and ape the Kremlin line concerning elections in republican countries.  On orders from Disgustus himself, and with the Russian Ambassador looking on, the Rescumlican Party did an immediate ‘about-face’ on Ukraine, changing its platform from support of the Ukrainian nationals over Crimea to supporting Putin and Russia. tRUMP immediately, again aping the Kremlin’s line, began to warn that the election was rigged, and that the only way he could lose would be through outright theft. 

Faced with a growing chorus of questions about Russian interference and his role in it, tRUMP dismissed U.S. Intelligence, denigrated the agencies, and parroted the Kremlin line, and then set about undermining our western alliances by questioning the need for NATO, suggesting that the U.S. may no longer honor the provision to come to the aid of any member of the alliance under attack, and demanding—like some slumlord running a tenement—that the member states belly-up to the bar and “pay their fair share”.   This, of course, has served to undermine one of the great alliances that has kept the peace in Europe for over 70 years; a principle policy goal of Putin and the Kremlin since NATO’s expansions into Eastern Europe right up to the doorstep of Russia itself.  Once again, Disgustus has demonstrated by undermining our alliances—even to the point of refusing to shake the hand of the German Chancellor-- how useful an idiot he has become in the furtherance of Russian national interests.    

In the memorable words of Senator Sam Irvin presiding over the Senate Select Committee investigating Watergate: “If it looks like a horse, walks like a horse and sounds like a horse, one can reasonably assume it’s a horse.” 

As we speak, former tRUMP National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, known to have met with the Russians before and after the election and suspected of undermining Obama’s response to the Russian interference by promising reversal of policy upon tRUMP’s inauguration, has offered to sing in exchange for immunity from prosecution.   So far no one has taken him up on it.  

March 29, 2017: The Politics of Mass Delusion, Paranoia Strikes Deep, ‘Tweeting’ Away the Presidency

“Paranoia strikes deep

Into your life it will creep

It starts when you’re always afraid

Step out of line, the man come

And take you away”

                        ----Buffalo Springfield “For What It’s Worth”

Historians have long observed the American propensity to be deeply paranoid (1).  Indeed, from the “Great Awakenings” of the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries to the “Know-Nothing” movement of the mid and late nineteenth century, to the “Palmer Raids” in the immediate aftermath of World War One to the McCarthy era and the hysteria that permeated much of the cold war, paranoia has often—all-too-often it seems— come to define the political landscape.

Americans have always been a deeply paranoid lot but the paranoia that currently holds the conservative movement in its grip is a most peculiar strain and a uniquely modern phenomenon.

I have written previously (2) citing the works of Corey Robin of the deep sense of persecution felt by what I call “the victims of property and standing”, dating back at least to the French Revolution.  Here is an excerpt of that post from 2008, a long segment of which bears repeating:

Corey Robin in an essay entitled “Out of Place” quotes the opening statement of Ronald Story and Bruce Laurie's “The Rise of Conservatism in America, 1945-2000” that 'the central story of American politics since World War II is the emergence of the conservative movement'.  “Yet”, writes Robin, “for some reason Will still feels that the travails of his political kinsmen are insufficiently appreciated and recognized”.  Robin continues: “Will is not the first conservative to believe himself an exile in his own country.  A sense of exclusion has haunted conservatism from the beginning when emigres fled the French Revolution and Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre took up their cause.  Born in the shadow of loss—of property, standing, memory, inheritance, a place in the sun—conservatism remains a gathering of fugitives (emphasis added).  (3)  Buckley and his cohorts saw themselves at “out of place” with their badge of exclusion making them just about the “hottest thing in town” (3)

“Plato's guardians were wise”, writes Robin, “Aquinas's king was good; Hobbes's sovereign was, well, sovereign.  But the best defense of monarchy that Maistre could muster in “Considerations on France” (1787) was that his aspiring king had attended the 'terrible school of adversity”.   Similarly, Edmund Burke in his “Reflections on the Revolution in France” (1790) would describe Marie Antoinette “dragged 'almost naked' by 'the furies of hell' from her bedroom in Versailles and marched to 'a Bastille for kings' in Paris'.  “Marie Antoinette”, Robin continues, “was a particular kind of loser, a person with everything who finds herself utterly and at once dispossessed.  Burke saw in her fall an archetype of classical tragedy, the great person laid low by fortune.  But in tragedy, the most any hero can achieve is an understanding of his fate: the wheel of time cannot be reversed; suffering cannot be undone.  Conservatives, however, are not content with illumination or wisdom.  They want restoration.” (3)

What we have here, according to Robin, is the truly “bizarre” nature of modern Conservatism: a ruling class that for the first time rests its claim to power upon its sense of victimhood asking “us not to obey them but to feel sorry for them—or to obey them because we feel sorry for them.” Whereas other political movements must persuade “the disenfranchised that they have rights and power”, the modern conservative poses a novel justification: “they are aggrieved and entitled—aggrieved because entitled—and already convinced of the righteousness of their cause and the inevitability of its triumph.  They can play victim and victor with a conviction and dexterity the subaltern can only imagine, making them formidable claimants on our allegiance and affection.” (3)

A deep sense of paranoia, born of an abiding persecution complex, inhabits the conservative mind, and colors the political landscape.

But, alas, Corey Robin hasn’t entirely mapped the extent of it.  Beginning in the immediate wake of the Supreme Court Decision Roe v. Wade, forces already breaking loose from established main-line protestant denominations began to organize; forces already at war with the federal government’s efforts to integrate the public schools; forces representing strains of Protestantism deeply at war with reason, science and natural history; forces deeply suspicious, deeply intolerant, and deeply paranoid.   First falling under the banner, at the presidential level, of one James Earl Carter Jr, and later switching to Ronald Reagan they have become the foot soldiers of the emerging conservative crusade, willing to man the phones, pound on doors, stuff envelopes and attend rallies.  What distinguishes them from typical congregants and parishioners is their loose or non-existent connections with some greater presbytery (answerable to no higher church authority), their unparalleled intolerance fueled by a deep and abiding paranoia.  I am here speaking largely of the so-called “evangelicals” but also the free-lance non-denominational hucksters like Robertson, Hagee, Olsteen, and Dollar. 

What has brought these disparate elements of the conservative coalition together is not taxation, monetary or economic policy, certainly not the legalization of abortion by the Supreme Court.  What they have in common is a deep and abiding paranoia, born of real but mostly imagined persecution: in the case of the intellectual lights and financial scions of the movement it is government regulation and taxation and the refusals of academics to give credence to their demonstrable nonsense; in the case of the religious zealots it is alleged persecution at the hands of virtually everyone who doesn’t follow their version of the gospels.  And, by degrees, it is variously held that the wealthy deserve the lion’s share just as the true Christian has a prior claim on the fruits of the planet and the governance thereof. 

To accomplish this, we are continually reminded of persecutions real or imagined from unspecified burdensome regulation to tales of Christian persecution despite a church standing on every other street corner of America. For this purpose, tales of Muslim conquest although centuries ago and far less draconian than our collective memory has it color a deep suspicion in these quarters of anyone hailing from the region.  For this purpose, the Crusades keep re-emerging as a template ignorant of the fact that we lost the Crusades.  For this purpose, a strain of anti-Catholicism colors the political wrong as the inquisition is rehashed.  It is a persecution complex as old as Christianity itself dating back to Roman times, embroidered by time into a full-fledged tapestry deeply coloring how the assembled view the world. 

On this point one must consult, briefly, the historical record.  The historian Gibbon in his “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, estimated, after consulting contemporary records, that perhaps 1,800 persons were put to death in the 400 years before Christianity became the state religion noting that subsequent persecutions by Christians far outnumbered the original sin.  Never mind, for Rome had become the first Anti-Christ, a trend that has continued down to our time to include our own government. 

The fact is that these people have always been in control, only now a much more virulent strain of the disease that is American Conservatism has taken the palace exhibiting a much more deranged, delusional and far more deeply paranoid behavior.  Convinced now that they are being “sandbagged” by a “deep state”, tRUMP and his associates—foremost advisor Steve Bannon lately of Breitbart “News”—have balked at staffing high government positions, refusing to refill vacancies left from the previous administration thereby destroying institutional memory.  They have moved to cut funding of the State Department hampering intelligence gathering worldwide thereby insuring that this country will be blindsided in some upcoming international crisis.  They have even cut funding for NASA satellites monitoring global warming.  Deeply suspicious, deeply intolerant of opposing points of view, deeply paranoid, tRUMP and associates spend their time “tweeting” away the presidency engaging themselves only is uneven attempts to expunge Obama from the historical record and getting revenge upon “enemies” real and imagined. 

This is what unchecked paranoia can do to a body politic, and this too is a legacy of the ever delusional “Generation of Swine.”

___

(1).  See, for instance, Hofstadter, Richard. “Anti-Intellectualism in America American Life”

            Op.cit.  

(2).  See my post dated October 2, 2008: A Question of Will, Exile on Main Street,           Victims of Property and Standing.

(3).   Robin, Corey.  “Out of Place” The Nation June 23, 2008 pages 25-33

March 27, 2017: The Politics of Mass Distraction, Jambing Our Radar, Not the Medium nor the Man

“Only a twit goes on twitter, and only a birdbrain tweets”

                        ----from “The Quotations of Chairman Joe”

A theory is being bandied about which holds that tRUMP’s use of the social media “Twitter” is a clever stratagem to circumvent conventional media, in whose hands he has been savaged, opting instead to speak directly to his constituency in 40 characters or less.  I imagine that this would comport with the ‘bumper-sticker’ mentality of the great unwashed in search of a champion, but it is no way to explain public policy.  Others hold that tRUMP’s nearly daily use of the medium is a bit of genius, distracting as it does from the wretched Rescumlican agenda, serving as a form of “flak” in effect jamming our “collective radar”, distracting us from watching what congressional Rescumlicans are cooking up in the smoke-filled rooms and about to foist upon an unsuspecting public.  Others hold that tRUMP’s “tweet storms” serve to distract us from the ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in our election, possible tRUMP campaign ties to the Russians and possible collusion with the Russians to rig the outcome of the election.  Lurking beneath, not so far from the surface, are possible financial dealings which may involve racketeering and money laundering.  So, it is held, tRUMP almost daily takes to “Twitter” and “Tweets” false accusations and insults in every direction, calling into question in the process the legitimacy of every institution in this country, be it law enforcement and the courts, the press, the congress, thousands of county clerks (mostly Republican) across this country who conduct our elections, financial institutions, American corporations and businesses and accusing anyone who slightly disagrees with his version of reality of being “fake”, disingenuous, and an outright liar; all of this designed to smear with a mighty hand so as to obfuscate, confuse and obstruct.  He has even been compared to the ‘Great Communicator’ Ronald Reagan as an alleged genius in connecting with the ‘people’. 

I’m not about to give tRUMP such credit.

You see Reagan spoke on behalf of a moribund and largely discredited political and economic philosophy honed by messages delivered at countless ‘rubber chicken’ events held at VFW and other venues in countless towns and cities throughout America, transforming himself, over the years, from a first-rate second-rate actor to a master political salesman.  Moreover, a political salesman possessing a deeply-flawed philosophy of governance, but a philosophy nonetheless.  tRUMP, it by now must be clear, possesses none of that. 

Many students of the presidency have correctly pointed out that the president has very few constitutional powers.  Beyond his or her role as “commander-in-chief” of the armed forces and the veto power over acts of congress (which can be overridden), the power of the presidency is one largely of persuasion. In this the president, to be successful, must first have a clear idea of where one wants to lead the country, how to use the office in order to so lead, and, most importantly, how to sell one’s agenda to the nation at large.  For this one must be able to adroitly use in Teddy Roosevelt’s immortal words the “Bully Pulpit”, but in order to do so one must be able to make a salient case for one’s agenda; one must use the profile of the presidency in order to legitimize and move one’s policy goals.  For that one needs an uncommon salesman.  tRUMP, it appears, is not a salesman.

I have often pointed out in these columns that a business background is an immediate disqualification for political office, especially the highest office in the land.  The president, you see, does not “rule” by “decree”, but must persuade the people, the congress and the courts of the need, legitimacy and urgency of proposed change. For this, the star of the reality television show “The Apprentice” is the most ill-suited for the job, for barking “you’re fired!”, will hardly get the job done for the inevitable question—and it is always a PUBLIC question-- immediately emerges “now what”?, demanding a public debate and discussion.    In any case, nowhere is the totally ill-suited nature of this man for the office he holds on greater public display than in his almost daily use of “Twitter”.

“Twitter” along with “Facebook” and “LinkedIn” represent the vanguard of an explosion in this culture of so-called “Social Media”.  It should be more correctly termed “Anti-Social Media”, inasmuch as complex questions of public policy, when they are discussed at all, are done in crude two-dimensional “Memes” where everything is reduced to bumper-sticker mentality or involve sometimes long threads where people, armed with few facts and less understanding, openly abuse each other by reducing public discourse to invective, vitriol, and abuse. 

These are media made for one Donald J. tRUMP, for it should be clear by now to even the most casual observer that the man in the oval office, armed with few “facts” and even less understanding can only express himself by reducing public discourse to invective, vitriol and abuse.  And so, the headlines of the day are dominated by these “tweet storms” in which our intrepid leader is constantly seen whining, blaming, accusing and demeaning everything about him—even, on occasion, his own party’s policy agenda.  None of these rants stick, none have in the parlance of the theatre “legs”, save the “tweet” that President Obama bugged tRUMP tower thereby accusing the former President of committing a felony.  That little tweet storm rattled through the ‘news cycles’ like loose change in a dryer for nearly two months bringing unwanted attention to the Russian mess all the while robbing Rescumlicans of a splendid opportunity to sell their much-anticipated savaging of the health care system in this country. 

But it is one thing to steal a Supreme Court seat in the static caused by these “tweet storms”; it is one thing to get a health care bill through the house stripping, by estimates of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, 22 million people of their health care; it is one thing to then have a handful of Senate Rescumlicans meet behind closed doors to fashion a Senate version of same.  It is quite another to get this country to swallow such a savaging of the safety net as Rescumlicans are learning with each trip back home. 

So instead of addressing the nation from the oval office or, as Obama before him, before a joint session of Congress in order to explain himself, we find instead this little man, hamstrung by language reduced to trying to forward his agenda in 40 characters or less.  “Twitter” is not the medium for this and Donald J. tRUMP is not the man.   To do this one must sell the program to the American people.  To do this one must have a Master Salesman, one must have a president.  Donald J. tRUMP is no Master Salesman; Donald J. tRUMP is no president worthy of the name.  

March 21, 2017 Requiem for Rosemary, Fifteen Years Gone,

February 28, 2017: State of Disunion, A National Obscenity, Quintessential ‘Boomer’

Donald tRUMP is much more than a national embarrassment; he is a national obscenity"

                            ----from "The Quotations of Chairman Joe"

Following the election, Time magazine published a cover photo of Donald tRUMP over which was written the headline “President of the Divided States of America”.   And so, he is. 

To be fair to our Caesar Disgustus he did not create these divisions but, like any Rescumlican worthy of the name, he has done his level best to exploit them.  Divisions of race, class, geography; black and brown vs. white, rich vs the rest of us, town vs country and the coasts vs the interior ‘heartland’.  Many of these divisions have been eternally with us bedeviling the republic since before its inception, race and class being a legacy of our colonial heritage.  tRUMP, as Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes before him has been the happy beneficiary of the politics of divide and rule; but the divisions now are so marked and run so deep as to fragment the very foundations of the republic itself. 

Again, it is hard to lay responsibility for all this upon the sorry head of Disgustus.  The Democrats, by encouraging international trade agreements and ‘free markets’ as well as whoring after the moneyed interests on Wall Street have now become the party of the coastal states.  Is it any wonder then that one would find Obama pushing the secret TPP as well as an equally secret European trade deal, despite clearly predictable consequences for the middle class and what is left of organized labor?  The Democrats have likewise become a party ossified by layers of special interests representing narrow bands of the electorate and increasingly narrower bands of national territory.  It is not mere happenstance that upon election the first casualty of the Obama administration was Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean who had envisioned and worked assiduously to broaden the party’s popular and geographic support, taking the Democrats deep within Republican territory.  Instead new leadership in the form of Tim Kaine assumed control, an alumnus of the Clinton-led DLC and firm believer in transforming the Democrats into America’s second Rescumlican Party.  The results where wholly predictable with Americans consistently opting, when given the choice, for the genuine article—as in the last presidential election.  Again, tRUMP had nothing to do with these developments, but he was the happy beneficiary thereof.

What tRUMP did do was conduct himself in such a manner as to demean the process by which we choose who will represent us, and now threatens to demean the process by which we govern. 

The tragedy of 2016 was clearly demonstrated by the second presidential debate featuring tRUMP fresh from allegations of serially sexually abusing several women facing the Clintons with several of Bill’s paramours featured prominently in the audience looking on.  The national tragedy was that neither of these aging “Boomers” could, unlike, for instance, the far more qualified Gary Hart, be shamed from the national stage.  Instead the nation was forced to endure what became an openly pornographic contest for the nation’s highest office; a contest which tRUMP did his level best to lose but, unfortunately for the nation and perhaps the world, lost the race to the bottom by an even more suspect opponent.  Indeed, on election day more people trusted Disgustus than our former First Lady.  

The damage done to our politics by such a spectacle is difficult to measure but it is becoming increasingly clear that the longer this ‘Generation of Swine’ has its hands about the throat of the republic, the greater the risk of its survival. 

tRUMP is the quintessential “Boomer”, willfully ignorant, narcissistic, paranoid, thin-skinned, self-serving, greedy and with a propensity to vandalize whatever he touches.  He is, in fact, the ‘Boomer’s” end game; a national obscenity and now titular head of a movement hell-bent upon, perhaps, destroying the republic itself.    

February 27, 2017: Orange Julius, Caesar Disgustus, No Discernable Validation

"Donald tRUMP is much more than a national embarrassment; he is a national obscenity"
                            ----from "The Quotations of Chairman Joe"

In what had to be one of the strangest spectacles to ever disgrace the republic, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer held his first news conference and took to the podium not to announce new policy but to denounce press coverage of the inauguration, boldly and falsely claiming that the crowd attending tRUMP’s ascendancy was the largest in history, larger even than that attending Obama’s inauguration in 2009 or that of Lyndon Johnson in 1965.   Photos rapidly produced by the park service immediately demonstrated otherwise, including banks of empty seats lining the inaugural parade route right up to the presidential grandstand in front of the White House itself.   But tRUMP continues to contend otherwise, believing what he needs to believe, facts to the contrary notwithstanding.

Orange Julius is a serial prevaricator, which is to say, a pathological liar.  Everything coming from the mouth or computer (Twitter) of this man is either a diversion, exaggeration, hyperbole, or outright boldface lie; all designed to meet the deep emotional needs of a man with small hands and even smaller ego; a man ill at ease with himself; a man compelled to resort to petty, mean, small-minded acts of vengeance even at the cost of burying the larger Rescumlican agenda beneath false assertions and tweet storms. 

So the first press conference held by this administration was not an attempt to lay out an agenda, explain changes in policy, nor open the floor to questions and answers.  Instead Spicer simply took the floor, chastised the press for its reporting, and questioning the motives and by extension the legitimacy of the 4^th estate, and then called an abrupt end to the spectacle storming off the stage.  If the press had any intestinal fortitude it would simply refuse now to cover the White House, for whatever comes out of the White House is truth stood on its head.  We have now gone beyond spin into the nether regions and dark corridors of the deeply psychotic and paranoid alternate universe of Steve Bannon, Alex Jones, and Breitbart “News”.   In the less than immortal words of former tRUMP spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway we are now presented with “alternate facts” which carry no discernable validation except in the minds of the tin hats now in the White House; “facts” which the White House now demands be taken more seriously than what the rest of humanity clearly sees as universally discernable and measurable empirical reality. 

Coming as it does on the heels of claims that 5 million illegals voted in the last election, thereby giving Hillary more popular votes despite virtually no evidence that any voter fraud, not to mention fraud at this level exist, tRUMP is emerging as a whining pre-adolescent, easily slighted, thin-skinned, and easily played.  The fact is that the ego of this little man simply cannot stand the fact that more people voted for someone else, especially when that someone else is a woman.  So, desperate to smudge the historical record he now calls for a presidential commission to investigate bogus claims of large scale voter fraud.

The White House has rapidly degenerated into a “Funhouse” house of mirrors, images of Orange Julius distorted to serve the purposes of the moment, images endlessly replicated into infinity giving the illusion of great depth when, in fact, there is no there, there. 

Welcome to the New Order, get in line, bow and genuflect before our very own Caesar Disgustus. 

February 26, 2017: Support and Rememberance, To the Ramparts, Seeking Ablution

On Saturday, January 21, I took part in a demonstration.  For weeks my daughter had been talking of taking part in the national 'women's' demonstration scheduled for the day after the inauguration in Washington D.C, and had gone online in search of a more local event which, she had hoped, I would be able to join.  The closest event being planned turned out to be in Grand Rapids and she decided that it might be too great a reach for the old man and dropped the subject.

Later, while perusing my email, I encountered a missive from one Caitlin Maloney from the "Courage Campaign" with the heading "Women's March on Washington: The pussy grabs back". How could one resist such an appeal?  Indeed.  I found myself irresistibly drawn to participate once again, to take to the ramparts and register my protest; to become part of the resistance. 

Accordingly, I looked up the information regarding the particulars of the event in Grand Rapids and decided that I, too, would join the march. 

The event was held on Saturday, January 21, at the Fountain Street Church.  For those not in the know, Grand Rapids'  Fountain Street Church is a venue which has hosted everyone from U2 to Winston Churchill and has long been a rallying point for those seeking expression.  Originally constructed as a Baptist Church it became, decades ago, nondenominational and has accordingly become an institution giving free expression to a range of religious and non-religious points of view. 
I made my arrangements and arrived at ten in the morning as the event was getting underway.

I made the journey alone.  Upon arriving I found myself wondering about the narthex of the cathedral where the organizers had placed several tables upon which were items for sale.  I found myself spending ten dollars on a sign reading:

IN THIS HOUSE, WE BELIEVE:
BLACK LIVES MATTER
WOMEN'S RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS
NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL
SCIENCE IS REAL
LOVE IS LOVE
KINDNESS IS EVERYTHING

I purchased the item as a means of making a contribution to the cause as well as to have a souvenir that I could then pass on to my daughter who was, at that very moment, in Washington D.C. taking part in the center-stage event around which several hundred local protests were organized. 

As I wondered about, a woman approached me from behind and, taking my arm, pulled me aside to inquire what I was doing there.  I was a bit taken aback by the approach thinking that perhaps she had mistaken me for an errant tRUMP voter who, now seeking ablution, was now about the business of assuaging his conscience if not, by making a rare appearance in church, appealing now to a higher authority lest the grim reaper arrive before forgiveness is bestowed upon this lost soul.  I gently explained that I was here in support of my daughter who was now taking to the ramparts in the nation's capitol.  She seemed satisfied with my explanation and I could discern in her countenance that forgiveness was not in order and that I was indeed welcome into the fold.  I then walked about a bit, took my sign to my van for safekeeping, and then returned in time to find a place in the pews as the event got underway.

There was a bit of poetry reading, including a choice by Langston Hughes' I, Too, Sing America" followed by someone about to set up and sing some protest songs when someone once again tapped me on the arm.  I turned to find that the same lady who had buttonholed me earlier inquiring if I would mind being interviewed on local television.  I followed her out of the church into the daylight and was introduced by a channel 8 reporter for WOOD-TV of Grand Rapids.  I was led to a nearby stairway where she set up the camera and, standing behind the camera she asked her first question:

"As a white man", she queried, "what brings you here today?"

I was a bit taken aback.  Has 'identity' politics come this far? Nonplused, I soldiered on. 

"As a white man for sure," I responded, "but also as a father and a great grandson..."   I then went on to explain that a century ago my grandmother and great grandmother who were area organizers for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and, along with my great uncle, demonstrated for women's suffrage; and that indeed the struggle, now well more than a century old,  continues today.  In their remembrance, and in support of my daughter who was at the ramparts in D.C., I am here today.  Indeed along with the more than 280 others who had left Fountain Street Church and traveled to D.C. by bus from Grand Rapids earlier in the week. 

I then joined the march from the Fountain Street Church to Rosa Parks Circle located at Campau Square.  As we approached our destination a certain de ja vu overwhelmed me.  It had been nearly half a century since I walked these streets and took part in a political event and as I looked about and registered what had and had not changed since that distant spring morning in April 1968, I could still hear that voice in my ears. (1)

"There are places I remember
All my life, though some have changed
some forever, not for better
Some are gone, and some remain.  --The Beatles "In My Life"

I had started out earlier in the day quite alone seeking only to add my support by my participation in an event that would involve, across the country, many millions of people.  I ended up, quite by chance, on the local news.  It is indeed strange how these things sometimes evolve; hard to know what life has, at any given time, in store.  I had set out in search of an event only to find myself confronting not only my turbulent age, but my own distant youth.  My daughter had been right.  It was indeed quite  a reach for the old man. 

---------

(1).  See previous post: April 11, 2008: A Sunny Afternoon at Campau Square, "There aren't any Republicans Here, Are There?", Great Leaders Don't Grow On Trees