November 27, 2017: Pocahontas, Ever the Demagogue, Ultimate Vandal.

“Aurora Borealis
The icy sky at night
Paddles cut the water
In a long and hurried flight
From the white man
to the fields of green
And the homeland
we've never seen.
 
They killed us in our tepee
And they cut our women down
They might have left some babies
Cryin' on the ground
But the firesticks
and the wagons come
And the night falls
on the setting sun.
 
They massacred the buffalo
Kitty corner from the bank
The taxis run across my feet
And my eyes have turned to blanks
In my little box
at the top of the stairs
With my Indian rug
and a pipe to share.”

                                                                 -----Neil Young “Pocahontas” (1)

All he had to do was get through a simple ceremony observed Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren. He couldn't do even that, quickly turning a ceremony honoring the Navajo soldiers into an ugly, gratuitous slap at a political adversary by referring to her as “Pocahontas” in an effort to refer to the historical native American figure disparagingly. In doing so, our very own Caesar Disgustus simultaneously outraged both the Massachusetts senator and our entire native American populations.

The group of surviving Navajo soldiers who, during the Second World War, distinguished themselves by volunteering for service and using their native language in a successful effort to pass commands and signals in a 'code' that the Japanese found impenetrable, were brought to the White House in order to honor their services. Instead the ceremony was converted into yet another effort by this White House to communicate to its white nationalist base.

This morning, Joe Scarborough, on the MSNBC program “Morning Joe” held forth that this is not normal, that everything that has transpired in the last year or two has been the result of a 'blip', an abnormality occurring on election day 2016. This is a dangerous interpretation.

I have previously written about this at length. (2) This is not an aberration and the latest outrage by our very own public ass needs to be put in some context. On first blush it looked as if Disgustus had simply once again began to ramble and was soon off the rails. But look again at the video, here stood a group of native Americans underneath a portrait of president Andrew Jackson under whom the nation passed a law expelling the Cherokee, Seminole and other tribes from Georgia, Florida and other areas of the American Southeast forcing a march in the dead of winter which quickly became a 'death march' toward a homeland they'd never seen. (3)

It is no coincidence that the portrait of Jackson gazed down upon the ceremony, for Disgustus idolizes the seventh president of the United States. Jackson is celebrated in liberal circles for his 'populism', his so-called “Jacksonian Democracy” lauded by the likes of Arthur Schlessinger, but he also stands as one of the principle architects and practitioners of genocide and ethnic cleansing. There can be no doubt to which purposes the portrait, what part of the Jacksonian legacy, that Caesar Disgustus was drawing upon during this ceremony; another dog-whistle designed to denigrate those assembled and, by extension, the author of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and agency with which he is currently embroiled in yet another power struggle.

He has been attacking Warren for years, referring to the totally baseless charge that she had declared herself to be 1/32 native American when applying for college. Like many of us, anecdotal histories, passed on by relatives over the generations, led her to understand that she has native American lineage. I have no idea whether she has or not. It doesn't matter. In any case, at no time did she seek nor accept any financial aid, nor did it affect her acceptance or rejection when making application to colleges or universities. But Disgustus, ever the demagogue, has seized upon this urban legend and tagged her 'Pocahontas' as a means of conveying, through yet another dog-whistle, the message that somehow she didn't deserve her education, she doesn't deserve realizing the fruits of her accomplishment. It has become a dog-whistle conveying to his knuckle-dragging political base a larger charge than whites are discriminated against and that any acceptance or admission of a person of color into our larger community is illegitimate. “They” don't deserve to be here, brought into the corridors of power through ill-gotten means by liberals who have tipped the Ouija Board of life against them.

The senator castigated Disgustus saying “he had to throw out a racial slur”. The White House protested that it wasn't a racial slur but it is. To use the honorable figure of a revered member of our Native Americans as a means of denigrating someone. Let me be clear: Caesar Disgustus is the ultimate vandal: he debases everything he touches. Yesterday he accomplished, in a very short few minutes, the besmirching of an American Icon; making of Pocahontas a racial slur.

____________________

1. https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/neilyoung/pocahontas.html
2. August 8, 2017: Roads to Hell, Long and Tortuous Path,
   Reap the Whirlwind
3. Ehle, John. “Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation” Copyright 1988 Anchor Books, Doubleday Dell Publishing Group New York. 424 pages.

November 5, 2017: Ye Public Ass, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Holding the Bag

“The words president and  tRUMP go together like barn dance and polecat, or church and fart.”

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

Using the words tRUMP and president in the same sentence violates the sensibilities, for the stench that both precedes him and that lingers long after his departure betrays a corruption beyond anything in our national experience. Tales of sordid business dealing, racketeering and money-laundering await an anxious nation as the Mueller investigation proceeds apace. Today I want to focus instead upon the vandalism that this man is currently inflicting upon the presidency by behavior unbecoming the office.

To date one can envision several looming articles of impeachment:

1. Collusion with a foreign adversary in order to subvert the duly constituted political process of a free republican government.
2. Obstruction of justice by misleading, lying, fabricating, dissembling, removing from office several principle investigators, threatening possible material witnesses.
3. Knowingly participating in the receiving of material assistance in the form of information and money from foreign nationals, many connected with organized crime.
4. Failure to fulfill the oath of office by “Faithfully executing” the laws of the land, as in failure to enforce additional sanctions upon Russia, failure to enforce environmental protections, failure to enforce and support the Affordable Health Care Act, ad nauseum.
5. Receiving gifts and payments from foreign governments and nationals by pressuring governments to do business with his hotels and resorts.
6. And, last but not least: for conduct unbecoming, that is for BeingYe Public Ass.

It hasn't been enough that this man has been the most incompetent ass to preside over our government since at least James Buchanan. It hasn't been enough that this man has besmirched virtually everything he touches. It is that this man has been a national embarrassment, a national humiliation, a national obscenity while so doing. In short, a public ass.

It took years for Reagan and the Bushes to reduce the federal response to natural disasters. The response to hurricane Andrew late in George the Greater's administration and the greater failures of George the Lesser in response to hurricane Katrina proved low-water marks for both administrations ushering in, as they did, brief returns of Democratic dominance. But it took several years for the Rescumlicans to savage governance to the necessary degree in order to accomplish these objectives. With hurricanes Harvey and Irma having already savaged Texas and the Gulf Coast our Disgustus, still riding the headwinds of competent Democratic administration, was able to respond in a somewhat orderly and timely fashion. Not because of political leadership mind you (for our birdbrain spent his time 'tweeting' and playing golf), but because FEMA still had resources and institutional memory. But with hurricane Maria, there was no such response.

Why is anyone's guess but Keith Olbermann, among others, have pointed to the racism rampant in New York City during tRUMP's childhood as evidenced by the themes in the musical “West Side Story”and the movie “Twelve Angry Men”. Our Disgustus grew up in a New York was experiencing an explosion in immigration largely from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and all to familiar ethnic conflicts emerged.

In any case tRUMP in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane blithely announced that he wasn't suspending the Jones Act—a federal law prohibiting intrastate shipment of goods from the United States to the islands on foreign ships. The act was intended and serves to protect what is left of the U.S. Merchant shipping and merchant marine but is often suspended in emergency. Not this time. Disgustus also announced that he would not use the military in response to the crisis, also a common practice in such circumstances. Normally a president would order the military to airlift food, water, generators, gasoline, medicine and medical equipment, engineers and construction equipment as well as other supplies in order to alleviate the suffering. Not so our very own Caesar Disgustus. He did send the hospital ship “Comfort” to San Juan but two weeks after the hurricane the ship with over 800 medical staff and scores of beds had only treated 40 patients.

What the country witnessed instead was the self-absorbed little Lord Fauntleroy twitting away, venting his spleen on the National Football League in an attempt to settle a score involving his attempt to become a team owner decades ago and being rebuffed by Commissioner Pete Rozelle and the other owners. Having been rejected by this exclusive club, tRUMP set about joining the now defunct United States Football League purchasing the New Jersey Generals and signing Georgia's Herschel Walker. After some marginal success tRUMP then went about pressuring the other owners to change the marketing strategy from playing games in the spring of the year to going directly up against the entrenched National Football League in the fall.

Now the NFL has, principally under Rozelle, emerged as such a dominant force, commandeering entirely not only every Sunday during its schedule but the holidays as well. Indeed the last such force to command these time slots was God himself. Nevertheless our intrepid fool led his band up against one of the most powerful monopolies in the nation, if not the world. Other owners in the league were skeptical, even fearful, knowing it would be a hard climb. But Disgustus, always the bully, always the cock-sure megalomaniac would—surprise--not listen. The result was a disaster. A bankruptcy and end of the endeavor leaving the owners no choice but to sue (always a tRUMP stratagem) the National Football league. They won the case but the NFL was fined only one dollar. The real strategy was, of course, to lead the USFL up against the NFL knowing that it would strain the other owners but in the wake of its collapse tRUMP would leverage his position and force his way into the NFL as the old American Football League had earlier done by forcing a merger. But this time the NFL was having none of it, for the stench of tRUMP so greatly offends the sensibilities. Walker moved on to the NFL and Disgustus and his business associates were left holding the bag.

I bring this up because now decades later we find the swine confronted with a full-blown national disaster involving himself instead with a feud with NFL players over kneeling during the national anthem in protest of police-state practices involving minorities. Here we find the birdbrain 'tweeting' away while an island is without drinking water or power, where millions are homeless and desperate for relief in an effort to besmirch an institution that had slighted him.

Finally, when this display of childishness created a public outcry, he was convinced by White House staff to make trip to the island resulting in video footage broadcast to the world in which he was seen tossing rolls of paper towels to the afflicted and speaking only of the 'great success' of the federal (read tRUMP's) response. Indeed pressed to rank the response on a scale of one to ten, tRUMP—ever the megalomaniac—of course gave himself a ten.

Lost in the imbroglio, of course, was the fact that the Rescumlicans were planning a 30% cut in FEMA funding in their upcoming budget, the first full budget of this administration. I bring this up because the full effect of his blinding ignorance has yet to be felt. Had these storms ravaged this country into the third or fourth year of this administration the full effect of tRUMP and his ilk would have born down upon the unsuspecting residents of Texas and the Gulf Coast as well—that is not upon the people who don't look or speak like Disgustus but upon those who do and vote for him.

But let us make no mistake about it. When it comes time to remove this cancer upon our nation one of the reasons must be that he is and remains a public ass.

Happy Guy Fawkes Day.

Impeach and Imprison

October 8, 2017: Autumn, Once Again

Autumn, Once Again

It’s been two cold winters

And hot long summers

Since we celebrated

The arrival of spring

The trees now turn

the cold wind falls

setting leaves, a-chatter

a ritual rattle

I’ve made it

once again

But it’s never

quite the same

Momma don’t go

Daddy come home.

---

To Kate Camfield.  December 11, 1959-October 8, 2015.

And my step-father Vernon Lyles, whom today we laid to rest. 
And, lastly, to John Lennon for the coda

September 7, 2017: Time nor Place, Sowing Confusion, No Idea

 “Politics is a performing art involving timing and context.”

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

It is the reason that Reagan was so successful.  It is the reason that he was called the ‘Teflon’ president.  Reagan understood that politics is a performance art and, like any artist, understood that timing and context are everything.  Not so the dolt now occupying his seat. 

Nowhere is this more dangerously on display than in the ongoing disputes involving North Korea.  At a time when Disgustus, full of bombast and sounding like some iron age god, warns of ‘fire and fury the likes of which the world has never seen”, threatens a deeply insecure, indeed paranoid regime.  At a time when he openly declares that the “time for talking is at and end”; at a time when he threatens any country currently doing business with the regime with retaliation and sanctions, we find him openly criticizing our South Korean ally accusing Seoul of “appeasing” the adversary and threatening to end the current trade agreement with South Korea. 

These are seriously mixed messages sowing confusion among our friends while outraging the rest of the world community. 

Clearly something must be done with our trade agreements.  Since ratifying five years ago the current accord with South Korea, an agreement that was supposed to lower if not eliminate altogether our trade deficit with the country, the trade imbalance has doubled.  This is not the outcome intended and it has strained relations between the United States and its ally.  Addressing this issue is important for it has cost, by some estimates, 90,000 jobs in the United States and added to our standing as the world’s largest debtor nation.  But this, given the severity of the crisis over nuclear and missile testing by the North, is not the time.  Nor, perhaps, is South Korea the place for our trade imbalance is much more serious if one looks to either Japan, China, or the European Union. 

But Disgustus, perhaps seeking the ultimate diversion from his Russian troubles, has done his utmost to inflame the situation, now saying that we will not trade with any country doing business with North Korea.  Since this involves not only China but also India, Russia, Japan and a host of other nations it is clearly an empty threat; for such action would quickly bring not only the United States but the entire world financial structure to the ground.  While these actions might finally fulfill the masturbatory fantasies of one Steve Bannon they would do nothing to either address our economic woes nor keep the peace. 

In recent weeks, especially in the disgusting months of July and August we have witnessed and increasingly unhinged chief executive as he delivered a campaign speech to a Boy Scout Jamboree, and act for which the Boy Scouts was moved to apologize; we have seen him address a graduation of Coast Guard cadets using the occasion to whine about how he is treated in the press; we have seen him stand before a gathering of law enforcement officers and condemn

ObamaCare and call for the reinstatement of police brutality; we have seen him take the care and time to head off to Missouri to campaign against a Democratic senator while a region and a city drown; we have seen him speak to the nation and draw a false equivalency between the voices of hate and domestic terror and the forces that gather to protest them.  We have seen him, as ever the ingrate he is, call the White House, the very symbol of the American Republic, “a dump”. 

Clearly, this man knows not who he now is or the place that he now defiles.  Disgustus has no idea of time and place; no idea of what is appropriate and what is not; no idea of what is decent and honorable and what is corrupt and disgusting. The emperor does not wear well the emperor’s raiment. 

Evidence is gathering that the country is having its fill.  MSNBC recently aired video of a focus group gathered in Pittsburg a city that had voted for Clinton.  Gathered in the cross section of ten voters were four that had voted for tRUMP, none of whom support him now.  One lady said that “of course I knew he was crazy, but I expected that he would at least be professional, he’s not presidential, he’s not even professional”.   Another said that he had hoped he would be a great executive, delegating to competent executives and running the government like the businessman they all thought he was.  Clearly, he had bought the illusion presented on the ‘reality’ television show “The Apprentice”.  With tRUMP, illusion—façade—is everything.  Then there was the man who said he voted for tRUMP but regretted it telling the interviewer that he wished Disgustus was on the other side because of the damage being done by this man to the causes he holds so dear.  They are not alone.  Disgustus has lost, in the last month alone, 9% of the white male voters without a college education and fully 56% say that he is “pulling the country apart”.  He is also tearing apart our alliances and the fragile, if enduring, peace that they have produced.

Donald J. tRUMP has no idea.  He has no idea of time and place.  He has no idea of where he is nor what he is doing.  He is the ultimate vandal realizing the wet dream of the “Generation of Swine” to bring the whole house down about our feet. 

Impeach and Imprison. 

September 6, 2017: Ignorant and Enraged, Hateful and Cruel, Demeaning Office and Country.

They put their trust in us.  They were persuaded by the previous administration to come out of the shadows.  They wanted to do what is right.  They registered with the government.  They subjected themselves to a rigorous vetting process, demonstrating responsibility, that they had a job or were in the process of educating themselves so to do.  They proved that they had no criminal records, that they have otherwise violated no law.  They are the 800,000 or more so-called “Dreamers”, young adults brought here as children illegally by their parents.  They arrived here at an average six years of age and this is the only country they have known. 

With a straight face and a stroke of the pen, Caesar Disgustus has put their future in jeopardy, threatening to tear apart families affecting millions of Latinos. 

He couldn’t help himself.  It was an Obama administration initiative and all things Obama are like a red flag before an ignorant and enraged bull.  He also couldn’t stop from characterizing these young people as he has previously characterized persons with Latin heritage.  Contending, with a straight face, that many of “them” are thugs and gang members and then adding, as a lingering afterthought, that “some of them are good people”, Disgustus returned to his campaign platform punishing those least deserving and most vulnerable as he wages his struggle to Make America White Again.  Mischaracterizing libeling and scapegoating a people is, and was, a disgraceful exhibition, demeaning the office he holds and the country he represents. 

Many pleaded with the ignorant twit to stay his hand.  Rescumlican senators Lindsay Graham, Susan Collins, and John McCain, among many others begged him not to take this action.  House Speaker Ryan likewise made the plea.  No matter.  These people are the ‘establishment’, an evil force representing the ‘deep state’ that Bannon and his ilk fear and loathe.  Word coming that tRUMP still talks with Bannon, and that his chief of staff cannot step in to prevent it, is revealing; for the paranoia that inhabits the soul of this administration runs deep, producing a dynamic in which any appeal by anyone of substance is bound to produce the opposite action in this White House.  Such is the dysfunction of this government. 

It was a hateful and cruel action taken against those who have trusted us and have tried so hard to make amends and to integrate themselves into our society.

It is well to observe that nowhere in this campaign to right the ‘wrong’ are the employers of these undocumented workers called to account.  No one on the ‘right’ side, if not the ‘white’ side of this issue is going to jail nor suffered to pay any penalty for their actions.  Instead they will be allowed to pocket their ill-gotten gains through the exploitation of these laborers forced into the shadows—reputations and fortunes intact.  In the fantasyland of Disgustus, the capitalist can do no harm. 

Impeach and Imprison. 

September 5, 2017: Simple Dulsatory Polemic, Elevation of Scum, Stirring the Shit

“This White House can be depended upon only to stir the shit, no matter how much it stinks”.

                        From “The Quotations of Chairman Joe”

Keith Olbermann, in a recent pronouncement in a podcast for “Gentleman’s Quarterly” that he calls “The Resistance”, described Donald J. tRUMP as “Scum”.  Indeed, he is.

The elevation of scum to the highest corridors of power, indeed, into the very inner sanctuary of the oval office, did not happen overnight.  We did not happen upon these crossroads by accident. 

It is now a decade since I first began writing, albeit furtively and sporadically (for life makes many demands upon the leisure time of the working man), these columns.  I began this journal with the opening headline, a parody of Earnest Hemingway, entitled “The Scum Also Rises”.   Indeed, unfortunately, it does.

So, began my chronicle of the decline and fall of the American Empire. I have attempted in recent columns to demonstrate that the mendacity that is the conservative movement has, after more than half a century, metastasized into a full-blown and virulent cancer now taking the form of our very own Caesar Disgustus.

Disgustus is beyond being a mere national embarrassment; he is beyond being a mere national humiliation. He is, a national shame, a national disgrace. 

As pointed out by Olbermann and many, many, others, the month of August reached a new low in this administration’s determined effort to plumb the depths of political depravity.  August, a month given to vacationing in which Congress out of session and the country otherwise distracted, is normally a slow news month.  The networks find themselves giving increasing air time to ‘fluff’ news stories about vacation spots and celebrities.  The most serious stories tend to revolve around the hurricane season and the weather.  Not this year.

To prevent the administration from moving the Keebler Elf –one Jefferson Beauregard Sessions—from the Justice Department to Homeland Security and appointing a new Attorney General, the Senate, in a rare exercise of wisdom, remained technically in session.  But no matter, for this White House can be depended upon to stir the shit, no matter how much it stinks. 

As so, we find Disgustus coming to the aid and comfort of Neo-Nazis, crypto-fascists and White Nationalists contending with a straight face that there were ‘good people in that crowd’ at Charlottesville, Virginia, a mob chanting “the Jews will not replace us” and the Nazi slogan “Blood and Soil”.  We found him pardoning Joe Arpaio, the Sheriff of Phoenix who in his own words ran concentration camps holding illegal immigrants in which abuse, shame and torture were routine.  Found guilty of violating two court orders to cease and desist, Disgustus, during national emergency, was nevertheless found taking time to the real agenda at hand, which is to placate and appease his knuckle-dragging bigoted political base of support by granting a full and complete pardon.  Here Disgustus demonstrated not only his support of fascist police-state tactics, his not-so-latent bigotry, but his complete contempt for the rule of law. 

But, alas, our Disgustus is easily distracted. As hurricane Harvey did its worst along the Gulf Coast, Disgustus was attending to more urgent matters.   Dumping in some places over 50 inches of rain, producing in the process the greatest rainfall ever recorded on the North American continent and putting the country’s fourth largest city (Houston) under water, Disgustus would nevertheless be found tweeting about a newly released book by the now former sheriff of Milwaukee Wisconsin (another troglodyte), and heading to the great state of Missouri to tout the real agenda of this administration—you guessed it—tax cuts for the already rich, openly campaigning against Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill in the process. When Disgustus could finally find within himself the call to action he could not find within himself the need to meet a single flood victim nor stand beneath a single rain shower.  Instead he was found boasting of the federal government’s response, praising the states’ Rescumlican governor, expressing awe about the strength of the storm but finding no words of comfort and solace for those where were battered by it. 

This man is so myopic, so self-absorbed, so emotionally crippled, so ego-centric and self-serving that he cannot find within himself the words or compassion that this country identifies as the mark of a true president.  Donald J. tRUMP is worthless in a national emergency. 

And now we have hurricane Irma, a category 5 monster bearing down on the leeward Islands and heading for Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, and then, perhaps the Southeast United States.  As the country braces for another hit, Clarabelle the Clown trains his seltzer bottle upon the so-called “Dreamers”, young adults brought here illegally by their parents; here by no fault of their own, brought here at an average age of six years of age and now living and trying to function in the only country they’ve ever known. 

Disgustus says he wants a solution to the immigration problem and about that he is quite right.  This issue has been on the back burner for far too long and gridlock has prevented action for nearly two decades.  But instead of moving to deport the parents who brought them he, like the playground coward that his is, moves against the children.  Instead of working toward comprehensive reform that will not tear apart families and spread fear and hardship upon the second largest ethnic group in the country, Disgustus, like a true coward, wages war on the youngest and most vulnerable among them.  

There is a pattern here:  defense of bigots and white nationalists, pardoning a bigoted sheriff in the middle of a hurricane, pimping for another bigoted sheriff’s book while the storm rages, working to end the Obama-era “DACA” program and threatening to deport over 800,000 duly vetted and registered undocumented young people—many currently serving in our military—speaking before a gathering of police officers and giving them permission to return to brutal tactics, empowering—through Arpiao’s Pardon, police profiling and other tactics—discriminatory practices reminiscent of Jim Crow and what emerges is a profile of the most racially bigoted man to occupy the oval office since at least Woodrow Wilson. 

Donald J. tRUMP is a hateful bigot and a swine.  It is no mere coincidence that his first encounter with government—a lawsuit involving racial discrimination at Trump properties—has forever shaped the way he sees government and governance.  When he calls America “Back” to its greatness what he is calling for is a return to Jim Crow.  He has surrounded himself with people like the Mercer’s who long to see the civil rights laws repealed.  And now we find him, in the teeth of every form of hurricane, political and otherwise, holding steadfast to the mast of White Supremacy in his campaign to ‘Make America White Again”, by making America hate again. 

Impeach and Imprison.        

August 31, 2017: False Equivalency, Ever the Vandal, Bad Hair Day

It has been nearly three weeks now since the confrontations between white nationalists and counter protesters embroiled the administration in yet another series of controversies.  Citing violence and blaming ‘all sides’ Disgustus, in his immediate reaction to the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, moved to quickly assert a false equivalency. An old fascist trick, Disgustus even referred to a newly-minted and wholly mythical “Alt-Left”.  There is no “Alternative Left”, there are only the sane and the insane; solid, honest and well-meaning citizens and the stark-raving mad.

Nevertheless, this mantra was quickly taken up by Faux News, citing violence by the likes of “Black Lives Matter” and other such groups, the evidence for which is nonexistent.  On Tuesday of the following week, tRUMP reversed himself, calling out the white nationalists and their ilk and condemning them, but within 48 hours he was once again defending his original statements, a posture he took with him to campaign-style appearances in Phoenix late last week.  Make no mistake about it.  Disgustus, ever the vandal, in deliberately and consciously moving to legitimize the worst elements of American Society.  As the political process, first legitimized Barry Goldwater, then Richard Nixon and his ‘Southern Strategy’, and now Donald tRUMP, so Disgustus is, by way of recognition, using his office to legitimize the white nationalists and crypto-fascists. 

“There were some good people, very good people, in that crowd”, said Disgustus to reporters at Trump Tower in New York as General Kelly, his Chief of Staff, stared gloomily down at his shoestrings.  The press conference was touted as a roll-out of an administration initiative to push an infrastructure and, therefore, a jobs bill.  Instead Disgustus, never missing an opportunity to stomp all over his message, led the discussion down the long and twisted road of racism and his tortured defense thereof.  One reporter quipped that “there are no good Nazis”, a point wholly lost upon the ever ignorant Disgustus who, reportedly, sleeps beside his copy of Mein Kompf whenever possible.  Let us finally face it:  Disgustus is a fascist.  Not, perhaps, a Hitler, but assuredly a Mussolini.  El Duce on a bad hair day. 

Impeach and Imprison.

 

August 30, 2017: Tragedy that is tRUMP, Nose of the Camel, Newly Minted Legitimacy

“The lunatic is on the grass

The lunatic is on the grass
Remembering games and daisy chains and laughs
Got to keep the loonies on the path”

                         ----Pink Floyd “Brain Damage”

The tragedy that is Donald tRUMP is that not only has he has squandered his presidency, but that he has legitimized the worst elements of American Society.  In this he is not solely responsible, for he had a lot of help.

William F. Buckley Jr. once remarked that the difference between conservative and liberal is that the conservative has more kooks on his side.  So, it seems.  Buckley, to his credit labored with Eisenhower to marginalize at least some of the most egregious craziness rampant in the movement by banishing the likes of the John Birch Society from the Republican Party councils.  Not so anymore.  A decade or so ago, the Birchers were welcomed back into the fold, invited to the annual C-Pac conclave, a veritable cesspool of excrement, also featuring the likes of Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter.  The nose of the camel, as is said in the Middle East, was back under the tent and the Rescumlicans welcomed it in.  And so, began the movement toward a form of ‘populism’, a political term that Huey Long would not embrace because of its historically racist implications. 

The tragedy that is Donald J. tRUMP is that first through his nomination for, and then elevation to, the presidency the Rescumlican Party and then the country at large has legitimized what he represents.  His elevation, in turn, of Steve Bannon and his ilk have, in turn, not only legitimized ‘stale-fart’ News but all that it represents.  Bannon can now, after a short stint in the West Wing, take his White House credentials with him as he parlays his newly minted legitimacy into an ever-greater political voice.    Bannon now, in his words, has his hands back on his weapons, only now his missiles are armed with ever greater warheads.  Disgustus and his Rescumlican enablers are responsible. 

mpeach and Imprison.

 

August 29, 2017: Beware of Darkness, Faux Populism, Herding the Swine

“Watch out now

Take care, beware
Of greedy leaders
They take you where
You should not go”

                            ----George Harrison “Beware of Darkness”

Last week’s departure of Steve Bannon from the White House was celebrated on nearly all sides as a move toward sanity.  The adults have finally triumphed, it is earnestly held, and now the Rescumlicans can move on to the real business at hand, which is always cutting the tax rates imposed upon their benefactors and paymasters.

Bannon had always been a cruel joke, a national embarrassment.  The darling of the Mercers, Bannon had commandeered tRUMP’s presidential campaign as it reeled from the emerging duel embarrassments of Paul Manafort and the ‘pussy-grabbing’ tapes, lending it enough of a ‘populist’ narrative to secure narrow victories in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania thereby winning the Electoral College and, with it, the presidency.  But it was always a ‘faux’ populism, emerging as it did from the darling of a hedge-fund manager and the political party of Wall Street financiers.  For no matter, what was being said about the return of good paying jobs and infrastructure investments, the real agenda of the Rescumlican Party, since its inception, has always been about comforting the comfortable. Lincoln and Stanton were, after all, renowned railroad and corporate attorneys. 

No sooner had Bannon been banished than Disgustus could be found once again on the anti-social media ‘twitting’ away his presidency by calling out the Rescumlicans in congress for failure to repeal ObamaCare; once again on the campaign trail this time in Arizona calling out and criticizing its two Rescumlican senators; and on the phone with several Rescumlican senators demeaning them for not adequately defending him and protecting him from the ongoing Russian investigations.  In sum, it is difficult to tell, as of this writing, that Bannon is gone.

I suspect he isn’t.  For Bannon is a bit of a queer bird: a conservative at war with the conservative movement.  Bannon is said to represent the ‘base’ of the movement as it has morphed from a loose coalition of religious evangelicals and Wall Street financiers to now include a strong contingent of White Nationalists, crypto-fascists and Neo-Nazi’s marching under the guise of a ‘populist’ banner.  These people have little in common with main-line religious fundamentalists and loathe Wall Street and international financiers-- with the single possible exception of another queer duck: Robert Mercer.

It appears to this observer that Bannon, like nearly all of tRUMP’s appointees, was ill-suited for his appointed tasks—and no more obviously than his short stint on the National Security Council, an act almost on par with Caligula’s appointment of a horse to the Roman Senate.  Bannon’s role in life is as provocateur, not administrator.  But Disgustus, never able to tell the difference, judged him the man of the hour. 

Now Bannon returns to “Stale-Fart” News to once again lay hold of his weapons and the West Wing breathed a sigh of relief.  It was a short-lived respite.  For while General Kelly is said to have gained control of the paperwork, we find Disgustus openly waging Steve Bannon’s war upon the Rescumlican establishment. 

Bannon immediately announced that the tRUMP presidency, from the point of view of achieving any of the agenda that his ‘movement’ represents is over.  He has returned to his role as rabble-rouser, provocateur, and cattle-prod hoping to herd the swine toward some white nationalist restoration.  Disgustus, however, now finds himself face-to-face with his real mistress: greed.  Having assembled a cabinet based entirely upon greed and the service thereof, and having swallowed whole Paul Ryan’s philosophy of greed, Disgustus is now the puppet of the very forces that he so recently vanquished:  greedy leaders, about to take us where we should not go.

Impeach and Imprison.

 

August 25, 2017: No Inherent Value, Idiocy Enshrined, The Republic Itself

“It is an idea as old as Aristotle: A republic rests upon a large and controlling middle class.

To wage war upon the middle class is to wage war upon the republic itself.”

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

               

He takes his science on climate change from Arthur Robinson, a biochemist, not a climate expert and contends that concerns about the climate are overblown.  He is a strong supporter of Jeff Sessions for Attorney General, contends that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a mistake; that African-Americans were better off economically before the civil-rights movement; that there are no white racists in America today, only black racists.  He is a rabid Clinton hater, deeply immersed in the various conspiracy theories that abound on the fringes of the political wrong.  He has helped empower the so-called “Alt-Right” a gussied-up term for white nationalists, crypto and proto-Nazis, which “has included anti-Semitic and white-supremacist voices”, foremost among them Brietbart “News”.  He has contributed millions of dollars to Republican candidates, 22.5 million in 2016 alone, and he is the largest private contributor to Donald J. tRUMP’s presidential campaign. His name is Robert Mercer, “a reclusive Long-Island hedge-fund manager, who has become a major force behind the (t)RUMP presidency”; and he has had “surprising success in aligning the Republican (Rescumlican) Party, and consequently America, with his personal beliefs.” (1)

“Mercer is the co-C.E.O. of Renaissance Technologies, which is among the most profitable hedge funds in the country.” (2) David Magerman, described by reporter Jane Mayer for the New Yorker magazine, as “a senior employee at Renaissance,” …” told the Wall Street Journal that Mercer’s political opinions ‘show contempt for the social safety net that he doesn’t need, but many Americans do’.  He also said that Mercer wants the U.S. government to be ‘shrunk down to the size of a pinhead.’ Several former colleagues of Mercer’s said that his views are akin to Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand.  Magerman told me (Mayer), ‘Bob believes that human beings have no inherent value other than how much money they make.  A cat has value, he said, because it provides pleasure to humans.  But if someone is on welfare they have negative value.  If he earns a thousand times more than a school teacher, then he’s a thousand times more valuable.’  Magerman added, ‘He thinks society is upside down—that government helps the weak people get strong, and makes the strong people weak by taking their money away, through taxes.’” (3) an attitude “‘typical’ of the ‘instant billionaires’ in finance who ‘have no stake in society’ unlike the industrialists of the past, who ‘built real things.’”  (4).

Andrew Breitbart was an idiot when alive; in death, his idiocy has become enshrined in his legacy “Breitbart News”, an online blog/journal whose most accurate reporting involved Bill Clinton getting head in the oval office.  Since then it, along with the “Drudge Report” and Alex Jones’ insane “InfoWars” radio broadcasts, has become the fetid petrie dish for toxic anti-social conspiracy theories poisoning and killing rational political discourse in this country.  The ‘Alt (alternate) Right now presents us with ‘alternate facts’ from some presumed alternate universe.

Breitbart was taken over by one Steve Bannon who moved to secure its existence by enlisting the financial patronage of the Mercers who have contributed millions of dollars to underwrite the fraud.  From the cesspool of the ‘Alt-right’ straight into the damaged ears of Rush Limbaugh to the fake news of Fox (accurate about 18 per cent of the time), and on into the Koch-addled brain of the Republican Party this “alternate reality” is imposed upon us.  Mercer made Bannon at Breitbart and his financial support of tRUMP made Bannon tRUMP’s campaign C.E.O. (a position hitherto unheard of), and Kellyanne Conway his campaign manager.  It also put them in the White House.

A study of Mercer and Bannon are important not only for what it tells us about the deep paranoia that lurks just beneath the surface of the alt-right (alt-wrong); a paranoia held in common, though not to the degree, of the long-suffering conservatives.  For this derangement is of an entirely higher level of magnitude, finding Bannon and his ilk confusing themselves with Leninists (perhaps explaining their infatuation with all things Russian), and plotting endlessly with a fictional ‘deep state’ producing, in turn, perpetual crisis and turmoil as they wage war upon the ‘establishment’, the ‘bureaucracy’ and ‘institutional competence and memory’.   For these reasons, we can see in Mercer and Bannon a reflection of the mind, such as it is, of our very own Caesar Disgustus.

It is no surprise, then, that as of this late date hundreds of senior level positions have not been filled; that the State Department has been savaged with many ambassadorships not yet staffed; that draconian cuts are in the works for virtually every federal agency not involved with the military-industrial complex; that lack of experience is put at a premium.    

But a study of Mercer and Bannon also reveal how Disgustus views humanity: Ones worth is directly related to one’s net worth.  Is it any wonder, then, that tRUMP would assemble about him a cabinet and group of advisors that are worth an estimated $61.380,600,000, a figure greater than the GDP of 114 of the world’s nation-states? (5).  tRUMP’s entire concept of human worth is invested (and infested) in money.  It is for this reason that he constantly inflates his fortune and for this reason that Disgustus has assembled what comedian John Cleese has described as a ‘crew of a pirate ship’ in the form of multi-billionaires skilled in the dark arts of separating labor from the wealth that it creates. These are the only people he ‘respects’; the only people, in this view, that have worth; people, in whom, the narcissist sees his own reflection.

Two points follow from the above.  Disgustus only recognizes money, indeed worships only money.  Nothing else has value.  Secondly, in the words of his biographer David Kay Johnson, the people who supported tRUMP have value only in the votes they give him.  He will not be their savior, for Disgustus they have no real value. 

Let there be no mistake: whatever Disgustus says about others he is attributing to himself and he is now about the business of creating that very dystopia so graphically attributed to others in his inaugural address. The struggle to create that ‘more perfect union’ has run amok.  The struggle for the ‘American Dream’ has become the ‘American nightmare’; the ‘American Utopia’, is fast becoming the ‘American Dystopia’.

Meanwhile the war against the institutions that have built and nurtured the middle class continues unabated; and with it the war against the republic itself.  Whatever and whomever this man touches he diminishes and destroys.

Impeach and Imprison.

----

(1).  Mayer, Jane “Trump’s Money Man. How Robert Mercer, a reclusive hedge-fund tycoon,

                        exploited America’s populist insurgency” The New Yorker March 27, 2017

                        pp 34-45

(2).  Ibid. pg. 36

(3).  Ibid. pg. 37

(4).  Ibid. pg. 37

(5).  Harper’s Index “Harper’s” magazine. May 2017 page 11.