The Idiot King: A Lifetime of Failing Upward

“In fact, I’d venture that few American historical periods are more relevant to understanding our contemporary racial politics than Reconstruction.” Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 

So now, hot on the heels of his Twitter tirade against Ilhan Omar, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib, Trump is trash-talking Representative Elijah Cummings and the city of Baltimore. Although I realize it’s not a laughing matter, I can’t help but laugh every time Trump accuses a person-of-color of being a racist. It’s as absurd as when Trump claims not to have a racist bone in his white, flabby body. 

It’s obvious that Trump can’t stand it when a man, or worse, woman of color stands up and calls him out for his personal stupidity or the stupidity of his policies. Trump must honestly believe that non-whites have a duty to bow before him; he’s a sick man, not to mention a small, insecure and frightened one. 

Next to his cruelty, what astonishes me most about Trump is his bottomless ignorance. He has to rank high among the dolts who have occupied the White House. One has to be pretty fucking stupid to make George W. Bush or Warren G. Harding appear intelligent by comparison. That Trump sits atop the American government is testimony to how broken and degraded our democracy is. The damage done by Trump and his gang of lowbrow misfits and nitwits may be irreparable. He’s loading the Federal courts with far-right ideologues with lifetime tenure. Citizens will pay for this for a generation.

This is the wrong historical moment for an idiot king who leads an amoral political party with no shame. How can so many people who have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution keep turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to Trump’s outrageous statements, policies, and behavior? How deep into the cesspool must we descend before these people locate their moral consciousness? How many more lies must Trump spew -- about the economy, the border situation, the environment -- before his acolytes and silent co-conspirators realize how thoroughly they’ve been played? 

Perhaps Trump isn’t a surprise, not in the grand scheme of history. Our country was born in a crucible of racism and white supremacy, sanctioned by the Holy Bible, and the stain of racism remains constant. While we’ve made progress -- hard, slow, painful progress -- Trump’s racism isn’t uncommon. Many Americans still believe that African-Americans are genetically inferior, that African-American males are a danger to white females, that Mexicans and Salvadorans are dirty and violent, and that all Muslims hate America. Facts, logic, and reality don’t intrude on these beliefs. The fears of people who hold such beliefs are easily stoked and fanned; Trump does this all the time. It may be the only thing he’s actually good at.  

What’s very clear as Trump deals cards from his racist deck is that he is the president -- or Idiot King -- of only some of the American people. The rest of us do not buy the division and hatred this con man is peddling.

Blue Ribbon President

“Winning the vote required seventy-two years of ceaseless agitation by three generations of dedicated, fearless suffragists, who sought to overturn centuries of law and millennia of tradition concerning gender roles.”  Elaine Weiss, The Woman’s Hour

I rarely remember my dreams, good or bad, but the other night I had a doozy and it has stayed with me. It was the day after Trump launched his Twitter tirade against Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley, four duly-elected members of Congress, which is, let’s recall, designed to be a co-equal branch of our government, not subordinate to any president and definitely not the Orange King. I must have gone to sleep wondering how this draft-dodging, philandering, tax cheat, who has failed his entire life at everything he’s tried except reality TV, gets away with it time and time again. There seems to be no circumstance that will either turn Trump’s supporters against him or inspire Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to launch impeachment proceedings.

Anyway, here’s the dream, or nightmare, depending on your point of view, as best as I can remember it. 

The big day finally arrived for the members of the North American Sheep Council. Six grizzled ranchers in two extended cab pickups traveled east from Sand Draw, Wyoming, towing trailers that contained eight award-winning sheep. Though the ranchers despised the Federal government, they were tickled pink to be invited to the White House by President Trump, and couldn’t wait to show the president himself just how wonderful the agricultural sector of the economy was doing. Bobby and Cliff and Clem and AJ and Emmett and Wade were tingling with anticipation. They had packed their best suits and boots, their MAGA hats and bolo ties. They admired Trump’s no-nonsense style, the way he stood up for America and heaped ridicule on the Democrats.  

The apple of their eye was Elvira, their prize-winning brood ewe, a beauty with a dozen blue ribbons to her credit, the most ribbons won by a ewe in the long history of the North American Sheep Council. On the day of their visit, Cliff led the sheep onto the South Lawn, Elvira ahead of the others, her head up and proud as if she knew she was about to be in the presence of the most powerful man in the world. She had been brushed and groomed, her teeth cleaned, and her hoofs buffed. Cliff was smiling so broadly with pride that his face hurt. 

The president emerged, surrounded by dignitaries and Secret Service, mounted a couple of steps to a stage, gave the thumbs-up sign to the ranchers, looked at Elvira and nodded his head with apparent satisfaction, clapped his hands and gave another thumbs-up. He made a short speech, most of which Cliff couldn’t hear, though he did catch the words “great” and “beautiful” and “our country.” The president then shook hands with Bobby and Cliff and Clem and AJ and Emmett and Wade. He told them he was proud of them and that they were the kind of men who made America great. Then Trump said something to a man in a dark suit and walked away. The man in the dark suit tapped Cliff on the shoulder, nodded his head toward the White House, and took Elvira’s leash and led the brood ewe away. Cliff followed, not quite sure what was going on, but a few minutes later he was sitting outside the Oval Office, and it was much quieter than he’d imagined, kind of like a museum, what with all the paintings on the walls and the chandeliers and the thick carpet, but then he heard a bleat, then another, and he knew it was Elvira, and she didn’t sound right, so he opened the door to the office and got the shock of his life. 

Hours later, when his whole world had turned upside down and reporters and producers from CNN and ABC and CNBC and MSNBC and The Today Show and TMZ and Good Morning America, and outlets from overseas, wanted to interview him, and get a photograph of Elvira, Cliff marveled that he’d had the presence of mind to get his iPhone out and turn the camera on. He wished he hadn’t let AJ and Wade talk him into posting the video he shot on Instagram, and he wished even more that he could get in the truck and hightail it back to Sand Draw, where his life was normal and quiet. And of course he was worried about Elvira, whether or not she’d ever be the same because the poor girl looked morose. 

The media storm hit harder than any blizzard Cliff had ever experienced, and suddenly he was at the center of it, accused by the Trump White House of being a loser with an axe to grind, of being an agent of Iran, a communist, a socialist, and in league with The Squad. The pudgy Attorney General, William Barr, went on all the networks and said that Cliff should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, though he never said what law Cliff may have violated. 

Kelly Anne Conway accused the Democrats of concocting the whole thing in an effort to embarrass the president, and that the video was fake, created in a Hollywood studio. Conway also accused Elvira of pursuing the president very aggressively, with no respect for his feelings. 

Trump then Tweeted that he was claiming executive privilege over the entire matter; William Barr immediately agreed that Trump had the Constitutional authority to do so. 

Senator Lindsey Graham appeared on Fox News and launched a tirade against Cliff, claiming that the rancher had trained Elvira to seduce the president. Graham called for Cliff to be tried under the 1917 Espionage Act.

When Mitch McConnell was asked if he planned to condemn the president’s behavior, the Senate Majority Leader replied, “Absolutely not. I’m from Kentucky.”

What really hurt was when Trump Tweeted that Elvira was not his type at all, and that she should be euthanized, and if she wasn’t euthanized, he was going to sue.  

Many Democrats demanded that Trump be impeached, that of all his crimes, high and low, his insults, his racism, his misogyny, this was the absolute worse, cruelty to a defenseless animal being far worse than cruelty to a defenseless Guatemalan or Salvadoran child. 

Nancy Pelosi went on all the networks and said that while she understood the feelings of her fellow Democrats, launching impeachment proceedings wasn’t practical because the GOP-controlled Senate would never impeach Trump. According to sources close to Pelosi, the Speaker was also concerned that if Democrats dug too deep into Trump’s dalliance with Elvira, the Republicans might fling the numerous peccadillos committed by FDR, JFK, and Bill Clinton in their faces, hurting their electoral chances in 2020. Though roundly mocked for her cowardice, Pelosi refused to budge. “Don’t get me wrong,” Pelosi told reporters, “I don’t condone the president’s behavior, but I have more important things to do for the American people.”

Meanwhile, Cliff and the boys and the sheep finally hit the highway for home, shadowed for nearly 600 miles by a fleet of black SUV’s and an FBI surveillance drone.  

The America that is Coming (whether Trump likes it or not)

“But it is not permissible that the authors of destruction should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.” James Baldwin

Divide, divide, divide

Them and us

The worthy and the unworthy

In America this has always meant

White people

And black people, with white on top

Ever on top,

Better than

More deserving

Destined by God’s hand, by biology, by natural selection

to rule

Go back, go back, go back

To the shithole from whence

You came

That failed state, that crime-infested hood

So bellows the Racist-in-Chief,

Donald J. Trump

Whose DNA is racist

Who came from his mother’s womb racist

Who learned racism at his father’s knee

The racist loved by the Grand Old Party &

Beleaguered white men in red states

Who blame black and brown people for their sorry lot,

As if those people had the power to transform the US 

Economy

Into an oligarch’s 

paradise

The racist loved by evangelical Christians

Who line up to lay hands

On Trump’s twice-divorced

Porn star banging

Pussy grabbing

Lying

Cheating

Shoulders

The racist frightened-to-death of four

Women of color

Remember their names, for they are the face

Of 

The America that is coming

Whether Trump and his followers like it or not:

Ilhan Omar

Rashida Tlaib

Ayanna Pressley

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Remember too that those who lead

The way against the status quo

Are always

Maligned

Attacked

Denounced

As unrealistic, strident, radical

Just as Martin Luther King Jr. was

And the suffragettes and the brave souls

Who agitated for an 8-hour workday

And an end to child labor

Time for all good people to stand up,

take a step forward

Not two steps back,

Because

We know where that road leads.

Poem: The Visible Hand

You could argue that the United States has never been

A civilized nation,

The true history of this country

Is shot through with murder and theft,

Lies and busted promises.

The mask is off now. 

In our name 

children

Are caged,

Like animals,

Forced to sleep on concrete beds

With aluminum blankets for cover.

We don’t even supply them with toothbrushes,

Because cruelty is the point, the warning

Our debased government

Wants to send to the anguished

And desperate masses

Trying to flee the carnage and misery

That can be traced back

Through the years, the decades

back

To 

Washington D.C.

The Real American Divide

“Now it seems exhaustingly obvious that what’s happening to refugees, to the climate and the biosphere, to the poor under hypercapitalism, is a vicious disregard for their rights and humanity, and that some of the men perpetrating public brutality are monstrous in private is a given.” Rebecca Solnit

The Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges has warned for years about the corporate takeover of the American state, but because Hedges is, for all intents and purposes, banned from mainstream media outlets, his warnings go largely unheard. 

I bring Chris Hedges up because South Dakota recently passed two laws to make protesting the construction of oil pipelines a crime. Eight other states, including Ohio, Pennsylvania and Illinois are considering similar measures. Think about this for a moment: energy extraction companies -- keen to avoid another Standing Rock -- flush with lawyers, lobbyists and cash, use the power of the state to make public dissent a criminal act. By passing such laws, under euphemistic titles like The Infrastructure Protection Act, the state prioritizes corporate interests over public welfare. This is, or should be, astonishing, but I would wager that most Americans are completely oblivious to such affronts to democracy, let alone the environment on which we all depend. 

Robert Reich recently wrote that the divide in America isn’t between the left and the right, it’s between the oligarchs and the rest of us. He’s correct. The oligarchs, the ruling class, the elites, call them what you want, have been on a 40-year roll, a grand neoliberal economic project of low taxes, privatization of public services, monopolies, scant regulation, and endless military conflicts. They have gutted America’s manufacturing base, decimated organized labor, made it legal to buy politicians (see the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling), and organized an unprecedented transfer of wealth from the many to the few. 

Grotesque income inequality leads to political inequality and political inequality makes it nearly impossible for citizens to exercise agency when it comes to protecting the environment, voting rights, reproductive rights, or stopping the Pentagon from sucking up almost half of all federal government revenue. Neoliberalism has been a spectacular success for the few, and an unmitigated disaster for the many. This is blatantly obvious, but look how both political parties cling to the tenets of neoliberalism. Only Bernie Sanders, and to some extent, Elizabeth Warren, come close to offering a critique of this system that is inexorably destroying our environment and what remains of representative democracy. But none of the bumper crop of Democratic presidential candidates dare to name the real villain: unregulated capitalism. 

And that’s the other factor about the oligarchs -- they set the boundaries of debate, what can be discussed, and what topics, like catastrophic climate disruption, will be studiously ignored. Capitalism itself is never questioned, it’s the only system on offer, the sole possibility, even if it ultimately renders this planet uninhabitable. 

It seems to me that neoliberalism has also stunted our collective imagination. The mass media (owned by a handful of corporations), the universities, the think tanks, all reinforce the dominant narrative of free markets, fossil fuels, imperialism (in the name of freedom and democracy, naturally), and the dangerous idea that the unbridled accumulation of wealth and power leads to virtue. It never has and never will. 

The Heavy Stone on America's Back

“What it does mean, as we’ve seen, is that simplistic scenarios of good against evil encourage people to interpret conflict as non-negotiable.” Elaine Pagels

Independence Day. 4th of July, a hallowed day in American history, birthday of the nation that one day would refer to itself as indispensable. The white men who agitated to sever the ties with Great Britain and its King, our Founding Fathers, declared their independence and took up arms to make it so. They were the elites of the colony, property owners -- including human property -- African slaves who served as both labor and capital. Despite the high-blown rhetoric about liberty, the founders would fight tooth and nail for decades to maintain a lucrative trade in African people, buying and selling, exploiting their labor to raise tobacco and cotton, to drain swamps and clear forests, build cities. 

The American myth is messy, laced with inconvenient truths. George Washington was a land speculator and a slave owner; Thomas Jefferson fathered children with a slave woman; Abraham Lincoln believed that Africans should be repatriated to Africa; J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI hounded Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Race has always been the heavy stone on America’s back; white supremacy has been a feature of America since the very beginning, though we are indoctrinated to believe otherwise. 

Until Trump rode the escalator down from his lair and declared that he, and he alone, had solutions to all the problems and weaknesses caused by his predecessor, the first black president, Barack Obama, white supremacy occupied the fringes and moved in and out of the shadows. Trump tossed the reliable dog whistle aside in favor of a megaphone, and made clear whose side he was on, the aggrieved white working class preyed upon, or ignored by, the black president and his liberal followers. Brown and black people got all the advantages, free food, housing, medical care, all sorts of bounty, while poor whites suffered in silence, lost their grip on the social ladder. Trump’s megaphone was loud, insistent, he knew where to lay the blame and on who.

Myths are powerful. Forcefully repeated lies assume the outline of truth. A few thousand unarmed Central American migrants becomes an invasion, an immigration problem becomes a full-blown border crisis. Our flag waves, God Bless America is sung, and we assume that we are what we have been taught, a shining democracy, envy of the entire world, a force for all that is decent and good and just and righteous. 

Army tanks rumbling through Washington D.C. are the perfect symbol of America at this moment, when the American grip on the planet is slipping, when the vestiges of democracy are faltering, when the benevolent face of America is exposed for what it is, a mask, a disguise. When Uncle Sam extends his hand it is covered in blood. Iraq, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Libya, Syria, Yemen. Uncle Sam’s bloody hand reaches for the throat of Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden. Uncle Sam’s bloody hands tear an infant from his terrified mother. Uncle Sam snarls, threatens, blusters, bullies. Once Uncle Sam declared War on Poverty, now he wages war on the poor, he puts children in cages, holds prisoners indefinitely, punishes the victims. 

Myths die hard, but they do die.