Whacked Out in Waco

 “There is a germ of religion in human nature so strong that whenever an order of men can persuade the people by flattery or terror that they have salvation at their disposal, there can be no end to fraud, violence, or usurpation.” Christopher Hitchens, Arguably

Of course Donald Trump used Waco, Texas as a backdrop for one of his insane political rallies on the 30th anniversary of the siege between law enforcement and the Branch Davidian religious cult. Of course he did because Donald Trump is both mentally ill and an anchor around America’s neck.  

My perception, humbly offered, is that most Americans don’t grasp how seriously Trump and Trumpism threaten what remains of our anemic, sputtering democracy. Trump talks like an authoritarian because he desires to be an authoritarian almost as much as he needs the shield of public office to remain a free man. Trump is a walking, talking, lie-spewing, threat-issuing danger to everything that is good and decent about this country. Listen to what he says. Get past all the self-serving and self-pitying gibberish. Skip past his lies about stolen elections and a Radical Left that exists only inside his skull. Instead, listen to the violence in his words. The threats. It’s probably the only time he tells the truth. Trump believes he, and he alone, stands beyond the reach of the law -- so far beyond that even charging him with a crime isn’t permissible. Trump admires -- and I think he envies -- the way Vladimir Putin of Russia, Xi Jinping of China, Narendra Modi in India, and MBS in Saudi Arabia rule their countries with relatively few restraints on their power. Bibi Netanyahu in Israel is doing his best to join this club. That’s the kind of power Trump craves, in the first instance to enrich himself and his family, but also to vanquish his political enemies, real or imagined. 

And the imagined list of enemies is always growing, expanding, adding new villains and injustices against the righteous and infallible Trump…

I’ve noted many times that Donald Trump appears to be a physical and moral coward who talks like a mob boss but scurries at the first sign of trouble. He employs others to do his dirty work and heavy lifting. Imagine the audacity of a draft dodger who ridicules people, like John McCain, who answered the call and served. Who has never been tested like McCain was tested as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. McCain survived, and that kind of grit is admirable. I disagreed with McCain on politics, but I never had any reason to expect that he’d deliberately undermine the country’s core institutions as Trump did. Power like that cannot be handed to a man like Trump, a man with no shame or honor or sense of fairness. An adulterer. A tax cheat and business failure. A man whose bumbling and politicized response to the pandemic cost thousands of American lives. Pitting red states against blue states for supplies and equipment.  As the slow and tedious wheels of the American legal apparatus turn and indictments loom on his horizon, Trump tries to rouse his most die-hard supporters to stand between him and the authorities, claiming, falsely and illogically, that if the Manhattan DA or Jack Smith comes for him, they will be next. 

That’s mad shit from an American politician. There’s no parallel in my lifetime. 

As journalist Ian Masters often says, you’d have to scour the country from stem to stern to find a person as despicable as Donald Trump. Grotesque and comical, carnival barker and bully, con man and coward, physically weak and morally debauched. Search hard and long, in rank big city alleys and small town taverns and churches, on the Mexican border and in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, on Lake Okeechobee in Florida and in the Colorado desert; search under rocks and beneath the rubble of dead steel plants, and you’re unlikely to find anyone as devoid of humanity as Trump. 

Why do so many Americans buy the rank and rotted meat Trump is selling? What need does supporting such an odious, cruel, and ignorant man satisfy in them? Is it just Trump’s twisted and childish simplicity, his black or white, good against evil, worldview? Or is it the overt, almost joyous racism and misogyny and anti-Semitism? Do they really believe that their Christian god chose Donald Trump to carry the torch of Christian nationalism? Almighty God couldn’t find anyone else? He picked a man who’s not even a Christian? 

Weapons of Mass Delusion

 “They will overthrow the temples and soak the earth in blood.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

>It’s difficult to make sense of the world at this moment, particularly here in the United States, where madness has been sanctified in one of our two major political parties. That’s due to the cowardice of too many Republicans who allowed a sociopath to browbeat and cow them into submission by name-calling and mean posts on social media. I will never understand how so many people fail to see that Donald J. Trump is a quintessential coward, a braggart and blowhard who caves at the first sign of resistance. He’s also a draft dodger, a tax cheat, an adulterer, a liar, and the most incompetent and destructive man ever to sit in the White House. 

>It will not be a banner day for America when Trump becomes the first American president to be indicted for felonies. What it will show the world is that America isn’t what it has portrayed itself to be for more than a century. Not ordained by a higher power. Not exceptional or special, and certainly not better than or inherently superior to. Yet it’s absolutely necessary for Trump to be indicted and held accountable for all the crimes he committed as president -- even if that means acts of violent civil unrest on the part of Trump’s most demented followers, his neo-John Birch Society soldiers. We should fear not holding Trump accountable more than the possibility of scattered violence. 

>Trump is going to make a speech in Waco, Texas, on the 30th anniversary of the siege of the Branch Davidian complex; you can bet he’ll wrap himself in the shroud of David Koresh and proclaim that he is but another persecuted prophet. (Also batshit crazy.)

>The only way to bring Russia’s war in Ukraine to an end is through a negotiated settlement. Even with help from the West, and another $100 billion in assistance from the United States (which can always find money for war but only rarely for peace), Ukraine cannot prevail in a war of attrition. The mandarins and policy wonks of American imperialism cannot be happy that China is assuming a diplomatic role the US once thought its exclusive purview. Whether the US likes it or not, China is a global power, with growing interests and influence around the world. Brokering a diplomatic thaw between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and offering to mediate between Russia and Ukraine are two signs that the era of American hegemony is waning. This will be hard for US political and financial elites to accept; they have profited brilliantly from the American-led neoliberal world order. 

>The Republican Party loves the unborn but despises the living, as made clear by efforts underway in many red states to rollback laws and regulations that prevent exploitation of child labor. Arkansas has already acted, Iowa may follow soon. Yes, say Republican governors, 14 and 15 year old kids should toil in mines and meat packing plants, work around dangerous machinery because nothing is more important than providing cheap, expendable labor to America’s capitalists! Destroy the public schools and force children to work for the Fatherland! Heil Trump!

>America needs enemies to vanquish. Native Americans, Blacks, communists, socialists, immigrants, hippies, Yippies, feminists, suffragettes, George Soros, liberals, drag queens, gays, transgender people, poltically-correct, tree huggers and the ultra-dangerous Woke. We need bogeymen, objects to fear and hate. 

>I can’t get over the strangeness of these times. The world is a scary mess, and yet my little clan is still living a comfortable, pleasant life. How long this will last is unknown, and that’s disconcerting. What calamity waits around the bend? Without doubt we’re living at the end of one time and the beginning of another. American economic hegemony is fading as is American influence; capitalism is destroying itself as surely as cancer destroys the human body; and climate change is already wreaking havoc. 

>It’s the 20th anniversary of America’s unprovoked and entirely fabricated invasion, occupation and destruction of Iraq. Some of the architects of this massive strategic blunder have passed away, while others escaped accountability and went on with their lives. I wonder if George W. Bush has nightmares. Probably not. 

>It’s also the 50th anniversary of the standoff at Wounded Knee in South Dakota, a 71-day siege, with US Marshals on one side and members of the American Indian Movement and Oglala Lakota on the other. 

>Here’s some food for thought from the author Brian Klass: “Our social world has changed, but our brains haven’t. Humans have learned to pick leaders for reasons that no longer reflect modern realities.”

Empire of Hypocrisy

 “But history isn’t the paper it’s printed on. It’s memory, and memory is time, emotions, and song.” Paul Beatty, The Sellout

In the category of the more things change the more they stay the same, a large bank has cratered and there is fear that others will follow. Silicon Valley Bank wasn’t one of the behemoths that shouldn’t exist at all, but large and visible enough that its demise has consequences and sends shock waves through the banking system. Fear of contagion is powerful, and makes people irrational.

After the Wall Street banks seeded the last major financial collapse in 2008, new regulations were put in place by Congress. They were not the tough rules many wanted or fought for, and many reasonable ideas were stripped away at the suggestion of industry lobbyists, whose clients are major beneficiaries, as well as reliable campaign donors. Generally, when a legislative sausage is stuffed and encased, nobody likes it, and would avoid eating it if they could. 

Dodd-Frank was that imperfect legislation, passed in 2010 when Barack Obama was president. Eight years later, Donald Trump signed a bill called the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act (there was little consumer protection), that set the stage for the collapse of SVB.  As reported by the media outlet the Intercept, a couple of lobbyists for SVB learned the workings of Congress while toiling as staffers in Kevin McCarthy’s office. No surprise, this is how Washington D.C.’s famous “revolving door” operates, cycling characters in and out of government and industry. Back and forth they go, following the money. 

When Ukraine is of no further use to American interests, it will be abandoned like a spent condom. 

Trump preened when he signed the bill because it eliminated another Obama-Era accomplishment. 

SVB also failed because Republicans represent corporate interests that dislike being told how to run their businesses; they bristle at government oversight. Republicans extol the miraculous virtues of the magic Market when it suits their immediate purposes, but demand government relief when the shit hits the fan.  

It will be interesting to see who the GOP tries to pin the SVB failure on. 

More than two years into the war in Ukraine; more than that waiting for someone, anyone, to grow a spine and indict Donald J. Trump. 

I listened to a political analyst named Lincoln Mitchell talk about the Ukraine war. For the US, in Mitchell’s view, it’s a proxy war against Russia, but perhaps not as much as it’s a proxy war with China, part of the global chess match for influence, political position, and hegemony, the aging title holder, the US, against the up and coming contender, China. 

I read a figure from a reliable source that the US has thus far provided Ukraine with $113 billion in military, economic and humanitarian assistance. $56 billion per year. What such money could produce if it was invested in the US. What could $113 billion do to help ordinary Americans live healthier and safer and more materially-secure lives? Not that our political masters care much about ordinary Americans. They claim to, but their actions tell a different tale.  

The sad reality is that war is good business, steady, profitable and enduring. Does Ukraine deserve help? Yes, from all quarters, but for the US there’s more to our involvement than supporting Ukraine with arms and money in its battle with the evil Vladimir Putin. It’s also about maintaining our sagging empire. Watching the Russian military flounder and suffer massive casualties is a welcome outcome for the US. We provide the guns, the Ukranians do the fighting. Nothing new, the US has done this all over the world for decades. Vietnam. Afghanistan. Iraq. Nicaragua. When Ukraine is of no further use to American interests, it will be abandoned like a spent condom. 

But what happens if, out of short-term need, Russia becomes a de facto Chinese client-state? 

Geopolitics is complicated. One way to understand it is to follow the money. Or access to minerals and strategic metals. Or oil and gas. 

What has become of the American intelligence community’s assessment of the hundreds of classified documents recovered from Mar-A-Lago? In the immediate aftermath of the FBI search there was plenty of speculation about the potential damage to national security, but since then, silence. What are we to make of this? Why is Trump being treated so differently from other individuals caught with classified information? Why is Trump free to rant and rave and lie while Julian Assange sits in a prison cell? 

America is the Empire of Hypocrisy, but the sands beneath the foundation are beginning to shift. 

The New Lost Cause

 “History is the consequence not only of people’s actions, but also of their forgetfulness.” Salman Rushdie, Victory City

Tucker Carlson and his employer, Fox “News” want us to forget what happened on January 6, 2021, and replace what millions of us saw with our own eyes with a fantasy. The mob inflamed by Donald Trump, all those fools carrying flagpoles, clubs, baseball bats, bear spray, firearms, knives, who smashed windows and rifled offices and chanted for Mike Pence to hang, never happened according to Carlson and Fox. January 6 was simply a peaceful gathering of patriots exercising their Constitutional freedom to assemble. Any violence that happened, the injuries and deaths, were committed by radical left Democrats and Antifa. 

Right. And when the moon is full and the wind blows from the east pigs fly like eagles and crows shit nuggets of gold. 

At this moment, American politics and right-wing media is populated with some of the most vile, ignorant, intolerant, and corrupt people I’ve ever seen. When the execrable and dimwitted Kevin McCarthy gave access to thousands of hours of surveillance footage from January 6 to Tucker Carlson -- and no other news outlet -- I knew what was coming. A whitewash. It was predictable that Tucker and his crack team of propagandists would cherry-pick the footage to show their viewers that nothing unusual, and certainly nothing violent, happened on January 6. It was just another day in America’s capitol city…

How stupid does Tucker Carlson think his audience is? How gullible? How infantile? He obviously believes they will swallow any lie that tumbles from his lips. That’s astonishing in and of itself, but what’s more outrageous is that Carlson is pulling this crap while Fox is being sued for defamation. 

Television occupied our American brains many years ago. Images and sound bites replaced words on paper. Facts became negotiable, mutable, malleable and it became possible for politicians and skilled propagandists like Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson to create their own facts. When reality didn’t conform to the narrative they wanted to push, it could, like the script of a reality TV show, be rewritten, reframed, and re-contextualized. With enough repetition the new take could become a new truth. 

Carlson, with help from his buddy McCarthy, is trying to create a new “Lost Cause” for MAGA world. After the Civil War, the defeated but unrepentant plantation bosses and Confederate politicians and generals and soldiers, began spinning a new take on the war. States’ rights not slavery had been the central issue and reason for all the bloodshed. The Federal government led by Abraham Lincoln had tyrannically forced itself on the poor, beleaguered southern states, leaving them no choice but to take up arms to protect their culture and freedom. The South was noble and true, fighting for a great principle that had nothing to do with enslaved Black people. You see, Black people enjoyed their status as unpaid laborers and thought of their masters and owners as family. It was a benevolent relationship, not exploitative. Robert E. Lee wasn’t a traitor, he was a hero and patriot. 

The Lost Cause narrative was repeated for decades in newspapers, pamphlets, speeches, and in monuments to heroes of the Confederacy; it found its way into history textbooks and popular culture. No defeated population wants to see itself as evil. 

Will Tucker Carlson succeed? I want to think not, but this is a country awash in falsehoods and lies and outright lunacy. We’re a gullible nation. A certain percentage of Carlson’s audience is bound to believe that January 6 was simply a peaceful protest by thousands of red-blooded American patriots. Others might begin to doubt what they witnessed with their own eyes that horrible day. 

January 6, 2021 wasn’t a peaceful day in Washington D.C. A mob whipped into a frenzy by Donald Trump breached and ransacked the Capitol and disrupted a congressional proceeding for several hours.  It happened. People died. Hundreds suffered serious injuries. 

What’s outrageous, at least in this citizen’s estimation, is that none of the key players or architects of the attempted coup, including Donald J. Trump, have been held to account more than two years after the fact, and I think there’s a very good possibility that they never will be. I can hear Attorney General Merrick Garland in my head, explaining in his calm and measured way that the report by Special Counsel Jack Smith, though damning, will not be acted upon -- for the good of the nation, of course.