The Cartoon Kingpin

 “The cohort aged between thirty and forty was shocked into a strangely hapless political sentience by the September 11 attacks and the fraudulent war of aggression fought by the Republican administration against Iraq. Even as this cohort recognizes the immense civic and representational value of Barack Obama’s presidency, it has little experience of the Democratic Party implementing a Democratic agenda.” Joseph O’Neill, New York Review of Books

I caught short takes of the Democratic Party’s virtual convention -- clips of Michelle Obama’s speech, Kamala Harris’s acceptance, Barack’s indictment of Trump -- and large parts of Biden’s speech. The bar has fallen so far in the Age of Trump that Biden was given high marks for getting through his speech without committing any major gaffes. When Biden said, at the close of his speech, “May God protect our troops” I was reminded of the role he has played for nearly twenty years at the top echelons of our government, a time when our country has been continuously engaged in armed conflict with someone, somewhere on the planet; a time when our government stalled, deferred and ignored the accelerating climate crisis; a time when our capitalist-centered government legislated massive transfers of wealth from the many to the few.  

Biden closed with that for many reasons -- to reassure people that he won’t become soft on national security or that he has any intention of seriously challenging the military-intelligence-surveillance complex -- but also because ours is a country trapped and stunted by our addiction to war. 

The power brokers in the Democratic Party still refuse to acknowledge that the future lies on the left, not the right. Until Bill and Hillary Clinton are dead and buried, they will be rolled out every four years to dispense wisdom and remind us of the glory years. Barack and Michelle will play similar roles, defending the center-right and assisting in silencing, or dismissing, voices of people who have a different vision for the party, like AOC and Ilhan Omar. The old guard never relinquishes power without a struggle. Not Pelosi. Not McConnell. 

A  few questions rolled around my brain this week, such as, will the GOP go the way of the Whigs? How does the country learn from the colossal failure, ineptitude and corruption of Donald J. Trump and the criminal hordes who surround him? Why did the Democrats feel it necessary to give Michael Bloomberg a place in their virtual convention? 

Will the indictment of Steve Bannon for fraud end with his long overdue comeuppance? Doubtful. But it was somehow reassuring to see Bannon under arrest, and I hope to see similar scenes repeated with William Barr, Jared Kushner, Ivanka, Mike Pompeo, and the cartoon kingpin himself, Donald J. Trump.

Has it ever been more clear that the stock market and the real economy have almost nothing in common? 

Consider this amazing feat: the intellectually and morally bankrupt GOP has succeeded in repudiating both Lincoln and Reagan. 

Last I checked more than 500 wildfires were burning in California, multiple small blazes, and three or four big ones that are burning thousands of acres, destroying homes, and forcing residents to flee. Here in Santa Barbara it has been oppressively hot for the past few days, 90 degrees as I write this, and the sky is hazy from fires burning to the north and southeast. I can’t help but think we’re witnessing a glimpse of our future, an endless series of climate calamities. 

The Champions League final between Bayern Munich and Paris St. Germain should be epic. Bayern is a ruthless and relentless bunch, a steamroller of a side, while PSG relies on the creativity and flamboyance of Mbappe and Neymar. I think PSG can trouble Bayern, but I think the German club will lift the trophy. 

Israel is bombing Gaza again. The world yawns, as usual. How much of the equipment and ordnance landing on Gaza was made in America or funded by American taxpayers in the form of military aid? Israel can only get away with its war against the Palestinians because it enjoys the unequivocal support of the United States. 

 

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.

Where The Skeletons Hang

“In the end, there is only one conclusion to reach in this moment: The day I trust the word of a hired flak like William Barr regarding the behavior of a lifelong liar like Donald Trump is the day I flap my arms and fly to the moon. Barr’s missive is merely another salvo in a disinformation campaign that has lasted two years.” William Rivers Pitt

I never expected the Mueller Report to be a bombshell that would convince Republicans that their fealty to Trump is suicidal. Even if the report had flat out declared that Trump colluded with the Russians and obstructed justice to keep that fact from being discovered, Trump would still have claimed that the whole thing was a sham, a deep-state plot to drive him from the White House and deprive the American people of his great leadership.

Many Democrats put their stack of chips on Mueller, who, let’s remember, is a Republican as well as a former FBI Director, and while we’re remembering, let’s not forget the FBI’s long history of attacking and harassing the Left. Talk about an unlikely savior. The leadership of the Democratic Party, people like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, have no capacity for reflection. If they did, they would have studied what went wrong in 2016, recognized that the party is beholden to corporate interests, and hasn’t had a coherent political message in decades, certainly not one that motivates rural, working-class, or aggrieved white people. Had party leaders reflected, they would have realized that Hillary Clinton was a victim of her own history, arrogance, and sense of entitlement rather than a victim of Vladimir Putin’s meddling.

Had the party elders done any sort of soul-searching, they would realize that progressives like Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Rashida Tlaib, among others, are the future, rather than a force to be marginalized or opposed.

Do you ever get the sense that everything new was once old, like William Barr taking a second turn as Attorney General, and performing the same obfuscation and white-washing he did to save George H.W. Bush’s ass? Barr is a political apparatchik, a Washington fixer who makes bad stuff disappear. The older I become the more I realize that the American government has always been corrupt, has always served the wealthy and connected, has always been murderous. Trained lawyers like Barr and Mueller parse meaning, argue from both sides of their mouths, and protect their clients. The full extent of American “justice” is reserved for the working-class and the poor, not the wealthy and powerful.

Trump is a dangerous criminal. If Congressional Democrats really cared about protecting the Constitution, they would launch impeachment proceedings against Trump. Yes, with the Senate in the hands of a totally spent, brain-dead and corrupt GOP, they would fail to impeach, but going through the process would be beneficial. Nothing is more important than reinforcing that ours is supposed to be a system of laws, with no one above the law, particularly not Donald J. Trump. The GOP had no reservations about trying to impeach Bill Clinton over a blowjob. Compared to Trump, Clinton was a jaywalker.

We should also bear in mind that when it comes to interfering in the American political process no country rivals Israel, but only a small number of journalists ever mention this fact. You’ll never hear a corporate-media talking head mention it. The hypocrisy is stunning.

From the way Trump is behaving he certainly believes he’s skated once again, as he always has, but it’s too soon to put the Mueller Report to bed and forget about it. All kinds of investigations into Trump are underway and one or more of them are sure to bear fruit. The money trail is still the key to the closet where Trump’s many skeletons hang.

A Synthetic Scandal: Ilhan Omar & AIPAC

“That victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he, or she, has become a threat.” James Baldwin

Maybe AIPAC, the powerful Israel lobby, doesn’t directly buy political favors in the way the NRA does, but that doesn’t mean that politicians from both parties aren’t influenced to  outright support AIPAC’s aims or remain silent about them for fear of landing on the wrong side of the lobby. And you can see by the hysterical reaction to Ilhan Omar’s comments about AIPAC how quickly bipartisan indignation and righteousness gets ginned up. How dare this first year congressperson from Minnesota criticize AIPAC! The temerity. Naturally, anti-semitism must be Omar’s motivation. What else could it be in our black and white world?

Omar apologized but you can bet money that she will be forever fighting the anti-semitic label, which is one way AIPAC wields influence. On their best days, Washington D.C. politicians are a pusillanimous lot, and for the majority of them the idea of crossing AIPAC is about as welcome as a colonoscopy. Get smeared with the anti-semite brush and you can kiss your career goodbye. An AIPAC endorsement can spell the difference between winning or losing an election or reelection bid. And it hardly matters if the charge is baseless. You just can’t criticize Israel, period. You can’t compare AIPAC to the NRA though they both practice and benefit from influence peddling. You can’t bring up the fate of the Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank without having anti-semitism thrown in your face. I can think of no other nation in the world that can squelch even the mildest criticism as quickly as Israel can. The Israeli Defense Forces shoot and kill unarmed Palestinian protesters without consequence. This is a fact, not an anti-semitic statement. I don’t contest Israel’s right to exist as a nation and have security for its citizens. I don’t question the reality of anti-semitism in the world; it is real. I do question whether Israel has a right to forcibly expel Palestinians from their land, wall them into pitiful enclaves, restrict their freedom of movement, torch their olive trees and take their water, or strangle the life out of them in Gaza; I also question the Netanyahu government’s support for democratic values.

But just try having this debate in the United States, or Britain, for that matter. You can’t. No critique of the government of Israel is allowed. The subject is off-limits. The second you raise the question of the Palestinians you are deemed to be hostile to Israel, and if you’re hostile to Israel you will be chased from the editorial pages of the New York Times, from CNN, MSNBC, CBS, and all the rest. You will be silenced. Ask Angela Davis or Mark Lamont Hill. Ask Noam Chomsky. Ask Jeremy Corbyn. Ilhan Omar is in good company.

MJ Rosenberg, a contributor to the Huffington Post, wrote the following: “AIPAC uses the same tactics as the NRA to ensure that the United States never deviates from support for whatever policy the Israeli government is pushing at the moment.” It’s assumed that Israel’s foreign policy objectives are indistinguishable from those of the United States, and that the United States will always, and forever, provide diplomatic cover and military aid to Israel.

Donald Trump has called for Omar to resign over this synthetic scandal, a ridiculous thing for him to say but hardly unexpected from the most corrupt person to ever inhabit the White House. Less than two years ago Trump was apologizing for neo-Nazi’s who chanted “Jews will not replace us!” Pelosi and others in the Democratic Party leadership have extracted an apology from Omar, that’s enough. Like the NRA, the fossil fuel lobby and Big Pharma, AIPAC uses all the means at its disposal to influence the United States government on behalf of Israel. This is a fact and nothing to apologize for. If supporters of Israel are so certain of their righteousness and morality, why are they afraid to engage in debate and discussion?