Trump Joins the Club

“Second, if the Democrats were really a Left opposition party, the majority-Democratic House would already have impeached the Malignant One for any number of fascistic, corrupt, and ecocidal crimes more harmful to humanity than UkraineGate…” Paul Street

Trump is impeached. The Orange Menace joins Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton in the ignominious Impeachment club and, forevermore, will be labeled the “impeached 45th President.” Serves the fool right. Despite the batshit noise and smoke and disinformation kicked up by Trump’s GOP enablers, impeachment was necessary. The only disappointment for me was that Nancy Pelosi left so many of Trump’s impeachable offenses on the cutting room floor. 

For a man who sees himself as a tough guy, Trump sure is a whiny pussy. That six page letter he dropped on Pelosi will go down in history -- not for the reasons Trump wanted -- but because it’s a perfect example of his blatant ignorance of the most basic aspects of the Constitution, and his complete disregard for the rule of law. Trump’s constant white is black, up is down, round is flat, 2 + 3 = 6 pronouncements are morally dispiriting and intellectually exhausting. Trump’s manifest venality wears his opponents down. How does one respond to a man who refuses to recognize reality? Who lies as he breathes? Who wears his intellectual sloth as a badge of honor? Who doesn’t, or possibly can’t, read? Who spends most of every day watching Fox & Friends and Tweeting utter nonsense? 

Wasn’t it comforting that Vladimir Putin came out in support of Trump? 

Every last Republican who voted against impeachment deserves a ringside seat in Hell. For siding with Trump, for standing against the Constitution, for contorting themselves into pretzels to defend Trump’s indefensible behavior, they have earned the wrath of history. These people are craven hypocrites, and they know it. If Barack Obama had extorted the President of Ukraine and withheld military aid, the GOP would have gone into a full-tilt existential meltdown, an absolute freak-out. It would have been the end of the American republic, treason, the worst crisis in American history. Mitch McConnell would have tied the noose and picked out the highest tree in DC himself. Sean Hannity would have soiled himself. Limbaugh would have suffered a coronary. 

But the news that most astonished me this week was the House vote to approve a whopping increase in the Pentagon budget, including funding for Trump’s racist border wall.  My local Congress-twit, Salud Carbajal, cast his vote for the increase, as did many other Democrats. Who cares about deficits? Who cares that the bloated American military is a first-class contributor to global warming, a massive, worldwide carbon-spewing machine? The GOP certainly doesn’t care, though when they are out of power all they do is moan about the federal deficit, demand the country tighten its belt and live within its means lest we bequeath our children an albatross. The Democrats tax and spend; Republicans cut taxes and spend. Even worse, this ridiculous increase came on the heels of reporting that the Pentagon (surprise, surprise) lied repeatedly about our nineteen-year-old war of choice in Afghanistan. Turns out that when the top brass said we were making great progress, we actually weren’t. Of course any simpleton had already grasped that the mighty US military lost the “war” in Afghanistan years ago. But let’s hand the Pentagon and the generals and Lockheed Martin more tax money to piss away. And because we do, what choice do we have but to consign thousands of low-income Americans to hunger and want by slashing food programs? 

When a country is as corrupt as ours keeping despair at bay is difficult. We’re ruled by bankers, hypocrites, liars, and assholes who will not be satisfied until they reduce all they behold to a smoking pile of rubble. The whole system is riddled with gangrene and cannot be reformed from within.  

Christmas nears. The abyss opens before us. The devil is laughing. 

The Genie Is Out Of The Bottle

“But no U.S. president has ever lied as prolifically, constantly, insidiously and dangerously as Donald Trump. He never stops. He’s the Energizer Bunny of endless falsehood.” Paul Street

The beat of xenophobia, racism, fear mongering and lies goes on, orchestrated and revved up by the Trump junta ahead of the midterm elections. The language coming from Trump and his enablers is violent, and it encourages marginalized, broken, and wounded people to emerge from the shadows, from behind closed doors, convinced that their time has come, that the injustices they’ve suffered, real or imagined, are about to be rectified.

Macho man Trump, who, like most authoritarian men, is a coward at heart, orders a ridiculous number of US troops to our southern border to defend against an “invasion” of Central American migrants. This is all spectacle for Trump’s base, another empty stunt in his reality show, since a. The migrants, young men, women, and children, have no capacity or inclination to invade a hamlet let alone the US, and b. The caravan will not come near the US border until well after the midterm elections, and by then might be much smaller than it is now. But the spectacle and the emotion it engenders now are the point. It reinforces the fears of many of Trump’s supporters and makes Trump look like a tough guy, the great white protector of his great white flock. Forget the fact that it’s like a man using a bazooka to kill a mouse.

The Commander-in-Chief is abusing his power and using US military personnel as props in his midterm election theater. How can any US service member, officer or enlisted, go along with this madness without feeling used and befouled? Hey Private Jones, is this why you enlisted, to “protect” the US border from economic, political, and environmental refugees? Did you sign up to be a pawn? Don’t be surprised if, after this pitiful episode, you are not thanked for your service and allowed to board airline flights ahead of others. So much for our noble warriors. Let’s hope that when the migrants arrive, a month or two from now, US soldiers don’t overreact like the police so often do and start shooting children. I won’t be surprised if this happens, sickened yes, surprised, no.

The violent genie is out of the bottle, not only in the US, but in Brazil, which has just elected a strongman of its own, Jair Bolsonaro, whose past statements about women and gay people are even more outrageous than Trump’s. Brazil may be in for a very rough ride, one that will no doubt exacerbate the very conditions that brought Bolsonaro to power. Trump, Bolsonaro, Netanyahu, Erdogan, Putin, MBS, Orban -- the authoritarians are on the march, bolstered by the seen and unseen hands of the world’s capitalist masters. A half century of neoliberal economics, the ascendancy of the Market (all-powerful, all-knowing, fair and equitable, etc.), has created a few spectacular winners and billions of desperate losers, and, of course, put too much power in too few hands. As people grasp that they’ve been played for suckers, that neoliberalism and so-called free-trade is a rigged game, they start to protest, and the state, serving the capitalists who have bought its services, cracks down. Harder and harder. This is only the beginning.

This from Jeffrey St. Clair at Counterpunch:

“From 1970 to 2014, 60 percent of all animals with a backbone — fish, birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals — were wiped out by human activity, according to an ongoing survey of more than 4,000 species spread over 16,700 populations scattered across the globe.”

Ruminate on that 60% figure in light of what the Trump junta is doing to accelerate a climate disaster, and what Bolsonaro has promised to do in the Amazon.

The storm gathers on the horizon and dark clouds block out the harvest moon. Up on the hill, the lights in the shining city have almost all gone out.

When Reality Feels Like Fiction

“If you’re really looking for a scandal, think about that. The United States and Russia, the world’s top two nuclear powers, are both headed by petro-capitalist oligarchs who could give a flying fuck about human survival and who both represent an eco-exterminist system that is choking the life out of the planet.” Paul Street, Counterpunch

I took a break from reading Moby Dick to re-read Martin Cruz Smith’s Tatiana, one in his series of novels featuring the Russian investigator Arkady Renko. The character behind the title, Tatiana Petrovna, is an investigative journalist in the new, post-Soviet Russia, a world of corrupt officials, oligarchs, and gangsters all vying to skim a windfall for themselves. In this nearly lawless world, investigative journalists who expose corruption  become targets for beatings, intimidation, and murder. I was reminded of the way journalists are treated in Turkey under Erdogan, and in Mexico, where reporters who edge too close to the intersection of narco interests and crooked government officials die; and then, of course, I thought about my own country and the way our insane president denigrates the press every chance he gets. Reality feels fictional.

One runs out of things to say about Trump and his gang of incompetent kleptocrats. Crooks. Greedheads. Fucktards. Shitbags. Dickheads. Every day, it seems, there’s another hint of scandal or another batshit crazy Tweet or another absurd statement, like when Trump proclaims that he has accomplished more than any other president after a comparable stint in office. Trump still doesn’t grasp that signing an executive order is not the same as passing legislation. Irreversible damage is being done day after day by Trump and his gang, and by feckless politicians who are more concerned with ideological purity or base opportunism than common sense and the good of the country.

All Trump has managed to accomplish is to embarrass the hell out of the US on the world stage, fan the flames of division on the home front, and make a mockery of his office. As he was a lousy tycoon, lousy husband, lousy father, and all around lousy human being, Trump is a lousy president.

The Russia-Trump headlines, all of them blaring for attention, are now too frequent to be meaningful. All I can say is that if a trail of money can be found, follow it, and it may lead to connections between Russian oligarchs and the Trump Organization. It’s always going to be about money with Trump and his clan, as money is the only thing they really love.

What’s the wealth inequality figure I’m frequently reading about, that 5 or 6 people own as much wealth as the bottom 50% of humanity? Yeah, this is definitely a sign that capitalism is working just fine, lifting all the little boats on a rising tide…of human excrement, Benzene, battery acid, motor oil, and mercury.

I’m trying to stay sane and keep my head above the waterline as I watch my country slide down the drain. I want to live in a country that isn’t insane, that isn’t an empire, and that isn’t the single greatest instigator of violence on the planet. Is this too much to ask? Why don’t we give the idea of doing no harm to other countries and the planet a try? Why not give sustaining rather than destroying a go? Would cooperation rather than competition bring on the apocalypse?

What to do, what to do? Where to seek shelter from the gathering storm?