Is Trump on the Ropes?

 “It was the same set of tactics that the KGB recommended to agents under investigation: admit nothing, deny everything, make counter-accusations.” John Lanchester, London Review of Books, 4 August 2022

I was not the least surprised when the news broke more than a year ago that Donald J. Trump had fled Washington with several boxes of official documents, some of them known to be classified. After nearly six years of Trump, considering all his crimes, misdemeanors, lies, and blustery incompetence, why can’t people understand that there was no possibility that Trump was leaving DC without something he could leverage or sell, including our nation’s most sensitive intelligence from our most secret and delicate sources. Hell yeah, Trump is selling that, are you kidding? That stuff is worth big money to any number of parties, but particularly the Russians, Chinese, or the ruler of Saudi Arabia. Trump wouldn’t think twice. Understand his sociopathic mind: he’s in the game for himself and no one else. Collateral damage doesn’t matter; only loyalty to Trump matters. As the Trump edifice begins to tremble, as the first cracks appear, Trump will become ever more paranoid and distrustful, and more obsessed with loyalty; he’ll start purging anyone who isn’t 100% on his side no matter what he does or how idiotic the stuff of his pronouncements. You can take it to your bank that if Trump slips the noose again and somehow regains the presidency, he will reconfigure the Department of Justice to his aims and against whoever he tells it to target or harass.  

If you doubt that Donald Trump would sell America out for money, you simply do not understand the essence of the man. 

Back in November or December of 2016, soon after the horrifying idea of Donald Trump becoming President of the United States fully sunk into my brain, I wrote on my blog, Shouts from the Balcony, the following: “Frankly, I’m afraid of the damage the Trump gang might do, at home primarily, but also abroad;” I just assumed that Trump would lay a hurt of the country that would require years to recover from, like a devastating natural disaster, and he never disappointed; in that sense, and only that sense, he was consistent and reliable. No matter the situation, the law, or the norms and agreements followed by American presidents, of either party since at least the 20th century, Trump invariably snubbed, ignored, trampled, disobeyed, mocked, or violated them.

What has surprised me, pleasantly, I might add, during the last week is confirmation that the US Department of Justice is indeed deep into a multi-pronged investigation of Donald Trump. I was one of the many people on the left becoming very discouraged at what appeared a lack of action on the part of Merrick Garland and federal law enforcement with regard to Trump’s failed coup attempt, as well as his other crimes, including those related to his mishandling and misuse of classified information that had no legitimate reason for being in his possession at Mar-A-Lago. I’m delighted that Garland has proved me to be overly pessimistic and cynical. I never doubted that a case against Trump would take time to assemble and validate, I only wanted some reassurance that a case was underway -- because, to my mind at least, time is of the essence. 

In the excellent book, Surviving Autocracy, journalist Masha Gessen writes, “In the United States, proximity to political power is certainly not the only way to become rich. But political power does translate into wealth, and vice versa, and this is the feature of the system most salient to Trump and Trumpism.” 

If you doubt that Donald Trump would sell America out for money, you simply do not understand the essence of the man. 

In boxing parlance, the last four of five rounds have hurt Trump, hurt him badly; he’ll keep coming off his corner stool, but his punches will be wild and weak, easily avoided and countered. The Menace of Mar-A-Lago is ripe for a knockout. 

Shameless and Lost

MAGA world is outraged about the FBI’s search of Mar-A-Lago, Donald J. Trump’s Florida home. The usual blowhards and cretins are calling it a raid, insisting that the FBI planted incriminating evidence, and that Joe Biden’s aging hands are behind it all. In less than 24 hours, the entire right-wing media apparatus is whistling the same tune, doing everything it can to discredit the FBI and DOJ, and distract from the issue at hand: that the FBI doesn’t just decide to search the residence of a former president without lawful cause and a legal warrant signed by a federal judge. The bar for a search is high to begin with, the evidence must be solid and compelling, but imagine how sure the DOJ, FBI, and the judge had to be that crimes had been, or were about to be, committed by Trump. The Feds wouldn’t go after a former president unless they had iron-clad confidence in their evidence. 

 Trump could dispel the mystery by releasing the search warrant to the press, but that would torpedo its propaganda value as well as its usefulness in duping the gullible out of hard-earned cash. Isn’t it odd that Trump, who loves to boast about his wealth, is always begging people for money? Within hours of the lawful search, supervised by one of Trump’s lawyers, and known to the former president, his Secret Service detail and others in advance, Trump was blasting email solicitations for cash. 

Like the lies, the grift never ends. 

Trump left the White House nearly twenty months ago, after his coup attempt failed. Soon after, the story broke that Trump had taken fifteen boxes of official documents, some of them containing classified information, on his way out the door, in violation of law, practice, protocol and routine. The National Archives asked for the documents to be returned in the usual manner, by having its lawyers “negotiate” the return with Trump’s legal team. This is typically how elite white-collar crime is conducted, by lawyers going back and forth and quibbling over small details and obscure points of law. All very civilized. In response Trump did as he always does, by delaying and dragging his feet, objecting, and claiming non-existent authority and privilege. Defying authority, and the law in other words, because, as any sensible person can see, Trump believes that no law, rule, regulation or edict applies to him; he alone stands above it all.  

Remember how the GOP soiled itself trying to nail Hillary Clinton for using a private email server for official business, and how it painted what happened in Benghazi, Libya as the Crime of the Century? Frothing, fulminating, bellowing, and caterwauling for months on end, wasting millions of tax dollars on pointless and fruitless investigations that proved nothing, all of which they’ve forgotten in a tidal wave of hypocrisy. Trump owns them, and they know it, so McCarthy and Rubio and even Mike Pence attempt to defend the indefensible and stand behind their Dear Leader, who is currently under investigation in New York, Atlanta, and Washington D.C. 

Do you honestly think Trump would hesitate to sell state secrets to the highest bidder? For the right price, Trump would sell Ivanka or one of his idiot sons. If he could turn a tidy profit on Melania he’d ditch her in a heartbeat. 

On his program, Background Briefing, journalist Ian Masters speculated that transcripts of Trump’s conversations with Vladimir Putin might be among the documents Trump was trying to prevent the National Archives from getting its hands on. I don’t know about this, but it sure is amusing to watch the Cult of Law & Order rise to the defense of the most vile, corrupt and criminal person to ever occupy the White House. If hypocrisy were a chicken bone, the GOP would choke to death. 

Use the Damn Word

 “An unimagined catastrophe now characterizes how American education is being shaped by far-right Republican Party politicians.” Henry Giroux, Counterpunch

A large truck rushes down Milpas Street, gears grinding. Breaks my chill. It’s sunny and warm in Santa Barbara, the second day of the annual Fiesta celebration. My wife and I are both SB natives and have seen numerous Fiestas come and go, and like a lot of old-time locals we stay away until all that remains is confetti from cascarones. When our kids were small we always took them to the parade, and one year, Gabriel’s preschool was in it. But it’s been a long, long time since we drank our way down State Street, and rubbed behinds in the tourist circus. 

The word I want more Americans to study and use is fascism. I cannot remember seeing and hearing so many political voices uttering, amplifying, and repeating authoritarian language or proposing, and in many cases during the past few years, passing into law, more and more extreme measures designed to make it even more difficult for people to reason for themselves. The rights of women to control their bodies, to make their own decisions about giving birth, exercising that autonomy, naturally garners a lot of attention. I’ve no beef with that. What I’m watching is what despicable motherfuckers like Ron DeSantis in Florida, and Greg Abbott of Texas, are doing to transform public education into party-approved doctrine and dogma. This goes way beyond telling little fibs and huge lies about the causes of the Civil War and its aftermath, and protecting the delicate sensibilities of white children from the facts of their country’s history. I’m talking Nazi Party levels, people, or if that analogy bothers you, the Soviet communist party under Stalin. Ever heard of Stalin’s purges? If you didn’t toe the Party line you got a bullet in the back of the head. The Republican Party at this moment is functioning in much the same way, but using ostracism instead of bullets. Cowards are still afraid to cross Big Daddy Trump, so they slip their resolute masks on and fulminate about election fraud and call into question Biden’s legitimacy, even as evidence mounts and mounts that Trump attempted to overthrow the US government. People who watch too much Fox News or too much MSNBC are equally deluded. We’re watching a power grab, an authoritarian one. Get it straight: Trump’s desire, his fixation, is to become the American state, as Putin is the Russian state. Trump loves putting his name on things. Why not an entire country?

Authoritarianism is a potent aphrodisiac in a time of drastic change and social upheaval, of endless war and extreme wealth inequality, of suffering and privation for the many and opulence for the few, and of nostalgia for a golden age that never was. Nationalism. Even better, Christian Nationalism. Us against them, good versus evil, all nice and simple, little individual thought required. If it takes wiping the historic record clean, burning all the books, arresting those who disagree to maintain purity of the group, party, race, so be it.

This is scary shit, political monkeypox, and a virulent strain, so don’t sugarcoat it or refuse to call it out by name; fascism has gradations, shades and degrees, like most things in life. And one more thing, never underestimate the role that unregulated capitalism plays in causing the tremors that shake us to our skeletons. What happens when capitalism refuses to address the needs of the masses for basic necessities? Authoritarianism, social control, crackdowns to maintain order, and more and more extreme tests of loyalty to the Great Leader or the Party, which is usually one and the same. It doesn’t happen overnight, like flicking a light switch, it happens more gradually.

Authoritarians appeal to people who are scared of losing their privilege or place. The Gospel of Bigotry and Resentment plays well in times of uncertainty, and there is no shortage of messengers appealing to the aggrieved. We need to chill and think, but our little digital devices demand constant attention. We fucking killed silence and made contemplation a dirty word. 

The Wannabe: Don Corleone Trump

 “The Birch Society called for defending the police against charges of brutality, opposed putting fluoride in the water supply with the fervor of today’s anti-vaxxers, and fought efforts at gun control, which they depicted as the preliminary step for confiscation and a Communist takeover of the United States.”  James Mann, New York Review, June 23, 2022

Trump and his crime club will spend the next days and weeks engaged in a multi-media campaign to destroy young Cassidy Hutchinson, the former White House advisor who dropped strong tea to the January 6 Committee and the American public on June 28. We learned a lot that was new regarding Trump’s behavior on January 6, namely that he was warned that many in the crowd were carrying weapons of some sort: spears, flagpoles, mace, body armor, and firearms, including Glocks and AR-15’s. We learned that the disgraced ex-president had a hissy fit in his armor-plated SUV, demanded to be driven to the Capitol complex, and got physical with the Secret Service agents riding with him when they refused to comply. We also heard of Trump throwing his lunch against a wall in the White House when the Dishonorable Doughboy, aka former Attorney General William Barr, refused to tell Trump what he wanted to hear. The Fat Man has a temper. 

MAGA-world will be oblivious to the revelations about their Hero & God, but anyone with a functioning mind saw Trump come across like a punk, a bloated, defeated, whiny little shit upset because he can’t have his way. It’s more clear than ever that Trump wanted an armed mob to storm the Capitol and disrupt the proceedings. He wanted chaos. He got his wish: people died, hundreds were injured, and one of the best things about America, the last trophy in our case -- the peaceful, orderly transfer of presidential power, a rare thing -- was tarnished. Trump the sociopath primed and then unleashed an armed and angry mob on the seat of legislative authority, with the entire Congress in session and the Vice President presiding. MAGA-world won’t care. Their man could sodomize a ewe on the South Lawn of the White House and MAGA-world would still praise him as moral and god-fearing, the prime contemporary example of American manhood. 

What smears and innuendo will Trump and Rudy G and the propagandists on Fox News hurl at Cassidy Hutchinson? What kind of dirt can they unearth or manufacture to ruin this young woman’s life? One doesn’t cross the big boss without consequence. But before we become too misty-eyed about Ms. Hutchinson’s fate, let’s recall that she was all-in for Trump, firmly on Team MAGA, a true believer. You can’t get as close to Trump’s inner circle and co-conspirators as Hutchinson did without first passing a loyalty quiz. Meadows must have vouched for his very young, only 23 in 2020, idealistic assistant. But credit must be given where it is due: Hutchinson has a better moral compass than 90 percent of the cowardly white men she worked with, several of whom have snubbed the Committee. 

Which brings us to the curious case of Mark Meadows, who, until the special hearing on June 28, had gone deep underground. Meadows began cooperating, then reversed course and sued the Committee, blew off a congressional subpoena, and was let off the hook when the DOJ declined to indict him. Why did the DOJ make that decision? Was it perhaps judging that Meadows was vulnerable on meatier charges down the road? Has some agreement been made with Meadows? We might find out soon enough because after Hutchinson’s testimony, Trump will turn on Meadows like a rabid wolverine. If Meadows eventually reads the sign on the wall and flips on Trump I will not be surprised. Meadows strikes me as someone extremely interested in saving his own ass. 

The Republicans now have to decide if they will continue to grovel and cower before a man who turned an armed mob on their place of work, continue to support a man who is demonstrably unfit for any political office, and continue to parrot that man’s malign fairy tales about election fraud. 

The Myth of Normal

 “...positioned there to make me and others aware of our country’s tragic history -- a reminder that we must never regress to a traumatic past.” Ariel Dorfman

I have a one inch tear in the rotator cuff muscle in my left shoulder. It bothers me when I sleep, but otherwise I can work and do my training. I see an orthopedist next week. Looks like surgery. 

So, it’s essentially over, Covid and its variants, known and unknown, as a society we have decided to live with it. Wear a mask or not, get vaccinated or not, it’s entirely up to you. At the market where I work part-time, customers have the option as of two days ago; if they enter the store unmasked it’s assumed they have been vaccinated. I’d say the majority of people are still wearing masks, but as the days pass the number will decrease. I continue to wear a mask, even though it’s hot and uncomfortable. At this point it feels weird not to be masked, but it’s also weird to see the faces of people I’ve been working with for almost 6 months. Ah, so that’s what you really look like!

My wife and I have been watching Inventing Anna on Netflix and with every episode I am reminded of Donald J. Trump, who must be ranked with the greatest grifters of all time. More about Donald in a moment as it has been a bad week for the Moron of Mar-A-Lago. Before I saw the first episode of Inventing Anna, I had never heard of Anna Delvey or Anna Sorokina or the bodacious fraud she pulled off. What astonishes me is that people swallowed her obviously concocted story of being a German heiress, victim of a miserly and vindictive father who demands that she earn her own fortune. He gives her a taste now and again, but it’s up to her to make her way in the cold, hard world. This preposterous young woman convinced otherwise reasonable, intelligent people that not only was she worth millions, but that she was worthy of being loaned millions, for a business idea that struck me as absurd. Grifters need the gullible. 

Trump’s long time accounting firm gave him the sack in what may turn out to be the proverbial straw so many, myself included, have waited for. Trump’s financial statements can’t be trusted and the accounting firm is washing its hands before the hammer falls. Trump searches feverishly in his toolbox for a solution, but all he can come up with is Hillary Clinton, the Bogeywoman for all seasons -- veteran Trump watchers will recognize the usual diversionary tactic; don’t look at me, look at her, she’s the real criminal. Forget logic or commonsense. Forget the fact that Hillary has been off the public stage for nearly 5 years. Along with Hillary, attack the African-American DA, accuse her of racism. Again, put logic and commonsense aside, they don’t apply in the Trump Playbook. Claim that being dumped by the firm is an exoneration and a clean bill of health. Claim that there is a gold-plated Trump Hotel on the moon. The judge saw through the blizzard of BS and castigated Trump’s lawyers for presenting a ridiculous argument. Basically laughed them out of the courtroom. It must be plain hell to be a lawyer for a belligerent moron like Trump. Watch Trump become more unhinged as the walls close in. Not fast enough for my liking, but it’s happening. With a decade of financial statements now deemed worthless, Trump’s creditors could call in their loans. Surely Trump’s dreams are disturbed by the sound of clanking iron chains and screeching metal doors banging closed as the lights dim.  

The caregivers of our society are leaving their professions in droves, and why not? This profit-obsessed country has neglected them for decades, underfunding public education and public health so that millionaires and billionaires are not inconvenienced by tax bills. But when the Covid crisis came, who did we turn to? Teachers, nurses, medical technicians, and others who provide care. They’re exhausted and sick of being ignored, vilified, and neglected so the CEO-class can live large and be spared the minor inconveniences of life. Blame American-style capitalism. Blame a generation of politicians for sucking at the corporate trough. Blame lobbyists and lawyers, bankers, and hedge fund managers. Blame university presidents and overpaid NCAA football coaches. Blame Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Tech. Blame monopolies in almost every damn industry. And don’t neglect to point an accusing finger at the political operatives in black robes who sit on the US Supreme Court. But don’t blame working Americans, we didn’t light this fire as the Billy Joel song goes. The “system” fucked us, lied to us, made us interchangeable and disposable. We’re on the wrong side of 50 years of class warfare. In case you missed it, we lost. We went down with barely a whimper.

Yes, grifters need the gullible. 

Will We Forget?

 “They will, at last, realize themselves that there cannot be enough freedom and bread for everybody, for they will never, never be able to let everyone have his fair share!” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

This infernal year of plague and death and strife, trapped in the grip of greed and arrogance, careening for the abyss at top speed. It’s hard to decide where to begin. Should I begin with the photographs I took of downtown SB in March, during the first lockdown, when store shelves were bare and the streets were eerily quiet, deserted? When toilet paper was as good as money? Or do I start with the criminal negligence of the Trump Crime Family (TCF)? 

Remember Trump’s statements, day after day, about a few people coming in from China, how Covid would one day go away like a miracle, and that in any case it was no worse than the seasonal flu? 

Will we forget Liberate Michigan?

Human nature being what it is, I fear we will forget what has happened this year, misunderstand its deeper meaning, and how dangerous the game we’re playing with our limited democratic freedoms is. I’m afraid we will forget what an utter disaster Donald Trump has been. That with the passage of only a little time, we will forget the more than 300,000 Americans who have died on Trump’s watch, forget the millions more who lost their economic footing because Trump’s response to the pandemic was so inept, ignorant, incompetent, and indifferent to the reality of the situation. While Trump denied science and commonsense -- and babbled about miracle cures, ingesting bleach and disinfectants, herd immunity, and packed churches on Easter Sunday -- Americans suffered and died. 

Writing in the Nation magazine recently, Elie Mystal noted the following: “And yet, somehow, even all of this -- the bleach, the rallies, the unconscionable disregard for life -- fails to capture the full scope of the harm he’s done to this country. Trump’s anti-science sociopathy has been embraced by many other political actors. His messaging, his attitude, his culture-war mongering have filtered down throughout our country, to our national shame.”

I’m afraid that neither Trump or any of his many, many enablers will be held accountable for the damage they’ve done, or for how casually many of them betrayed their oath of office. Was that taste of power worth it? 

We must never forget the 18 state attorney generals and 126 Republican members of the US House of Representatives who supported the corrupt Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, and the bogus legal claim he mounted in an effort to overturn the results of the election and cancel out the legal votes of millions of Americans. 

Will we forget the ranks of silent Republican senators, who stood by while Trump mounted one laughable legal challenge after another in state and federal courts? Who said nothing when Trump claimed the election was rigged and that he’d never accept the result? Will we forget this wholesale absence of principle and courage? 

William Barr, good riddance doughboy, you sold your soul to Donald Trump, so no mercy will be shown to you. Your trangressions are many, but none more repugnant than reinstating the death penalty for certain federal crimes, and then executing condemned people in record numbers, including Orlando Hall and Brandon Bernard. 

One lesson to be learned from 2020 is that mercy is hard to come by in America, particularly for the poor and marginalized. Perhaps we never had mercy in us to give. Americans have always killed to gain land, territory, minerals, and wealth, or to terrorize people deemed a threat.  

I’m afraid we will forget George Floyd, Breeona Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, just to name a few. 

But Kyle Rittenhouse, a sad, deluded white kid who murdered two people protesting police brutality, will be considered a hero in many quarters. Will we forget hate groups like the Proud Boys, who crawled from the shadows to stand in Trump’s malign spotlight?

Will we forget uniformed but unidentified federal agents plucking people off the streets of Portland, Oregon? Or those federal goons under the direction of William Barr, who drove peaceful protesters out of Lafeyette Square with pepper bombs, rubber bullets, batons and shields, all so Donald Trump could make a triumphant march across the street to the church -- where the idiot held the good book upside down.  

As Donald Trump rants and raves about massive voter fraud, let’s not forget all the efforts by the Republican Party to cripple the US Mail service, reduce the number of polling places and ballot drop boxes. Voter suppression is the real election fraud in America, and it is engineered by a Republican Party that is openly hostile to democracy. 

Will we forget politics by stunt? 

We would be wise to think hard about the divisions, fissures, and fractures the Trump years and this deadly pandemic have revealed about our country, its insidious racism, militarism, and wealth inequality. 

When Donald Trump talked about “American carnage” in his inauguration speech in January 2017, I don’t think many people understood what he meant. Trump made it seem that America was at war with itself. It wasn’t true on that day, but it is true now. 

The Isolation Diaries No. 37

“MAGA loves the black people.” Donald J. Trump

Complicit too long. Silent too long. Indifferent too long. And as night follows day, the moment of reckoning is here. The dream of justice and equality for African-Americans, for indigineous people, for immigrants from Latin America and Asia, so long deferred, punted, kicked down the proverbial road for the next generation to deal with, is here. As Dr. Cornel West put it, “This is America’s moment.”

For me, the most striking, astonishing aspect of this moment is the outrageous, inexcusable behavior of police forces all across this country. It’s not the actions of citizens, it’s the police in their riot gear, with their tear gas and mace and pepper spray and rubber bullets and flash grenades, it’s the police driving their vehicles into crowds of people, throwing people to the ground, shooting at journalists and camera crews, much like American soldiers and Marines did to the citizens of Fallujah in Iraq and all over Afghanistan for most of the past two decades. Americans don’t understand that a nation cannot be violent abroad and peaceful at home. 

Violence is our fetish, our juice, our faith, our mojo. I think I finally understand what Cormac McCarthy and Blood Meridian are all about.    

We must connect the dots between decades of economic, tax (the wealthy paying less and less), and trade policies, lumped under the umbrella of neoliberalism, with obscene, reckless, and wasteful military spending, a global apparatus of more than 800 military bases, with relentless privatization and under-funding of public services and spaces like libraries, hospitals, and schools. The political and economic masters of this country are so compromised by hubris that they forced a cruel starvation diet on the people and expected them to take it without so much as a whimper. 

The people are angry, demoralized, fed up, scared, tired of crappy jobs that pay a poverty wage, tired of going bankrupt when they become ill, as all people will, tired of being ignored by the powerful. Most of all, people are done with the hypocrisy of the American ruling class. 

We’re in the middle of a confluence, like the point where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean. Treacherous waters. First, the pandemic, then the economic impact of shutting most of the country down, and then the murders: Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and finally, the sadistic killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, captured on camera like Murder Porn. The world saw it, and this time there was no way to explain it away, excuse it on some technicality, or claim the officer feared for his life. Not this time. 

Nothing more is required of black people. They aren’t required to get over slavery, to tolerate glorification of the Confederacy, to forgive the KKK. They have endured for centuries, marched, prayed, sang, contributed economic and cultural riches to this nation that can never be repaid.

To be clear about the American situation requires courage and honesty. Look not to the political elite, most of whom are more concerned about their tenure in office, their  appearance on Face the Nation, their next reelection campaign, and their investment portfolios than they are over the death of another black man. They say the right things but have no intention of turning their words into actions. Our president is the Coward-in-Chief, so limited and twisted as a human being that his one response to every problem is the same: domination. As long as someone else is wielding deadly force, Trump has an insatiable appetite for violence. 

Nothing more is required of black people. They aren’t required to get over slavery, to tolerate glorification of the Confederacy, to forgive the KKK. They have endured for centuries, marched, prayed, sang, contributed economic and cultural riches to this nation that can never be repaid. I’m a 61-year-old white male and the thought of a white dominated America fills me with terror; what a wasteland it would be. No, it’s on us white folks now, we’re the ones who have to get our minds and hearts right, to finally and forever renounce the idea that we are superior, chosen, anointed, selected, and born to rule. Peace and justice go together, but one cannot exist without the other. That’s the critical balance that’s missing in America. We have no peace in this moment because we who have power and money and networks have denied for too long the basic humanity of non-white people. Derek Chauvin is just the latest in a long, twisted line of racist cops. Chauvin not only sought to subdue George Floyd, he meant to dominate him. 

I listened to Gil Scott-Heron this morning and this caught my ear:

“And now it is your turn,

We are tired of praying, and marching, and thinking, and learning

Brothers wanna start cutting, and shooting, and stealing, and burning

You are three hundred years ahead in equality

But next summer may be too late.”

America is burning today, but the fire started long ago. What will we do this time, tamp it down or finally put it out? 

General Bone Spurs

“The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down.” H.L. Mencken

Press Event, The White House, Washington D.C.

President Trump enters the press briefing room looking agitated, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. After wiping his nose several times, Trump begins reading his prepared statement. 

PT: I have big news today, very big news. The biggest. At my direction, our brave military forces launched a raid in Northern Syria and killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, one of the most vicious killers of all time. al-Baghdadi died like a whimpering dog, begging for mercy, but on my order he was afforded none. We took him out very beautifully. Only a military leader such as President Trump -- the greatest president in American history -- could have planned and executed this operation. It was extremely dangerous, ten times more dangerous than the raid that  killed Osama bin Laden. I want to thank our wonderful allies Russia and Turkey for their assistance. They are great countries with strong leaders who lead strongly. al-Baghdadi was a very bad hombre, many times more dangerous than Osama bin Laden. I took out the worst of the worst. 

Reporter: Mr. President, you stated that you planned this raid. Can you tell us when you did that planning?

PT: I planned the whole thing on the 14th hole at my golf club, a beautiful course by the way, world class, and by the time I arrived on the 15th tee I called my generals and told them how to take this killer out. I’m the best strategist, even better than George Washington. Then I teed off on 15, drove the ball right down the middle about 350 yards. I’m a big hitter, you know, the best golfer to ever occupy the White House. I could beat Obama with a putter, a pitching wedge, and a 4-wood. Even if I let Obama tee off from the ladies tees I’d still beat him. 

Reporter: Will you toss out the first pitch for Game 5 of the World Series?

PT: We’re still considering that. The last time I threw out the first pitch was for a game between the Yankees and the Mets. The pitch was clocked at 95mph and had so much movement on it that the Mets offered me a contract on the spot. I turned them down because I was too busy making billions of dollars. People have always said that I was one of the best baseball players in the history of New York City, a phenom, the next Mickey Mantle. I was a classic 5-tool player which is why it’s insane for the dirty Democrats to talk about impeachment. Witch hunt! 

Reporter: Mr. President, the news on the impeachment front over the past two weeks hasn’t been favorable. Are you concerned about the reaction you might receive from fans at the World Series? 

PT: That’s fake news. The economy is the best it’s ever been, my administration has created like a billion new jobs, we’re building the Wall to keep our country safe, and many people are saying that no American president has ever been more popular. They love what I’m doing with China on trade. You should see the massive crowds at my campaign rallies! So many people, so many red hats, so many signs. They love their great president. They can’t get enough of me. My only concern with attending the World Series is that I’ll get a very long standing ovation that will disrupt the game. 

Reporter: The latest polling shows your approval rating at less than 40%. 

PT: Fake news. Fake news. Fake news. My poll numbers are consistently high, 60, 70 percent of Americans think I’m doing a fantastic job. And now that I’ve taken out this very bad hombre, al-Baghdadi, I expect my approval rating to go even higher. The dirty Democrats know I’m unbeatable in 2020, which is why they’ve launched this illegal and very phony impeachment. Adam Schiff is like a rabid dog. He’s got nothing on Trump, nothing but smoke. The whole thing is very illegitimate and the Democrats know it, they know it, especially now that Trump is a war hero, the man who took out al-Baghdadi, who was a very bad hombre with a lot of blood on his hands. Many people are saying nobody except Trump could have pulled this off. You think Joe Biden could have done this? No way. Joe’s too busy trying to help his loser son. 

Reporter: Mr. President, speaking of loser children -

PT: It’s illegitimate, the whole thing, because the House hasn’t voted to impeach. It’s right there in the Constitution, in black and white, and the Democrats know it, they know it. They’re making it up as they go, with no respect for the law. They will learn a hard lesson in 2020. My very good friend Vladimir Putin told me not to worry. 

A Quick Flash of Light

“The government’s central evil is its willful failure to distinguish the quality of intent or motive.” Jim Harrison, The Beast God Forgot to Invent

I am having a long conversation with myself about this blog and why I keep writing it. 15 years. Through George W. Bush and the Iraq Disaster, that unbellievably stupid strategic blunder, which has since caused distress and death for thousands of people, from Egypt and Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. We meddled, and we’re paying and paying and paying. I doubt  they can even keep count of all the money the US spent destroying those countries. 18 years in Afghanistan. Longest war in American history, and nobody’s pissed about the milestone except a few middle-aged liberal cranks like me. The Obama years were disappointing to me, a fumbled opportunity. Obama lost his political nerve and turned in the direction he was oriented in anyway, center-right. Outwardly kinder and far more sophisticated but no less deadly than W. Smoother by a mile. With no push forward, we stayed in place. But the optics as they say, the presentation of Barack and Michelle Obama, was to me always reassuring, even hopeful. Cautious man, that Obama. Measured. Honestly seemed to be a very decent person, and never for a minute did I doubt that Obama was doing his best for the country. The man was calm, cool, polished to perfection, and that drove some people in this country into anger, then near madness. I believe, historically speaking, in black backlash. Happens every time there are any widespread gains for people of color. 

Obama didn’t do much for the Democrats as a party. But he stayed smart and elegant and cool until the last day of his term. Only doubted the policies and decisions and compromises, not the man.

And then the system goes haywire and vomits up Donald Trump. And here I am three years and countless unread blog posts later, living in Trump Time. America is an amusement park violently flipped upside down. Donald Trump. Fuck! I don’t know what else to say. I cannot even keep track of all Trump’s high crimes and misdemeanors. Everyday there’s a new transgression. And his party of supposedly rational, decent people, the Grand Old Party, continues to follow Trump, fear Trump and, if not licking Trump’s ass, at least kissing it. They keep turning a blind eye and a deaf ear, afraid of Dear Leader and his Twitter machine, but secretly hoping he falls, and falls hard. 

The ship’s taking on a lot of water. The captain is addled, to say the least, but pretends that everything’s alright, that he’s the greatest man ever to sail, king of the sea, even though he knows deep down that this is the caper he’s not getting away with. The ship’s not listing, yet, but it’s taking on a lot of water. When are the rats going to start jumping, by ones and twos, and then trios and quartets? When will the sailors turn on the captain? This captain will sell his mother’s soul if it means saving his own. He’s fucked things up pretty well, and now it looks like his treasure maps are soon to be let out in the world. 

The age of Obama feels a long way back, a quick flash of light in the dark. The man read real books. He understood the law. He followed the law, for the most part. He was eloquent, even inspiring. Obama in eight years left no stain on America’s soul or hole in her heart. He kept the world at bay and the American empire humming. That takes a bucketful of skill. Obama had that. He also hired competent people. There were no personal scandals during Obama’s tenure in the White House. And then Trump and Company tramp in and the beautiful white walls turn a shade of ochre, the windows grow a film, a smell of rot permeates the whole place, and soon the only people that remain are the most immoral, crooked, cruel, and stupid. Barr. Pompeo. Mulvaney. Mnuchin. It’s not even the fourth string. It’s a coup alright, a coup by a bunch of people you’d never invite into your home for a cup of coffee. Redolent of sloth, all of them. The bottom of the barrel, the dogshit on the bottom of your boot. A decent God would smote them one by one, or at least plague them with disease, but as Tom Waits sang, God’s away on business. 

What I started with was the question of why I continue writing this blog. I’ll put that aside for now. 

It has been a strange week. I feel like I spent three days in a dark tunnel, with the faintest light at one end, and only today did I return to myself. I’ve been depressed. What Ernest Hemingway called the Black Dog. I bet my aura was tar black. I realized all of a sudden that I was garnering little joy for my day job, a job I have always performed very capably, but not one my heart is always in. The job pays the rent and puts food on the table and allows us to go to the clinic or the hospital. 20 years I’ve been there. 60 years old. I wonder about the remainder of my life, how we might survive on some pension money, my freelance work, and maybe a job at Trader Joe’s or something like that. The big worry is losing employer-based health insurance. I’m too young for Medicare. 

War Is My Viagra

“Habit disposes us to normalize the abnormal.” David Bromwich

What is it about the island nation of Cuba that scares the bejesus out of the big, bad USA? Is it the memory of the Bay of Pigs or Fidel Castro’s decades-long refusal to bow and lick Uncle Sam’s red, white, and blue combat boots?

To hear John “War-is-my-Viagra” Bolton, you might think Florida is in imminent danger of being overrun by heavily-armed Cubans inflamed with malice and high on cheap rum. Bolton recently accused Cuba of “ideological imperialism” which is, in Bolton’s fevered imagination, far more dangerous than the brand of economic and military imperialism routinely practiced all over the world by the US against its perceived enemies.

Cuba, you see, exports its potent Communist ideas to Venezuela and Nicaragua, and if the three nations ever joined forces, the US would find itself in grave peril. The land of the free and the home of the brave might cease to exist, might be turned into a communist hell-hole. No more freedom of choice. Say goodbye to 250 TV channels, Costco and Whole Foods, Disneyland and Harry Potter World, 75 varieties of toothpaste, 45 varieties of suppositories; all would be replaced by drab, bland products produced by worker collectives. Our capitalist fat cats, real and pseudo (like Trump), would be stripped of their wealth and sentenced to hard labor at reeducation camps in the Texas Panhandle. (This, come to think of it, is appealing to contemplate. Imagine Trump, Steve Mnuchin, Wilbur Ross, Mick Mulvaney, and the arch-dickhead, Mitch McConnell, digging trenches with pickaxes in the blistering sun. That would be hilarious. I’m not sure Trump could lift a pickaxe, let alone swing one, and in no time he’d start whining about the terrible unfairness of it all.)

Along with Iran, Cuba keeps John Bolton awake at night. Visions of robed mullahs and brown-skinned, bearded men in fatigues, marching, chanting, and waving AK-47’s in the air pervade his dreams. The ghost of Fidel, the specter of the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. “We must get them before they get us,” Bolton mutters as he paces the floor of his bedroom. “Economic warfare! Tomahawk missiles! To the ramparts before it’s too late!”

Cuba is the mouse that strikes fear in the bull elephant.

Short Takes:

And on we march to the abyss, the blind and corrupt leading the blind and complacent. The Democratic National Committee refuses to host a presidential candidate forum devoted solely to climate change, offering the pathetic reason that such an event wouldn’t be “practical,” but the real reason isn’t hard to figure out: the Dems are fearful of scaring off corporate donors. Let the oceans rise. Let the glaciers melt. Let the temperature hit 120 degrees in Delhi, India. Nothing must get in the way of business as usual. Give us your money, we’ll remain silent.

Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi continues to shirk her constitutional duty to uphold the law and launch impeachment hearings against Trump. She’s waiting for the planets to align. Trump’s recent admission on national TV that he would accept foreign government assistance in the form of dirt on his 2020 opponent, and not bother to inform the FBI, isn’t a blatant enough abuse of power for Pelosi.

Maximus Pompeo is gunning for Iran. Two hours after an attack of mysterious origin on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman, Pompeo was laying the blame on Iran. Maximus offered little to no proof for his claim, other than a grainy, inconclusive black and white surveillance video, and his claim was immediately refuted by parties closer to the situation. Only Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the US want another American-instigated shooting war in the region. Economic sanctions are punishing the Iranian people, but the blood-lust of the US will not be sated until the bombs fall and the missiles fly and thousands of innocent civilians perish. I haven’t heard one media talking head ask why Iran would risk precipitating a conflict with the US at this time. US policymakers obviously believe that Iran is led by idiots.

The cowardice, corruption and cruelty I see from the leaders of my country almost every day makes me want to hang my head and weep.

And there’s no end in sight.