Politics

10 V 2018: Enthusiasm for torture

The process of confirmation of Gina Haspel has re-opened the issue of the use of torture by the government of the United States. We failed to deal severely with this issue back when John Yoo, now a professor of law at Berkeley, and Jay S. Bybee, now a judge in the federal appellate court, were cooking up the so-called “Torture Memos.” 9/11 made the people of America pee in their pants and surrender their rights, morals, and dignity to those who claimed they could keep us safe. We were and ought to be ashamed of ourselves. But what we have now? An antinomian president who is a torture booster, with some of the old crew of torture-enthusiasts to cheer him on. Nomination of a veteran of the torture era to the directorship of the C.I.A. has summoned up a number of demons from Hell. That amoral ghoul, Dick Cheney, has appeared singing again his old “hurt ’em bad” song by way of claiming yet again that he was right all along. And Lt. General Thomas McInerny, making his pitch for torture on the Fox Channel, uttered some gratuitous insults against Senator John McCain for which the General deserves to be horse-whipped.

I will repeat now what I said back in 2002-2003, aged advocates of torture ought to volunteer themselves as laboratory subjects for the development and refinement of torture techniques.

5 V 2018: Newt Gingrich Again

I read an opinion piece by Newt Gingrich that’s being peddled by Fox News. He says Trumpy should just say “no” to that bully Muller’s questions. Trump is too busy, says Newt, to have a detailed memory of events of the first year of his presidency. Try asking Trump what his golf score has been over the last several years.

I have a good memory of Mr. Gingrich’s unremitting efforts to introduce extreme polarization and intolerance into American political life. Though he left public office under a cloud after the House voted (395 to 28) to reprimand him for an ethics violation, he has continued to pop up from time to time to display his corrosive views and personality. As I wrote in an earlier entry, I was hoping that he would fade into a life of silent repose at the Vatican with Mrs. Gingrich III. How wrong I was! The era of Trump has brought many bugs of the woodwork, Gingrich among them. Old reactionaries never fade away.

11 IV 2018: The Impeach Nunes Movement

So the congressman who represents the world of infamy, the leading rat of the House, David Nunes, is blathering about impeaching honest men. I look forward to the time when maybe Nunes is impeached or, at least, is listed in retrospectives on the Trumpzeit as the slimiest burrower in Donald’s dung heap.

8 IV 2018: U.S. is committing suicide??

Back again after a long hiatus … Not much has changed fundamentally since last August. But we’ve seen more, learned more of Trump and his ménage. Trump clearly needs psychiatric treatment (or to be put in prison) so that he does no more harm to himself and others. His family, friends, and appointees have proven to be wannabe plutocrats who are, if not criminal, at least sleazy through and through. Why don’t the American people and their elected representatives do something about this. Perhaps Mr. Jimmy Carter is right; maybe the American people want a jerk for president, someone as ignorant as they, someone as selfish as they, someone as hypocritical as they, someone as irresponsible as they. Unless the course of things changes soon, I have to conclude that the United States of America has a death-wish.

How will it die? It could wait and die of greed and the surfeit attendant upon it; it could die of sentimentality; it could die from ignorance. Or Americans might lose patience and slaughter one another, since we hate each other so. How could they accomplish this slaughter? The easiest way would be with firearms. There are plenty of them around.

As several investigations get closer and closer to Trump, he will surely try to distract us with a war. If we survive the war, maybe we will be chastened and move towards democracy. Perhaps we will have enough new citizens, young people and immigrants, whom the plutocrats have not yet seduced with their K-Mart, television, sports, and scandals, to find our way back to our ideals.

23 X 2017: Who crossed the line?

I read in the paper last week about the lawsuit brought by the ACLU for various disaffected people who had been with those blocking traffic, smashing windows, and overturning planters downtown, against the St. Louis Police for being too severe with them. The same article reports a statement of Sgt. Matthew Karnowski: “He also said police found six guns after the arrests.” I assume the guns were found on the ground, dropped there by people who’d been carrying them illegally. The police were dealing with an armed crowd of people who themselves or whose associates had committed acts of vandalism. “Innocent bystanders” who have any sense will keep well clear when the law is being ostentatiously broken. The protesters must find a way to separate themselves from criminals or potential criminals. The protesters may mean their demonstrations to be peaceful, but how can they be believed when people in the demonstrations break the law? Is the misbehavior associated with the demonstrations part of a plan to provoke the police? Is it intended to frighten the public? Or does it happen when a demonstration becomes an invitation to a block party for people with nothing better to do.

Today’s news reports the closing of an interstate highway and another invasion of the Galleria. On a television segment someone covering the closing of I-64 read off the list of the protesters demands, a long wishlist of wrongs to be righted. Few, if any, of these problems can be corrected at once. Most are long-term goals. But none of them can be achieved without serious leadership in the black community, and serious, disciplined behavior by protesters who wish to persuade the larger community.

21 X 2017: No right to be heard

I found on CNN this headline:

Bannon delivers blistering attack on former President George W. Bush

Why does the press continue to report drivel designed to shock?

George W. Bush’s criticisms of the selfish, pusillanimous kind of state that Bannon advocates apparently came too close to home, and Bannon, like his puppet Trumpy, was compelled to counterpunch. Wannabe-fascists like them ought really to have thicker skins, but there it is. Bannon launched a very nasty personal attack on Mr. Bush, asserting, in effect, “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Now who is it who really does not know what he’s talking about? Why report this piece of ugliness from a public enemy like Bannon? Why allow him any standing beyond that of a radio-show host like Rush Limbaugh, a cunning man pandering to the ignorant?

11 X 2017: A day without Donald

I have to admit that I, along with the media, mainstream and fringe, devote too much time to Trump’s uncivilized behavior. Clearly, we are being played. His behavior and rudeness are so shocking, no, not shocking, so repulsive, that it is hard to let them go by without some sort of comment. But I believe that is what he intends. We spend so much time complaining about what a perverse little shit he is that we fail to measure what a sneaky bastard he is also.

What I want to propose is this. Let’s have a day without Trump and see how it feels. Let all the news and non-news media boycott what Trump says for one day. No news of his speeches, no word of his tweets, and let’s see how it feels. We might enjoy it so much, and benefit from it so much, that we could go for a week or more without listening to Trump.

Let’s ignore what he says, but pay close attention to what he does, and fails to do. Popular superstition imagines a “Black Mass,” one in which all that is done and said in the real Mass is done backwards in adoration of the demons. Trump and his minions are celebrating their own black mass. They are doing just the reverse of what sound government and the good of our Country require. Let’s take note of what they are doing, in every detail, let’s work hard to thwart them, and then hold them to strict account when the reckoning finally comes.

1 X 2017: Sparked no more

The Post Dispatch describes recent conflicts in downtown Saint Louis: “The protests are the latest sparked by a not-guilty verdict in the murder trial of former St. Louis patrolman Jason Stockley ….” Now Stockley shot Mr. Smith in 2011. Were demonstrations sparked in 2011? I don’t know. None are mentioned in current reporting. Anyway, a righteous indignation seems to have been ignited by the announcement of the acquittal of Jason Stockley three weeks ago. Protests were sparked then, but now some seem to be blowing on the coals to keep the fire alight. Why?

30 IX 2017: From the fourth chapter of the book of Daniel:

King Nebuchadnesar made an image of gold … He set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon. … And the herald proclaimed aloud, “You are commanded, O peoples, nations, and languages, that when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, bagpipe, and every kind of music, you are to fall down and worship the golden image that King Nabuchadnezar has set up, and whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be ase into a burning fiery furnace.

Can we not see this in our times?

Our own Nebuchadnesar has set up the flag which he has usurped as an idol to be adored, and the national anthem as the music at which everyone must must now stand up and worship. Those who fail to do so will be branded “unpatriotic,” “ungrateful” and “Sons of bitches.”

29 IX 2017: Complicity in idiocy.

I saw a headline yesterday evening: “House Republicans propose $10 billion for Trump’s border wall.” Now estimates that I have seen predict that a wall would cost 15-25 billion dollars to build the wall, and that the wall, once built, would cost 750 miliion per year to maintain. $10 billion would be a mere down-payment.

But the House republicans’ proposal makes me wonder: If they think have $10 billion to piss away on the wall of Trump’s dreams, could they not redirect that $10 billion to healthcare or to education? They could, but, of course, they never would.

But I believe the Wall will never be built. Trumpy and the swindlers in the House do not really intend to build a wall. Most of them (not all by any means) are not that stupid and would never waste so much money (when they could give it to their rich friends). No, the whole Wall business is a drama they’ve been running to appeal to sub-rational and bigoted voters. There are a lot of them, and the Wall has real appeal. What will they do when Trumpy & Co. tell them that they were only kidding? How much time, energy, false hope, and rancor will have been wasted on this fantasy by then?