Trump

23 XI 2019: King Trump; Swamp Mummies; Americans’ Self-Destructive Behavior

rump’s lawyers, some of whom are paid by you and me, are claiming that the Boss don’t have to give ’em nuttin’ because of “presidential immunity.” An article that reports this referred to the President as King Trump, and this is a remarkably apt epithet. 

Trump’s lawyers are trying to cobble together an argument based on “sovereign immunity” which Wikipedia defines as “a legal doctrine by which the sovereign or state cannot commit a legal wrong and is immune from civil suit or criminal prosecution.” In English law this was expressed as “Rex non potest peccare,” the King cannot do wrong. St. John Newman has fun with this in his Present Position of Catholics in England where he includes a burlesque newspaper article that reports a Russian chauvinist denouncing the British because of the legal tradition

We can transition to this by stealing some lines from Milton:

 His state
 Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed 
 And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest. 

Well, King Trump’s not been sending thousands to find dirt on Joe Biden, but he seems to have sent his lawyer and his star supporter. We are now hearing more indications that Devin Nunes and three of his aides flew to Europe in 2018 to dig up some dirt on Biden — it’s not yet clear whether they spent their own funds on this trip or used our money. Nunes, sounding ever more like Trump, is denying this vigorously and bellowing threats of lawsuits. Well, we will have to wait and see. If this is true it will indicate that Nunes is a hypocritical sneak, something we’ve already strongly suspected.

I saw a piece online headed: “Egypt Unveils Cache of Mummified Cats, Birds and Crocodiles.” For a moment my eyes tricked me, and I read “G.O.P. Unveils Cache of Mummified Cats, Birds and Crocodiles,” from their Swamp of course. 

A warning about the possibility of three major storms during Thanksgiving Week reported that the AAA estimates that 55 million people are expected to travel by road, rail, and air during Thanksgiving Week. Every year I wonder: Why do the American people torment themselves annually in this way. Travel during Thanksgiving Week almost always involves some civil defense crisis. Civic sensibility would suggest that we try for a drastic reduction of crowding at Thanksgiving by making a less stressful trip to visit family at a more tranquil time of year. But no, I don’t care what others may do. I’m going to go to see my family. So 55 million “I“s hit the road, and they and all the rest suffer.

24 X 2019: Where your treasure is, there is your heart also

I think a headline today on CNN’s website describes perfectly what matters and does not matter to our Dictator Trump: “Trump suggests Kurds relocate as US considers deploying armored vehicles to protect oil fields.”

So: Deport the trashy Kurds (we like deportations), but by heaven protect the $ OIL $. 

Trump’s helpful ICE goons can create detention camps for the no-account Kurds, and the lust for oil can continue to rule U.S. policy in the Near East. I will wait to see how Trump reverses his faked withdrawal of U.S. troops from the region. Maybe the Saudis could spare some of the U.S. rent-a-troops Trump has sent them.

I see the House Republican guerilla warriors developing a strategy to defend their King. It is simplicity itself: call truthful witnesses in the impeachment hearings liars. This is their constant game plan, for Trump and the little Trumpies always accuse their critics of the offenses of which he and they are most guilty.

23 X 2019: Rebellion from the right

Today, Rep. Matt Gaetz stopped licking Trump long enough to lead a mob from the psychiatric wing of the Republican party to force their way into a closed-door meeting of the House Intelligence Committee, to demand, in effect, that they be allowed to shut down the impeachment investigation.

Their leader, Gaetz, is desperate to emerge as the chief of Trump’s little helpers. He was attended by Rep. Mo Brooks, a notorious blowhard from way back, and 35+ others, the ass-lickers, the lunatics, and sheep who follow anything.

These retrogressives know that the TRUMP team is losing, so they want to stop the game, and so are displaying the fundamental lawlessness they have in common with Trump. I do hope the Capitol Police will defend the United States against them.

The behavior of these congressmen is frightening. 

Trying to imagine how the future destruction our Government by a reactionary take-over might begin, I thought it might start with reactionaries using ICE to jail their opponents, arrest all the leaders of the military, silence all the media except FOX, and shut down all of the ‘unreliable’ courts. These subversives would then present themselves as a new “American Party” that would select the Dictator who is going to restore America to “the way it used to be.”

But no, I think the assault on the American government could begin with lawless, anti-democratic members of Congress who will shamelessly flout congressional rules and the Constitution to reach their selfish goal. These militant reactionary congressmen know very well that they are nothing without Trump, know that Trump has been caught red-handed and could be impeached and removed from office. They must prevent this at all costs. Hence comes behavior of the sort seen today, behavior that will continue unless sober Republicans restrain these foolish hooligans.

23 X 2019: Trump stars in victim role; Trump rallies his troops.

Trump has begun searching more widely for terms to aggrandize his pathological victimhood. We heard him this week calling himself the victim of a lynching. Soon we will see Trump at the stake instead of Joan of Arc or shot full of arrows in place of Saint Sebastian.  

I read that Trump has ordered his servants to “get tough and fight” on his behalf. What could “get tough and fight” mean in the Bog of Trump except “Tell more lies and bigger ones, too”?

18 X 2019: Trump’s great envy

What is behind Trump’s policy of appeasement of Mr. Erdogan? Did Trump do something scandalous in Istanbul that Erdogan can hold over his head? Maybe. Or maybe a more likely explanation lies in Trump’s adulation of ruthless absolute rulers. He must envy them so! No threat of impeachment for them, no annoying legislature, no independent judiciary, no unpredictable elections, no criticism — it must be heaven.

15 X 2019: Intrusion of popular culture on concepts of political life

Gripe No.1: Tonight the Democratic candidates for president, 12 of them, meet in their fourth debate. Debate is, of course, a euphemism for hullabaloo that is modeled on The Game of the Week.

Active participation in sports in youth and vicarious participation as fans through adult life is omni-pervasive in our society and competitive sports have become America’s paradigm for life. There is very little in human experience that we do assimilate to an athletic game, using the structures and language of sport to view all life as an agon, a combative competition.

This brings me to my point: I see a discouraging similarity of coverage of the debates to coverage of professional sport. We have pre-debate shows to discuss candidates’ earlier performance and to predict who will do best in the debate. Commentary is provided during pauses in the debate. And at the end come the post-debate roundups, evaluation of the debaters culminating in a determination of who was the winner.

This is by way of saying that I think the media trivialize and debase political discourse by turning it into a show, one like the show we know best, professional sports.

Gripe No. 2: I feel the media have bought into Trump’s characterization of those who have disclosed his malfeasance. Just today I read a piece in which figures from the White House who have revealed or are likely to reveal to Congress what they know about the President’s self-serving plots are referred to as snitches, just what Trump wants us to think of them.

Here I will complain not about sports in American life, but about the paradigmatic role of organized crime. So many gangster movies, so many that portray the gangster as an attractive anti-hero! Trump is the Godfather, surrounded by trustworthy capos and soldiers. Whistle-blowers or witnesses before Congress are the informers, snitches, rats who tell the feds the Godfather’s secrets. Trump also describes anyone who criticizes him as a traitor, but he never says traitor to what. To the U.S.A. or to Donald Trump?

But even though Trump thinks like a gangster, behaves like a gangster, and sounds like a gangster, we must not be tricked into treating him as another head of a crime family. Yes, he’s probably guilty of some lowdown crimes for which he should ultimately be prosecuted. But what he has been doing as President is beyond crime. He is breaking his inaugural oath by obstructing justice, condemning the Constitution, and is like Pravda streaming destructive falsehoods.

12 X 2019: If you find racism you will find Trump

The author Jennine Capó Crucet was invited to Georgia Southern University to speak about her novel Make your Home among Strangers, an account of the difficulties of a first-generation Cuban-American woman at an elite white college, required reading this year for first-year students at Georgia Southern. The issue of white privilege was, of course, prominent in the novel and affected its reception by Georgia Southern students. Some students who, like most Americans, are dimly conscious of color-based privilege, but persist in angry denial, took offense at Ms Capó Crucet’s person, her book, and her discussion of it. This was evident in hostile tweets that were collected by the campus paper, but abruptly deleted, and in the behavior of a group of students who collected around a barbecue grill to burn the frightening novel and, figuratively, its author.

This was a revealing combination! The Spanish inquisition and Nazi mass book burnings re-enacted on a barbecue grill, a symbol of suburban, middle-class America. Of course, many students and the University itself were deeply embarrassed by this outrage. University representatives denounced the burning but asserted that it was protected speech. However, free speech was not protected when the University canceled another scheduled event of Ms Capó Crucet’s visit because it felt it could not guarantee her safety due to open-carry laws.

The commotion began when, after Capó Crucet’s presentation, a student questioned her right to be speaking there and her generalizing about white privilege. Students started shouting against and for the questioner, and of those supporting the questioner some were heard shouting “Trump 2020!”

Three threads stand out here: frantic hostility to exposé of white privilege, abuse of the right to free speech, and open-carry laws preventing free speech. And these are all woven together by “Trump 2020!”

11 X 2019bis: Trump, the Blow-hard Bully

I watched a clip from Trump’s latest Nurembergesque rally. It was the usual logorrhea. But he spent 40 min. of his monologue denouncing and insulting anyone who has lately hurt his feelings. I suppose he thinks he is a puerile Don Rickles. It has reached the point that any who have not been insulted or denounced by Trump had better undertake some self-examination to see where they have gone wrong.

His language is decomposing as the pressures on him increase, and his facial expression consists of sneers, scowls, and snarls. We are now, I believe, seeing and hearing the real Trump. The smart set at his rallies love this sort of thing, but the rest of the country is shamed by it.

11 X 2019: I can beat you up any time

Today CNN ran a wonderful photograph with an article “Romney steps up as Trump tries to trample him.” The photo shows steps leading down from a closed door at, I think, the White House. Romney is descending the steps, looking to his right, towards an American flag there. Trump is at the top of the steps, his arms lifted to his mouth, as if he is shouting something.” Here is what I imagine is going on in the photo: Romney and Trump have had an altercation. Romney has had it with Trump and is leaving the scene and Trump is shouting inane insults at the departing Romney. But Trump is keeping close to the door of his big house so that he can run back inside if Romney turns around and comes after him.

9 X 2019: Trump near the edge

So that pathetic figure in the White House thinks that he owes nothing to our allies, the Kurds, because they did not fight along with us in WW II. Does he think that the neutral Turks fought alongside us? He might believe they did, for he is as ignorant of history as he is of government.

He is coming closer and closer to losing it altogether. It is reported that he keeps making frantic, menacing phone calls to Mitch McConnell to make sure that the Republicans in the Senate are still backing him. Many of his utterances, viva voce or on Twitter, are, it seems to me, actionable, for he is in a frenzy of slander and libel. 

Will he go off the edge? will he take America with him? I’m sure that by now he is thinking, as Hitler did of the Germans, that we are not tough enough to deserve him. Will he hang on, backed who cannot admit they have erred? Will he get away with all his crimes? If he does, America will have ceased to exist.

What about the Republicans in Congress? Will they, as his abuse and intimidation of them gets even worse, have the guts to give him the shove? Getting rid of Trump will be made especially difficult for the people he has debauched. The Republicans seem to have sworn allegiance to him as the Wehrmacht swore obedience to Hitler. They will have to find a way to distance from him, for if they do not, they will become infamous.

And the American people who voted for him, can they acknowledge their mistake, their having been scammed? Will those who proclaim “He’s my President!” come to realize what such a declaration actually says about themselves?