10 II 2024: I too smell a rat

Gov. Pritzker says he “smells a rat” in Special Prosecutor Robert Hur’s report on his investigation of alienation of classified documents by Biden, and I too smell a rat. The business about Biden’s age and mental acuity is an obiter dictum that has really nothing to do with Biden’s guilt or innocence. It was wholly inappropriate and there can be, I believe, only one explanation for its inclusion, it is a right-wing dirty trick.

I’m sad to say that I have come to have my doubts about Merrick Garland. I’d thought his apparent dilatoriness and lack of energy in prosecuting traitorous conspirators against the United States’ government were signs of caution. But I am beginning to wonder if they flow from indifference and cowardice.

We have prosecuted the foot soldiers of the Big Lie Conspiracy, but its originator and leader and those who advised him and urged him on are still at large. If Trump and his associates are not prosecuted and condemned for what they have done, the fascist takeover of the United States will continue apace. This sad end of our American government would suggest either that democracy cannot defend itself against its adversaries or that the American people are too sybaritic and childish to maintain a democracy.

7 II 2024: Israeli and Russian Irredentism

Irredentism is the passion, usually exploited by demagogues, to get back what is thought to be a nation’s former property. Russia presents itself as the successor state to the Russian Empires, and cites this as the basis for seizing territories from Ukraine, their pretense of respectability for this aggression being that they are simply taking back what once was the property of the Russian Empires. And, unless Russia’s grab for Ukraine is wholly frustrated, this same irredentism will probably be used to justify Russian invasion of Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Finland, and Poland.

Israel is doing the same thing on the West Bank and in Gaza, claiming a kind of “manifest destiny” for violence on the West Bank by “settlers” who have come to claim what God gave to their distant ancestors and for the police-action destruction of Gaza and deportation of millions of Palestinians.

I cannot see much difference between Israel and Russia. It is time to stop buying into Israel’s endless victimhood and affectation of democratic values and to begin being as tough with Israel as we would be with any other aggressor nation.

20 XII 2023: Trump born a Nazi?

Trump is saying he has never read Mein Kampf. This comes as no surprise, for we’ve learned that everybody’s favorite insurrectionist does not like to read and prefers pictures. Maybe he has often viewed Triumph of the Will.

But just because he hasn’t read Hitler’s work does not mean that he has not been influenced by it. I’m sure that Mein Kampf is the book of every month in the darker depths of Trump World. So if Donald hasn’t read this fascist bible, many of his advisers and supporters will have summarized it for him and urged its applicability to American democracy.

Or, maybe Trump did not have to get his Nazism from Mein Kampf, maybe he is a natural born Nazi, an anima naturaliter Naziana.

16 IX 2023: Immigrants are the new Jews

Donald Trump’s recent attacks on immigrants and his promised efforts to eradicate them from the American soil, bloodstream, etc. make it quite clear that immigrants are to Trumpworld what Jews were for the Nazis. This, in turn, makes it quite clear that Trump truly is a Hitler redivivus.

And the Trump base, Trump’s Sheepstate, can’t get enough of this.

And Trump and his Sheepstate are threats to national security.

12 XII 2023: Suicidal spending

The statistics quoted by Mr. Michael O’Brien in an article in the latest number of America include the following: “About $960 billion: the record amount of U.S. spending between November and December 2023 predicted by the National Retail Federation. Consumers say they expect to spend an average of $875 on gifts and holiday purchases this year.” To this figure we should add that the average household credit card debt is over $7,000, to show that American spending is downright suicidal.

7 XII 2023: No sudden rise in ante-semitism

Some prominent figures in politics, the media, and intellectual life have been expressing their alarm at what they see as a sudden rise in anti-semitism in the United States. However, I would maintain that what we are seeing is a sudden multiplication of expressions of anti-semitism, for anti-semitism has been in America from the start and was recently stimulated when Trump entered politics.

3 XII 2023: Should anyone care what Lindsey Graham thinks?

I saw a report that on CNN Sen. Lindsey Graham said of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin: “He’s so naive, I mean I just lost all confidence in this guy.” Old Lindsey is not naive. No, he is so sophisticated that, like Henry Kissinger, he would not hesitate to slaughter innocent people in order to WIN.

Why do they invite this flip-flop, security-risk, senator-for-sale onto television. Whatever opinion he says he has will soon change.

1 XII 2023: Israel and Kissinger, birds of a feather?

We’ve learned that at the end of the cease fire Israel rushed to renew the bombardment of Gaza. We’ve also learned that Israeli intelligence knew all about the planned Hamas attack a year ago and that that Hamas’ preparations for the attack were reported more recently. We’re hearing that the big bugs in Israeli intelligence decided not to take this evidences of Hamas’ fanatic ambitions seriously, because they did not believe that Hamas could achieve what Hamas was planning and preparing to do. This excuse for the intelligence failure makes Israeli intelligence seem not negligent, but virtually criminal.

Or is there another way to view this? Could it be that Israeli intelligence knew all along about the planned attack by Hamas and chose to allow the attack to happen? The attack by Hamas provided Israel with a casus belli for a war against Gaza, a war the goal of which is to expel the Palestinian population from Gaza and annex that region to Israel. To be sure, Hamas is an irredeemably bad lot, but wiping out Hamas is not Israel’s main goal in its aggression against Gaza.

Am I being too suspicious of Israel? The death of that cynical butcher Henry Kissinger reminds of the need to be endlessly suspicious of devotees of Realpolitik.