In 1921 Miss Mary MacSwiney was touring the United States to promote popular support for the Irish Republic. In an address given in Saint Louis at that time Mary MacSwiney said:
“I am speaking to you from the soul of liberty-loving Ireland to the soul of liberty-loving America. And on the day that America ceases to extend her hand of friendship and hospitality to oppressed people, on that day, indeed, America will lose her soul.”
It’s in the works, you can see it coming. Trump is going to start a war with Iran and is ready to send 120,000 American soldiers, if needed. And why does he want a war? Because war covers a multitude of sins. He needs a war to distract the country from his own criminality and ineptitude and from the corruption in which he has ensnared all around him.
Just look at what 9/11 did for George W. Bush. He was well on his way to becoming a joke but 9/11 made him, for the time being anyway, “President-beyond-Criticism.”
The news reports a scheme by that little shit Stephen Miller to round up some 10,000 immigrants in ten different American cities in a blitz of ethnic cleansing. The only obstacle to execution of his scheme was the hesitation of top D.H.S. officials whom Trump immediately fired as being too weak, though it seems that their objection was that the immigration police and concentration camps could not accommodate so many prisoners at this time.
What is the basis of Miller’s persecution of immigrants? Is it the fact that they are breaking the law? I doubt he cares any more about the law than Trump. Does he believe, with Laura Ingraham, that immigrants are a threat to white supremacy, and that the U.S. must be cleansed of these inferior people? Or has he taken such a hardline about immigration merely to show his gratitude to the crypto-white-supremacists who have been his sponsors and patrons? Whatever his motive, he clearly believes that you cannot make an omelet without breaking up families.
We’re hearing rumblings from the left and from Trump and associated crazies about Facebook’s banning Alex Jones, Laura Loomer, Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, and other sociopaths from its facilities. This is viewed by some as a blow or, at least, a menace to freedom of speech.
I think there is here an underlying assumption that freedom of speech implies a guarantee of audience. Now no one can stop me from going into Kirkwood Park, setting up a soapbox, and denouncing Monothelitism vehemently and at length, but I think that only a substantial cash incentive could provide me with an audience.
The worst threat to freedom of speech these days is that society allows semi-criminal rabble rousers such free access. It is virtually routine for totalitarian movements to subvert and destroy democracy by exploiting the freedoms that democracy guarantees.
I cannot propose an answer to the dilemma that this presents, but I can say that unless our democracy finds a way to obviate or moderate the voices of hate-mongering and uninhibited deceit in the public sphere, they will tear us apart.
A posting on the Psychology Todayblog by Dr. Vinita Mehta entitled “Is there a Criminal Mind? What Does It Look Like?” provides the following description of the antisocial: “A putative definition of antisocial personality disorder states that it is a mental health condition in which a person has ‘a long-term pattern of manipulating, exploiting, or violating the rights of others.'” To the question of what people with an antisocial personality are like, Dr. Mehta replies: “antisocial offenders with borderline personality disorder are emotionally reactive, unable to regulate emotions, bereft of cognitive empathy (knowing how the other person feels), rageful, and reactively aggressive.”
When I stop and ask if there is anyone I know who exhibits these indications of antisocial personality disorder, I think immediately of our President Donald Trump.
The partial publication of the Mueller Report fails, I think, to settle much of anything. Of course, the Trump crowd will continue to tell lies – oops, will continue to speak in the “heat of the moment.” Trump will continue to try to rule by impulsive diktat. His critics will nurse their impotent anger and the Republicans in Congress will continue to play “Let’s make believe that Trump is not a monster.”
I may have been unduly influenced by all the talk of conspiracies and intrigues, but I cannot keep from wondering, at least momentarily, if anyone at all really meant for the Report to settle anything. The Report will very likely end up as more wet paper thrown onto the garbage fire that is American political life.
I was impressed by Trump’s answers to the Special Counsel’s questions. These answers show either that his use of English is not limited to the verbal grunts of his public speaking or that with enough money you can hire lawyers to write English for you. I was also struck by Trump’s fierce indignation at any who told the truth about him expressed in terms “spying” and “treason.” We will hear more of spying and treason as time goes on.
When he was just a little boy Trumpy figured out that he could get a rise from adults who preferred to ignore him only by saying something dreadful and/or untrue. He has not changed at all, as can be seen in his latest attacks on Repp. Omar and Pelosi.
I might say that we should ignore him – that’s what one does with children who behave like Trumpy. Healthy children usually get the message and give up their anti-social behaviors. But for little hard-core haters, attention-getting and giving offense are more important than anyone’s good opinion, because outrageous behavior and its rewards are their security. And so, when they find they are ignored the terminally insecure will escalate their anti-social behavior, figuring that if a little bit once worked, a larger dose will probably get the desired result.
So I am afraid that if all truly patriotic people were to frustrate Trump’s attention-seeking devices, Trump would try to broaden the divisions in American society, or start a war with Iran, or launch missiles at North Korea, would do anything his childish mind suggests in order to retain the world’s attention.
We are now hearing demands that reparations be paid to the descendants of black slaves. But why slaves only? If the United States should decide to pay reparations to all the groups it has subjected to genocide, starvation, exile from home, slavery and wage-slavery, the list would be a very long one. But the American establishment tolerates, even encourages a penitential preoccupation with black slavery in order to deflect attention from our many other atrocities on which a scab has hardly yet formed.
In his latest denunciation of the amorphous enemy he calls “the elite” Trump is quoted as bragging “I have a better education than them, I’m smarter than them.” Enough said?
Trump has tweeted that the U.S., against all world opinion, is going to declare the Golan Heights Israeli property. In doing so he is trying to make legitimate Israel’s seizure of this territory by conquest in 1967. This is virtually to say that if you steal something and hang on to it long enough it must be yours.
In our case, the United States has held on to territories stolen from the indigenous peoples of North America and lands seized from the state of Mexico. We’ve shown greater restraint with more recent conquests. On Cuba we have only “leased” the Guantanamo Naval Base to serve as part of the federal penitentiary system. We have not yet annexed Puerto Rico because we are not sure that we want it. We have given the Panama Canal Zone back to the locals because we no longer needed it.
This fiat of Trump’s gives comfort to our fellow thieves, Israel and Russia. So I predict we will see new and greater landgrabs by Israel and the annexation of the Baltic states by Putin. We are in no position to object.