10 IV 2019: Reparations to whom?

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.

21 III 2019: Golan Heights, Spanish America, Crimea

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.

18 III 2019: Portrait of a Leader

I came upon the following in the Wikipedia site “Big lie.” The first is from an OSS Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler and the second from Henry A. Murray Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler: With Predictions of His Future Behaviour and Suggestions for Dealing with Him Now and After Germany’s Surrender:

His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

Never admit a fault or wrong; never to accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time; blame the enemy for everything that goes wrong; take advantage of every opportunity to raise a political whirlwind.

Who could read these and not think at once of President Trump. Trump does not quite conform to the “concentrate on one enemy at a time” rule, but, of course, Hitler did not have Twitter. To avoid pathologizing Hitler, we can say that he was an “unconventional politician” which is the way Republicans describe our President.

17 III 2019: Donny Dogwhistle

[I wish a happy St. Patrick’s Day to all who care.]

1) Trump has urged Fox Mendax to put Janine Pirro back on the air. So now he’s a television critic? No. He is just expressing a personal preference for Islamophobes.

2) CNN reports: “The President is not a white supremacist,” Mulvaney said on ‘Fox News Sunday.’ “I’m not sure how many times we have to say that.” 

I do not care how often he says this, he cannot make it true. Trump’s entire campaign was an appeal to white supremacists whom he tells they are losing control of “our country.” Mr. Mulvaney would have us think that Donny Dogwhistle’s presenting himself as a white supremacist who cares only for white supremacists does not make him a white supremacist as well. Trumpian logic at its best!

9 III 2019: Democratic Party

I read today a title on the CNN site: “8 times Democrats clashed with each other since taking power.” It has always been this way with Democrats. Will Rogers’ description of the Democrats remains accurate: “I don’t belong to an organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”

I insist on calling it “the Democratic Party” resisting an emerging anti-grammatical trend to call it “the Democrat Party.” I recall that years ago President Eisenhower and other Republicans of that era tried calling it “the Democrat Party,” and that President Harry Truman commented that it was fine for them to take two letters from “Democratic” if he could subtract two letters from the name of the opposition, making it “the Publican Party.”

5 III 2019: The Grand Rally of the Right

I’ve read accounts and seen films of the Annual Rally of the CPAC. What a rally it was! Haters of every retrograde persuasion were there in the audience. I did not notice any neo-Nazis or white supremacists, but if they were not there in person, they were surely well represented in spirit. The Congress recalled the Nuremberg rallies in the animal enthusiasm of the audience who were all wearing party-issue MAGA hats. When their Grand Wizard finally came on stage he began by humping the flag, just as Hitler used to grope the Nazis’ sacred Blutfahne (Blood Flag). There was an illustrious program of speakers who would be an embarrassment anywhere else. Though this was a man’s gathering, a lot of women were allowed to speak, like slaves making a commercial for leg irons. I’m sure there must have been at one point a moment of silence to commemorate the fallen heroes of the movement like Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Strom Thurmond.  The congress was a huge success, and coming when it did, it crowned the Leader’s foreign affairs triumph in Viet Nam.

1 III 2019: Socialists plan to undermine the U.S.A.

The news reported the address by Sebastian Gorka to the Conservative Political Action Conference in which he bellowed that the American “socialists” (that is, of course, dogwhistle for democrats) want to take away Americans’ hamburgers, rebuild their homes, and take away their pickup trucks. Well he has put his finger on the three major threats to American freedom. These socialists probably also to take away your right to shoot at road signs, take away your 50 cal. machine gun, take away your snuff, and forbid you to spit on the floor.

I suppose the warning about hamberders came straight from the White House, that about your homes from the asbestos industry, and pickup trucks … well it is not true that all ass-holes drive large pickup trucks, nor that all pickup trucks are driven by assholes, but I cannot help feeling that there must be some vital connection there.

28 II 2019: Post-disgrace Depression

Rep. James Jordan and Rep. Mark Meadows, members of the “Freedom Circus,” are trying to atone for their disappointing performances at the Cohen hearing by crying “perjury” and calling out the F.B.I. after Cohen.  These congressmen are among Pres. Trump’s warmest supporters and thus dedicated to the disinterested pursuit of truth.

Jordan is a sometime wrestling coach from OSU where he asserted a preternatural unawareness of the sexual abuse going on all around him. Mark Meadows, the one who brought the black manikin to the Cohen hearing, has been himself the object of a House investigation. In 2018 he was fined a substantial amount by the House Committee on Ethics in a case that began with reports of his Chief-of-Staff’s “inappropriate behavior” with female employees. Of course, Rep. Meadows, like Rep. Jordan, was himself wholly unaware of his Chief-of-Staff’s notorious behavior. But now, these are watchful men who notice everything and know how to sniff out deceit.