The president’s lap dog and offensive coordinator, Mr. Stephen Miller, has been yapping about America’s supposed right to annex Greenland. The pathetic swine is going on about our role as a superpower and how we should be pushing America’s weight around. I’m faint with nausea as I write this because that is what this sickening pig does to me. I’ll try to continue.
The prime minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, said recently that Trump’s comments about Greenland and last weekend’s abduction of Nicolás Maduro and his wife will likely lead to the collapse of NATO. NATO, in case half of America was sleeping, was a big part of what kept the world from WWIII during the cold war. But hey, Trump knows better than anyone because he is rich and has nailed down the speaking patterns of an after-dinner speaker in the hotel ballroom. His third-grade intellect is sufficient for his supporters.
There are plenty of sensible people in the USA who absolutely object to what Trump is doing to our beloved homeland and by extension to the world. It appears that his vision for America is in parallel to Putin’s vision of a large and powerful Russian empire. Putin’s ethnic pride pushes him to Russify as much western territory as possible in order to balance the USA and Europe.
Trump is not buggering America by himself. Who are those pathetic souls who grease the fascist machinery behind the scenes? There must be a list of lieutenants who do the planning and conceive of the action plans. Trump is not a detail man. He is the showboat and on-air talent.
The USA elected a mouthy billionaire real estate developer as president- twice -and what is he doing? He is looking for land to develop. He wants to repartition the world to fit his developer’s dream of having the USA pay for his indelible mark on monuments and in future history books. Another one of his businesses is the sale or leasing of his brand- TRUMP. He’ll plaster his brand without fear of recourse because we’ll let him do it. For crying out loud, he is planning to build a triumphal arch. And his supporters continue to tingle in excitement over his feats of strength and disregard for his detractors.
While Trump is casting societal norms into the ditch, we law abiding citizens must tolerate his dishonesty and incompetent mishandling of our historic nation. We tolerate it because we have respect for the constitution and the rule of law. He was twice elected to high office and we have respected his wins. The founders did not anticipate the ultraconservative majority that got elected or appointed to SCOTUS and how the country might be taken down one wall at a time.
Not only does #47 skirt the law but the news media, the fourth estate, who have previously tried to live up to their role in civic life are now conspicuously silent. The founders could not have anticipated the magnitude of trouble electronic media have contributed to a civically immature population.
It is well past time for us by the millions to take to the streets in lengthy and vigorous opposition to the current administration. We must make noise and push back in vast numbers with all of our strength. I know those who would protest with me once but not many who would do it multiple times. Arrest and reprisal must be accepted as untold millions have around the world.
America has been a land of opportunity for anyone who could summon the will power to “make it big.” Now, America is about those who have already made it big and are trying to push closer to trillionaire status. Haul up the ladder, I’m on board. Trump’s wealth has been seen as a sign of business savvy which was thought to transfer seamlessly into governing. So how did that work out?
The downfall of the United States of America is being accelerated by voters too clueless to know otherwise. Democracy is being undone by an idiocrasy from the low side of the bell curve. Citizens too stupid or too lazy to understand America’s place in the world. World history has been heavily documented so there is no excuse for civic ignorance.
Stephen Miller’s psychotic rattling of his stick in the administration’s bucket of shit in front of the White House never ceases to satisfy America’s confederation of fools. What a sad time to be alive.
Manhattan real estate magnate DJ Trump, US President and amateur epidemiologist, has announced that the US will exit the World Health Organization (WHO), according to Reuters.
‘Trump said the WHO had failed to act independently from the “inappropriate political influence of WHO member states” and required “unfairly onerous payments” from the U.S. that were disproportionate to the sums provided by other, larger countries, such as China.’ Reuters, January 21, 2025.
MAGA’s spiritual hero and standard bearer also said that his administration would cease negotiations on the WHO pandemic treaty during the withdrawal process. He still seethes over WHO from his previous administration and claims that they mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic. Trumps words read as pouty and not powerful.
This kerfuffle does not appear to be a bluff. Trump has a long history of refusing to pay contractors who have completed projects for him, claiming that they were attempting to rip him off. This move casts a similar shadow. Even if he personally benefits by the work of others, he has had no trouble stiffing them on their bills. This history of nonpayment blended with his spectacular ignorance of everything technical adds up to this stupid move. His transactional mind is only one dimensional, apparently, and is blind to the importance of WHO. Infectious disease can move beyond national borders and into the US at 500 miles per hour via jet aircraft as was the case of HIV/AIDS. An international entity is needed to intervene, especially in the spread of infectious disease.
One would suppose that the US, as the largest donor to WHO, would have had more leverage in renegotiation on payments or other objectionable issues.
#45-47 is a guy who commuted sentences and pardoned 1500 people who participated in the January 6th, 2021 riot and destructive and illegal entry into the US capitol building. This despite complete video evidence and guilty verdicts. Below is a quote by the QAnon, the horned shaman-
“I JUST GOT THE NEWS FROM MY LAWYER… I GOT A PARDON BABY! THANK YOU PRESIDENT TRUMP!!!” Jacob Chansley, dubbed the QAnon shaman as a reflection of his horned-animal headdress and body paint at the January 6, 2021, riot inside the U.S. Capitol, posted on X shortly after President Donald Trump commuted the sentences of or pardoned all those convicted of crimes related to the events of that day. “NOW I AM GONNA BY SOME MOTHA FU*KIN GUNS!!! I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!!! GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!!” he continued. “J6ers are getting released & JUSTICE HAS COME… EVERYTHING done in the dark WILL come to light!”
So, let the idiot gets his guns. This was his reflex after getting out of prison. Make yer momma proud, bucko.
Thus, a truly ugly chapter continues in the history of our country.
I posted this essay December 19, 2016, and am reposting it with some editing today, November 22, 2024.
Much as I would like to indulge in witty and ironic commentary about the results of the 2016 general election, it would be yet another steaming load of pathetic word paste gumming up the internet. There are no words or sentences you could construct that would make a meaningful difference in the direction our wobbling American culture seems headed for.
I’m left with the conclusion that only civil disobedience can disrupt the unholy congress of corporate media, banking, energy and the foetid red-light district of governmental-industrial conjugation. After all, aren’t the B-school gurus always going on about disruption? It’s good, right?
Could it be that donors and lobbyists amount to a 3rd house of Congress?
Enormous corporations, it seems, no longer have need of our democratic republic. Fortunes are stashed abroad, sheltered in tax havens lest a slice finds its way into public kitty. Corporations benefit from the use of American infrastructure- you know, public education, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Border Patrol, FBI, FDA, NIH, NASA, NSF, public highways, airways, NOAA, etc., etc. Deregulation is creeping forward. We live in a period of reconstruction. Neoliberal doctrines are taking hold in state and federal government.
America has become a big barrel of fish, stunned by the high voltage of short life-cycle consumer goods and ever spiraling planned obsolescence. Neoliberalism seeks to help businesses harvest these fish. We relent and become increasingly compliant with the tightening harness of ever advancing complexity and the cloying whispers of big data and AI.
Neoliberalism has hoped for this moment for decades when a character like Trump and both houses of congress filled with MAGA Republicans take control the government. Project 2025 is a grocery list of desired policy reforms the bastards have been wanting forever. Like the quivering desire of a lusty 18-year-old, capitalism knows only one thing- that it wants more. Always more and in bigger gulps. The acceleration of dollars over time squared must be greater than zero in perpetuity. Our brains soon grow tired of static luxury and comfort. Satisfaction is only transient.
The invisible hand of the market, we’re told, will surely trickle down a baptism of unexpected benefits to the masses, if only the rotten buggers would let the acquisitive 1 % have their way. After all, if your taxes are lower, the first thing a business owner will do is to add hirelings. Right? Wrong. The extra profits will be socked away. Why hire people if demand is level but taxes drop? This libertarian dream was fomented in the early Reagan years as supply-side economics postulated by economist Arthur Laffer and his famous curve.
In the inflationary period we are just coming out of, why not raise your prices 25 % even though your costs have only risen 10 %? If other companies are raising their prices, raise yours by a like percentage to match. Your price increase may be taken by customers as part of the wide-spread inflation. After all, price is what the customer is willing to pay, right? If they are accustomed to inflation elsewhere, maybe they will just pay your new price, bogus as it may be.
The gospel of laissez-faire is practically physics if you listen to the economists and B-school graduates. A force of nature both inevitable and irreducible. Capitalism is fine if you have capital to use. If your capital is your own stoop labor or assembly work, then maybe it isn’t such a great thing.
Taking to the streets is a form of persuasion that has rewarded many movements here and abroad. In thermodynamics, power is the rate at which work is done through the transfer of energy. Anthropological power lies in the ability to allocate and focus resources on a need or desire. Money is power because for a price, you can persuade someone to get most anything done. There is no shortage of those who would step up to the challenge or sell their souls or accept any spiritual disfigurement for the hefty jingle of lucre in their pockets.
If the tin ears of corporate media are deaf to the reasoned voices of those who don’t buy advertising, then what is left for us to do? In this general election cycle a species of disrupter was reelected president. This charismatic fellow can work a crowd like Castro or Hugo Chavez or Mussolini or (add your own dictator)? A large crowd in the spell of a colorful and grandiose orator seeking high office meets the show business (i.e., news) definition of “compelling.” If the event results in fisticuffs or tempers flaring like Roman candles, so much the better. Media is hyper-focused on “compelling”. Either as a savior or a freak show, Trump attracts the eyeballs and pumps up the ratings. He has been on television every day somewhere for over 8 years.
Electronic news broadcasting is to a large extent a freak show. The whole news industry exists because of our irresistible primate compulsion to stand and stare. A key element of a good story is conflict. Look at any movie. The writers take a sympathetic character and do terrible things to them. There is a chase, violence, intrigue and reconciliation with a twisty ending in three acts. Sound familiar? TV is constructed to do this and they are good at it. And it sells. Watch Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent.
Civil disobedience, as opposed to mere picketing, makes meaty footage because there is the possibility of imminent violent conflict. It is compelling. As an exercise in power, though, immediate resolution rarely happens. The power aspect comes to play when and if establishment politicians are forced to face reelection. Often establishment authority is refractory to public scrutiny. But when voter support disappears, it can fold like a lawn chair.
To overcome Trump we must put together compelling footage for broadcast.
To friends in democratic states around the world. As you watch America’s clumsy slouch into an authoritarian/fascist state in real time, take heed. Level-headed Americans are astonished at the ease with which one insane populist has misled a venerable political party to mutate and turn against the foundational principles of our republic. The US has struggled to conduct a capitalistic democratic republic for 250 years. There have been many rough spots since our founding, some reprehensible. What is happening today is the decapitation of a powerful liberal democracy. The USA has been a prolonged experiment in mostly democratic governance where, in principle at least, today the leadership is elected fairly by all the people, not just property-owning white men.
The USA will be the only nation choosing fascism during a period of economic growth, abundant oil & gas and relative peace. Other nations in the world are battling but the US has no combat troops deployed to fight.
Lest anyone think that the MAGA movement was built from the urging of Trump alone, be aware that there has been a population of angry and disenfranchised white Americans for a very long time. Trump was just the seed crystal around which a concentrated population of teabaggers and other white Americans has crystallized. They have somehow been left behind on the road to a modern, prosperous future. If there was an actual trickle down of wealth that Ronald Reagan promised in the 1980’s, they were left high and dry.
We are witnessing a gradual overthrow by a party led by a man who is well understood to be a serial liar and a shameless, malignant narcissist who, in desperation for power and vengeance, will stop at nothing to take control of the USA. There is a word for what is happening- Lawfare, “the use of law as a means of accomplishing what might otherwise require the application of traditional military force“. This was popularized by Major General Charles Dunlap, USAF.
Trump’s immediate goal is getting even with his enemies. If that weren’t bad enough, he is firmly supported by loyal one third of the electorate. Many other Republicans cannot bring themselves to vote for a democrat for various reasons. The rabid supporters are known as MAGA- Make America Great Again– Republicans. These people see Trump as the key to America’s glorious future, but too intoxicated with revolutionary fervor to see Trump for what he really is- a grasping neofascist.
The 20th century was blighted with fascist dictatorships and even fascist organizations within liberal democracies, particularly in the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s. A partial list can be found here. For some reason, the USSR has been omitted from this list. Today, the latest Russian dictator stands out in his attempt to resurrect the power and reach of the Soviet Union, and he must be stopped.
The origins of conservative and libertarian outrage against American progressivism traces back more than a century, even before the era of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal in the mid 1930s. By the end of the 1800’s, political machines and business monopolies were firmly rooted in the landscape of America. The rising middle class eventually overcame much of this through politics.
Some put the American Progressive Era as between 1896 and 1917. Before this period the US was beset with urban poverty, child labor, Victorian era patriarchy, long working hours and unsafe working conditions. Note to MAGAs, was this when America was great??
The New Deal was a series of public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1938, aimed at rescuing the U.S. from the Great Depression.
“Major federal programs and agencies, including the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), the Farm Security Administration (FSA), the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA) and the Social Security Administration (SSA), provided support for farmers, the unemployed, youth, and the elderly. The New Deal included new constraints and safeguards on the banking industry and efforts to re-inflate the economy after prices had fallen sharply. New Deal programs included both laws passed by Congress as well as presidential executive orders during the first term of the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.” Source: Wikipedia.
The 20th century witnessed the United States grappling with a severe depression starting in 1929 which spread worldwide. Later, the US reluctantly engaged in World War II with other allied powers combating Nazi forces in Europe, Africa, and Japanese imperialism in the Pacific. Upon discovering Hitler’s nuclear ambitions, the US, with vital assistance from British and European scientists, developed nuclear weapons using isolated domestic uranium-235 and the synthetic element plutonium-239. Fortunately, the Allied forces managed to defeat the Nazis in Europe in 1945 before the necessity of releasing a nuclear weapon there. By August 9th of that year, Japan was defeated and the war ended. Sadly, it received two atomic blasts.
The US came away from the World War II period full of itself and bursting with optimism. Technologies that were spawned by the war like radar, jet engines, high performance aircraft, industrial production of every kind and a can-do spirit led to a boom in single family homes, babies, and consumerism. By the late 1940’s, television was well along the way and behind it, computers, and new designs in automobiles. Americans were puffed up and excited about modern life while much of Europe and Japan were still cleaning up after the massive devastation caused by the war. The remoteness of North America and its seemingly inexhaustible natural resources left it almost untouched by the war.
By the Reagan years in the early 1980s, religious conservative and libertarian groups were organizing and linking up to form what would become a powerful political machine. This conservative, evangelical Christian Zionist nationalism group has methodically wound itself up and this very day proposes to make the USA into a theocratic state. They have money and fanatical adherents willing to risk a civil war for their faith. They will support the state of Israel to the extent that it makes way for the second coming of Christ. This is the core of Protestant Evangelical Christian eschatology. Like all religious warriers, they believe they are fulfilling God’s very own plan. I think the 21st century is going to be difficult.
Many of us think this would be laughable bullshit if it weren’t so serious. To grease the skids of their feared ‘apocalypse’ involving a final battle in Israel, they see Trump as one who could aid the beginning of this nightmare. To their credit, many confess they will have to hold their noses while voting for him. An apocalypse of sorts may happen, but it is more likely to be of the usual unholy variety.
In eastern Europe, once Trump withdraws US assistance to Ukraine, Putin will do the predictable and step up his plans for the take-down of the Baltic states and Poland as well. Putin is already well underway with his hybrid warfare. His meddling in the US elections is one element of hybrid warfare. The goal is to shake the world’s confidence in liberal democracy.
Once his move has begun, NATO will be obligated to come to their defense. It is hard to predict whether or not the threat of NATO’s backing will fend off a Putin invasion if the US backs out or takes a neutral position to Putin. Putin’s military, already greatly weakened, would be even closer to claiming that the state is in danger of collapse. The collapse of the state is Putin’s criterion for the release of nuclear weapons. NATO will respond in kind to a nuclear threat, and it will likely get out of control.
The US and Russia each have a nuclear triad that requires presidential approval for a strike. Even if the command centers of both countries are in ashes, the ballistic missile submarines will still be mission ready. Imagine, if in a conflict, that the US and NATO will have to rely on Trump and his White House staff to be Commander and Chief of US forces. Trump is a man who, as President, has a long history of ignoring the advice of military specialists preferring to ‘winging’ on his own.
What in Trump’s past behavior and utterances makes anyone confident that he is qualified to make decisions in any other matter of warfare? Should he have access to the nuclear launch codes or to top secret plans?
Of course, there will be military general staff and advisors around him as would be the case if Harris is elected. But Trump was notorious for not reading his daily intelligence reports nor much of anything else. He spent a lot of time on Airforce 1 traveling to play golf at his resorts.
Harris has a disciplined and educated mind as well as the native intelligence and organizational savvy to listen to the experts and make decisions with the best and latest information. Being a district attorney and prosecutor, California Attorney General, California Senator and Vice President, she is well versed in the law at many levels and can be relied upon to follow it.
International friends, protect your liberal democracies from those who would degrade them into autocratic states under the guise of law and order. A democratic republic is messy, noisy and will test your patience. This is not a bug; it is a feature. Rejoice in it.
See that pale blue dot as a single pixel? It is a picture taken by Voyager 1 in 1990 at a distance of 3.7 billion miles from the sun. A band of idiots living there are about to do something very stupid and self-destructive tomorrow, 5 November 2024. Source: Nasa photograph.
There is an interesting substack post by historian and NYU prof. Ruth Ben-Ghiat discussing the latest filing by Special Counsel Jack Smith that was just unsealed and released by Judge Tanya Chutkan. The full 165 page document can be found here. Boiled down, the filing makes the case Trump is not immune from prosecution.
Ben-Ghiat summarizes-
”At its core, the defendant’s scheme was a private one,” the prosecutors’ document reads. “He extensively used private actors and his campaign infrastructure to attempt to overturn the election results and operated in a private capacity as a candidate for office.”
On that basis, the filing argues that Trump is not entitled to the immunity from prosecution granted him by Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and other far-right ideologue-justices of the Supreme Court; that ruling would grant immunity for “official acts” executed as president.
The article goes on to say that Trump uses a ‘personalist’ model of governance where his personal, legal, political and financial needs take precedence over the party and the nation. And his needs are endless. The GOP is his personal storehouse of resources. His close followers are individuals who are strongly loyal to him and his mystique. He can convince others to conduct unsavory or even criminal acts, and when they fail, he’ll find someone else. This is not without precedent in the history of authoritarians.
The word ‘Lawfare‘ seems appropriate to Trump’s method courtroom delays and litigating to the hilt to sow confusion, expense and delay. it works, but is hugely expensive. Trump has been a wellspring of billable hours for the legal profession.
I just read that conservative influencers and even former president Trump have been referring to VP candidate Walz as ‘Tampon Tim’ over the state law mandating free menstrual supplies be available in grades 4-12 in Minnesota schools. The issue for some is that these supplies be made available to all needing access to the products, including transgender students, in whatever restrooms commonly used by students.
Editorial
I grew up in an America where such juvenile and scurrilous name calling would at least be kept out of the public discourse. It fell under the heading of “Mature and Common Decency” that most adults adhered to. That the insulting appellation “Tampon Tim” is being bandied about by a former US president in a presidential campaign watched by the world and being eagerly repeated by news outlets as infotainment. Even worse is the large population of MAGA citizens who accept and even encourage Trump’s troubling behavior. Trump is riding a wave that was already there waiting for someone like him.
Section 1. [121A.212] ACCESS TO MENSTRUAL PRODUCTS. A school district or charter school must provide students with access to menstrual products at no charge. The products must be available to all menstruating students in restrooms regularly used by students in grades 4 to 12 according to a plan developed by the school district. For purposes of this section, “menstrual products” means pads, tampons, or other similar products used in connection with the menstrual cycle.
The response by the Trump horde has been vigorous and execrable. Even #45 himself is calling Walz ‘Tampon Tim’ in the open.
“As a woman there is no greater threat to a woman’s health than leaders … who support putting tampons in men’s bathrooms in public schools,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told Fox News on Tuesday. [Bold typeface mine] Source: CBS News.
Help me trace cause and effect here. ‘As a woman (ok, gender specific here) there is no greater threat to a woman’s health (a threat that could lead to what exactly?) than leaders … who support putting tampons in men’s bathrooms in public schools.’
What is the nature of the threat? Is it more threatening than male violence by murder, rape or physical abuse, because murder, rape and physical abuse is pretty bad already, right? How could a ‘tampon threat’ play out? What could men/boys do with a tampon, a wad of compressed fiber on a string, that would rise above an immature prank? A prank that would likely be played on boys by other boys?
Oh, right. Karoline said that the threat was from ‘the leaders … who support …’. So, what kind of harm could women suffer from a leader who makes free feminine hygiene products available in the public schools? Her statement obviously signals ‘danger’ from tolerance for transgenderism. The matter of gender dysphoria is listed in DSM-5-TR as a recognized condition, but not a mental illness. The Journal Psychiatry has a short and readable paper on diagnosing gender dysphoria. From the article, Gender dysphoria is ‘a marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and primary and/or secondary sex characteristics.’
Conservative protestant evangelical leaders and many GOP politicians who rage about the illegitimacy of gender transition have taken the path of idiocy and are happy to be there. Gender dysphoria is a medically recognized condition based on a minimum set of criteria. Those so afflicted often lead lives of misery that frequently ends in suicide.
This sounds like little more than a regression to the Victorian age taboo about discussing the female body and its physical processes. Or the entire subject of sexuality.
In this case I tend to think that being a female making ridiculous claims about an exclusively female topic does not afford refuge from criticism, but only boils down to a person being a dipshit trying to influence others by stoking brainstem-level fear. This is the usual Republican means of grabbing power.
The top-tier scientific journal Nature published on June 5, 2024, a research paper on the effects of Twitter de-platforming 70,000 accounts providing fake news. Unfortunately for many (most?) of us, online access to Nature is behind a paywall.
I won’t waste time on an analysis of someone else’s brief analysis of the hidden Nature article “Post-January 6th deplatforming reduced the reach of misinformation on Twitter.” Am I too miserly for not paying for a Nature article or a subscription? Yes, I am. I will include a link here to a brief online review article at TechPolicy.press for the readers consideration.
“The report makes clear that the authors could not reliably identify the magnitude of the observed effects due to the complexity of the events surrounding the insurrection and the volume of the news reporting on it, and that the results may not be generalizable to other platforms or events. But while Twitter normally “benefitted enormously from Trump’s volatile tweets” by keeping the platform “at the center of public discourse,” they say, the events at the US Capitol marked a moment of crisis for the company. “January 6th is a moment that highlights the relationship between real-world violence and misinformation, as well as the attempt at purposeful control over political speech on Twitter by its leadership,” the paper reads. In th [sic] moment of crisis, perhaps the bluntest of content moderation tools appears to have had the intended effect.” Source: TechPolicy.Press [Emphasis mine]
Instead of relying on words and handwaving, the authors of the Nature paper above used actual Twitter data from 500,000 users over June 2020 to February 2021 to extract trends about the very complex behavior surrounding the Jan 6th, 2021, event. Again, from the TechPolicy.press article …
“To answer these questions, the researchers used data acquired during the two most recent US election cycles to compare the misinformation sharing rates on Twitter. The 2020 election share rate among all Twitter users was five times higher than in the 2016 elections, and about twice as high among misinformation sharers. Following the November 2020 elections, and up until January 6th, the rates of misinformation remained “relatively high,” which is in direct contrast with the 2016 elections, where misinformation “declined immediately following Trump’s victory.” These results suggest “a marked change in the misinformation ecosystem on Twitter over time,” according to the paper.” Source: TechPolicy.Press [Emphasis mine]
It is interesting how the “misinformation declined immediately following Trump’s victory.” Golly, why would that be?
Note: I’m having a difficult time not posting on the many ways I’m sickened by you-know-who. This is one more but is blessedly short.
To my great chagrin, there are tens of millions of US citizens who can look at the photo below and not sicken at the patronizing spectacle of a former real estate mogul turned reality TV showman’s hamming it up with a clownish embrace of the flag and laying on a fully puckered kiss for good measure. The guy is a one-man traveling burlesque show. This picture is part of his brand.
#45 Smoochin’ Old Glory.
This is a pose cynically staged to appeal to the many citizens who cannot recognize a charlatan when he is standing in front of them. It is an exaggerated and garish display of idolatry posing as patriotism. Patriotism is many things but not this.
Recently Trump has compared his troubles to that of Alexei Navalny, the recently deceased political opponent of Putin. Fox News aired a Trump interview with Laura Ingram where she asked how he is going to pay his enormous legal costs. He described his troubles as “a form of Navalny” and quickly pivoted to his large-scale legal woes. He stated that “We are turning into a communist country in many ways.”
First, 4 grand juries of fellow citizens in 4 jurisdictions indicted him on 91 felony counts. He has been given due process. For, Navalny, not so much. He was poisoned with nerve agent in 2020 (a particularly Russian trick) but managed to survive. Following treatment abroad, he returned to Russia where he was quickly apprehended, convicted and sentenced to 19 years in a maximum security prison for recidivists and those with life sentences for violence.
Source: Google Maps. The Fku-Ik3 facility in Kharp, Russia, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug.
He was sent to penal colony number 3, a distant arctic prison in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. According to Hugh Williamson of Human Rights Watch, “The Russian authorities have abandoned any pretense of justice in dealing with dissenters, and with Navalny they have thrown a litany of charges against him, each more brazenly absurd than the next.
Source: Google maps. Navalny’s Polar Wolf penal colony was in the town of Kharp in north central Russia, as indicated on the map. The town was built by Gulag prisoners in the Stalin era.
The Soviet Union had a large number of Gulags prior to its collapse. The map below shows the locations of the camps. During Operation Barbarossa in WWII, Hitlers army and Himmler’s SS were under orders to kill all Jews encountered and they did. Many non-Jewish Poles, Ukrainians and Belarusians were murdered during Hitler’s advance to Moscow and subsequent retreat. Poland in particular suffered greatly during this time. Some fraction of Jews were sent to various concentration camps but a great many were collected into groups and shot en masse just outside of their villages. As the Red Army moved into Poland killing and pushing the Germans west, Stalin gave orders to take over control of the country and establish a communist government. The participants of the weak non-communist provisional government of Poland were captured and killed by the Soviets and the Polish government was taken over under communist control. Many, many Poles were captured and sent into forced labor in the Gulag system. Poland was savaged by both the Soviets and Germans.
Source: Wikipedia, Gulag. According to Wikipedia, the Soviets had 423 labor camps as of March, 1940. It is said that 18 million people passed through the camps and 1.6 million died due to detention.
As an American, I have been exposed to the history of both the western European and Pacific theaters of WWII. However, the history of Central and Eastern Europe, especially from WWI through WWII has largely been absent in my experience. I just finished reading the 2010 Bloodlandsby Timothy Snyder. Snyder is a Yale historian and writes in detail on the period in the Central and Eastern European regions between the times of the Bolshevik revolution and the end of WWII.
The period of 1932 to 1933 (the Holodomor) in Ukraine is particularly interesting and sheds light on the fear and revulsion Ukrainians must feel at the prospect of once again coming under Russian rule. During this time the Soviets, on orders from the Kremlin in Moscow, blocked any exit from Ukrainian territory and starved the Ukrainians in an effort to speed collectivization. Their agricultural products were stolen leaving Ukrainians to starve. Many tens of thousands were killed or sent to the gulags. Being sent to the gulags entailed being packed into rail cars and shipped off without food or warmth. Sometimes when they arrived, they found that they would be forced to build the prison camp they would be imprisoned in.
Some critics complained that the book presents nothing new. It is after all heavily referenced to extensive existing literature. Nonetheless, it is a very compelling read for we non-scholars. For Americans in general, this bit of history is probably unheard of.
For Trump to compare his “treatment” by the American Justice system to that of Navalny betrays great ignorance of the history and contemporary politics of Russia. His lack of compassion for Ukraine is only a small slice of his overall absence of compassion.
Trump bitches that his troubles are of political origin. I agree, they are. Our democratic republic is in part a political system of government. Citizen voting and the legislative process are inherently political, but adherence to the law require is absolute. This political structure has a built-in justice system based on due process and the presumption of innocence with many checks and balances- perhaps to the point of generousness. Trump and his legal team routinely take advantage of our due process by filing for delays, dismissals, objections, nuances in civil trial procedure and lawsuits for the purpose of delaying judgement. He learned from his first attorney, Roy Cohn, former chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy. Trump and his squad of attorneys are very good at it. Trump is a very ignorant and narcissistic man-child who attracts national news coverage because of his outrageous behavior. It’s cheaper than advertising, just like in the 2016 campaign. For him to compare his predicament to that of Alexei Navalny is preposterous. In Trump’s portfolio of legal trouble, where there is smoke, there is fire.
Handing over the presidency of the USA again to Trump would be a tragic mistake that might not be recoverable.
As expected, New Hampshire Republicans rallied for their Golden Calf yesterday. Naturally, media people are using this to boldly predict the future. I’ve had to abandon NPR because they are serving wall-to-wall election coverage as though nothing else has happened. Despite the years of legal actions against the Orange Jesus, his popularity endures and Republican politicians and candidates continue to rally around him, hoping some of magic rubs off on them.
In interviews, Trumpsters confidently say that things were better during his presidency than under Biden’s despite what the numbers say about the economy at present. Even though inflation has dropped from 9.1 % to 3.2 % over the last year according to the AP, many consumers apparently expect prices to come down as well. Are the Trumpsters really upset about the economy or are they just angry that he lost the 2020 election?
“We don’t care about no stinkin’ 91 felony indictments. Yes, he’s committed fraud and sexual assault. But, but, but he is going to drain the swamp and halt immigration!!”
Reducing prices is not something that business people will do to make life easier for people. What industry will be the first to reduce their prices willingly because it is a “nice idea?” Prices are always set to what the customer is willing to pay. A common nightmare of a business person is that they may have left money at the table during a negotiation or a sale. Businesses charge as much as they can all the time. People who leave money at the table are not the people who rise into the thin air of the C-suite of business.
During the pandemic, supply chain interruptions helped trigger inflation. Businesses ratcheted up their prices to grow or maintain their margins. Many businesses had to raise their prices because their costs had risen, but not evenly across the board. Why waste a good opportunity to raise prices if others are doing it? For essentials, consumers soon adapted to it because they had little choice. Strangely, the economy has shown unexpected vigor during this inflationary period. Some products like pickup trucks and real estate, however, are suffering badly.
Along comes the Federal Reserve to slay the dragon of inflation. They pulled their one big tool out of its sheath for staunching inflation- raising interest rates. And so they did with success. The down-side is that it hurts those seeking a mortgage or other loans due to increased interest rates.
Another effect of the pandemic is the continuing trend of employees working from home. According to one source, the 1Q23 vacancy rate for NYC office space was 22.2 %. Remote work activity has caused businesses to reconsider the size of the office space they are leasing. Many are opting not to automatically renew their leases in favor of leveraging better terms or outright downsizing their space requirements. The new workforce shift has had a negative effect on surrounding businesses who rely on the daily flood of office workers to buy lunch and shop. It also has a big effect on the owners of office buildings who likely had business models and loans relying on higher occupancy rates. The knock-on effect is that the banks who made the commercial loans to the office building owners are beginning to see an increase in loan defaults. Commercial borrowers also face significantly higher interest rates than they started out with. News reports are very pessimistic for a reprieve in the near term.
The term that was coined for this is the urban “doom loop.” Reduced office occupancy leads to reduced tax revenue for municipalities who supply services like transit, police and street maintenance. But I don’t want to spoil it- Google “urban doom loop.”
Back to the Golden Calf.
I would offer that there is a portion of the grand American bell curve that probably shouldn’t be left in charge of a vast international economic and nuclear superpower wielding a military machine the likes of which the world has never seen before. Further, I would offer that just possibly many of the followers of #45 are comfortably squatting on that side of the bell curve.
As I see it, the Golden Calf getting back into office will adversely swerve the fate of Europe, the Balkan and the Baltic states into direct conflict with an expanding Russian Empire. Putin is obviously trying to reestablish and reenergize the reach of the former Soviet Union. He has little care for the lives of Russian soldiers as they fight and die on the battlefield, and even less for those who defy his wishes. They are expendable in the grand scheme of a Great Russian Empire of Tsar Putin.
The State of Ukraine traces back to October of 1917 when the Bolsheviks tried to capture Kyiv and failed. By January of 1918 the Ukranian revolutionary parliament declared the formation of Ukrainian People’s Republic. After much conflict, Ukraine was made part of the USSR.
In the 1930’s there was the Holodomor, or the “Great Ukrainian Famine” of 1932-33 with continued mass killing and exile of Ukrainian Kulaks to the east for the rest of the decade. The collectivization forced on Ukraine was brutal. Many thousands of Ukrainians were exiled to the east and disappeared. As Hitler invaded Poland and continued with Operation Barbarossa to Moscow, his plan to exterminate Jews went with him. The wholesale slaughter of Jews in Poland and Ukraine wasn’t limited to the concentration camps. Villages were captured by the Nazis and Jewish citizens were marched by the many tens of thousands into the woods and executed by a bullet to the head, falling into pits where they would be buried. No age or gender was spared. Hitler gave orders to Himmler to carry out the Final Solution in eastern Europe and Russia and he did with a vengeance.
A large scale international concern is with Putin’s latest invasion of Ukraine. Russia has a long history of conflict with Ukraine starting after the Bolshevik Revolution. Putin does not recognize their sovereignty and further claims that there is no Ukraine, only Russia. He seeks to establish the boundaries of the former Soviet Union and Ukraine is the first step. To allow Putin to conquer Ukraine will enable him to go after the Baltic states, the Balkans and Poland along with their manpower and resources to fortify the depleted Russian military-industrial complex.
Trump has a record of stating his disinterest in protecting the European Union and remaining in NATO. American retreat from the EU and NATO would only serve to telegraph to Putin that the US will not interfere with further Russian conquests. A massive Russian dictatorship butted up against western Europe will not lead to an enduring peace. A Russian dictatorship the size of the USSR will be no friend of the western powers.
An America that withdraws from international affairs is an America in steep decline. After all that we have accomplished and learned, under Trump and his ilk we will step down from our international platform and slink away into some imaginary Libertarian Southern Baptist utopia with the inmates running the asylum. No thank you.
The election of Trump has a ghastly downside for western civilization that is largely kept quiet by the popular media. In their desire to portray fairness, they tend to avoid topics like this for fear of the accusation of bias..
Lamentations on Chemistry 