Category Archives: History and Politics

Correction about Biden’s prior presidential runs

Biden did not run, as I mistakenly wrote a week or two ago, for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984, though one delegate loved him so much that a vote was cast for him at the 1984 convention.  In 1988 Biden “inadvertently” plagiarized a very fine speech by a British Labor Party politician (he wished afterwards that he’d simply added the guy’s name before passing off his quotes as his own).   He dropped out after the story broke, but got almost 1% of the delegates at the convention.

The Electable Mr. Biden’s 2008 run (from Wikipedia):

During the campaign, Biden focused on his plan to achieve political success in the Iraq War through a system of federalization. He touted his record in the Senate as the head of several congressional committees and experience in foreign policy. Despite a few notable endorsements, Biden failed to garner significant support in opinion polls, and was marred by controversial comments made while campaigning. He ultimately dropped out of the race on January 3, 2008, after coming in fifth place and capturing less than 1% of the vote in the Iowa caucus.[4]

Of course, this is not 2008.  This is Germany in the fall of 1932.   Unlike the current president, Mr.Biden has given no indication that if he could, he would become Hitler.  Biden has not openly expressed hatred of any ethnic or religious group.   He is famous for his public affability, in stark contrast to the snarling psychopath who, during a frightening pandemic, is busily tweeting about Hillary Clinton’s emails and Benghazi, and his renewed determination to finally get to the truth about the most dangerous woman in America, outside of Rosie O’Donnell.    

Of course, we could do worse than Biden (Trump).   We also deserve better (any one of several of the other Democratic candidates).  The time will come, because the scales are heavily weighted in favor of corporate interests, whose voices speak infinitely louder than everybody else’s combined, when we will have to hold our noses and vote for this seemingly pleasant chap who has also authored and supported some hateful laws and policies (Crime Bill,  Welfare Reform, War in Iraq, et al).   That time is not yet.   At the very least, Biden needs to be pushed as far as possible from his smiling cooperation with former segregationists, his draconian positions toward poor people, his generally vague policy positions, his inability to apologize for something as grotesque as his part, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in allowing Anita Hill to be publicly humiliated and her testimony dismissed.

To me, Biden’s inability to apologize for not protecting Hill during the Clarence Thomas “high tech lynching” is the single most despicable thing about this affable, smiling man whose best friend was the coolest black dude to ever inhabit the White House.   Joe’s ready to challenge critics to fist fights, as he did last week while campaigning in a factory when someone questioned his commitment to the sacred Second Amendment.  Saying to Hill “I wish there was more I could have done”– when he was chairman of the committee whose members did their best to publicly humiliate and discredit the woman who came forward to testify about her sexual harassment at the hands of the Black Klansman, merits a swift shot in the kisser.

Of course, most politicians are self-aggrandizing scumbags, many are outright psychopaths, no question.   Still.   We deserve better than this guy, though, obviously, even he is way, way better than this unredeemed sicko we have there now.  When the time comes hopefully two out of three Americans will hold their noses and click Biden, rather than the immature, churlish man who has made America so great, for the chosen few, these last few years.  If Biden wins by 15,000,000 votes, it will make a statement.   Even if Trump’s quants once again game the Electoral College, this time by a total of say 8,000 votes in three key states (as opposed to his whopping 78,000 vote Electoral College mandate in 2016).   

Remember, boys and girls, there was a very good reason the final say of who will be the president was left to the wealthiest citizens.  Left up to the majority, the right of the richest to employ slave labor might have been in trouble decades before the Civil War!

Red Baiting 101

Some tropes never go out of style.  If, for example, you in any way criticize the corrupt excesses of the largely unregulated “Free Market” and the political culture that enables them, most often you will be shouted down as a Communist, a Red, an apologist for the mass murders of Mao, Stalin, a defender of a failed ideology, an Un-American who hates our freedom.    It is an idiotically un-nuanced counter-attack to legitimate criticism of a power structure that openly favors the liberty of a few super-privileged individuals over the best interests, or even mere survival, of the vast majority of the earth’s population.   

You would think that an attack so simplistic, stupid and one-sided would simply stop working over time.  You’d be wrong to think that.   Some tropes never go out of style.   Check out Mike Bloomberg, a hideous modern-day avatar of the Eternal Jew of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, for example.    As despots have proved over and over, if an argument is made continually in the mass media, spoken by everyone, even some dissenters, and repeated in endless variations, the argument itself need not be particularly coherent to find itself on everyone’s lips.

The argument, for example, that Bernie Sanders could never be elected in America because he represents a vicious and failed extremist ideology that America finally defeated once and for all,  is advanced in sometimes subtle ways.

Here’s a nice one two punch from yesterday’s New York Times, often cited as the even-handed journal of record:

Screenshot_20200310-054522_NYTimes

So, we can see now, reading the thoughtful, nuanced, authoritative account in the NY Times,  that really only desperate people, America’s biggest losers, cling to the appeal of this Democratic Socialist and his promises to continue fighting for greater justice for all.   Most reasonably successful people, of course, (and it goes without saying) will have a more nuanced view of what’s really  important in the upcoming existential battle to unseat President Caligula.   They all know that “moderation” is the only way to defeat an “immoderate” presdient.   

As for Sanders’ call for paid health care as a human right for all Americans (including those hopeless desperados who are his loyal base) ?  The New York Times has that one covered too — won’t happen, forget about it, losers:

Screenshot_20200310-054544_NYTimes

 

The great Jeremy Scahill lays out, with great clarity, how Red Baiting works and how it’s being used against the Sanders campaign, here   in less than ten minutes.   Very much worth taking in.

I would weep for my country, but I’m too busy creating new dance grooves on my tenor ukulele and channeling the spirit of the martyred saint of the fucking First Amendment ,Mr. Lenny Bruce… 

On an IV of your favorite pleasure drug

I was thinking about the one percent again after hearing John Oliver cite experts for the proposition that 2% of vulnerable victims of Coronavirus, COVID19,  die of the disease.   A 2% death rate is not as bad as the 3.4% I heard just days ago, you have to like your odds of survival, but, still, you’re talking about millions of dead, potentially.   Even at a 1% death rate poor management of the crisis would, in ordinary times, be a death sentence to a political leader who grossly bungles the serious duty under the pressure of actual emergency events.   

Luckily for those in power, the vast majority of Americans, deadened by years of increasingly painful political malice and legislative deadlock, regard politics, even now, as a grim spectator sport they can keep track of on their phones.  They are desperate not to find themselves living in a dictatorship, they are merely realistic about their options for having any actual say in actually avoiding it.  They have no clue how to organize, how to militate, how to demand concessions from power by the sheer force of mass mobilization, power yielding nothing without a powerful demand [1].

The reasons authoritarians always rely on police power for social control is that when enough people are pushed to the point of desperation, anger builds. Dictators harness this anger and release it as police rage on fellow citizens.   Works for the ruling few, if not for the teeming masses.

The essential skill everyone of us needs to figure out is how to organize with fellow citizens, how to gather our forces and discuss the best way forward, speaking to the powerful in a clear, strong voice.    The only change worth fighting for is change worth fighting for, to state the obvious yet never stated.   Is it worth fighting for a legal end to involuntary servitude that will go into effect one hundred years in the future?   I think 1% would buy that idea.

Speaking of one percent, here’s a fun one.  Put one billion in your calculator. Assume the least sophisticated billionaire in history, on a full-time IV of his favorite pleasure drug, has his money in a series of FDIC insured bank accounts making 1% interest.  Tap those numbers in and you will see what even this drugged out idiot earns in simple interest in one year:  $10,000,000.   Almost a million a month, not bad for a complete dope!   Of course, at 5% the annual earning would be $50,000,000, a significant sum by any reckoning,  and at 10% a hefty and very livable $100,000,000 a year in interest, but, of course, those are just numbers.  No reason to get excited.

 

[1]  Frederick Douglass, genius and good twitter friend of @donaldjturnip

 

 

Mary and DonaldRump and DadTrump siblings

Perspective on Unlimited Campaign Money and (self-funded) Billionaire Presidential Campaigns

Just to make this one perplexing fact about our political system a bit more clear.  

One billion dollars is a thousand million dollars.  It looks like this:  $1,000,000,000.00.    

Mike Bloomberg, for example, has about this amount of money:  $60,000,000,000.00.  

He plans to boldly spend at least $500,000,000.00 in paid campaigning by “Super Tuesday” when more than a dozen states are simultaneously in play, along with 33.8% of delegates nationwide..  He is already closing in on that half billion number, having passed $350,000,000.00 already.  Take out your calculator.

If candidate Bloomberg spends $500,000,000.00 for ads and staff to help him win maximum delegates toward the Democratic presidential nomination on Super Tuesday, what percentage of his fortune does he spend?

To divide those numbers, first move the 5 of $500,000,000 over five places. You can see at once what an insignificant fraction that half billion actually is to someone with sixty billion.  If it was $600,000,000, we could see at a glance the percentage of sixty billion would be about 1%.

Placing the numbers into a calculator gives us our mathematical answer:  .0083%   One half a billion dollars equals .0083% of Mike Bloomberg’s personal fortune.  That’s a shade under 1%.   If he felt like spending a billion, that would be 1.66% of his personal fortune.  An unprecedented $5,000,000,000.00 presidential campaign expenditure would be 8.3% of his wealth.

For the equivalent for the “average” citizen, with $10,000 in savings, that $500,000,000 Bloomberg expenditure is $83.   Chump change by any calculation.  If you have $1,000 the equivalent amount would be $8.30 — it would hardly break the bank.  On a personal fortune of $100 it would cost you 83 cents.

As far as the rest of the story on Mike Bloomberg, a man who bought a third NYC mayoral term after being blocked by term limits, I will return here eventually for a full treatment of Mike Bloomberg, a vicious, smooth-talking,  weasel-dicked motherfucker.  As for what Bloomberg will do as president, I can confidently tell you he’d be basically Trump with a brain.

American history master Robert Caro observed that the only accurate way to tell what somebody would do if they had power is to watch them exercise power when they actually have it.   LBJ had all of his segregationist buddies fooled for all those years, during his climb, as he built his national Senate majority,  when the time came he betrayed them all by signing legislation to once again enforce century-old constitutional rights for Coloreds.  LBJ paid a big price, politically and personally, but, as Caro points out, signing that equality and expansion of the New Deal legislation was what he wanted to do all along, if he ever got the power to do it.  The proof is that, in spite of the tremendous forces against it, he actually did it when he had the power to.   Politicians will do and say almost anything to get votes and campaign funds, it’s what they do in power that tells you what you really need to know before you cast a ballot.   We have a fat book here in New York City on Mike as mayor of New York City, pretty much a piece of shit from start to finish.  I have a few details that I’d like to have more well-known (and will do in coming days).

I heard a pundit say, correctly, that this longtime Republican, Bloomberg, should be spending his vast fortune to secure the Republican nomination against Trump.   Mayor Mike knows that would not be possible in the fearful cult of Trump that is currently the Republican party.   So he runs as a Democrat, with the advantages of a demoralized, terrified Democratic electorate,  a compliant mass media squelching meaningful public discussion of social and environmental justice during the presidential campaign, a desperate, willing DNC (one that won’t even allow the candidates to debate the best ways to deal with the escalating climate crisis) and unlimited funds, from his own money that he made entirely by himself, with no help from anybody.  

Realpolitik, baby, the name of Mike Bloomberg’s sickening game.   The practical art of attaining and wielding power divorced from moral, ethical, ideological or any other consideration, outside of gaining and maintaining power.  Only in 2020 America, kids.  Where the 1% can spend less than 1% to become a serious contender for heavyweight champion of the world.

 

 

 

The Role of Malice in our Culture

The phrase “politics of resentment” has been used to describe the bravura style of mass influence employed by demagogues Mussolini and Hitler who harnessed the grievances and resentment of people screwed by the powerful.   What does a resentful audience respond to?  Strong expressions of undisguised malice.

We will hang these traitors from lamp posts!   (huge applause)   We will punish each of these sick and audacious criminals with a slow painful death!  (chant)   We will not let these rapists get away with their crimes against the innocents among us!  (grunts of approval)  The day of our long-denied vengeance has finally arrived!  (fists pump)  Lock her up!  (chant) etc.

Malice is all that remains when every other imaginable avenue of improving a situation is blocked.   You could call malice a  moral failing, a failure of imagination, or a character flaw, but it has its psychological uses.   Malice, which is aggressive and directed outward toward a hated enemy, is seen by most people as a more vital emotion than hopelessness, an inward focused depressed admission of defeat in a rigged game.  

Malice gives the illusion of power.  You say I’m powerless?  FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT, I’LL KILL YOU!    Feels better than “Jesus, you’re right, there really is nothing I can do after being fucked the way I was…” doesn’t it?  An illusory feeling of manliness, since malice, which feeds on a sense of worthlessness, only diminishes a person, though it’s seen preferable to an admission of hopelessness to most people, I suspect.

Arguing based on malice, which easily takes Reason out of the discussion, explains a lot about our politics today.  Mr. Trump is a master of malice.  He comes by his maliciousness the old fashioned way– hopeless envy of others.   He comes by this honestly.   He was not his father’s first choice to run the family business.   He was a spiteful little bully, and not the smartest of the five children, by a long shot.  The first born, dad’s favorite, was not cut out to be the ruthless steward of his father’s fortune, he broke his father’s heart and died a broken man himself.  The fourth born, the second male in line, the spiteful little bully who kept acting out, was sent away to military academy to learn self-discipline and to “man up”, then kept out of the wartime draft by a powerful father who was grooming him, relentlessly and demandingly, to take over his empire.    

Mr. Trump squandered everything his father gave him, more than $400,000,000 in today’s dollars.  Then he tried to take control of the family fortune before his father was dead (he was deep in debt and needed the money).  His father exerted himself one last time, had his lawyers stop his impetuous and hotheaded son from wasting the rest of the family fortune.  When the old man died, Mr. Trump ignored his father’s wishes that the Trump properties stay in the family and sold off his father’s entire empire at a loss.  He needed the money.  Taking a hit of a few hundred million did not seem that big a deal, in light of the circumstances.  He and his sisters and little brother all did very well, the proceeds of the sale, although the properties were sold at a steeply discounted price, made all of them very, very wealthy.  Vast wealth is never enough for someone filled with malice.

Trump has to realize, on some level, that he is not a very good businessman.   He was a blustering snake oil salesman, trying one scam after another to increase his fortune, to shore up his losses in bad deals and foolish decisions in his other businesses.  He was a failure in every business he set up, declaring bankruptcy several times.  He had the fabulous good luck of “Reality TV”.   At the time he was approached by TV producers about fronting a show about his fabulous life he admits he was virtually broke.  Pointing to a homeless bum on the street near Trump Tower he reportedly told his daughter Ivanka (according to them both) that he was basically in the same boat as that worthless fucker.

Then he got to play his dream version of himself on TV.   A winner who never made a wrong move, ever.  A sought-after mentor to the most ambitious contestants on his zero-sum winner-take-all show.   He was transformed, by “reality TV”, from a wealthy attention seeking jackass to an icon of American success, America’s greatest winner.  Millions watched him play this character on TV, waited for him to deploy his winning catch phrase every week as he eliminated another contender to be his apprentice.  Somehow “you’re fired” resonated with millions of downtrodden Americans who apparently lived vicariously through Trump’s gold-plated persona.  Go figure.  Building this carefully stage managed image of himself as the smartest businessman in America was his greatest achievement.   He owes his great success to a great network television production team and to his own his ability to harness and channel malice.   At malice, he is simply the best.

The Brutal Politics of US vs. Them

Yale Historian Timothy Snyder, author of the 2016 On Tyranny,  has been all over media lately, analyzing our ravaged nation’s rapid slide toward open autocracy.   His quote on the lesson of history resonates strongly with my own view on the matter — since the future is entirely an exercise, to those who still insist on our agency as citizens of a democracy, in imagining possibilities, informed by knowledge of the past:

[H]istory does not repeat. But it does offer us examples and patterns, and thereby enlarges our imaginations and creates more possibilities for anticipation and resistance.[19]

I recently saw his 2018 talk at Harvard on youTube.  Snyder lays out the recent history of the politics of US vs. THEM, the dividing line of current Western politics (not only in the U.S. but Hungary, Turkey, UK, Brazil, India, etc.)  He discusses how a politics based on defining friend and enemy, (with the appropriate treatment for each category), is antithetical to  the democratic goal of a rules-bound politics of consensus, a system of institutions and laws designed to protect the weak and restrain the impulse of the powerful to favor friends and punish enemies. 

Snyder cites our increasing reliance on the internet as the biggest single factor fostering this Us and Them oversimplification of the world and the rightward distortion of our politics.  He argues that the unreal online world of the internet has been the biggest single factor in flattening a complicated three dimensional world into a largely self-affirming two-dimensional one.   

Rather than increasing our critical abilities, with our unprecedented access to the total accumulated information of the world, our online lives have flattened our range of exploration by instantly and robotically providing us opinions and glosses that affirm our preconceptions.   The internet now serves us personalized content tailored to what the algorithms know we already prefer.  The hours most of us spend on online every day deaden our ability to reason our way to conclusions based on actual facts, real things that actually happened in the real, three-dimensional interactive world.  Time spent online, in a virtual cocoon of like-minded opinion, also saps our will to meet other humans in the real world to strategize with and take concerted action with.  

In cyber space it is easy to magnify certain things while disappearing others.  In an immersive cyber world it is fairly easy to erase the very real problems confronted by the actual humans who make up the abstract, hated “Them” — rendering “them” nonexistent.  Millions of desperate refugees fleeing real atrocities and climate disasters in far away countries?  Their existence and their terrible dilemmas can easily be erased on the internet, reducing them solely to their emotional use in tropes, memes and bots shaping “our” opinion toward “them.”

If you stay in your internet silo the chances for real-world participation start to seem less real than the stimulating and addictive interactions (with humans or bots, one never knows) you can constantly have on-screen.   I had a dramatic example of this recently, in trying to leave the online space for human interaction in the real world.  I was disappointed by the website of the large militant Brooklyn and D.C-based nonprofit clearinghouse that I’d visited with great anticipation that it would provide local options for live participation in the struggle to retain democracy. The end user (me) was offered no possibility of live interaction with other human activists, only online petitions and donation buttons. There were also great press releases about the many successes by this well-funded group in fighting back against oppressive policies.   Leaving me with only online options for “action”.

To complicate matters, and make the determination of what is fact and what is fabricated bullshit supremely hard, on-line there’s no way to know which comment is from a like-minded human being (or one you don’t agree with) and which is simply a comment fabricated for influence, generated per algorithm, expressed and personally delivered by a bot. The influence of this false “Us” is huge.

The human troll plays an outsized role in political outcomes on the internet as well.  The troll can sit anywhere in the world.   Snyder gives the example of Michael Flynn and Russia, how Flynn found himself citing numerous Russian troll- bots for definitive answers to questions of American political opinion.

Our addiction to the cyber world is, at this moment in time, moving us toward a fascistic view of the world as the battlefield for eternal war between irreconcilable enemies, away from increased liberalism or the interconnectedness humans require to solve perilous ecological and economic challenges.

In order to understand the potential of the internet to move toward greater human understanding and freedom we need to see it through the lens of history. Snyder says.  The printing press (driver of protracted religious warfare) and the radio (instrumental in the rise of fascism) were at first very destructive social forces as well.   The current polarizing power of the internet can be fixed over time, perhaps, but it is best to understand and be wary of its outsized power to evoke and affirm strong feelings to drive political outcomes.  At present human emotions are being manipulated by robots, mechanized entities brought into “existence” by coders.  This is a one way transaction in evoking strong feelings from targeted humans, since the robots stoking these feelings are incapable of any feelings at all.

Snyder calls for the  “revalorization of factuality” — the notion that it’s actually heroic to analyze and understand the world based on facts, discoverable in the three-dimensional world, easily compressed into unreality in a two-dimensional world.   The project of all tyranny begins in the destruction of “fact” in favor of a strong, emotional call to fight an inhuman enemy.   Good local news coverage by independent reporters, increasingly hard to come by, is one antidote to this trend that Synder singles out as something essential to support.  He urges us all to subscribe to and support our valued news sources.

The US and Them distinction powerfully cuts across all discussion, debate, every chance of human understanding.   It’s hard to even have a discussion about justice without immediately falling into one of two artificially drawn political camps. 

A recent email I wrote discussing institutional injustice, opposition to it and the debate between moderate incrementalists vs. urgent “justice delayed is justice denied” types (especially in the context of acting to save the planet before it is actually uninhabitable), and my strong sympathy for the latter, convinced an old friend that I had to be “all in for Bernie”.  This immediately caused him to fear an ugly confrontation with me, as he’s had with other Sanders-supporting friends lately, since he feels the only pragmatic and realistic thing is to hold one’s nose and vote for whoever the DNC selects as a candidate, rather than dogmatically fighting for what can never be.   Trump, he says (and I don’t disagree), must be defeated if we are to avoid truly terrible outcomes and it’s as simple as that.

So instead of he and I being able to have a reason-based back and forth discussion of principles, we are instantly reduced to arguing about our feelings towards the mass-marketed individual celebrity horses in a zero-sum celebrity horse race, covered mainly by dishonest brokers serving a profit-driven corporate agenda. 

Here, of course, with no intention to do it, I’ve indicated my preference for a Sanders or Warren, who openly point out and have plans to attack institutional injustice, and my extreme distaste for a “moderate” like Bloomberg [1] or Biden.  As we are simplemindedly taught to do here, on the politically “reasonable” side of the aisle, nobody’s totally right, nobody’s totally wrong, the main thing is to defeat a dangerous would-be autocrat and his powerful backers, let’s split the difference and have someone “electable” who won’t upset anybody as much as a “radical” harping on vast, long-time inequalities of opportunity.   It’s US vs. THEM after all, and the main thing is not to let those Nazi fuckers cheat, and win, again.

A rant full of sound and fury mostly,  a fearful cry of pain and frustration at the powerlessness we all feel as isolated citizens with extremely limited say (we’re not corporations, after all) staring at our screens for hope, or at least affirmation.   The best thing to do to deny Nazis their ultimate triumph, is to fight them where they stand — based on superior and infinitely more moral ideas about the future of humanity.  The enemies of progress, those who want to turn the clock back to 1953, stand strongly online, to be sure, but they also stand everywhere else.   We need to gather together and stand against them in the real world (he said firmly, online).

 

[1]  Mike Bloomberg is a supremely foul piece of shit that we in New York City got to see close up for three terms (though non-billionaire mayors are limited to two terms).   I will lay out some of this motherfucker’s more alarming “peccadillos” in another post.

A Cabinet of Sycophants and Acting-Idiots, Bill Barr edition

Donald Trump, as part of the unsolicited expert advice he gave to businessmen while he was campaigning for the presidency in 2016, advised would-be titans of industry to surround themselves with people less intelligent than themselves.   This way, he pointed out, you can always literally be the smartest man in the room, an important advantage for the boss.  Particularly if you’re the boss of a family business given to you by a demanding and ruthless father who never really had faith in your smarts.

In office, Trump’s been as good as his word, if we add the important caveat that if you are smarter than the smartest man in the room, you must hide your intelligence behind heroic loyalty to even the boss’s most idiotic and indefensible whims and policies. 

This caveat, obviously, does not apply to people like Betsey DeVos.  It applies directly to the most dangerous man in America: Bagpiper Bill Barr.   Follow the chain of events:

When, on May 17, 2017, after lawfully firing FBI director James Comey to end the Russia thing and the Flynn thing, and, obviously, the Comey-loyalty thing,  the president was confronted with the awful news that traitorous Acting A.G. Rod Rosenstein  (who stepped into the role after AG Sessions followed the advice of DOJ ethics lawyers and correctly recused himself from the Russia investigation — his recusal was seen by most lawyers and legal observers as mandatory) had appointed a Special Prosecutor, Trump was beside himself.

“Oh my God,” a note-taking witness quoted Trump as saying, “This is terrible.  This is the end of my presidency.  I’m fucked.”   He became angry and lambasted A.G. Sessions “How could you let this happen, Jeff?”   Trump said “Everyone tells me if you get one of these independent counsels [sic] it ruins your presidency.   It takes years and years and I won’t be able to do anything.  This is the worst thing that ever happened to me.”   source

To grasp the full weight of these words, here is John Lithgow’s excellent dramatic reenactment. 

The Mueller Report, Volume Two, details the undeviating pattern of presidential actions intended to obstruct the investigation into presidential obstruction of justice.   Don McGahn, Trump’s White House counsel, refused to fire Sessions, as he was asked to do by the president, and refused to write a knowingly false letter for the files at the president’s request, a letter denying that Trump had ever asked him to fire Sessions.  Trump pressured Sessions, accepted Sessions’ resignation letter, refused the resignation, but held on to the letter for leverage against his disobedient but very loyal AG.   

He called on several other people, including the pugnacious Corey Lewandowski who was not in the government at that time (a “back-channel,” just like unofficial Rudy in Ukraine), to deliver coercive messages to Sessions about his refusal to “unrecuse” and to fire the Special Counsel.  That his servants did not carry out his orders was later used by the president’s defenders to justify the lawfulness of Trump’s actions under the absurdist rationale that mere attempted crime is not a crime.   After all, as every schoolchild knows, there’s no such crime as attempted murder.

Trump later lawyered up and (following new AG Barr’s advice in a letter that was published) asserted a ridiculously broad and audacious privilege (one that would require a major 5-4 Supreme Court reversal of strong unanimous precedent if Trump’s claim was to be upheld) against ever, under any circumstances (including during his impeachment), allowing testimony or evidence that could be adverse to his interests in remaining the Unitary Executive and the businessman most well-shielded from investigation in the world, as long as he remains POTUS.   

Volume Two of the Mueller Report was a catalogue of the president’s seamless pattern of guilty-looking actions to obstruct an investigation into his obstruction of justice, a pattern that contained all the elements for sustainable obstruction of justice charges.  Take a few moments to go watch a bit of that marvelous dramatic reading of the Mueller Report, Volume Two.  Mueller famously wrote that he could not exonerate Trump of obstruction of justice, even as he was prevented, by an OLC legal directive, from charging him with a crime, regardless of the seeming weight of the evidence that Trump had actually done what the sworn witnesses said, as long as Trump was the sitting president [1].   

Enter Bill Barr, the new AG, the man who took the AG job just in time to make the Mueller findings disappear, as he’d promised to in his published audition for the job.  There were calls for Barr to resign the other day after some public, transparently partisan presidential DOJ ass-licking on Barr’s part (no judgment, Barr clearly just likes the taste).  1,100 former federal prosecutors had signed a letter calling for his resignation, citing his unfitness to oversee all federal law enforcement.   I went on-line to read their letter.   

The letter that came up first was another letter signed by more than 1,100 former DOJ prosecutors,dated May 6 2019.  It was a reaction to Barr’s lies about the findings of the Mueller Report as well as at least one lie to Congress,    That letter, which will be familiar to many, is here.

As for lying to Congress, Barr famously pretended, under oath, not to have received the politely indignant letter Mueller sent him immediately after Barr publicly, and deliberately, mischaracterized the findings of Mueller’s report.  Barr claimed he had no knowledge of how Mueller felt about Barr stating that Mueller’s report had, basically, completely and totally exonerated the president, an innocent man whose innocence completely justified all the lawful actions he took to try to end the baseless investigation into his obstruction of justice.   Mueller had written Barr with his strong objections to Barr’s mischaracterization immediately after Barr’s public dismissal of Mueller and his findings.   So?

Barr’s successful obstruction of public knowledge of what Mueller’s report actually contained about Trump’s obstruction of justice made the contents of the report a dead letter in the public mind.  Nothing to see here.  Just angry, loser partisans going after an innocent and all-powerful man, based on their own crippling loser inadequacies.   

Mueller’s fully-redacted summary of Volume Two, which was made available to Barr along with the report itself, was withheld by Barr for a month while Barr’s own “summary” publicly substituted its far-fetched story-line for the one Mueller’s sworn witnesses had told under oath. 

Mueller, by all accounts a good and honest man, a Boy Scout who believes in the rules,  is said to have shit the bed by writing his report with the prissily ornate disclaimer-laden legalistic prose that requires a law degree to parse (read the report, counselor!) , and in a real way he certainly did.   

At the same time, as was his charge, Mueller also preserved a trove of eyewitness testimony and other evidence, indicted and secured the convictions of several of the president’s closest associates (Flynn, Manafort, Cohen and Stone come to mind).   In a functioning participatory democracy, one whose chief law enforcement officer is not an unprincipled God-fearing toady, Mueller’s report would have performed the duty that had been entrusted to Mueller’s team, by turning over an impressive pile of evidence and letting the facts speak for themselves to the American people and the branch of government responsible for checking a president who abuses the powers of his office.

Barr’s disinformation campaign to squash Mueller’s findings to protect the president was so successful it convinced iron-willed Nancy Pelosi, the most powerful Democrat in the country, that most Americans are already too brainwashed, too stupid, or both, to understand the immense gravity of the facts Mueller set out, the ones Barr successfully made to disappear.   She made a political calculation and restricted the impeachment to very limited, much weaker grounds, although there was the planned benefit of a relatively straightforward, easy to follow story, Trump’s shakedown of the new president (of a country nobody in America can find on a map [2]) to get dirt on a political rival. 

In my mind, Pelosi used her outsized power (which I compare to Moscow Mitch’s awesome power in the Senate — in neither case does it speak well of democracy to have a single strongman in each House speak for the will of the People) to silence the voices of anyone who argued for a third article of impeachment — Obstruction of Justice, a federal crime-in-progress by our untouchable, lawyered up Boss-in-Chief.  In the context of a three year continual process of obstruction and abuse, of court processes as well as subpoenas from Congress and attorneys general all over the United States, the president’s actions in Ukraine actions could be seen in their proper perspective, as part of an ongoing pattern of the president committing the federal crime of obstruction of justice.   Pelosi made a strategic decision to play a weaker, but  arguably more straightforward, easily understandable, number card instead of the most powerful face card in her hand to play.  Oh well.

In December 2019, at the end of the Inspector General’s  investigation into the sordid origins of the what, unaccountably became the vicious partisan Mueller Witch Hunt conspiracy against Mr. Trump, the Bagpiper sucked his own bagpipe, as follows:

Screenshot_20191213-150447_NYTimes

The “intrusive investigation”  started on the “thinnest of suspicions,” suspicions in Barr’s view “insufficient” to start the Mueller probe (and, of course, in fairness, the investigation only only led to the conviction of a mere six (6) of Trump’s many close 2016 campaign associates for crimes related to a cover-up of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign and other improprieties.  Just yesterday the innocent, unfairly persecuted Roger Stone was unfairly sentenced for several arguable non-crimes, including jail time for the non-crime of “Obstruction of Congress.”  Horrible and very unfair, according to our nation’s Chief Law Enforcement Officer, Donald Trump. 

The country’s other, secondary Chief Law Enforcement Officer, Bagpiper Bill Barr, continues to stand by his arguably untruthful positions.   The conclusion by Mueller, our intelligence agencies and even in McConnell’s own Senate Report, that Russian efforts to sway the outcome of the 2016 election in favor of Donald John Trump were “sweeping and systematic” — SO?  That the efforts are ongoing and absolutely planned for the 2020 election, in progress now, urgent, danger, Will Robinson.   No action whatsoever needed to protect the integrity of the American electoral system, according to no less an authority than Moscow Mitch … puzzling, isn’t it?

The February 16, 2020 letter from 1,100 ex-DOJ officials calling for Barr’s resignation (that number is now over 2,000)  the one I was actually looking for is here.      The outcry came about when Trump whined on twitter that his friend Roger Stone was facing a long prison sentence for his numerous so-called crimes to protect the president, totally SAD! horrible and very unfair!  After the tweets DOJ withdrew its sentencing memo, a memo that asked for the seven to nine years prescribed by law for those serious crimes of lying and corruption to advance a corrupt scheme.  Not to mention witness intimidation (pretend I didn’t mention it) and defying a judge’s gag order.  (The charges in that case were based on Stone’s repeated lying and obstruction in connection with Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election.  Talk about grounds for twitter recusal, Mr. President…)

The lawyers formerly employed by the Department of Justice make another excellent case in their recent letter calling for Barr’s resignation.  It is a case that  the DOJ should really look into.  Whoops.  (ROTFLMAO!)

When Trump was in his moment of political and personal agony, on May 17, 2017, when he cried out to his inner circle that he was “fucked”, in his anguish, he cried out rhetorically for his Roy Cohn.  The evil and self-hating Roy Cohn, among his other destructive life achievements, was, for years,  the unbeatable attorney to all five major organized crime families in the United States.  The Trump family business was a long-time client of Roy Cohn’s.

Cohn was the man who taught Trump how to use the law as a sword and a shield.  Countersue audaciously, when you lose, appeal, drag it out, make them go bankrupt, break their balls with motions, kill them with process, make ’em spend millions if they want to try to beat them, make them pay while at the same time destroying them in the press.  Cohn’s taught Trump that unscrupulousness was no vice, if your aim was to keep a guilty person out of prison.  He showed Trump how to use the mass media to influence public sentiment, introduced him to friendly contacts at the tabloids, showed him how to publicly bully foes real and imagined and how to lie confidently (Trump probably didn’t need tutelage in that, he’s a Hall of Famer in that category).   In the end, when Cohn was disbarred, indicted, dying alone of AIDS he swore was cancer because everyone knew he hated fucking fags (don’t ask…) Trump, a man known for loyalty and his many deep friendships, turned his back on his longtime mentor. 

But in that moment of agony, on May 17, 2017 when Trump cried out for his Roy Cohn, the unprincipled Bill Barr’s ears pricked up.   Opportunity was knocking, history was knocking, Barr’s destiny was knocking.   Barr presented himself, a fatter, slicker version of Roy Cohn.  You an picture his courtly bow “at your service, my liege.”

Barr, the president’s current Roy Cohn, is a long believer in the infallible authority of the powerful and well-connected.  He is ever mindful of his own righteous version of truth and justice.  His public credibility (among the credulous) is bolstered by his sober demeanor: judicious in his pauses, utterly certain in his pronouncements, his cynical but authoritative-sounding use of legal chicanery. 

He argued to the American public, during a live appearance after he told America what Mueller’s report had actually concluded (while concealing Mueller’s actual summary for weeks), without betraying the slightest hesitation or irony, that Trump’s innocence was apparent, from the report itself.  Barr said that the crucial element of corrupt intent, necessary for proving the crime of  “obstruction of justice” could not be established.   Barr said, without breaking expression, that the president was simply understandably angry and frustrated at the persecution by Mueller and so did what any of us — knowing we were 100% innocent victims of a vicious conspiracy — would have done– used every one of his legal, self-defending powers to intentionally protect the rights of an innocent man.

Barr looked at the camera calmly, feeling no need to add at that moment what a weaker person would have blurted out:  so suck it!

Barr is Trump’s Roy Cohn, not much more to say about that.  Truth, particularly if potentially incriminating, will not be allowed to stand in the way of carrying out God’s will on earth, and God, clearly, demands a Unitary Executive to rule over these corrupt and evil generations.  Without vast powers to enforce the will of God, the soul of America will be lost to the invading haordes and wicket “social justice warriors”.

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[1] It’s fair to say Mueller punted in his noncommittal report, turning the ball over to the Congress for impeachment, after he performed an insanely legalistic ballet that enabled him to remain civil, polite and scrupulously unbiased, even when his investigation was documenting clearly very bad behavior by the president and his inner circle. 

[2] Not to get too far afield here, but Paul Manafort made tens of millions in Ukraine using his brilliant campaigning techniques to help get a Russian-backed thug named Yanukovich elected president of Ukraine.  (Unfair to call him a ‘thug”, I suppose, it was decades before his election, the convictions and two prison terms for assault)   Manafort’s efforts succeeded and Yanukovich was elected president of Ukraine, only to be ousted a few years later by a popular uprising.   After Yanukovich fled to Russia he was tried in absentia in Ukraine and found guilty of treason.   Manafort’s next client was Donald Trump, for whom he worked for free and on whose behalf he gave polling data to Russian agents.  Just sayin’… Nothing to see here!!!

Perfect President

If your goal is to destroy the administrative state, end all regulation and stop the enforcement of coercive laws that protect only the poor, those demanding and parasitic “takers”, while ensuring maximum liberty for the most privileged to enjoy the unfettered pursuit of happiness, the shambolic [1] Mr. Trump is the perfect president  for you.  Mr. Trump, shameless showman and all-star sower of chaos, is the perfect president for those interested only in preserving, or enhancing, their own vast privilege.   

Trump’s manifest lifelong unconcern with law, rules and norms, his constant pursuit of self-interest above everything else, his mania for “winning”, coupled with his very limited attention span,  makes him the perfect man for the job.   His inattention to detail is catnip for those who have specific targets of  attack to cripple the impediments to their complete freedom from government coercion.  He is always happy to do nothing, if it benefits his biggest donors.   The devil in any regulatory scheme is in the details, as any high-stakes white collar criminal knows, so create enough havoc and certain key details will get lost in the shuffle.  Leave open appointments for agency heads, don’t fill government jobs as they become vacant, employ acting-directors so as not to require Senate confirmation, and so on. 

For example, we learn (from the excellent investigative podcast Trump Inc.) that the Federal Election Commission is currently unable to enforce federal campaign finance law.  All the perfect president has had to do to ensure this is nothing.

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is an independent regulatory agency whose purpose is to enforce campaign finance law in United States federal elections. Founded in April 1975, after adoption of the 1974 amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act, the Washington, D.C. based agency employed 339 Americans as of 2006 and, as of 2017, an annual budget of $79,000,000.  Its six commissioners, three from each major party, are appointed by the President.      See: Wikipedia

In order to vote to refer a criminal prosecution for violations of campaign finance law, a law the president himself appears to have violated when he was named as Individual One in a campaign finance violation that put his personal lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen in prison, the six commissioners, three Democratic, three Republican, must vote do do so [2].  Republicans have been historically reluctant to bring these complaints to enforce campaign finance laws, which require, at minimum, a quorum of four to vote on.  

There are currently only three FEC commissioners, making it impossible to have a quorum.  No quorum, no vote to enforce the federal campaign finance laws.   So all Trump had to do to ensure that there is no enforcement of federal campaign finance law, and, obviously,  no penalty for its violations, was — nothing.   Which he always does with aplomb.   He has been otherwise very busy, since the day he was inaugurated in 2017, focusing on his reelection campaign and driving huge rally crowds into continual frenzies.

Interesting note: Don McGahn is a former FEC commissioner, nominated by George W. Bush in 2008 and confirmed by the Senate for his six year term.  He was elected FEC chairman soon after his confirmation.   Read all about it:   Here is a  beautiful example of Mr. McGahn’s legal prose, an opinion in a 2013 enforcement case ruling that Trump, Michael Cohen and the Trump organization did absolutely nothing wrong in connection with the 2012 presidential campaign.

 

As Wikipedia puts it: Due to multiple members resigning and no confirmed replacements, the commission lacks a quorum and cannot conduct most of its regulatory functions.[5]

Before we get too excited, there is powerful criticism of the FEC, summarized here:

Critics of the FEC, including campaign finance reform supporters such as Common Cause and Democracy 21, have complained that it is a classic example of regulatory capture where it serves the interests of the ones it was intended to regulate. The FEC’s bipartisan structure, which was established by Congress, renders the agency “toothless.” Critics also claim that most FEC penalties for violating election law come well after the actual election in which they were committed. Additionally, some critics claim that the commissioners tend to act as an arm of the “regulated community” of parties, interest groups, and politicians when issuing rulings and writing regulations. Others point out, however, that the commissioners rarely divide evenly along partisan lines, and that the response time problem may be endemic to the enforcement procedures established by Congress. To complete steps necessary to resolve a complaint – including time for defendants to respond to the complaint, time to investigate and engage in legal analysis, and finally, where warranted, prosecution – necessarily takes far longer than the comparatively brief period of a political campaign.

My advice to anyone outraged by the kind of nonchalantly autocratic moves Mr. Trump routinely makes to weaken regulations, oversight and democracy itself, look away, vote for whoever the DNC puts up as a “centrist” presidential candidate.  Nothing you can do about any of it anyway, you powerless, worried citizens, short of doing the near impossible thing of figuring out how to join with others to organize and have a voice.  Just keep looking away.  You’ll hardly feel it when the bottom drops out from under us all.   The world is being destroyed anyway, and will be beyond salvaging shortly at the present rate of destruction, so no worries.

 

[1]  Just learned this great word from James Risen.  Shambolic:  chaotic, disorganized or mismanaged, (syn: muddled, confused, in total disarray).

[2] National disgrace Bill Barr (who recently joined the line of bagpipers at a police rally, so help me God) made the case against Trump in the Southern District go away, though Cohen, now in federal prison,  was reimbursed the $130,000 he paid porn-star Stormy Daniels in October 2016 (the campaign finance crime) and produced the $130,000 personal check Trump signed in his now familiar jagged Sharpie scrawl to reimburse him for the criminal act.  Oh, well.  That’s the Unitary Executive for you!

 

How To Avoid The Second Civil War

In a nation that has long been an innovator in the inter-related arts of public relations, advertising and propaganda, most of us get our news in a highly mediated, skillfully filtered form that caters, increasingly, to our own personal prejudices.    It seems impossible to find a reasonable consensus at this historically perilous moment.   At least 45% of the country sees Abuse of Power and unprecedented blanket obstruction of all investigations as not impeachable.

Many now believe that there are facts and there are equally valid alternative facts, in this threatening pre-civil war funhouse we are all living in at the moment [1].  We are living in a historically perilous time, like Kansas 1860, or Berlin 1932, with the unsettling overlay of the foreseeable end of a habitable planet ticking loudly in the foreground.   If we are to spare ourselves another actual bloody civil war, followed by mass extinction, we need to be very smart going forward.

We consumer-citizens rely largely on commercial mass media, run by profit-driven corporations with deeply intrenched interests– largely increasing profits — for most of our information about our limited political choices.   Noncommercial news sources like Democracy Now! and the Intercept, outlets that cover the struggles of activists against institutional injustice unreported elsewhere, (and never to my knowledge successfully sued by anyone over a false report), are unknown to most Americans and the news they report is easily dismissed by low information voters and pundits on the right and center as … choose your favorite word for the ranting of liberty-hating, unAmerican losers.

Old friends rage at each other over perceived political dogmatism, blindness, defeatism, stupidity, idiotic idealism, long friendships sometimes ending in bitter inter-partisan disagreement over how to get to the end result both may desire.   Rage is effortless on social media, where trolls reign, delighting in provocation.   

We are sharply drawn into inimical opposing camps, every one of us powerless except as part of a larger block.  As far as political action, we are largely constrained by the design of the two party system, the only game in town, and forced to vote for whichever candidate is chosen for us by a National Committee.  We try to choose the less hateful of the two and hope for the best, a sorry version of actual democratic participation.  

Both major parties run on corporate dollars and the dark money of our super-wealthy, many of them the privileged inheritors of vast fortunes.  Our Supreme Court is staffed by at least five hardcore corporate rights judges who believe that corporations are “persons” entitled to all the freedoms the rest of us enjoy, including the freedom to all the speech their vast money can buy.  Our highest court holds that corporations are citizens just like the rest of us, only with infinitely more power and influence than any thousand of us regular people working together can hope to exert. [2]   The individual, unless very wealthy (see several billionaires currently vying for the presidency) is almost utterly powerless in our democracy.  Except for our freedom to speak, to reason, and to organize.

(brace for a slightly disjointed next paragraph, citizens)

If you are the victim of an illegal practice committed against you by a corporation, join the club, it’s a gigantic one.   Millions of us are fucked by corporations on a daily, hourly basis — they are not in business to make sure consumers are not being fucked, they are in business for the bottom line– maximizing profit, by any means that is not specifically illegal and enforceable against them.  The Supreme Court itself clarified that the sole legal imperative of the American corporation is maximizing profits for shareholders.   If a corporation violates the law, the consumer must find the precise law it violated and then find a legal remedy.  No specific illegal act under law and/or pertinent regulations found, no remedy, stay screwed, asshole.

I was recently victimized by the corporate “person” that provides my health insurance under Obamacare.  On January 22, when I called to pay my premiums through June, I was told Healthfirst could not accept my payment and that my ACA health insurance for 2020 had been terminated.   A supervisor, Daiya by name, confirmed that this had been done “pursuant to the guidelines” for my failure to pay during a once-a-year ten-day “grace period”.   She told me the corporation had no obligation to inform customers in advance of the severe and irreversible consequence of failing to pay within this one-time “grace period”.  She initiated what she said was the only available appeal, an internal one within the company, and called two days later to pleasantly let me know that Healthfirst had not restored my insurance.

Working hard and having a great piece of good luck, I managed to find the only appeal process that could remedy this particular illegal act (at the NYS Department of Financial Services, naturally– here’s the LINK).   Two business days after my on-line complaint I had a call back from Healthfirst, apologizing for its “mistake” and accepting payment of my premiums through June.

Two weeks later, after my letters to the CEO of the corporation and the Attorney General’s office, I had a call from a “Resolution Supervisor” telling me “billing” had asked her to call me.  She assured me that my insurance had never been cancelled.  I was not reassured and questioned this long-suffering, apologetic woman at length.   She told me she’d try to send me the records of my dozen recent calls with Healthfirst, but had to first run it all by another office.

To my surprise, I learned there is an office at Healthfirst called “Regulatory”.  They were reviewing whether I was entitled to call records of my own calls to the private corporation.  I wrote an angry second letter to the CEO, cc’d it to the Attorney General.  I mailed it, then emailed it to her.   The next day I had a call from Healthfirst — I’d be receiving a written apology from Daiya, the confidently “mistaken” supervisor.  I’d get copies of my phone records with dates, times, person I spoke to, the substance of each call.

I am a perversely insistent motherfucker living in a corporately run nation where we non-corporate persons have  very few protections of any kind from routine predatory practices by largely unaccountable entities.   While I was helpless prey I managed to luck onto to a mechanism to almost immediately reverse an extremely stressful interruption of my ongoing medical treatments.   I was fortunate to find someone in an agency, a sympathetic woman who listened carefully, who told me how to get an emailed copy of the sections of the laws that Healthfirst apparently violated in putting me into that upsetting situation.   

I was surprised to learn today that the corporation is giving me everything I asked for without forcing me to bring a lawsuit against them.  I will soon be able to look over the law itself and see which specific sections and subsections were violated in my non-terminal termination.  I am positive than I am the lucky one in a thousand, or ten thousand, maybe a million,  getting almost immediate relief from intolerable, illegal mistreatment by a health care provider, under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

I am have a certain skill set, I’m diligent and, in this case, my illegally terminated health coverage was saved only by a miraculously fast resolution process that is well-hidden from the average consumer.   We live in a country where the powerful are free to oppress the rest of us, often without consequences to themselves, the burden being heavily upon those fucked to figure out how to unfuck ourselves (not easy, I can tell you for sure).   The laws that exist are co-written by expert lobbyists providing careful loopholes and provisions (like the now ubiquitous “arbitration clause” in every contract — thanks to now-Justice John Roberts, a genius of corporate law) that protect their fantastically powerful clients against things like class actions.

What was done to me, personally, can be multiplied by a hundred, or a thousand, or tens of thousands, just in New York City, where I live.  The woman at the NYC office I spoke to today (NYSDFS) told me they get HUNDREDS of health insurance complaints every day, many similar to mine.   

Do we have vast institutional problems in our country, including opaque laws that allow gigantic unaccountable private profit-driven institutions to do business largely unrestrained by effective laws?   You betcha.    Are many of our government officials, the people we trust to protect our interests, incompetent, lazy, corrupt, complacent or otherwise of little use?   You betcha.   Is the Republican Party, supported by vast funds from our wealthiest and most greedy, going to address this oppression of the many by the few?  Not likely.  (Picture me holding a fortune-telling 8-ball when I ask these questions)   Is the Democratic Party, supported by vast funds from our wealthiest and arguably slightly less greedy, going to address institutional injustice?   Perhaps over the next hundred years, if history is any guide.  If there are still two political parties by then.   If the earth itself is still a habitable place for human life.

We, people of good faith who are living through these viciously partisan times, when even old friends savagely attack each other like angry rats in a failed lab experiment, must find a way forward.    We must talk to each other as reasonably as we can, allow ourselves to hear and consider reasonable arguments. 

We need to meet likeminded strangers, and strategize and organize for effective influence and representation in our Republic. 

We need to act in concert to put pressure on, and keep pressure on, elected officials and the political parties that choose them.    How we do that is a great challenge in our atomized social media surveillance state.   I embrace that challenge as my only alternative to crippling hopelessness, though I have no immediate way forward to report.

I leave you with these wonderful, wise words from historian Howard Zinn, delivered while accepting a prize, toward the end of his life, for his groundbreaking A People’s History of the United States :

I wanted, in writing this book, to awaken a consciousness in my readers, of class conflict, of racial injustice, of sexual inequality and of national arrogance, and I also wanted to bring into light the hidden resistance of the People against the power of the establishment.   

I thought that to omit these acts of resistance, to omit these victories, however limited, by the people of the United States, was to create the idea that power rests only with those who have the guns, who possess the wealth.  I wanted to point out that people who seem to have no power — working people, people of color, women– once they organize and protest and create national movements, they have a power that no government can suppress.

I don’t want to invent victories for people’s movements, but to think that history writing must simply recapitulate the failures that dominate the past is to make historians collaborators in an endless cycle of defeat. 

And if history is to be creative, if it’s to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I think, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, occasionally to win.

I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past’s fugitive moments of compassion rather than in the solid centuries of warfare.

(you can watch Zinn deliver these short remarks HERE, highly recommended)

 

 

[1]  fact or alternative fact?   From CNN:

The Department of Justice has dropped its criminal investigation into former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe without bringing charges.

Back to me (channeling an alternative fact citer): a president pursuing “groundless” two year DOJ criminal investigations into his personal enemies is not an abuse of power, and even if it was, fuck off you partisan haters!   See Article Two!   It’s the only one you need to read!

[2]  The great Bill Moyers had the best reply to the legal fiction of “corporate personhood.”   He said “I’ll believe that corporations are people when the State of Texas puts one of them to death.”

Fuhrerworte haben Gesetzeskraft, yo

The hallmark of autocracy is unquestioning fealty to the unfailing wisdom and absolute power of the autocrat.   If the leader did it, it cannot be wrong.  If the leader said it, it must be the law, in a dictatorship.  That was the express credo and supreme legal principle of the Nazi regime, “the leader’s word is law” to wit:

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After his party-line acquittal in the first trial in American history free of witnesses and evidence, the President’s impeachment “trial” in the Senate, the President exercised his legitimate power to punish the civil servants who had complied with legal subpoenas and testified honestly in the impeachment inquiry. 

The purge included the blameless twin brother of Alexander Vindman, one of the officials who gave sworn public testimony that directly contradicted the President’s claim that his 7/25 call to the new president of Ukraine was “perfect” (leaving aside a: what a “perfect call” even means and b: why the only record of the perfect call was hidden in a top secret government server until the Barr-squelched “credible”  and “urgent” Whistleblower complaint became known on September 9th).   

Although the vindictive purge by the President looked like the act of a petulant dictator, the firings were within the absolute right of every head of the Executive Branch, to purge the ranks of his enemies.   No reason to get all morally indignant about that.   Purges happen, the law says it’s fine, everyone in the Executive Branch works “at the pleasure of” their boss, the President, as we all know.

A few days later, late the other night, the President tweeted that the upcoming sentencing of his longtime ally Roger Stone was “horrible” and “very unfair”. 

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All Stone had been convicted of, after all, was loyalty to his old friend while the sick and dangerous Democrats were getting a pass on all their many crimes.  Barr’s DOJ, by the way, is conducting criminal investigations into some of these sick bastards, including two sick and dangerous former FBI directors who refused to swear personal loyalty to the President, even when directly asked by the President [1].

Stone was only trying to help the President by lying under oath to federal investigators about his role in Russia’s sweeping and systematic attempt to help Trump eke out a 78,000 vote Electoral College win over an almost equally reviled opponent in the 2016 presidential race.  Where is the crime in that?!!!   Being a loyal friend is now a crime?!  Stone’s open defiance of the judge’s gag order?   He was nervous, because he’s INNOCENT!  What don’t you understand about “very unfair” and “horrible”?!

Asked yesterday, after the unabashedly corrupt Bagpiper Bill Barr’s Justice Department modified their own sentencing memo to the judge in the Stone case, based on the President’s sophisticated legal arguments in his “horrible” and “very unfair” tweet,  the President was asked if he has learned anything from impeachment.   Here is the question and the dumber than a pile of scats fiery red meat response:

Reporter:  What lesson did you learn from impeachment?

POTUS:  That the Democrats are crooked, they’ve got a lot of crooked things going.  That they’re vicious, that they shouldn’t have brought impeachment…

Reporter:   … anything about yourself?   

POTUS:   … and that my poll numbers are ten points higher because of fake news like NBC which reports the news very inaccurately, probably more inaccurately than CNN, if that’s possible, uh, MSDNC, and you’re MS… uh, and if you take a look at NBC… no, I think they’re among the most dishonest reporters of the news.

Case closed.  Trump 2020. 

The mass media (except for FOX, Breitbart, Der Sturmer and a few other reliable outlets) is the Enemy of the People, some very sick and dangerous people lying about truly great Americans while covering up the crimes of other sick and dangerous Democrat traitors!  It is finally almost time to turn the tables and bring justice to these sick and dangerous criminals.

Trump 2020.  Say it with me:  “Fuhrerworte haben Gesetzeskraft, yo.“

 

[1] The investigation into one, Andrew McCabe, was ended shortly after this post was written, with no finding of an actionable criminal charge.