Category Archives: Law and Justice

Authoritarianism 101, February 26, 2024 edition

Project 2025, written by the far-right ideologues of the influential Heritage Foundation, sister think tank to the rightwing judicial fraternity the Federalist Society, The Institute for Humane Studies, The American Legislative Exchange Council and dozens more funded by Charles Koch and every fascist billionaire in the country, begins with these words:

 It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on Day One of the next conservative Administration. 

see footnote

Winning elections, at this apocalyptic moment in human history, against the “Radical Left” already in control, due to the irreversibly rising tide of ignorant majoritarian hordes, is simply not enough to preserve their sacred values of unlimited wealth and uncheckable power for the privileged.

Also, they cannot win honest elections anymore and they know this very well. Hence, Project 2025, a plan to go for all the marbles, once and for all.

Charles Koch learned in 1980 that his “libertarian” beliefs could not win elections, at best, his brother and his presidential running mate were barely able to get one percent of the national vote, which was appropriate since those were the only interests they represented. The far right’s project, seeing they could never prevail through fair democratic elections, became to capture the religious extremist vote, and the vote of every angry, lost soul, to make the vote look competitive, and to seize power by extra-electoral means.

Brilliant, privileged, covetous men like Charles Koch understood their ideas would never win elections, being of benefit only to a tiny fraction of the top 1% of Americans. So they began the long game of Making America Great Again (for Robber Barons, Monopolists and families of inherited wealth) by funding strong rightwing candidates in local elections, taking control of state houses, gerrymandering to keep control of state legislatures, churning out political philosophy and propaganda from “think tanks,” generating model legislation like Stand Your Ground and other gun protection laws, anti-voting, anti-labor, anti-environment and anti-abortion laws and bringing carefully constructed ideological lawsuits that would be heard in captured federal courts and ultimately decided by graduates of their far right, religious extremist judicial fraternity, the Federalist Society.

Their bigoted, polluting, oligarch-empowering ideas cannot win democratically, so their project is to destroy democracy with a very firm-handed minority rule, enforced by carefully vetted loyalists to a strong leader. They are authoritarians, or, as I always see it, regular ambitious folks always ready to go full Nazi on the citizenry.

Heather Cox Richardson lays out the connection between Putin, Trump, the forces of global authoritarianism and its angrily righteous partner, religious extremism, tying together recent events and a little bit of recent history, which is worth noting again, including this:

The use of Russian disinformation to destabilize democracy in the U.S. looks much like the information warfare Russia has used to establish Ukrainian leaders that worked for the Kremlin. It was the ouster of one of those leaders, Viktor Yanukovych, in the 2014 Maidan Revolution ten years ago that prompted Russian president Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine later that year. Yanukovych won office with the help of American political consultant Paul Manafort, who advised and, briefly, chaired the Trump campaign in 2016, when it weakened the Republican party’s platform plank that supported arming Ukraine against Putin after his 2014 invasion.

Seeding lies about corruption that came from Russian-linked Ukrainians was central to Trump’s 2019 impeachment: his phone call to Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky demanding Zelensky announce an investigation into Burisma and Joe Biden’s son Hunter was part of an attempt to create dirt on the Bidens. That call happened after Trump’s advisor Rudy Giuliani went to Ukraine, where he talked to “an active Russian agent,” according to the FBI. FBI agents warned Giuliani that he was a target of Russian disinformation.  

That poison has now spread from Trump’s rogue team in the White House to the Republican Party itself, which has apparently been carrying water for Putin at the very center of our government. 

The whole piece is here, very much worth reading in its concise entirety, and thinking about as we prepare to preserve democracy and prevent Project 2025, the billionaire funded plan to make Bill Barr’s theocratic worldview the permanent government of our nation of immigrants.

Just say Biden is corrupt and leave it up to my lackeys in Congress

Trump was impeached the first time for making an improper political demand as he held up American arms and extorted the new Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. He told him on a perfect call that many people heard, and that Bill Barr subsequently tried to hide, that all Zelensky needed to do before Trump would release military aid to Ukraine was announce an investigation into Biden corruption, and that he and his allies in Congress would do the rest. No need to actually open an investigation, America’s Greatest Liar assured Zelensky, the main thing is just to announce it, on American television, so we have a big Benghazi-type scandal to run with before the election.

Zelensky turned out to be a man of principle and a skillful politician with a bit more mettle than Trumpie counted on. Barr was still Trump’s most ardent and capable legal enabler and, after trying unsuccessfully to bury all records of the perfect call, he appointed a diehard rightwing DOJ official (who had refused to serve under a Democrat but came back to be appointed by Trump) to dig more deeply into the scandalous sounding matter that Rudy, Igor and their crew were trying to stir up in Ukraine. This DOJ investigation led to FBI informant Smirnov (now in prison awaiting trial for peddling Kremlin lies to the FBI), who took the bull by the horns and planted the entirely false Russian story that both Putin and Trump wanted out there about Biden’s corruption and bribe taking from corrupt, lying, Nazi Ukraine. Then they could let Trumpie’s myrmidons in Congress do the rest. And they have been doing the rest relentlessly. Incoherently, much of the time, but with characteristic blustering Nazi-style vigor.

Recall that after losing the election in 2020, incessantly transactional Trumpie told the DOJ just to announce that the election had been corrupt and leave the rest to him and his henchmen in Congress. You remember that one, right?

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump sought inside help from the Justice Department to execute his campaign to reverse the 2020 election, according to evidence presented by the House Jan. 6 committee Thursday.

“Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen,” Trump implored top Justice officials in a Dec. 27, 2020, conversation memorialized in then-acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue’s contemporaneous notes.

source

Counting on the disgusted exhaustion of people of average intelligence to prevent them from keeping a thousand hideous details in mind and the angry credulity of people of below average intelligence, the Nazi machine grinds on, doing exactly what it always does — marching behind the insane, iron will of the infallible narcissistic Leader who believes that he alone has the right to decide who gets rich, who gets lynched and who goes to the death camp with Rosie O’Donnell, Mike Pence, Bill Barr and the rest of the gutless pigs who have defied, insulted, betrayed and misunderestimated [1] him.

[1] With a tip of the yarmulke to eloquent language stylist George W. “Dubya” Bush

Since Federalist Society Dobbs decision: Rapists 65,000, Rape Survivors 0. But who’s keeping score?

65,000 forced births, and counting, in 14 MAGA states, by women and girls impregnated by rapists, since the June 2022 Supreme Court decision striking down a female’s constitutional right to reproductive autonomy.

Gavin Newsom goes off, beautifully, on the recent Alabama Supreme Court decision stating that Jesus Christ decreed that a fertilized egg is a human being and that mishandling such microscopic humans can subject the offender to prosecution for wrongful death.

Alabama, of course, being #3 in the nation for highest infant mortality rate…

Alabama finds fertilized frozen egg is human life

The sordid history of the ignorant yet calculated movement of bigoted political domination by America’s most militant white Christians (sometimes called Christian Dominionism) is laid out here by the great Heather Cox Richardson .  I’m just adding a few telltale stats that should be noted in relation to the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision that a fertilized egg that is then frozen is human life and anyone who destroys such a human life maybe held criminally liable, essentially for murder.  If a state like Alabama leads the way in enforced so-called Christian morality, heaven help us!

Alabama ranks third in the nation for highest infant mortality rates. The only two states with higher infant mortality rates are number two Arkansas, and America’s greatest state, Mississippi, in the number one position as far as most deaths of newborns. In fairness to both sides, it must be said, of course, that this is according to the CDC, a government agency that Jesus Christ himself long ago warned is full of lying commie cucks, who will do anything to make good Christians look bad. infant mortality rates US states

Alabama ranks fifth in the nation for highest rates of child poverty. Once again, Mississippi leads the pack. child poverty by state

In terms of education, Alabama does much better, coming in at #44 out of 50, a respectable sixth from the bottom. In this case, Mississippi, at #41, beats them, being nine from the bottom. Education by state

Per capita murder in the state of Alabama, which is double the rate of rootin’ tootin’ Texas, is the third highest in the country. Once again, Mississippi makes them look a little better by comparison. Murder by state

In terms of executions, Alabama kicks Mississippi’s ass, by a margin of two to one! Executions by state.

A word to out of state men visiting Alabama: avoid jerking off in your motel room. While killing a spurt of sperm cells might not technically qualify as murder, it could be seen as assault with a deadly weapon. I would advise you to consult with a pious Christian expert like MAGA Mike fucking Johnson about this before randily reaching for the old johnson. Peace out.

Both sides of Putin v Ukraine

Controversy has been manufactured here in the USA in the case of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The angry MAGA minority has declared itself firmly on the side of no aid to Ukraine and full support, mainly by silence on the matter, for Putin. The vast majority of Americans favor continued aid to embattled Ukraine, an underdog democracy battling a much larger authoritarian invader. Presenting both sides of this fake controversy gives us an opportunity to see how strong a purely emotional story is, and how resistant to Reason, facts and cause and effect the right emotional appeal is.

The case for Putin’s invasion. He has every right to take back territory that he claims is historically his, because — history! As for the claimed lack of a casus belli, Russia’s indiscriminate killing of civilians, the discovery of mass graves, the mistreatment, torture and murder of prisoners of war — it’s war! War is hell. To pretend otherwise is to be a libtard cuck. From an American point of view, why should we spend money we need here to help one side in a war that has nothing to do with us?

For Ukraine — the country was invaded by a foreign power in a war of aggression. Ukraine committed no act to provoke this foreign power, other than resisting that foreign power’s political efforts to overthrow its government, and make it a satellite of Russia as it had been at times in the past. Ukraine is a democracy defending itself against the aggression of a neighboring dictator, one who routinely kills his political opponents in a political system he controls in the manner of an iron-willed Stalin, Mao or Hitler. Putin is using this war against Ukraine to press his larger territorial ambitions, and assert his right to conquer other countries, as countless megalomaniacal conquerors have done in the course of brutal human history. A Putin victory in Ukraine would be a major blow to the safety of the other surrounding NATO countries. NATO has largely kept the peace in Europe since the end of World War II.

Which side you take will be determined largely by the color of the baseball cap you wear to political rallies. For those in red caps, the fact that no chargeable criminal conspiracy was found between Putin and Trump‘s 2016 presidential campaign, in spite of 140 documented instances of coordination between them, in spite of Trump’s pro bono then-campaign manager’s years working for ousted pro-Russian Ukrainian president Viktor Yanokovitch (who fled Ukraine for refuge in Russia after being overthrown for corruption by pro-democracy, Ukrainians), in spite of proven coordination between Trump’s former campaign manager and Russian agents, and the exchange of sensitive polling data for the states Trump later narrowly won, in spite of Russia’s massive social media interference and successful hacks of voting systems (though no votes were changed this time), in spite of Trump having a Russians only meeting in the Oval Office immediately after his firing of James Comey for publicly speaking of allegations about Trump’s ties to Russia, and Trump destroying all notes of his one on one meeting with Putin in Helsinki, proves that “Russia-gate” was a complete and total hoax, political hit job and classic witch hunt and that there is nothing wrong with Putin or his methods.

For everybody else,  Ukraine was illegally invaded by a relentless force that also meddles in American elections, as set forth in detail in the Republican controlled Senate investigative report on Putin-related irregularities in the 2016 election, written in response to the Mueller Report.  Most Americans, and even a majority of Republicans in Congress, it appears, believe that Ukraine needs and deserves the support of every other democracy in a position to help. The sole argument for denying the support is iron-willed Trump’s unwavering loyalty to Vladimir Putin.

People sometimes give me crap for comparing MAGA to the Nazis. For me, the main point of comparison is that the most illogical argument you could possibly make is good enough for these folks if it rings the bell that stirs their lowest impulses and makes them angry as hell. Once a mass of people is enraged, and that rage can be stoked at will, and they are following an implacable, emotionally infallible leader, they can be convinced to do anything, and they feel right and just and perfect doing whatever is asked of them. Many of them will feel this way even after the wars and mass destruction their leader causes, when history writes the damning verdict on their unfathomable indecency and their willful inability to see what was directly in front of their lying eyes the whole time.

We have faced down American Nazis before

Documentarian Ken Burns interviews Rachel Maddow about the last time millions of Americans were drawn into an angry authoritarian movement by an appeal to their lowest, most violent, Nazi, impulses.  The last time it was actual German Nazis who propagandized to and inspired America’s most right-wing haters. This time it’s something different, but also similar.

This is a great interview, and I’m looking forward to reading her book, Prequel.  Her excellent podcast on these same events is like a great film noir with a strong element of horror and deja vu.  A story so cinematic and consequential that Steven Spielberg immediately purchased the rights to tell the story on the screen. And speaking of stories, here’s a reminder from Ken Burns about the power of an emotionally compelling story.

Resolved, Trump’s “ring” is delicious!

If you have any doubt about what the Republican party represents going into to the 2024 election, and who controls their every vote, there is a one page document that will remove that doubt. You can read the last GOP party platform in less than a minute, simply skip the few Whereas clauses which set out the “reasons” they are not adopting a platform setting out their principles and policy goals in the Age of Trump, and cut to the chase:

RESOLVED, That the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the
President’s America-first agenda;
RESOLVED, That the 2020 Republican National Convention will adjourn without adopting a
new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention;
RESOLVED, That the 2020 Republican National Convention calls on the media to engage in
accurate and unbiased reporting, especially as it relates to the strong support of the RNC for
President Trump and his Administration; and
RESOLVED, That any motion to amend the 2016 Platform or to adopt a new platform, including
any motion to suspend the procedures that will allow doing so, will be ruled out of order.

read the entire one page Trump platform here