As for the Orange Polyp, things are finally closing in on him. There is now proof of three meetings he attended with a dozen Congressional lackeys to plan the spontaneous (ad budget to promote the lie that he won was a modest $50,000,000) January 6 “protest” that degenerate, Negro commies made to look so bad by dressing as a violent white MAGA mob and putting dozens of cops in the hospital, with help from the FBI, a dead Venezuelan socialist and other nefarious traitors, freedom haters and never-Trumpers. I really don’t see how he and his insurrectionist buddies get out of this one.
The impeachments were a joke, because, although strong cases were presented each time, his loyalists are so shameless and so terrified of his sadistic wrath they’d acquit him (after a trial with no witnesses, where the foreman of the impartial jury announced he was working closely with the defense) of publicly raping and eating a five year-old, but courts are a different matter. Even the zealot judges he appointed from the list given to him by the extreme right wing legal fraternity (The Federalist Society the Koch-funded Nazis call themselves) ruled against him in hundreds of cases — a couple even ripping him new assholes. Evidence or lack of it still rules in court and there are very few cases in which a judge can safely rule against the evidence (and those are mainly on the unappealable Supreme Court where the majority wins no matter how asinine their opinion). The numerous cases against Trump do not favor him.
Not to say he won’t bring a lot more pain on a lot more people before he’s done– and if they don’t prosecute him soon it may well be too late for all of us, AMERCA WHILL B GREAT AGIN, but it really looks like the tide is finally starting to turn against the enraged giant baby. The shit in his diaper doesn’t smell quite as sweet to many who used to pretend to love sniffing it, to coin a disgusting phrase.
An unaccountable crime scheme never ends until the perpetrators are charged, arrested, prosecuted and convicted. The former president, an insane giant baby, angrily rants and his party stalwarts cower, doing whatever he says, no matter how insane or babyish (though, in recent days, more cracks in this united facade are showing). For the most part, publicly, it’s Whatever you want, Mr. Insane Giant Baby, sir!
“Sir, they say, they always call me ‘sir’, which is funny if you think about it…” notes the Insane Giant Baby with that winning fake smile.
You had virtually every leader of Trump’s constantly changing 2016 campaign team (with the exceptions of Jared and Kellyanne) arrested and/or briefly locked up for various crimes, including working directly with Russian intelligence officers and fleecing Trump supporters of millions of dollars (with a fake Build the Wall website), several convicted of perjury and other crimes, most pardoned by the man they loyally worked for. The same goes for at least five members of the former president’s cabinet, referred for criminal investigation, none charged by the Trump DOJ. This is not normal, as they used to say.
You had four years and counting of seamless obstruction of justice by the sitting president using the DOJ as his personal legal cover-up team. Inauguration Committee chairman Tom Barrack was investigated for serious crimes (similar to those committed by QAnon advocate and martial law/MyPillow enthusiast Mike Flynn) by the Department of Justice under Jeff Sessions and/or Barr and never charged with anything. Using the same evidence reviewed by Trump’s personal DOJ, Barrack has been indicted and is facing many years in prison if his criminal case goes to trial. The tax returns Trump fought so doggedly to hide, that the DOJ now says Trump’s DOJ and Steven Mnuchin illegally refused to turn over to Congress? Nothing to see! Personal! Nobody’s business, NANCY PELOSI, ASHLEY BABBIT, POWERFUL PEDOPHILE CANNIBALS, LIARS, ENEMIES, COMMUNISTS, DR. SUESS, MR. POTATOHEAD!!!!
The other day, apparently because Trump, frenetically trying to fix the “fake” election results, did not get around to classifying all DOJ notes and memos in the waning days of his presidency, when he was super busy trying to stay in power by any means necessary, some incriminating notes of a conversation he had with the corrupt Bill Barr’s successor as interim-acting AG (after even Barr had to bail) are now public. These contemporaneous notes show Trump had actual knowledge that he was lying about the election he lost, as he and his most ardent followers continue to brazenly do. Trump knew the truth, he just wanted the DOJ’s help to sell the lie.
This proof that he had knowledge that he was lying about the election shows his clear criminal intent for the many illegal actions he took, an intent his followers, especially Barr, kept obfuscating while they were all busily obstructing justice. At minimum they show Trump’s corrupt intent in, most recently, promoting his Big Lie, including $50,000,000 spent on ads (how is this not a big thing?) and countless calls (at least one recorded and heard by the public) and meetings during his unhinged “charm offensive” trying to pressure state Republicans to overrule their states’ voters.
Barr had already informed Trump, in a heated private exchange, that Trump’s continued claims of election fraud, and a rigged, stolen election were “bullshit.” Though Barr provided one last enthusiastic reach-around in his letter of resignation (“you are the greatest of all-time, sir, and the most passionately loved and admired compulsive liar in American, yea, world history. Your member is enormous and millions worship you”) he went on the record then and now as saying the election had not, in fact, been stolen. There had been no fraud, he concluded, on behalf of the DOJ, on a level that would have changed any election result. Too little and way too late, after all of Barr’s truly herculean efforts to shield Trump from accountability for anything, but even he left the sinking Trump administration before he could be directly tied to the attempted violent coup his boss was openly planning.
The “incriminating” notes, taken by the acting assistant deputy to then brand new interim-acting AG Jeffrey Rosen, show Rosen again informing Trump that there was no evidence of a rigged, corrupt or stolen election. The conversation took place on December 27, shortly after Barr left and ten days before the January 6 MAGA riot. Rosen corrected Trump’s false and mistaken claims. When Trump claimed there was a 68% miscounted vote/fraud rate in Michigan, Rosen corrected his number, it was actually a 0.0063% miscount rate, Sir, less than one hundredth of a percent. A small math error, fortuitously in his own favor, Trump’s rate was more than 10,000 times more than the actual rate. Anybody can get confused by decimals.
Trump remained undeterred with his political appointees, continued to try bending them to his will. The note quotes Trump’s response to being told by Rosen that the DOJ cannot just “snap its fingers and overturn the election results”. The Insane Giant Baby said he understood that, all he wanted was for the DOJ to do him a favor, though:
“just say the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. congressmen”
“These notes reveal that a sitting president, defeated in a free and fair election, personally and repeatedly pressured Justice Department leaders to help him foment a coup in a last-ditch attempt to cling to power,” Laufman [a former DOJ official] said. “And that should shock the conscience of every American, regardless of political persuasion.”
At this point, the war-weary American conscience is pretty darned hard to shock and there are always appeals and legal delays that can be employed by Trump and his myrmidons until there is a GOP majority in Congress again. Biden appears to believe (and is betting American democracy on that belief) that keeping Americans safe from the pandemic, giving them security, help with poverty, providing millions of jobs, repairing our crumbling infrastructure and starting the hard work of slowing catastrophic climate change will convince committed anti-fact fanatics to no longer support the Insane Giant Criminal Baby they faithfully adore. The moderate American president seems to actually believe that the results of his popular programs will speak for themselves, without a real need to overturn dozens of GOP voter suppression laws in many closely fought “battleground” states, laws that leave the final counting and certification of votes in the unchallengeable hands of GOP partisans. In less than a hundred days, after all, Biden’s legal experts will issue their report about the constitutionality of increasing the number of federal judges (no controversy, Congress can actually do it any time, absent the filibuster), including unpacking the 6-3 Federalist Society Supreme Court. What’s the rush? Americans aren’t that stupid… surely they’ll understand the radical Democrat commies improved their lives…
As for the seriousness of the new revelations about our criminally-inclined former Teflon Don and whether they will prompt any federal action?
I can hear the demented argument of former civil libertarian Alan Dershowitz, opining that, perhaps, had this been known at the time, while Trump was in office (where he could not have been legally prosecuted, even for murder, according to a generous reading of a famous memo) the notes might have, arguably, been a convincing part of a larger argument that the president had knowingly abused his power to spread a self-promoting lie and facilitate illegal efforts to make it the “truth”, although, as Trump’s first impeachment and second impeachment demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt, abuse of power, by itself, is neither a high crime nor a misdemeanor if the powerful abuser is known to be supremely vindictive, petty and sadistic, and has at least 50 votes in the Senate.
Now, some will say that this new “note” by Jeffrey Rosen’s deputy is much ado about nothing. EVERYBODY knows Trump lies, thousands of times as president, many, many, many times since he lost the election he tenaciously claims, without any evidence, that he won. Everybody knows you either love Trump unconditionally or hate him without boundaries. Those who love him admire his unbeatable ability to say “fuck you” to anybody, at any time, with no consequences. Those who hate him consider him a deadly cancer on decency and democracy. Who’s to say who’s right?
The stodgy New York Times printed an editorial the other day, entitled, circumspectly enough “ Trump and His Allies Still Aren’t Telling the Truth about January 6th” (Trump and his Allies are still lying about January 6th might have seemed biased, right?) contrasting numerous counter-factual GOP talking points to the truth as established by actual evidence and the fact that it actually happened. It was an impressive collection of fact and often absurdist alternative fact, but, of course, it proves nothing to those millions who are convinced that had faithless Brad Raffensberger and other powerful RINOs, including Trump’s loyal but spineless VP, homophobic lapdog Mike Pence, had merely done the right thing, finding Trump ONE more vote than Biden in each of the several swing states Trump “lost”, we wouldn’t be having this annoying fucking discussion now, while vicious Satanist cannibal child-fuckers like “affable” Communist Tom Hanks are running free and gleefully unaccountable for monstrous crimes they continue to blissfully get away with (sorry, Tom, but, you know people are sayin’… ‘sir’ they say ‘Tom the actor is not a good guy’).
It’s been said many times lately, prominently by justice-obsessed former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner, that the ongoing GOP authoritarian insurrection will not be halted until its leaders and organizers are charged, arrested, tried and convicted. Elected insurrectionists, who seem to have played key roles in the lead-up to Trump’s MAGA riot (and its follow-up), still loudly talking shit, must be held accountable and, if merited, forced off the political playing field, that much is clear.
The proof of Trump’s criminal intent is there, Trump’s actual intent in his many criminal undertakings since losing the presidency can be easily established by deposing Barr, Rosen and his deputy assistant. It is beyond question that Trump knew he was lying when he sought extra-legal help overturning a fair election, he refers to others he enlisted, Mo Brooks organized three pre-January 6 strategy meetings with at least ten other elected Republicans, and still they persist, “doubling down” on the Stolen Election Lie at every opportunity.
We must all hope (those of us who are not Trumpists) that the water in the pot that is slowly heating now under the Giant Insane Angry Baby and some closely related frogs will get hot enough, soon enough, to make some of his loyal, betrayed co-conspirators start making deals to get out of the bouillabaisse, soon.
Why not take a one-month vacation now, Congress, you’ve certainly earned it! Nothing of great importance that won’t wait a month or two, or six, or … whatever.
As the House Select Committee on the January 6 MAGA riot began its first hearing, the man who called to beg Trump to stop the riot, and then asked him “who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” when Trump mocked him, held a press conference to ask the most important question of all about the day a hoard of outraged Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and attacked police: What did Nancy Pelosi know and when did she know it?
This is a typical diversionary obstructionist move and brazeness is sometimes the main point of the exercise. The provocative yet senseless question can be answered easily enough by anyone who read accounts of the riot. Nancy Pelosi knew the Capitol was under attack when her security team hustled her to a safe location, with freshman Congress member and QAnon adherent Lauren Bobert texting out Pelosi’s movements and realtime location to the armed rioters who were looking for her.
Again, the brazen nature of this in-your-fucking face distraction is the point of the exercise. If you are trying to provoke rage in your supporters, you want to go big — give them more reason to really hate those they already blame. Plus, it will drive your hated enemies crazy! Forget that more than one Capitol police officer is in the House chamber testifying about a crowd of snarling “protesters” calling him a “fucking nigger” and daring him to put down his gun and have a fair fight against the twenty of them. It looks bad for some of the very fine militia member supporters of America’s most openly racist president that his peeps would use the ‘n-word’ so openly, and toward Blue Lives Matter. No problemo. Flip the script, give Newsmax, OANN, FOX a BIG alternative headline.
Fucking Pelosi is a witch. This is yet another illegal, purely partisan witch hunt. She could have stopped the riot at any time, merely by surrendering and letting the lawless mob bring her to justice. Did she? No, she selfishly hid, like the radical communist coward she is. What did she know? When did she know it? Real Americans need to know!!!
Not far away, during the mayhem on January 6, we all know what the man who was the focus and instigator of the riot was doing. He was glued to the television. When McCarthy called him, in reasonable fear for his life, and was finally put through, and asked his leader to call off the rioters, Trump reportedly delivered a very catty line — “well, Kevin, I guess some people are more upset about this stolen election than you are”. The line pissed stressed out Kevin off, he raised his voice to America’s Greatest Snarkmeister, even used the fucking f-word. 140 Blue Lives Matter folks were seriously injured in the ongoing lovefest (presumably from excessive hugging and kissing) as the former president swelled with pride watching the riot, seeing how many still loved him unconditionally, and showed it by openly, violently violating the law to carry out his gentle suggestion that they “stop the steal”.
So, naturally, the REAL question is not why Capitol Police were unprepared for the attack [1], who ordered the DC National Guard to stand down during the riot (Trump ordered the interim-acting lackey who headed DOJ to do so), not who donated the $50,000,000 in advertising funds to promote #Stop the Steal, not who worked directly with the White Supremacist militias who took care of the logistics of the actual violent insurrection at the Capitol, not who failed to act to stop the riot for hours, not who gave aid and comfort to the criminals who stormed the Capitol — none of that matters. The only question before real Americans today, in this great nation, under God, indivisible, is “What did Nancy Pelosi know and when did she know it?”
My next question is will Pelosi authorize the House Sergeant at Arms to arrest and lock up McCarthy when he tries to pull a Don McGahn, defy a legal Congressional subpoena to answer the many questions he is desperately ducking as he audaciously tries to reframe the exercise in accountability as a purely partisan witch hunt by the very witch responsible for the riot in the first place, Nancy Pelosi, who, indisputably DID NOTHING TO STOP IT!
I’ll tell you this, if Nancy Pelosi stops short of having McCarthy arrested for contempt of Congress, she will embolden every other Trump apologist and Nazi wannabe that Congress subpoenas to testify. This is not a situation where anybody has a year or two to spare while federal judges slowly work on this Rubik’s Cube of a constitutional conundrum, the binding legality of a Congressional subpoena.
Democracy is under direct, sustained, serious attack. When did Pelosi know this and what does she know?
Three Stooges
[1]blah, blah blah…WHAT ABOUT PELOSI?!!!
Three days before the siege, a Capitol Police intelligence assessment warned of violence from supporters of President Donald J. Trump who believed his false claims that the election had been stolen. Some had even posted a map of the Capitol complex’s tunnel system on pro-Trump message boards.
“Unlike previous postelection protests, the targets of the pro-Trump supporters are not necessarily the counterprotesters as they were previously, but rather Congress itself is the target on the 6th,” the threat assessment said, according to the inspector general’s report. “Stop the Steal’s propensity to attract white supremacists, militia members, and others who actively promote violence may lead to a significantly dangerous situation for law enforcement and the general public alike.”
But on Jan. 5, the agency wrote in a plan for the protest that there were “no specific known threats related to the joint session of Congress.” And the former chief of the Capitol Police has testified that the force had determined that the likelihood of violence was “improbable.” . . .
. . . The Department of Homeland Security warned the Capitol Police on Dec. 21 of comments on a pro-Trump website promoting attacks on members of Congress with a map of the tunnel system, according to the inspector general’s findings.
“Supporters of the current president see Jan. 6, 2021, as the last opportunity to overturn the results of the presidential election,” said the assessment three days before the riot. “This sense of desperation and disappointment may lead to more of an incentive to become violent.” . . .
. . . “Several comments promote confronting members of Congress and carrying firearms during the protest,” a Capitol Police analyst wrote.
Among the comments reported to the Capitol Police: “Bring guns. It’s now or never,” and, “We can’t give them a choice. Overwhelming armed numbers is our only chance.”
“Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood from their BLM and Pantifa slave soldiers being spilled,” the message read. “Get violent … stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal.”
My embrace of democracy does not make my recent experiences with losing government-provided health insurance three times in the last eighteen months any less bitter. The first time my health insurance was cancelled, and I lost the corporate internal appeal at the insurance company, it turned out my insurance had been cancelled illegally.
An on-line complaint to the NYS Department of Finance resulted in the corporation instantly reversing its irreversible decision, restoring my health insurance. I even got an apology for their “mistake,” unlike the probably tens of thousands of others who lose their health insurance every year in the same “unappealable” scam all insurance companies routinely use to cull their lowest paying, most expensive customers.
The supremely maddening part of that first gratuitous fucking is that, even as a long-time lawyer who spent weeks in research, speaking and writing to every expert in the state and federal bureaucracy, I was unable (as was every expert) to find the law the company had clearly violated. Not part of the “Patient Protection (and Affordable Care) Act”. Not discoverable in New York State Insurance Law or in any administrative code. Makes me angry just thinking about it now. No agency I spoke to was even aware of the existence (let alone amazing efficiency) of the Department of Finance online complaint form [1].
If a law that protects a low-income Americans from the illegal act of a corporation providing affordable health care, under the Patient Protection Act, cannot be found, even by determined lawyers, there is no fucking law.
The opacity and unfariness of that burns me to this day, even as a learned, well-meaning former friend kept assuring me I was wrong to be so angry, that I should just be happy I got lucky and saved my own healthcare. As for those with limited English proficiency, struggling to get by, who’d had their ACA insurance illegally cancelled in this manner? Fuck ’em, not your problem, pal (spoken by this dick head like the Great Communicator himself).
The second time my insurance was abruptly terminated (during the second month of the pandemic, which raged uncontrolled in NYC), it was a matter of one document I’d “failed” to upload to a website in a timely manner. There was no actual notice to me of this failure, or its hard consequence, (and fixing it on-line took about three minutes, once I knew about it), my insurance was legally cancelled, according to New York State Law, for my failure to timely provide the document I wasn’t told needed to be provided.
During the window of time we are required to re-apply for ACA insurance in NYS this tax document is not yet available. A reminder email would have been nice (and I had numerous survey emails from this same agency), but is apparently not required under unappealable NYS law. Although NYS informed my insurance company of this fatal failure of mine, with enough time for me to fix the problem, neither entity had any obligation to inform me that my insurance was in jeopardy, until after it was irrevocably cancelled. This time there was no appeal, I had to wait a month to be insured again, trying not to inhale too deeply any time I left the house.
Then we have Medicare, the Great Society program that is the American gold standard for health insurance. “Medicare for All”, is the rallying cry of liberals and socialists alike. I recently turned 65 and learned, over the course of several months, how complicated the public-private Medicare partnership actually is. Do this first or irrevocably lose the right to that, and so forth.
Accepted by virtually all doctors and hospitals, Medicare leaves a potentially gigantic bill for the patient to pay, as 20% of medical visits is not covered. One can, of course, spend thousands a year on private insurance “Medicare Advantage” (there are many plans of all different prices in our “Free Market”), to avoid these possibly huge bills falling on the old person who gets sick. Medicare is infinitely better than no Medicare, but, again, complex and not without tremendous problems, at least based on my initial experiences.
Fortunately, the law gives a person six months, three before the 65th birthday and three after, to learn about this complicated program and sign up (though you will get no communication from Medicare itself and Medicare itself cannot help you in any way until you are officially on Medicare). I was finally able to speak to a knowledgeable volunteer (at the NYC Department for the Aging) who spent over an hour warning me of pitfalls and giving me important information. She found me a prescription drug plan for $8 a month (or something like that) among many that are ten times or more that price. You see, that’s part of our freedom here in the USA — the right to choose!
Two weeks before my 65th birthday I got a notice from my insurance company informing me that ACA insurance ends when you turn 65. Goodbye three month window to apply for Medicare after you turn 65, you will be uninsured until you apply and get approved for Medicare.
Here my beef is not as much with “government” (a legal requirement for actual notice, with enough time to act before your health plan is terminated, would be good) as with how thoroughly corporate “culture” has affected the workings of government. This adoption of corporate practices stems from the idiotic and frequently disproven 40 year myth about the superiority of “private enterprise” over “government”, a big talking point of right-wingers like Louie DeJoy and other “Free Market” defenders.
Part of corporate culture is the thorough segmentation of the “corporate brain” such that one side of it cannot communicate with the other. You cannot get information you need from the consumer side, because they have no way to interact with the provider side — which can answer the question– for example.
We also now commonly see “third parties” with contracts to do government work, like collecting debt, sending bills, providing “notice” and so forth. If I requested something a month ago that is typically available in five business days, and call weeks later to find out the status, I am as likely to get a bored, underpaid, bitter “third party” subcontractor giving me a surly answer pulled directly from his ass as I am to talk to a well-informed government agent ready, willing and able to solve my problem.
In the case of Medicare, I was assured when I applied on June 17 (after a ten business day delay to get a new PIN sent to me by US Mail when I was unable to log-in) that everything was in order, that my application would be approved within two weeks or so and that my Medicare, whenever officially granted, would be effective July 1.
You can’t reach anyone on the phone to find out why it is now three weeks later and the website shows the same 2/3 on the status bar. You read that your application is in process, but there has been no discernible movement in three weeks.
For most people, you read, this review takes 2 to 4 weeks. For you, asshole? Hah!
The first three times you call you are subjected to an endless loop of “Thank you for holding.We appreciate your patience, we’re currently assisting other people and will help youas soon as we possibly can.” The loop about helping you plays until your call is eventually cut off. This is a universal corporate trick that enhances the bottom line, why hire extra workers to answer phones when you can simply play this recorded loop until the call is automatically terminated?
My fourth call was the charm, I was connected to a woman who assured me I simply had to wait, everything was in order, everything that could be done was being done. The Social Security Administration website continued to tell another story.
My next call, a few days later, also got through, this time the guy impatiently told me to forget what the website said, the review ALWAYS takes 60 to 90 days to complete and I’m only slowing it down by trying to call all the time. And, yes, the recording says that if your need is crucial you can schedule a face-to-face meeting (NYC branches of federal government offices are apparently still closed for the pandemic), but merely being uninsured does not qualify as crucial and there are no face-to-face meetings because … Covid. You just have to be patient, asshole.
My next couple of calls put me in that endless loop of thanking me for my patience and eventually disconnecting my call. When I got through next, just the other day, Ms. Estevez was very helpful. The guy who told me 60 to 90 days? He had no idea what he was talking about, he was completely wrong, said Ms. Estevez with great disgust. She looked over my stalled application, found no reason it was being held up. Approved it on the spot.
The next day, with only two or three hours of work, I was able to get my Medicare ID number read to me over the phone. Now, the only things I have to worry about is getting this cancer scare checked out before September, and how much 20% of my doctor’s bill will be (it will certainly be far less than the full retail $885, excluding tests, I was scheduled to pay “out of pocket” in September).
Say it with me, boys and girls:
USA! USA!!!
[1]
I received a notice from the Department of Finance, after my complaint was successfully resolved by their intervention, that my low-cost health insurance did not allow me to use the Department of Finance’s website, that I’d have to lodge any future complaints with Andrew Cuomo’s incompetent political appointee at Medicaid (also in charge of all ACA programs in NYS). Medicaid’s website contains no on-line form, you have to wait for someone who can help you, possibly, to pick up the phone there, you indigent piece of shit.
Note: this letter from the Department of Finance did not stop them from filing my next online complaint against the insurance company, though that one led to nothing, as current New York State law required.
Thank you for holding.We appreciate your patience, we’re currently assisting other people and will help youas soon as we possibly can.
(repeated every 40 seconds, at 7 minutes into a short loop of insipid hold muzak with the Social Security Administration, at 16 minutes and finally, one last time, at 26 minutes, when I belatedly pulled the plug on holding for these lying, pseudo-corporate bureaucrat pricks)
Theoretically the American people are the government and the government is intended to work for us (particularly if we are in the social class for whom the benefits of life, liberty and the pursuit of whatever were guaranteed by our Founders). The experiment in democracy these wealthy white men designed in the waning decades of the Eighteenth century was revolutionary, at the time every other place on earth was ruled by a monarch who sat on the throne by Divine Right (compare: Manifest Destiny). Anyone who questioned why God would put a vicious inbred hereditary imbecile on the throne could be considered a blasphemer and subjected to the usual time-honored remedies for this sort of impiety (not to mention treason).
The Founding Fathers risked their lives, committed open treason against the world’s most powerful king, to change a system that placed a king’s arbitrary will over all of them, giving them little or no say in the conditions of their own lives. “No taxation without representation” was a rallying cry of the colonists, since there was, by then, a bicameral representative council in England below the king (House of Lords and House of powerless fucking chumps) that had a say in government policy.
It was the radical idea of representative government, based on the radical notion of the right to self-determination, that gave rise to all sorts of radical ideas (including representative democracy) during the Age of Enlightenment when discerning minds began to use Reason to question long held beliefs, practices, customs and superstitions.
We’ve come full circle, in many parts of the world, to the pre-Enlightenment vision of religious faith in an all-powerful individual leader, chosen as part of an unknowable God’s all-loving, all-knowing plan, a “strongman” who exercises unlimited personal power paternalistically, to ensure what he deems is in the best interest of citizens. Thus, even in our democracy, you can have a mentally-ill sadist, ordained by God, doing what he needs to do to rid us of hated enemies and promote his loyal followers to head every important government office to advance his vision of truth, justice and the American way.
In the US that includes, obviously, the Social Security Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, the US Postal Service, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, etc. If that leader surfs to power on a wave of churning emotion, exploiting fear and hatred of an unfair, corrupt, inefficient, abusive government, well, the more unfair, corrupt, inefficient and abusive his government is, the more it proves the point that he’s the only person who can save us! Don’t worry about the argument making sense, it doesn’t need to. It just needs to keep making you angry as hell.
So we have “debates” in our deadlocked, non-functioning Congress about things like increasing the budget for IRS enforcement against wealthy tax cheats (to pay for programs to literally begin trying to save the world from accelerating climate catastrophe). Is it American, patriotic, decent, honest, to cheat on your taxes? Here is the opposition party’s position in the debate:
WHO ARE YOU TO FUCKING SAY??!!! FUCK YOU, WASSHOLE! TRYING TO TAX THE RICH, THE JOB CREATORS, IS PUNISHING SUCCESS, JUST COMMUNISM, RADICAL ANTI-FASCISM or FACISM, TAKE YOUR PICK!!!
This is literally the quality of political “debate” in a nation run by, and for the benefit of, sociopaths and unprincipled careerists. Here’s a great snarky take on that from Sarah Lazarus at Crooked Media:
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) confirmed this week that he plans to investigate Donald Trump as part of the probe, and is prepared to depose senior Trump administration officials and members of Congress who might have played a role in the insurrection—like, say, the two seditionist Jims that McCarthy tried to put on the other side of the table. Thompson also indicated that the committee is very interested in learning more about McCarthy’s panicky phone call to Trump as the attack unfolded, which probably has nothing to do with McCarthy’s panicky efforts to thwart the investigation.
Nothing to fucking see here! You’d do the same if you had supported a maniac’s insane right to send a mob to the Capitol to violently stop the constitutionally mandated certification of an election he honestly refused to accept that he lost since he is history’s greatest winner. You’d do the exact same fucking thing if you were in McCarthy’s position!!!! Repeat everything you’re told to say and pretend you love the taste of the delusional Big Guy’s crusty hindquarters.
Anyway, I believe in government, in spite of the sickening frailties of the one we have now. Democracy is better than any alternative form of government, but we need to fix ours. Several radical, common sense reforms will be needed to restore our experiment in democracy to a representative government.
No more dark money in politics (at least say your fucking name, Charles, Rupert, Robert Mercer) funding the most extreme reactionary candidates in primaries to ensure the extremist political outcomes the 1% desires (part of the proffered protection of the public in the disastrous Citizens United ruling was that unlimited funding of political campaigns would be done transparently, a transparent bit of purely transactional bullshit, as it turned out).
No more right-wing fraternity vetting and choosing lifetime federal court judges to rule, whenever legally possible, according to that fraternity’s stated far right ideology. No more (currently entirely permissible, per 6-3 Supreme Court) partisan gerrymandering and no more restrictive, partisan voting laws — whether or not “race” is intentionally implicated in these moves (the Supreme Court’s brand new standard for overturning voter suppression laws, opponents have to prove they were intended to be deliberately racist, whatever the actual impact of the on different “races” the law causes).
The Supreme Court, a 6-3 right wing juggernaut whose majority was appointed by two presidents who lost the popular vote, straight from the Federalist Fraternity’s list, must be balanced with a handful of even-handed, non-“ideological” judges. Abolish the fucking Electoral College, that vestige of slavery, while we’re at it.
Everyone who works deserves a living wage, $7.25/hr, current federal minimum wage has not been raised since 2008, adjusted for inflation (since it was instituted) it should be $24/hr. Giant corporations must not be allowed to pay workers so poorly they qualify for Medicaid, health insurance for indigents. Taxes on vast, untaxable hereditary wealth and massive corporate windfall profits could go a long way to paying for vitally important programs we needed to have started decades ago, including the preservation of a habitable planet.
There’s a pretty short list of the essential things that are broken, and need to be fixed.
So I don’t write this in any way to attack our need for government programs and agencies that help our fellow citizens. We need those things that only a determined, responsive, well-functioning federal government can do. Think of the immediate improvement in American vaccination under a new president who didn’t regard the pandemic as a Communist/BLM-antifa hoax engineered to personally hurt him. Another example: the federal government took its time about it, to be sure, but in the end it was the intervention of the federal government, enforcing federal law, that ended the custom of lynching in many parts of the country that were determined to uphold this hateful tradition. FEMA is who you call when a killer storm destroys your town. Protection of voters’ rights in federal elections also falls to the federal government, under the 14th Amendment, and so forth.
Here are a few basic human needs the federal government has to attend to in a democracy, none of which seem controversial to me:
Disabled people should get help from the government. Children should not be subjected to malnutrition and the other ravages of poverty. Decent health care should be a right of citizenship, Americans should not have to die for lack of health “insurance”. Workers should be able to afford a place to live, food, clothing, days off, a bit of security. People who retire should be able to live in dignity and at least modest comfort. All citizens should have easy access to voting. Victims of killer storms should be rescued, helped to rebuild their lives. Corporations should be prevented from poisoning the water, air and ground. None of this is controversial, until you get down to the details, which are dictated by the agenda of a tiny, powerful elite of the hereditary super-wealthy, a group that has other priorities.
For example, if a law that protects a low-income Americans from the illegal act of a corporation providing affordable health care, under the Patient Protection Act, cannot be found, even by determined lawyers, there is no fucking law.
I wake up almost every morning, the grandchild of two people who had their entire families massacred one August night in 1943, to the banging of drums and the caterwauling of drunken Ukrainians (all relatives of my other two grandparents disappeared, with no trace at all, into the fog of Nazi genocide), slightly sick to my stomach at the latest news of how heartily homegrown fascism is growing in our promising democracy. The antidemocratic insurrection that came to an ugly head the day a Jew and a Black tipped the balance of a closely fought Senate is still openly in progress as feckless liberals ring their hands and vow to get to “the truth”.
It is a supremely sickening subject, one detail more vomit inducing than the next, so we must not speak about it, it is too upsetting, plus we are utterly helpless to do anything about it but watch in horror, let’s talk about anything but what is taking place right in front of us! So I sit to write every day, and try to clear my head a little bit, lessen the sick feeling in my gut. Some days it works better than others.
We live in a country that, as a culture, does not believe in history. Six months back might as well be fifty years ago, two hundred years. Since nothing happened to really refute the lies Trump told about the effect his explosive lies had on the followers he incited to storm the Capitol to stop certification of the election he lost, well, who’s to judge him? Nobody has ever held him accountable for anything, why start now? In additional, there are important institutional questions to be debated before we act hastily, about the administration of justice, the Supreme Court, prosecuting the organizers and inciters of the MAGA riot.
Who among us has not wanted to have people who hated us shot to death by riot police, the military? What his fans love about him is that he does exactly what they would do if they were in charge. Even when he lies, he’s telling a larger truth anyone who is really angry can instantly identify with. Enemies? Fucking kill them, what’s the problem? They’d do the same to you, if they could.
In every new book about the previous regime, led by a giant two-year old in a perpetual temper tantrum, we learn more details about how destructive a giant angry “populist” baby can be when in charge of a country with violently emotional divisions.
Russia, we learned the other day, again, made a calculation in 2016 based on the usefulness of a vain, insecure, easily flattered and manipulated American president of strong opinions and limited intellect, an “impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual who suffers from an inferiority complex” according to a leak of Russian documents reported by The Guardian[1].
This claim by a super-liberal British fake news rag is pure propaganda to tens of millions of Americans who may not agree with everything their leader does, but who know that he has their best interests at heart, even as he weaponizes vaccination (he himself quietly took the vaccine, and softly admitted on FOX that everyone should get it), exacts revenge on everyone on his long, ever-expanding enemies list, humiliating even those most loyal to him once he feels they failed him, and continues to fan the flames of the audacious, violence-stoking lie that, but for the grace of God and some Capitol police who fought against overwhelming odds, would have cost his supremely loyal Vice President his life (along with others). He plays to rage, his particular “genius” is inspiring greater and greater bonfires of rage in his followers. He will say literally anything to keep them mad as hell, fired up, ready to take names and kick disloyal, unAmerican commie ass.
At least 40% of America is in denial about their destructive champion, no matter how much evidence of his destructiveness is revealed by people close to him who remained fatally silent when it mattered most to reveal these alarming details (“just shoot the protesters” “I need a favor, though” “support my self-serving lie or I’ll end your fucking career”). This man, aided by the able, and morally supple Bagpiper Bill Barr, sent a death squad to execute an unresisting American citizen they believe had murdered a Trump supporter in a street brawl in Portland.
Forget the Three Percenters (their name is based on the myth that only 3% of British colonists in the New World actively supported the American Revolution, and that was enough to start it), 40% of the electorate, angry and motivated, in a country whose electoral system was designed to protect the minority power of slaveholders, can decide the destiny of our experiment in democracy.
This group is glad to believe that it’s irrationally angry Blacks who are the racists, not White Christians. The teaching of history, they believe, must not be political, it must be patriotic. They are happy to renounce the vaccine that their leader once touted among his greatest accomplishments, the result of his brilliant and history making Operation Warp Speed. They are willing to die en masse for the freedom to ignore the best advice of infectious disease scientists. They belong to a death cult they fervently believe is a cult of freedom.
My friends, in a way, are right. There is very little any of us, as individuals, can do to change any of this supremely depressing stuff. If one million people a day read this blahg, where I attempt to make sound arguments based on actual facts, it would make little difference, would change almost no minds that didn’t already agree with my point of view. The price for my success would probably be dozens, if not hundreds, of trolls telling me every day that I need to take a fictional red pill to really understand the seriousness of the Satanist cannibal pedophile ring that runs the world (speaking in a heavy Yiddish accent, of course).
On the other hand, things looked hopeless for flipping the Senate as the Georgia run-off approached. It seemed unbelievable that after all of the clear fuck-ups of the giant peevish baby’s disastrous (except to the rich and religiously extreme) administration so many of his most ardent supporters easily won reelection. Why the Democrats didn’t take a dozen seats, including Lindsey Graham’s, McConnell’s, was a perplexing mystery to people like me.
As the Georgia run-off approached, Sekhnet and I attended Zoom meetings and did everything possible to get Georgia Democrats to the polls. On January 6th a Jewish journalist and a Black reverend made history, becoming the first of their kinds to be voted in as Georgia senators. That victory was quickly swallowed up in an outburst of organized rage that the Party of Patriots is defending, counter-factually, as a lawful protest, based on a patriotic reaction to an infuriating allegation advertised to the tune of $50,000,000 plus dozens of influential, free, presidential tweets and speeches in the weeks leading up to the deadly siege. Democrat (sic) determination to investigate the MAGA riot is just another example of a child-blood drinking radical leftist witch-hunt against a man whose only crime is trying to make America great again, and rid us of the rule of murderous pedophiles.
No facts can really enter this existential debate. Facts are malleable, subject to definitive refutation by allegations of alternative facts, as we’ve learned. Here is a nice quote from a powerful, ambitious Republican who never tired of the taste of his leader’s crusty nether sphincter:
Here are a few other quotes that jumped out at me, wound up flapping around in my stomach acid:
General Mark Milley, who’d accompanied Trump on his triumphant walk through used tear gas canisters to awkwardly and defiantly hold up a Bible for a photo op of a Strong president who showed cowardly governors how to dominate the protesters, distanced himself from the stunt, regretting his involvement. A few months after that he, a student of history, referred to these very fine Nazis by name. He at the time had
See also the Lyin’ Ted quotes above. The Leader has the right to say anything, no matter how much it might rile up some very fine Nazis, even who he would or would not Do a coup with.
The most loyal asslicker in US presidential history, Mike “No Homo” Pence, was unable to convince his master that he lacked the power to stop the certification of votes on January 6. He lacked the courage or the character to speak to him frankly, suggesting that perhaps the lawyers could have the final word, but not Rudy or Sidney Powell, nor Flynn or the My Pillow Guy. Never mind. He proved himself an unworthy coward, and such a person, in the eyes of a lynch mob, is richly deserving of kicking at the end of a rope.
Not a problem. The guy was a coward, you kick his ass to the curb, like that guy who married a dog (the only woman who would have him) and whose father was involved in the Kennedy assassination. We’ll leave colossal piece of shit Bill Barr with the last supremely aggravating word:
That, and the fact that he ran against the second most hated politician in America in 2016 (fuck Barr and his fucking last word).
[1]
The second big story came this morning in the form of an article from The Guardian, which purported to reveal leaked documents from the Kremlin in which Putin and Russian leaders agreed in January 2016 to make Trump president to sow discord in the United States in order to get U.S. sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Crimea overturned. The documents described Trump as an “impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual who suffers from an inferiority complex.”
There are many reasons to be skeptical of this “leak,” but, in the end, whether true or not, it doesn’t tell us much that we don’t already know. There is ample evidence, articulated most clearly in the Senate Intelligence Report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, that Russia worked hard to get Trump elected in 2016.
Historian Timothy Snyder wrote an excellent extended piece in the NY Times recently entitled The War on History Is a War on Democracy. He goes over the recent history of “memory laws”, usually used by totalitarian states, and would-be totalitarians, to ban the teaching of inconvenient aspects of history in furtherance of their demand for citizen obedience. If you make cause and effect disappear you can convince ill-informed citizens of virtually anything.
These memory laws are counterfactual, since they deny things that actually happened, but they don’t need to make sense — they are strictly political in their intent. They’re intended to erase accounts and collective memory of bad things that actually happened, things the law may have shrugged at, held nobody accountable for, things essential to study if you hope to avoid the mistakes of the past. Erase the awful things done under color of law, et viola, a beautiful past, an inspiring and idealistic past, made to order!
Snyder points to the example of Putin’s 2014 “memory law” banning the discussion of Soviet war crimes during history’s deadliest war. The law claims that since all war crimes were adjudicated at the Nuremberg trials, bringing up alleged Soviet war crimes is actually “holocaust denial”. Of course, as Snyder points out, the Soviet Union participated in the prosecution of Nazi war crimes and no Soviets were tried, let alone held accountable for any of the massacres done by their troops, approved by their generals and by Stalin, but no matter. If you talk about any of that in Russia today, you are guilty of “holocaust denial” and in violation of the 2014 Russian memory law.
We have the same thing going on here, obviously, with the many new state laws proscribing the teaching of horrible, often racially motivated, moments of violence in our past, some little remembered to start with, that the law, and American historians, long winked at here. Ever hear of the New Orleans Race Massacre of 1866 [1]? You sure won’t now in any state that is determined to teach only an inspiring, patriotic history of our Exceptional USA. Mentioning an unspeakable horror like this massacre under current Florida law will get you in very hot water, very fast.
Snyder puts his finger on what is so destructive about these laws, designed to keep people in the dark about cause and effect in history.
If it is illegal in Florida to teach about systemic racism, then aspects of the Holocaust relevant for young Americans go untaught. German race laws drew from the precedent set by Jim Crow in the United States. But since Jim Crow is systemic racism, having to do with American society and law, the subject would seem to be banned in Florida schools.
Well-done and well worth reading. If you can’t read it at the link above, shoot me a comment and I’ll be happy to cut and paste the entire piece for you.
Nothing bad ever happened to this man for any “systemic” reason..,
[1]
The New Orleans Massacre of 1866 occurred on July 30, when a peaceful demonstration of mostly black Freedmen was set upon by a mob of white rioters, many of whom had been soldiers of the recently defeated Confederate States of America, leading to a full-scale massacre.
We learn, (unless in a Florida classroom, apparently):
By the end of the massacre, at least 200 black Union war veterans were killed, including forty delegates at the Convention. Altogether 238 people were killed and 46 were wounded.
The New Orleans Massacre, also known as the New Orleans Race Riot, occurred on July 30, 1866. While the riot was typical of numerous racial conflicts during Reconstruction, this incident had special significance. It galvanized national opposition to the moderate Reconstruction policies of President Andrew Johnson and ushered in much more sweeping Congressional Reconstruction in 1867.
The riot took place outside the Mechanics Institute in New Orleans as black and whitedelegates attended the Louisiana Constitutional Convention. The Convention had reconvened because the Louisiana state legislature had recently passed the black codes and refused to extend voting rights to black men. Also on May 12, 1866, four years of Union Army imposed martial law ended and Mayor John T. Monroe, who had headed city government before the Civil War, was reinstated as acting mayor. Monroe had been an active supporter of the Confederacy.
As a delegation of 130 black New Orleans residents marched behind the U.S. flag toward the Mechanics Institute, Mayor Monroe organized and led a mob of ex-Confederates, white supremacists, and members of the New Orleans Police Force to the Institute to block their way. The mayor claimed their intent was to put down any unrest that may come from the Convention but the real reason was to prevent the delegates from meeting.
As the delegation came to within a couple of blocks of the Institute, shots were fired but the group was allowed to proceed to the meeting hall. Once they reached the Institute the police and white mob members attacked them, beating some of the marchers while others rushed inside the building for safety.
Or as Trumpist governor Ron “DeathSantis” would say to any Florida teacher allowing this kind of anti-American propaganda in her classroom “YOU’RE FIRED!”
The best people only hire the best people, it’s like a thing among the best people, to surround themselves with only the very best people. At the same time, the best people often need to be the smartest person in the room, so if they are of average intelligence they’ll wind up choosing the best people who are not as smart as them, meaning they’ll be surrounded by spineless toadies, many of them dumb as a post. Makes sense.
Here are three of the best people in Germany, right after the failed Beerhall Putsch, an early Nazi attempt to overthrow German democracy [1], and the well-publicized trial for treason, before a right wing judge sympathetic to Nazi aims, that made one of them an international symbol of militant nationalism (the photo was taken in Landsberg Prison during their short stint there):
[Fuck, I love the mandolin, I just saw it. Not only the best people, but at least one of them loved music!He seems to be actually fretting a chord. Can you hear these best people singing along? I can.]
Mediocre minds often dream desperately grandiose dreams. It is not possible that destiny created me just to live out an obscure life, greatness is in my soul, leading the masses to glory is my birthright! I have been chosen, I am the Chosen One, the Savior, the only One who can make things right, the only One who can lead the terrible fight against PURE EVIL!
Critical people will view these types as deluded, insane, but true believers will faithfully follow them into the jaws of death. It has been this way from the dawn of human history, those who can convince others that the force of history has chosen them will always find a ready army.
As horrible as the glowering faces of the most threatening monsters in human history are, their smiles are far worse. The smile on the face of a violent sadist is a sickening sight. There are few things more horrific, to those opposed to things like genocide, than a beaming Nazi. Check out these fucking faces.
ThePoisonous Dwarf, Hitler’s Minister of Public Enlightenment, in a buoyant mood
I know, I know. These human expressions of happiness are familiar to us all, and on the faces of history’s greatest criminals they are particularly hideous. I always had the same feeling whenever I’d see the self-hating Stephen Miller (Trump’s would-be Minister of Public Enlightenment without portfolio) or Bagpiper Bill Barr (Mr. Trump’s pugnacious Hermann Goring-style gunsel) smiling. Before that the aptly named Dick Cheney’s rare, jagged, apparently painful smile always evoked that sick in the stomach feeling. The revulsion comes from knowing what makes this type smile, the triumph of their twisted views, the suffering of others, of people they passionately hate.
Hate and resentment is good for business, if your business is uniting masses of angry people. As long as hate rages anger remains unquenchable and the loop is endless. You cannot rest, if you truly believe powerful Satanist cannibal child molesters are out to turn your home into a totalitarian Marxist state where the blood of your own children will be lustily slurped down, after they are raped by these vampires, until you join an army to root out and KILL every last member of this evil cabal.
A passionate mob is capable of the most atrocious actions you can imagine. Their passion does not need to argue with anyone, it doesn’t require evidence or fact — only faith and passion. True believers, if Christians, may think of it like the Passion of Christ [2]. Many destructive, abusive people in power wrap themselves in the pious cloaks of their religion (e.g. Bagpiper Bill Barr, Mike Pompeo, Antonin Scalia, Osama bin Laden). Religion demands obedience to all-knowing, all-merciful God’s will. How do we know what God wants? Faith.
On the other side of the equation, we have decent people of good will wringing their hands, instead of taking the bold, decisive action that is needed to protect the rest of us from irrational maniacs hawking violence-inspiring lies and monetizing them. In history this has always been a recipe for the worst possible outcome. “Why won’t they accept the plain truth that we’ve proved ten times over?” they wonder. If only we could get things back to the way they were before everything was so out of control, they think, not really thinking things through.
Contrast these moderate, status quo embracing, nuance-appreciating institutionalists with the bold, passionate, reckless, history-making mold breakers admired by millions. The bold transactional liar acts with a game plan (to win it all) and lays out a worldview the average angry person can embrace. You can prove the guy is lying, but it makes no difference to the faithful, who see the world exactly as their leader does.
I’d always heard Hitler was a “failed artist” before he found his calling in German politics. This label always irked me, as I myself am a “failed artist” (though my army of fanatical followers does not begin to compare to Mr. H’s) since I stubbornly failed to monetize my talents in any way. I’ve seen few of Hitler’s art works over the years but here is one that, like Trump’s American Carnage speech (Blacks and the Socialist Left have reduced our cities to raging anarchist war zones), perfectly reveals the artist’s weltanshauung, his view of the world as a grim, scorched, treacherous battlefield for eternal struggle, a worldview that would inspire millions:
see FN 3
You can’t argue with that shit.
Fuck you, Widaen
[1]
Think of the January 6 MAGA riot/dress rehearsal at the Capitol.
[2]
The Passion of Christ is the story of Jesus Christ‘s arrest, trial and suffering. It ends with his execution by crucifixion. … The word Passion comes from the Latin word for suffering. The crucifixion of Jesus is accepted by many scholars as an actual historical event.
— the internets
[3]
The images above (with the exception of the soul-revealing shot of America’s Greatest Sore Loser) are all from episode one of Netflix’s new short series “How to Become A Tyrant”, narrated by the excellent, deadpan Peter Dinklage.
The world comes into focus when I sit down to write. As I write, and rewrite, what I mean to say becomes clearer and clearer, to me and to anyone who reads the words. Writing feels very much like having a meaningful conversation with another person, an unhurried exchange with no regretted, blurted word, as little ambiguity as possible, the endless chance to make things as clear as they can be made, nothing that can’t be fixed before it’s a problem. Writing and careful editing can make everything more understandable, which in itself is a beautiful thing.
Writing feels like a talk where everyone is listened to, all confusion is heard and responded to thoughtfully, every complexity clarified. This is rare in conversation, sadly, and we fondly recall those conversations where we take the time to really hear and are listened to this way. I feel the embrace of this kind of intimate talk virtually every time I sit down to write. It matters little to me, as I write, that very few people, or no people, will read a particular piece. The conversation goes on in any case, ready to be joined at any time.
What is it, exactly, that is spurring me to write today? What do I want to talk with you about? Once you give your thoughts a title (an excellent suggestion from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. I read, and took to heart, as a sprout) it becomes much easier to follow them, to corral them, to get the flow of them to make sense. Today I am writing about why we write, though, of course, I have little insight into why YOU write.
I speak for myself, obviously, as I write these words. I’m certain that many of you experience a similar feeling of connection to others when you sit down to write. This feeling is particularly precious in our atomized, virtual world where much of our communication is done in short text bursts or other digitized interactions, without the nuances of eye contact or body language. The conversational/connection angle of writing and rewriting will resonate with those of you who are motivated the same way I am.
Vonnegut said he always wrote imagining his bright, well-read sister’s reaction. If he could picture her shaking her head over something he wrote, that passage would have to be rewritten until it met her high standards, or tossed. When I write, I sometimes picture a literate stranger, in India, China, or the Ukraine, and strive to make my prose as clear and my train of thought as focused as I can. I also sometimes picture my mother’s reactions when I write, she was a keen appreciator of good writing.
When I was a boy, I used to write much more emotionally, driven by the mistaken belief that I could include everything I’d ever felt, thought or learned in the piece I was writing. I was driven by a strong need to sum everything up every time I sat down to write. I have heard this impulse compared to trying to hit a mammoth home run every time up. It took time to adjust my expectations, get better control of my swing, to learn that making good contact is the point of this game. It took time to learn to choose one thing to focus on at a time. That’s where Vonnegut’s advice comes in so handy. The universe swirls, an infinite multi-dimensional kaleidoscope, in constant, frenetic motion, making it impossible to focus on the giant themes we often feel up against. Unless you focus on one specific thing at a time, and naming that one thing up top helps.Which, of course, is not always as simple a matter as it seems.
For example, I heard a few snippets of some of the speeches at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (mein kampference [1]) in Dallas. The former president, a compulsive liar loved by 39% of Americans, continues to lie about his second term being treacherously stolen from him in a fake election. The faithful do not doubt that his lie (which would, of course, require a national, bipartisan conspiracy against him) is true — if not literally true, based only on evidence, then true in the higher, faith-based sense that true believers believe is a higher truth than the earthly, limited fact-based variant. To verify that his endlessly repeated claim of a stolen election is an audacious, incendiary lie, we need look no further than the many Republicans and Trump-appointed judges who found there was no fraud in the election the Orange Polyp still claims was rigged to steal from the rightful winner, him. To see how provocative and dangerous this lie is, we need look no further than the deadly January 6 riot and the GOP’s continued far-fetched defense of a stirred up insurrectionist mob that violently stormed the Capitol and successfully stopped the peaceful transfer of power for several hours, at the exhortation of the former president and his faithful, like his son Junior, Rudy and Alabama Representative Mo Brooks. Yet, the CPAC crowd [2] drowned the lying speakers in adulation, chose the ex-president by 70% in a poll of who these extremists want to represent their party in 2024. This paragraph would become the seed of a post, after I called it something like “Nazi rallies had nothing on these cute pups!”.
So I realize another reason I write is to digest things that are otherwise indigestible to me and to make my point of view known. Most people I know have little tolerance for discussing the depressing battle over our nation’s soul, they want to relax, enjoy life, be out in nature, eat good food together, not be tortured by someone making an all-too convincing case that we are living in Berlin, 1932. Or the soon to be violently sundered United States of 1860. I can gently judge them without blaming them, I understand their point of view, nobody likes a fucking party pooper, I hate them myself. Here, on the other hand, I can lay things out that would otherwise suffocate me, if left unvented. Writing it out here helps me process things and leaves me able to say much less to friends about the details of this ongoing horror movie we are all living in.
Thoughts lead where they do, and if we follow them carefully we can make the path of those thoughts intelligible. It gives some comfort, at least to me, to be able to see things in perspective. In the case of the paragraph about CPAC, it leads, invariably to certain related thoughts and questions. The MAGA riot actually stopped the function of government, as it was intended to, which is the legal definition of an insurrection, so why is nobody on trial for inciting insurrection? Why have none of the funders ($50,000,000 on advertising alone), organizers and promoters of the attack on the Capitol been indicted for anything? Why are there no senate investigations into senators who actively spread the Big Lie and then actively contested the counting of uncontroversial votes, based on the prevalent Republican belief in the Lie they had helped to spread (Lying’ Ted, you brazen little vampire!)? Same in the House, why no ethics investigations if members were seen conducting tours of the building for the rioters in the days before January 6? Is Merrick Garland, a thoughtful, decent man who cried at his confirmation hearing recounting how this country had saved his family from the Nazis, the right man to face off against our home-grown American Nazis? I’d have loved the even-tempered, fair-minded jurist on the Supreme Court, but I don’t know that he has the stomach to do what must be done to face down the virulent antidemocratic threat we are up against.
I see I’ll have to go where these thoughts lead me today, but I’ll go there later, in another post. Another great feature of writing is that you can leave off wherever it makes sense to leave off, and hours, even days later, pick right up after reading everything you wrote in the previous session. What you have already written leads you directly to your next thought.
Which is a magical thing about reading and writing, along with our human ability to string letter symbols into words which can then be fashioned into expressions of even our most complicated thoughts and feelings. Wow.
Another beautiful thing, you can go back, proof-read, trim, fix, reorganize, restate, clarify, polish, as many times as you need to. I’ll no doubt be back to this post a few times in the next day or two, making little tweaks.
Hey, stop me if I asked you this before: why do you write?
[1]
An obnoxious little (parenthetical) darling, adding nothing, likely subtracting, that I should almost certainly murder …
[2]
reads a bit like it was written by Dr. Bronner, but surely the work of a true patriot:
A favorite technique of abusers, and their admirers, is to blame the victim. This happens literally all the time. Nobody wants to feel they’re doing something for a shitty reason, we need to feel justified in our actions. So if I beat you to a pulp I have to believe, and convince everybody else, that you richly deserved your beating. My story will include a host of provocations that would have tried the equanimity of Buddha. Sure, you got hit, but look what you did to me over and over leading up to it.
We hear this in defense of deadly police shootings and chokings — “the video doesn’t show what happened right before the officer justifiably reacted with deadly force!” Part of this syndrome is claiming the other party has no right to feel upset or angry about how things are — that they are, in fact, ungrateful fucks who deserve whatever punishment they provoke.
It is easiest to make the argument that there is no systemic racism in America (and therefor it is the fault of angry Blacks when they are met with deadly force) by attacking a theory that lays out how racism is not only an individual belief system, but has long been embedded in American law and law enforcement. A theory making the case that racism in American institutions is not an aberration, it’s the norm.
If you look at disparate results by race (street stops, arrests, police killings of unarmed civilians, long prison sentences, death sentences) you will not win many arguments on this score, based on data, based on the facts.
So it is much better, before the largely uninformed (or deliberately misinformed) jury of public opinion, to attack a law school theory that says our institutions are, to a largely unacknowledged extent, marred by racist assumptions and practices (see, e.g., bloviating Bagpiper Bill Barr‘s asinine ‘argument’ to refute this self-evident truth — a “small handful” of unarmed Blacks are killed by police every year, what’s the big deal?).
The theory’s name plays into the talking point that this theory critiquing racism in American law is itself racist. Critical (mean, carping, negative, often unfair, nobody likes a critic) Race (mentioning race is itself an indication of racism, we’re colorblind!) Theory (an argument supported by facts, a very unfair way to make a point!).
Here is a capsule description of the controversial graduate school theory:
As Nazi piece of shit, pardoned immaterial perjurer Mike “Lock Her UP!” Flynn, caller for martial law to overturn the presidential election, follower of the rabid QAnon conspiracy “theory”, urges his people “where we go one, we go all” — take over all local school boards and stop this BLM/antifa/Commie bullshit in its goddamn tracks before it poisons more of our white Christian youth !!!! The problem is the goddamned colored people who hate us for no reason! They are the racists, not us! That’s why they must not be allowed to vote, and if they do vote, why their votes should not be counted! USA! USA!!!
