Conning The Conned

Notwithstanding its faults - slavery, native American genocide, Japanese internment, misogyny, persisting racism, favoring the wealthy, the Electoral College - I've always believed America was a respected and trustworthy force for good in the world. By votes of its people, it made efforts to correct those faults, showing the world that, unlike dictatorships, democracy's ills can be self-healing.

Trump's first election challenged those beliefs, but he'd lost the popular vote and, four years later, was rejected and ejected: beliefs restored. Then, despite January 6 and his election lies, threats, mishandling Covid-19, and promises to punish anyone who'd challenged him, he was elected again, though more votes were cast against than for him. Now, only weeks into his second term, Trump's America is, observably, no longer a force for good. Predictable from how he campaigned, America is siding with enemies, forsaking friends and the health of our planet. Once-true beliefs have become untenable. It's hard to take.

Amidst a brave war for democracy in a land murderously invaded by a dictator whose political opponents tend to become dead, America has switched sides. If it still existed, Trump would have us join the Warsaw Pact; his kind of people.

Knowing it can no longer count on us to stand for and protect freedom, the free world recoils. Trump's besotted party, which once condemned Russia's criminal dictator, now praises him. For reasons about which there's speculation but -- not yet -- no revelation, Trump has always done Putin's will. Confirming the obvious, Russian state television's Vladimir Soloviev just said it's "no coincidence" that, after his conversation with Putin, "the phrases [Trump] is saying are so deep and so correct. They are in total alignment with the way we see things."

MAGA is Trump's most dangerous con job. Pretending to make America "great," he's blinded millions of gulliblized voters from seeing that he's eliminating every aspect of its greatness, including standing for freedom around the world. People who've never understood or accepted the value of America's founding principles see what's happening and love it; trying to descale those eyes is wasted effort. But we're approaching the point at which the machinery to bring the world's greatest democracy back into being will have been dismantled forever. More people need to join those speaking out. The need isn't subtle.

Dictators have in common controlling all centers of power: first, the military and law enforcement, to make good on threats. Then the press, legislators, investigators, and judges. With no resistance from Republicans and willing capitulation by others, Trump is remaking all of those entities, purging people who've stood for the Constitution, replacing them with his most loyal sycophants, guaranteed to do his bidding. Which they already are. The latest example: selecting as FBI deputy director former Foxer and current right-wing screamer Dan Bongino, who describes himself as "all about owning the libs." For MAGAs, that's all a resumé needs.

Thanks to America's most hypocritical senator, Trump has our Supreme Court mostly in hand, too. And he's been removing from office everyone whose job it is to keep the government from illegal overreach. JAGs, there to keep the military within legal constraints; inspectors general, ethics overseers, and US Attorneys who'd been investigating him. Moving us further toward autocracy comes his delusional executive order granting interpretation of laws only to himself and his Attorney Genuflector. In their silence, Republicans, other than Alaska's Senator Murkowski, have purged themselves. 

MAGAs hear Trump refer to himself as "the King," see the White House officially picturing him wearing a crown and rejoice. "Command us, Your Majesty. We believe your promises, even as they go unfulfilled. Attack those we fear or hate and we'll ignore the harm you're doing, including to ourselves." (Sick, but not sic.)

Ironically, the victim of the biggest con of all is Trump. The Project 2025 creators he's hired have convinced him he's in charge, encouraging his monarchical madness. Meanwhile, they're getting him to implement their true agenda: erasing the vision of America's founders, in which they've never believed, that individual freedom, defended by the law and by separation of powers, should be paramount in a democratic republic; that ultimate power resides with the people.

It's starting to feel like this: Following Project 2025 page by page, the Projectors are securing their anti-American dream of a Christian Nationalist theocracy, by and for only straight, white, native-born, wealthy males; limiting the vote, if they could, only to them. So certain they were of Trump's malleability, they published their plan pre-election. With no pushback from them, free to use the presidency as an ego-fondling, tribute-providing ATM, Trump ceded to them the real power. Especially Elon Musk: boastfully, recklessly ruining lives, barely denting the federal budget, lying about reasons and results; convincing MAGAs they're seeing patriotism at work. 

Time is short. Watch this speech by Illinois Governor Pritzker. Its truths are self-evident, its warnings a cri du couer. Stay for what begins at 4.00.

Paving The Road

My next column in The Everett Herald:

Bosses fire employees. Therefore, Trump removing Alex Vindman and million-dollar-donating Ambassador Sundland for complying with legal subpoenas and responding truthfully is no big deal. Same with firing Elaine McCusker at DOD who warned withholding military aid from Ukraine was illegal. Fox “news,” rightwing radio, and Trumpists demand the head of Mitt Romney, who finally manifested integrity born of faith and respect for his oath. His “physical safety” would be at risk, says CPAC, were he to attend. It’s all good. 

When William Barr took control of all future investigations of political candidates, Trumpists smelled no rats. Same with his announcement of an “intake process” for Rudy Giuliani to send him dirt on the Bidens. With the mass resignations of attorneys prosecuting Roger Stone, after Barr’s takeover of the case, there’s no reason for concern that the DOJ is now, officially and solely, an instrument of presidential power. As in Putin’s Russia. When Trump attacked the federal judge in charge, Republicans remained silent, comfy in their reconstituting Reichstag. No worries.  

No klaxons were sounded when Trump’s Treasury Department handed private-citizen Hunter Biden’s financial information to Senate Republicans, having refused when House Democrats requested Trump’s. Unconcerned about current costs of Tribe Trump’s protected travels, they’ll investigate how much Biden cost taxpayers for security on business trips. 

Outrage over young Biden’s income from Burisma dissipates with JaVanka making over eighty-three-million while in the White House; and with Trump’s who-knows-how-much from foreign and domestic swamp-dwellers renting his properties. The hundred-million-plus his “I’ll-be-too-busy-to-play-golf” golf trips have cost us? It’s fine: he’s ours.  

Those who don’t find this frightening are those who don’t recognize America’s accelerating descent into authoritarianism; or who do, and welcome it. Those unfazed when information critical to Congressional oversight is withheld by a “president” and by agencies whose mission is to protect the nation, not Trump. Those unconcerned when Secretary of State Pompeo bans reporters who ask hard questions. It’s fine. He’s Trump’s. 

If Trump has the right to fire those who revealed his intended extortion, what of his and his adulators’ demand to expose the whistleblower, whose claims proved accurate? Rand Paul, libertarian, did it. Illegally. Why would a distruster of government do so, other than to silence other potential revealers of government criminality? And why do no Constitution-loving, government-distrusting Republicans seem to care? 

It’s not hard to understand. Purely out of selfishness, and personally safe, or so they imagine, from the depredations of the more powerful, such people ignore intimidation and muzzling of people willing to speak out against crimes committed by their protectors. 

We’ve seen it before: they’re sure it won’t happen to them, and don’t care when it happens to others. It’s Trumpism unchained. It’s the “lesson” Trump learned, dear Susan, from people like you. And your party.  

Laws created to guard against Trump’s authoritarian abuses aren’t enough, especially when our chief law-enforcer is a sycophantic tool. Free societies depend on the willingness of citizens to respect the law, the absence of which among his followers Trump has always exploited; and on others feeling safe in speaking up when they see leaders who aren’t. It’s why, until Trump, whistleblowers were shielded. 

Following the totalitarian playbook, Trump is purging those who have or might yet sound alarms, across all departments, including Justice, State, and Treasury, Secretaries of which are bending abjectly to Trump’s will, abdicating independence and their duty to us. Now he wants “his” military to punish Vindman. So it’s DOD, too.  

This is precisely the unrestrained despotism against which our founders created checks on executive power. Abetted by cowed Congressional Republicans and supporters who rationalize his worst, Trump is destroying those checks. His message to future truth-tellers: DON’T. 

Recalled by Trump for her incorruptibility, Ambassador Yovanovich knows of what she speaks: "I have seen dictatorships, where blind obedience is the norm and truth-tellers are threatened with punishment or death. We must not allow the United States to become a country where standing up to our government is a dangerous act." 

We’re there. Even in America, whose democratic institutions are more deeply embedded than, say, Turkey or Poland, where they’re collapsing rapidly, or Russia, where Trump’s role model Putin was able to end its march toward democracy in a couple of years, institutions are only as strong as people’s willingness to defend them. Trump won’t. Barr and Pompeo won’t. Trumpists sure as hell won’t. Are there no actual conservatives left who will? Time is running out.

Acquitting Themselves Poorly

My next column in The Everett Herald:

Trump’s impeachment will be remembered for establishing that two-hundred-fifty years of Constitutional governance can be erased in three. That the party which elected Abraham Lincoln can choose and excuse a despot wannabe. And that when he behaves predictably -- raging, lying, ignoring the law, encouraging anger and fear and victimization like every successful dictator in history -- that party, when it still had a chance, will look away, cowering.  

Impeachment and Trump have shown that the world’s longest-standing democracy is capable of capitulating to an authoritarian bully. If there’s still time for responsible, forward-looking citizens to take America back from the mob-king, they won’t come from today’s Republican Party. 

Several Republican senators agreed what Trump did was bad. Rubio even admitted it was impeachable. Yet, except for Mitt Romney, they abdicated their responsibility to our nation. Why? Reflected power. Cash. But, mostly, fear. For their careers, of course; and, because Trump is Trump, Trumpists are Trumpists, and Fox is Fox, fearing threats to themselves and their families.  

That’s how dictators gain and maintain power. We saw it, bright as gunfire, dark as blood, during the Senate puppet show, as, out of cameras’ view, Republicans absented themselves from the chamber, leaving their integrity behind.  

Congressional Republicans fear Trump more than the seventy-five-percent of Americans who wanted witnesses and documents brought forth. That’s the power of tyrants to bend people to their will, and it’s how democracies end. Sherrod Brown wrote that many of his Republican colleagues privately admit their fear. As RFK said, “Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle.” 
 
History teaches that, facing autocratic amorality like Trump’s, even democracies may lack the means to stem the tide. Always, though, there are plenty who march to a despot’s rage and vindictiveness; who think they’ll never be its victims, but relish picturing those who will. 

With Mitchly reptilian grins, those recreant Republicans say we should leave it to voters, as if the founders hadn’t created impeachment precisely because they rejected that specious argument. Behind those smirks lie their aces in the hole: voter suppression, voter-roll purges, gerrymandering. Denying funds to protect against helpful foreign interference. Rejecting measures to safeguard voting machines, hacking of which we know Russians have done, and which has been shown to be child’s-play. Literally.  

The case was made beyond denial: Trump tried to extort a vulnerable foreign government into helping him with his reelection. Caught in flagrante delicto, he stonewalled and lied to cover it up. Shutting down further testimony and documents, Senate Republicans made it clear: Trump’s demagoguery works. 

Meanwhile, as his feared “enemies of the people” do their job, more of Trump’s illegality is seeping out. It’s certain there’s plenty more, for it’s always been who Trump is. Republicans still won’t care.  

“Trumpism is a cult,” people say. It’s worse. When cultists drink their leaders’ Kool-Aid, they destroy only themselves. Trumpism is destroying America. If we’re not a nation of laws; if we’ve stopped believing in limited executive power, we’re no longer America. If we accept a “president” who lies wantonly, uses division as a weapon, who convinces his minions they’re the abused ones, whose thirst for vengeance will now be unchecked, we’re approaching the end. 

If enough Americans continue to countenance a man who systematically tears down institutions designed by the framers to preserve freedom from monarchy, whose followers flash weapons as threats, even claim a constitutional right to “kill socialists,” it’s over.  

Senatorial capitulator-in-chief, Susan Collins said he’d “learned from this.” “It was a perfect call,” Trump responded. Proving the point, his State of the Union speech, the opposite of inclusive, was replete with the expected exaggerations, calculated divisiveness, slandering the opposition, claiming undue credit, omissions (Deficits? Climate change? Who cares?), and unregenerate lies. Lindsey Graham’s promise to investigate the Bidens post-acquittal was even more craven. And Rush “Barack the Magic Negro” Limbaugh? Wow.  

To recapture our democratic republic, massive voter turnout -- enough to overwhelm Republican-created obstacles and cowardice -- is the last hope. Liberals must vote for the Democratic nominee even if it’s not their favorite. Remaining conservatives, if any there be, must recognize they can survive Democrats in charge for a while, a more equitable and capitalism-enabling economy, better healthcare, less pollution, lower deficits; even background checks. 

But not the end of Constitutional democracy. They’ll need to outvote those rejoicing in it, to reclaim a fearful, Constitution-abandoning political party. The odds aren’t good. 

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