Forked

 

About the shutdown of the government in which Republicans control both houses of Congress and the presidency (if that’s still the right word), the most accurate take came from this guy. Now, the same guy and every Republican in Congress, including Holy Mike Johnson, who talks directly with God, are lying, blatantly, un-ninth-commandmently about what Democrats demand to end the shutdown. They’re NOT arguing for including undocumented immigrants in Medicaid. They DO want to restore Republican-cut funds to it. For citizens. Unable to govern, Congressional Republicans turn to lying.

What Democrats SHOULD be demanding is release of every page of the Epstein files, unredacted; the end of lying about emergencies in blue-state cities; no more sending troops there; a clear statement that Trump turning the DOJ into a vehicle for personal vengeance is illegal and so is murdering people in Venezuelan boats whether or not they’re drug-runners of which no proof has been presented; and an admission from Republicans that they don’t care.

Yep, that'll do it. Shutdown over.

More realistically, Democrats should announce they won’t allow funding of the most corrupt government in the history of our republic until it’s fixed. And they should enumerate examples of that corruption every day till this November and the next.

But the moment demands more. Not MAGAs, because it’ll never happen, but, looking at that raid in Chicago, every clear-eyed American must realize we’re living in an incipient police state whose head of government (“president” no longer applies) claims the right to send US troops into any city he chooses, to round up anyone that displeases him. He just announced, after all, that he’ll imprison, for a year, anyone who burns the American flag, which is constitutionally protected speech. Only dictators declare their own laws. Only dictators unilaterally imprison people. And they ban books, words, history, and speech. Especially when, like MAGAs, enough subjects approve.

After training for Chicago like practicing the raid on Usama bin Laden, Trump sent a helicopter from which troops rappelled onto the roof of a five-story building; military vehicles; and agents with flashbangs who kicked down doors, trashed apartments, and rounded up all residents, including US citizens, offering no proof they’re terrorists as claimed. Children were zip-tied together and hustled out, screaming and crying, some of them naked. When a bystander called on those brutal agents to think of the children, one said “F..k them kids.” That’s what ICE has become. That’s who joins it. And that's not all.

Why those tactics? Why not secure exits and knock on doors? Because it’s about brutality for its own sake and unchecked power. It’s about testing outrage, of which there’s been only some, and only from Democrats. Trump’s fascistic suppression is met with silence from the right. Which means they’re so deep into curated hatred and fear that cruelty is satisfying. They welcome dictatorship because of who they think will be hurt by it and who they think, wrongly, won’t. Stephen Miller, evil incarnate, was caught considering sending the 82nd Airborne into Portland. Paratroopers. Into an American city. Against Americans. Aimed at one group, it’s terroristic. At the other, masturbatory. It’s sickening.

If the Chicago obscenity didn’t cause Republicans in Congress or members of rightwing media to speak out in revulsion, it’s likely too late. It didn’t. So it probably is. Acceptance of Trump’s lawlessness and inhumanity isn’t just cowardice, of which there’s plenty. It’s adoration. It’s what he has unmade of the United States. It’s how Kristallnacht happened. We’re almost there. 

Trump spoke to U.S. Navy sailors in San Diego last weekend: “We have to take care of this little gnat that’s on our shoulder called the Democrats. They want to give all of our money to illegal aliens...” On his Truthless Sociopathic, he referred to Democrats as “the party of hate, evil, and Satan.” And he posted this dark vision of himself. Dictators thrive on hate for the “other.” But, say MAGAs, Trump LOVES America. Our half, anyway, and that’s all that matters. (He doesn’t. It isn’t.)

Since Trump announced his third run, his plans have been clear. After nine months, they’re undeniable: established law means nothing, nor do the courts. He wants absolute power and is taking more every day. That’s not hyperbole, it’s not hate. It’s observable fact. So voters have a defining choice: vote Republican, admit you welcome dictatorship and trust it’ll always be others in Stephen Miller’s and Russell Vought’s crosshairs; or vote for Democrats, even if you’re uncomfortable with same-sex marriage and vaccinations and love canceling 94 million pounds of food for food banks, because you think democracy is worth saving and anyway you’re not gay or sick or hungry.

We’ve come to the inevitable fork in the road. If you rationalize what’s happening in Chicago, if you keep voting Republican, you’re trading constitutional democracy for autocracy. It’s that simple. You can no longer pretend otherwise.

Am I angry? Damn right I am.

Taking Dictation

 

Two months in, Donald Trump is not acting like a dictator. He’s become one. He’s assumed every trait he’s admired in the world’s worst: capricious, insulting, boastful, striking at enemies perceived and real, threatening, suppressing art, banning words, hiding history, bullying, raving like a lunatic. Fulfilling dreams born of a life of failures masquerading, he knows, as success. Hurting the weak, to feel strong. Punishing people and places that show concern for racial and religious minorities, unwinding protections for Americans of different sexual orientation, gutting departments that serve people about whom he couldn’t care less, including his enstupened MAGAs – people and things he considers useful only as ways to flash see-me power.

NOAA and the National Weather Service? Cancer research? Promising more “clean” coal (which doesn’t exist) plants to stick it to “lunatic” environmentalists. Is it all retribution for when, as a shady businessman and social pretender in NYC, his peers ridiculed him? For which he made up by sexual predation?

But why such an ugly start to this column? Maybe because I’ve just returned from NYC, where my brother, intubated in an ICU and unresponsive, faces uncertain recovery. While there, news didn’t stop. Each day, already emotionally taut, brought a new outrage from Trump and his coven of unqualified but willingly subservient people. Plans to undo climate-related and pollution-preventing regulations, hurting everyone but his grateful bankrollers, who slather him with flattery. Attorney General Pam Bondi promising, enthusiastically, to weaponize her department for Trump. 

Trump calling non-slavish news organizations criminal. Overt attacks on free speech, ho-hummed by the “patriotic” right. Ten Senate Democrats caving to Republican budget blackmail; House Democrats stood firm against it, a plan that cut social spending, increased it for the Pentagon, and granted more power to Trump and Musk to do their worst. That’s what ugly is.

We picked a good time to be with my brother. As a physician, I could provide context and translation of his situation to my sister-in-law, whose strength has been stretched to its limits. Always an optimist, she imagines him returning home. I can’t, but it’s too soon to say.

The chance of America returning home, however, is less than my brother’s. Because of the unhealthy mind of one man (not counting supra-president Musk) in a position and disposition to destroy everything that makes America what it is, we’re in real trouble. It’s governance by intimidation. Trump must imagine himself alongside Hitler, Mussolini, Putin, Stalin, Kim Jong Un, Viktor Orban, Saddam Hussain; arm in arm, grinning his signature, plasticized thumbs-up. 

To whom can we turn to undo the madness? Cowardly and avaricious elected Republicans, whose party once eschewed authoritarianism, have forsaken America’s foundational principle of separation of powers. Once outraged by President Barack Obama’s executive orders, they’re now mum as the word at Trump’s, who, in his first four years, issued as many as President Obama did in eight. The pace, now, is furious. In both meanings. Including helping to curtail free speech around the world.

Every day, there’s something worse. Even as their rights disappear along with those of the people they hate, MAGA voters revel in it. Their sources of what passes for news blind them to the implications if Trump achieves the total control he desires, facilitated by surrender of those who could stop him. Right-side submission is already complete. From the left, podcasters and YouTubers are issuing fighting words; but words (like these here ones) aren’t action.

Courts? Trump’s control of them, personified by Aileen Cannon, isn’t yet total, but he’s filled them enough to make them unlikely rescuers. One brave judge just took a stand against Trump’s ominous use of an antique act for extralegal deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members. Forcing the ultimate showdown, he ordered planes carrying them to turn around. They didn’t. Trump continues deportations, ignoring judicial injunctions, attacking judges personally after being ordered to follow the law. Time was, Republicans would denounce such dictatorial lawlessness. Not MAGAs. They wished for a mad king and got one.

Until he retired, my brother was a nationally recognized lawyer. Despite Trump’s vindictive, okay-by-Republicans attacks on lawyers who dared to defy him, he’d have stood up, too. My dad was an appellate judge who scrupulously followed the law even when he disagreed with it, leaving legislating to legislators, unlike Trump’s Cannonade. Ironically, when my dad was in a similar medical situation to my brother’s, I was our family’s physician-guide for painful decisions. For my brother, it’ll be his wife’s and daughter’s role, for which I’m grateful.

Bereft of feck, Democratic leadership is useless. The Republican party has thrown in with global enemies and, worse, home-grown ones, the ones rising to Trump’s occasion, willingly, anti-constitutionally, turning every strand of government into a bullwhip in his hand. Unable to tell Reich from wrong, nearly half of Americans appear glad for Trump’s corrupt goose-step to despotism.

Once, I believed America could protect itself from that, and would.

Capitulants

 

The above cartoon was created by Pulitzer Prize-winning Ann Telnaes, then spiked by Jeff Bezos' Washington Post. So she resigned. The worst is yet to come.

Last time round, Trump lost the popular vote by millions, but the antiquated Electoral College, disinformation from Russia and others, and a rightwing media conglomerate devoted to replacing truth with fiction put him in the White House. He proceeded to run up massive debt, mishandle the pandemic to the tune of hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths, and gift world leadership to our adversaries. Then, at the end, he lied about losing a free, fair, multiply-adjudicated election and instigated an attempt to overthrow it. The lie lives on.

This time, all memory erased, Americans gave him more votes than Vice President Kamala Harris; though, as in both prior elections, more voted against than for him. Baseless claims of receiving a “mandate” notwithstanding, it was one of the narrowest margins of victory in history. But they gave him both houses of Congress, too, Republican members of which are more MAGAfied than ever. The Supreme Court was already his. It’s a four-fecta. How quickly we forget.

Well, not forget, so much as succumb to four years of concentrated whitewashing. Because they know their agenda depends on obsequious acquiescence by Congress and voters, along with the press and social media, it’s been an all-out effort by Project Trump 2025. Who remembers Trump’s words on January 7, 2021, when he said that “the demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy”? He doesn’t. He never meant it in the first place. Now he agrees with Rep Mike Collins (R-GA), who said this week, evidently without irony, “On this day in history in 2021, thousands of peaceful grandmothers gathered in Washington, D.C., to take a self-guided, albeit unauthorized, tour of the U.S. Capitol building.” And if he was being ironic, his colleagues and voters nevertheless buy the rewrite like Trump Bibles.

This Olympic-level gaslighting has been furthered by relentless attacks on big- and small- “ell” liberalism as hatred of America. Holy Mike Johnson, whose ear, by his own report, God has, just referred to Democrats as “the enemy.” Newly-elected MAGA Congressmen Brandon Gill of Texas and Riley Moore of West Virginia, on the occasion of their swearing-in, unlimbered themselves of their demagogic Trumpist bona-fides:

Gill: “We want to end the woke chaos that they have unleashed on this country, that boys can become girls and girls can become boys, and that boys should be in girls’ sports and boys should be in girls’ locker rooms.”

Moore: “My constituents have sent me here to this town not to work with Democrats but to destroy their agenda over the last four years that has crushed the American Dream and the American worker.”

After Vice-President Harris swore in three-time Senator Deb Fischer (R-NE), the senator’s husband shook off Harris’ proffered hand. Placing themselves on the side of the lawbreakers and against its defenders, Republican leaders have refused to install an authorized plaque in the capitol honoring the police who fought to stave off the riot. Thus is the division and hate Trump has stoked within his party and among his voters.

There are consequences to accepting this totalitarian repetition of lies and rejection of legitimate dissent. Before blowing up himself and a rented Tesla in front of Trump’s Las Vegas hotel, the deceased had written: “Try peaceful means first, but be prepared to fight to get the Dems out of the fed government and military by any means necessary. They all must go and a hard reset must occur for our country to avoid collapse.” It’s all but a direct quote from Trump at every one of his rallies.

The perpetrator of the terrorist attack in New Orleans was immediately hyped on Fox “news” and the rest of rightwing dissemblers as an illegal immigrant rather than the US-born Texan he was. The truth hasn’t stopped Trump from continuing to blame it on President Biden’s so-called “open borders.”

The political inversion of America is nearly complete: an incoming administration promises to lie to us, suppress truth, and punish those who dare tell it. While claiming to be protectors of free speech. Rather than taking a principled stand, self-serving media oligarchs are pre-capitulating, donating millions to Trump’s inauguration, which, for lack of regulation, may as well have been slipped directly into his pocket. Because they knew President Biden and Democrats weren’t a threat, those same moguls gave nothing, or next to it, to his. 

Let’s assume not all Trump voters are happy with what they’re seeing now, that they’re not as enthusiastically destructive as those legislators and people like these. But, having been willing to overlook the obvious and believe the lies, they’re complicit. If it’s not already too late, they should consider Abraham Lincoln’s 1862 message to Congress as Civil War approached: 

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

Blame Joe

Despite not needing a gas station for eight years, your columnist is aware of prices and that people are leaving stickers on pumps blaming President Joe Biden for rising costs. Of course they are. Like every bit of malicious misinformation spun from rightwing media, the Trumpic swath of our population accepts it as gospel. And Jeff Bezos will sell them the stickers. 

The truth, though, as experts (people Trumpublicans don’t like very much) tell us, is that presidents have little direct control of or effect on the price of gas at the pumps. Indirect, well, yes; a perfect example of which is how the economy tanked under Trump, in large measure because of the pandemic which, due to his inept mishandling, led to massive unemployment. Which led to diminished demand, and, therefore, dropping prices. Supply and demand: it’s capitalism!

Cheap gas meant not much incentive for oil companies to produce it; so production decreased. As the economy has recovered under President Biden’s stimulative guidance, with unemployment now at near-record lows, demand and prices are increasing. So far, companies seem to see no reason to increase output to bring prices down. They’re raking it in as it is. It’s how it works. Otherwise, we’re talking socialism, which let’s not even.

But Brandon canceled the Keystone XL pipeline, scream the screamers. True. Had he not, it wouldn’t have been finished, even now. And if it had, funneling shale oil, the world’s dirtiest, through America’s fertile heartland (pipelines leak, by the way), its product would have been processed on the Gulf Coast, from where much would have been exported.

Then how about President Biden’s devious plan to increase renewable energy, because, you know, climate change? Which threatens all currently living things on our planet except, maybe, cockroaches. Yes, how about that? Concern for our future. Like an actual president.

Or how about the fact that the Biden administration issued more drilling permits in his first year than the Trump whatever-it-was did in his? Should he be forcing oil companies to drill? Republicans claim to espouse free-market capitalism.

Speaking of which, in 2021, profits reported by BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Shell totaled over sixty billion. Could they have afforded to keep prices where they’d been? Does a bear sit in Ukraine? Would it surprise Trumpists to learn that the US remains a net exporter of oil under President Biden? For those interested in reoility, there are reputable sources which, unlike Fox “news,” et ugh, are accurate. Here are two.

So let’s return to the other existential threat to humanity in general and America in particular: the leader of the Republican Party, the party of small government and democracy and freedom, Donald J. Trump. Still revered, mysteriously still their preferred future presidential candidate. In South Carolina, at his latest gathering of the gulled, adding something new to his usual catechism of self-praise and election lies, he said this, about his next term: “We will pass critical reforms making every executive branch employee fireable by the President of the United States…” Not said: “… and sendable to Siberia.”

They cheered, of course. Because an unrestrained “president,” able to rid the government, at all levels, on a whim, of people who might stand up to his transgressions, or, worse, know what they’re doing, doesn’t bother them at all. And why would it? They’ve made Tucker Carlson Fox’s most popular seditionist, whose nearly word-for-word promotion of Russian propaganda has made him a go-to for Russian TV. Where that kind of “president” already exists. 

Because he’s never admitted a mistake (understandable, as there’d be no time for doing anything else), excusing his earlier praise of Putin’s invasion, Trump now claims Vladimir Putin “has changed.” The loveable guy to whom he’d granted everything he wanted wouldn’t possibly have invaded Ukraine. Right. No way it could be that, like Kim and Xi, Putin played Trump for the needy, praise-craving narcissist he is. To any open-eyed observer, Putin hasn’t changed at all.

Nor has the Republican Party, since its conversion to one of blockage and trickle-down. As proof, one-upping the six-week rules running rampant in red states, Missouri legislators are considering a proposal to ban abortions even in the case of ectopic pregnancy. If it becomes law, women will die. Hopefully, it won’t. But it shows where we’re headed if they regain federal power. 

What has passed is Florida’s “don’t say gay” bill. Denials from Governor DeSantis about that characterization notwithstanding, it’s snowflake/cancel culture squared. And evil. It’ll require another column to say why, but only common sense to know Trumpublicanism must never again control the federal government.

Dictatorship: It's Coming Unless We Stop It

As we look into the gray emptiness of a disappeared world, Puget Sound displaced by choking smog, the future of our planet looks back. Being blinded by smoke is a worthy metaphor for those who still deny climate change. “It’ll get cooler, you just watch,” said Trump this week. Just as the virus went away, “like a miracle.”

Thus was this column first intended: discussing the most demanding and dangerous challenges we face: climate change and an administration refusing to address it. Then the week happened. Climate change must wait. Until January, this country will continue to ignore it, anyway, no matter what we say or how obvious the need. So, not now.

 

Because, just in the last few days, Trump and his horribles have made it even clearer that the most urgent first step to saving our planet is to save our democracy; that he and his will do and say anything to prevent it from happening. This isn’t new; it’s just that the potential has been taken up several quanta.

 

Trump and his collaborators are actively encouraging armed uprising if he loses. And, he’s telling us, the only way he can lose is if Democrats cheat. That popular-vote-losing-by-millions “president” is telling citizens to ignore the polls: if he loses, it was stolen, and they must rise up. “You will see a backlash the likes of which you haven’t seen in many, many years,” he told Jeanine Pirro, who’s in a four-way tie for Fox “news’” most evil entity.

 

“Be poll watchers when you go there. Watch all the thieving and stealing and robbing they do,” he says at his Covid-spreading rallies. (Speaking of which, he announced he’s not afraid of getting the virus because his podium is away from the crowd. You understand what that says about his concern for the attendees, right?)

 

It’s not just Trump. The former CIA guy in charge of finding bin Laden, and now, like so many Trumpists, a QAnon believer, has written, “Loyal Americans know their domestic enemies … and will be able to act swiftly to eliminate them ... The only thing I would be upset about if it came to war is that not enough Democrats would get killed.” Reflecting Trump’s racist demagoguery, he calls BLM “a semi-human mob.” This is the hate-filled, propagandized division Trump incites, because it works for him. And because it’s who he is.

 

Roger Stone, Trump’s favorite felonious fluffer, said that if Trump loses he should declare martial law. Calling on the FBI to block certain people from voting, and for federal authorities to seize Nevada ballots, he also said Zuckerberg, the Clintons, James Mattis, and others should be rounded up. Has anyone heard Trump disavowing it? No one who loves America can be okay with this. Those who are, don’t.

 

Michael Caputo, Trump’s unqualified choice for number two at HHS – but a big donor – who demanded scientists at CDC alter their facts to conform to Trump’s lies, later calling them “seditious” for refusing, said, “… when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at [Biden’s] inauguration, the shooting will begin… If you carry guns, buy ammunition...” Called out, he’s taking a “leave of absence,” from which he ought never return, because, like most Trump appointees, he had no business being there in the first place. Money and mendacity are the only credentials required for inclusion in Trump’s swamp.

 

What more would it take for current Trump supporters to remove their blinders? Their “president” and his acolytes are openly calling for insurrection should he lose; spreading falsehoods about the electoral process in order to discredit the cornerstone of democracy: the right to vote and have it count. It’s a truism: if Trump accuses someone of doing something, it’s he who’s doing it. If he’s the embodiment of narcissism, and ticks every box on the dictator checklist, he’s also the spitting definition of projection.

 

Barr, too. He’s urging prosecutors to charge some demonstrators with sedition; which, unlike exercising the right to protest, is exactly what Trump is doing, by dictionary definition. Choosing to encourage blood in the streets rather than accept defeat, ready to overthrow America if Biden wins, Trump has undertaken a coordinated campaign of faked videos and lies (“Looters and anarchists will be your neighbors.” “Biden is against God”) to incite his supporters to violence, in order to install himself as dictator. Millions of Trumpists seem to like the idea. The only person happier about that than Trump is His Excellency, Vladimir Putin. 

[Image source]