Trump The Destroyer

Donald Trump's career as a businessman is characterized by bankruptcies from which he's managed to escape profitably while ruining the people below him. And it's been one of seeking vengeance on those who've crossed him. Many, including me, have pointed it out, and have wondered how that will translate now that he has the power of the US government to seek and destroy. Not that it was ever a mystery; but now we know:

WASHINGTON — There's a Texas state senator with a new target on his back, courtesy of President Donald Trump and the Rockwall County sheriff. 

At a meeting Tuesday with sheriffs from around the country, Sheriff Harold Eavenson complained about a state senator who wanted to make it harder for law enforcement to get control of assets forfeited by drug traffickers.  

"Do you want to give his name? We'll destroy his career," Trump offered...

That senator's effort, by the way, was to require conviction before assets are taken. Because "civil forfeiture" has been abused across the land by many a police agency, and people are finally catching on. Not Trump, of course, because it's a little complicated.

Meanwhile, does anyone really think he was kidding about destroying the guy?

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The Dickhead Is Wearing Me Down

If my ones of readers have noticed I'm mainly posting my weekly newspaper column lately, it's because so much news and opinion, all of it more salient than mine, is out there. Also, it seems almost foolish to concentrate on one outrage among the daily flood of so many. Which, I guess, is the desired result of the outrages. Mea sucka.

Which is not to say I'm planning to stop the column, nor am I ending the blog. (A sigh of relief, loud enough to be heard for inches, is raised.) But firing off a statement about something as it happens, while possibly de-stressing for me, has started to feel a little self-indulgent. Why read me, for example, when Charles P. Pierce is out there? At best, I feel I'm only paraphrasing or repurposing what smarter and more connected people than I have written.

That said, I liked posting the title picture.

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The Man And The Man-Child

My latest newspaper column, to appear Saturday:

Trump voters got one thing right: he’s running the government like a business. Regrettably, it’s Trump University, Trump Airlines, casinos, and the rest of his inept undertakings. 

Or maybe not. It’s unclear that Trump is the one in charge. After all, he brags he doesn’t read and doesn’t need briefings. As protests against his Muslim ban unfolded, he was holding a private screening of (not kidding) “Finding Dory.” The appellation “man-child,” it turns out, might be understated. 

No, this presidency seems to be the work of chief adviser Steve Bannon, proud white nationalist, and, reportedly, a self-described Leninist who wants to “destroy the state” and “bring everything crashing down.” Imagine his delectation at ensnaring Donald “You-Do-It-I’m-Watching-Cartoons” Trump. Court orders? Ignore them. Acting Attorney General willing to take a stand against unconstitutional regulations? Fire her in the nastiest way possible. If irony hadn’t died in November, I’d mention that in 2015 Trump’s nominee for A.G. asked that same woman if she’d refuse an illegal order, because, he said, that’s what an Attorney General must do. On what basis shall we believe Mr. Sessions, a full-throated cheerleader and high-level political adviser to Trump, would do so? 

As practice for what’s coming, though, let’s ignore legality. Let’s talk about the wisdom of a ban on Muslims entering this country. We needn’t address the incompetence of implementation because that’s obvious. Let’s just point out that, absent cooperation with Muslim people and Muslim countries, we have no ability to “wipe ISIS off the face of the Earth,” as Trump promised. Everyone prefers preventing terrorists from entering. But it seems desirable not to create more or lessen the likelihood of finding them in the process, and there’s a substantive argument that that’s exactly what’s happening. 

Trump insists his order is about protecting America. Having lied so much, is this another? Why did his ban exempt every country from which participants in the 9/11 attacks came? Is it because those countries are also ones in which he does business? At best, this is cynicism. At worst, it’s scattershot and ill-considered endangerment of our country, the fruits of unchallenged conflicts of interest. There have been, let’s recall, no acts of terrorism committed here by refugees from the banned countries. As security experts have predicted, ISIS and al-Qaeda are already recruiting by touting the actions as proof America is at war with Islam. 

Some suspect the chaos created since the inauguration is intentional distraction from the arrival and entrenchment of autocracy. If Trump’s not clever enough for such multilayered planning, Bannon surely is. It seems he’s taking charge, eliminating dissent, and leaving no paper trail. He wants us to live in fear. He’s called press “the enemy” and said they should “shut up.” (In another epitaph to irony, Trump calls them “fake news.”) There are plans afoot to criminalize demonstrations, to make internet access harder, and further to limit voting rights; there are increasingly ominous warnings to anyone who questions White House actions. Do no conservatives find this alarming? 

If these efforts succeed, the carnage to democracy will be absolute. Constitution-supporting, checks-and-balances-understanding conservatives, only a few of whom seem to exist anymore, need to step up. Removed from every Republican Congressperson, there’s a pile of backbones that’d fill the lobby of money-losing and illegally leased Trump Hotel in D.C. Having just steamrolled approval of Trump appointees despite their lies in hearings, such ethically challenged hypocrites will be of no help. 

We must hope for more patriotic and brave Republican voters to see the light. Trumpists never will. A friend says he’s happy seeing the “whole thing” burn down. Missing the indispensability our founders invested in a free and adversarial press, he considers them useless liars, just as Bannon would have it. A man I recently met for coffee after he criticized a column said his vote wasn’t for Trump but against Hillary. Having chosen Trump’s incompetence and mendacity over personal dislike, his view is unlikely to change. Finally, confirming everything I’ve ever said about Trump’s most thoroughly Foxified supporters, here, in its entirety, is an email I received in response to my column about Trump’s pathological lying: 

“Another sicko opinion from a d**khead.” 

Not very promising, is it, America-wise?

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Wait A Minute! You're Saying...

This conclusion isn't original with me, but it bears spreading around: Trump claims that Democrats, or Hillary, or some dastardly force successfully orchestrated the illegal voting of millions of people; managed to get poll watchers, Secretaries of State, election officials in countless counties to allow those votes to happen. And they limited their efforts, complicated as they must have been, to states Hillary was already sure to win. 

Three to five million votes; and yet they didn't think to finagle the 70,000 total votes needed in three states that went for Trump to have swung the election to Hillary.

Makes sense.

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Liar In Chief

Here's my next newspaper column, to be published Saturday:

In the age of Trump, having only a weekly column makes it challenging to prioritize. By the time this is published, who knows how many more significant issues will have come up? On the other hand, what’s more important than truth? So, displacing about a dozen other topics for now, let’s talk about Sean Spicer, Trump’s official press mouthpiece, and his remarkable appearance one day after inauguration. 

In case anyone is unaware, he devoted his first news conference to upbraiding the press for, he claimed, lying about the size of the crowd at the inauguration. Photos taken at the same time, from the same angle, make it clear that the crowd for Trump was enormously less enormous than for President Obama eight years earlier, as do Metro ridership data; but Sean Spicer was having none of it. It was the largest crowd ever, for any inauguration. Period. Yes, he said “Period.” And left without taking questions. 

Is this weightier than issuing gag orders on scientists across all government agencies? Does it deserve more attention than his impossible claim he’ll end crime and remove radical Islamic terrorism from the face of the earth? Offending the CIA by using their Memorial Wall as a backdrop for vainglorious self-promotion and having brought stooges there to cheer and clap? Well, if we have a president who’s untethered from reality, yes. If blatant lies are to be modus operandi from this administration, it deserves unwavering attention, because this level of shameless mendacity is unprecedented. 

Although many Trumpites seem okay with being lied to, I believe among them are decent people, thoughtful ones, who prefer truthfulness and reality-testing in a president. People whose patriotism and bravery run deeper than partisanship. Very soon, we’ll all depend on that. 

If Sean Spicer believes what he claimed, he’s delusional. If not, if he’s just following orders, we must wonder what demand, if any, he’d consider beyond justifying. Are Trump’s people already afraid to tell him the truth? More pertinent, though, is why Trump ordered him to say what he did. During the campaign we learned to expect lies. But this? Crowd size? When there’s photographic evidence? What does it mean that our president is compelled to such obvious fabrication? There aren’t many explanations, and they’re all alarming. 

If Trump sees only what he wants to see, ignoring irrefutable evidence to the contrary, we’re in grave, non-partisan danger. (He’s repeating his discredited claim that millions voted illegally for Hillary; even confabulated about rain and sun during his inauguration. This is disturbingly abnormal.) If he lies intentionally, thinking so little of the people to whom he promised to return the government, we should be both frightened and insulted. Which is the greater threat: a president who’s pathologically unmoored from reality, or one capable of lying whenever he speaks? That’s the no-winners situation we face. 

Which brings us to Kellyanne Conway. While many of Trump’s appointees are some combination of inexperience, incompetence, and ethical deficiency, Ms. Conway is a brilliant choice. Never have we seen a more facile propagandist or producer of disinformation, not even on Fox “news.” Asked why Trump sent Spicer out there to lie, her glib response was chilling: he was presenting “alternative facts.” We’ve just learned the motto for the new administration: Alternative Facts. 

Accepting the health risks, I check in on right-wing websites. They defended it all, claiming the pictures weren’t from comparable times (they were), blaming the press, seeing conspiracy, exactly as Trump would have them do. But even Chris Wallace, one of Fox “news’” two sometimes fair and occasionally balanced reporters, creating a Sophie’s choice for Trumpists, stated he was there and saw the empty space.  Is Trump plumbing the depths of gullibility of his voters, prepping them for even bigger lies, testing what he can get away with? Is that a less disturbing explanation than literal insanity? Joseph Goebbels vs. George III? 

How much duplicity can Trump’s supporters rationalize? It’s in their hands, especially those in Congress, to take a stand if he becomes even more unhinged. If they don’t, they will have failed themselves and their county. And, having the temperament, history, and, now, the means to punish “enemies,” what will Trump do if they do?

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The Brave And The Bullshit

The brave ones are the women marching, faces uncovered, banners held high. Peaceful, enthusiastic, determined, saying "Look at me, look at us, here we are. Listen." Telling their employers, employees, patients, clients, families, everyone, they're willing to, want to, be seen. Have something important and valuable to say.

The cowardly and stupid ones are dressed in black, faces covered, lighting fires, running up to windows and smashing them and going off to hide in the crowd, like kids who put burning bags of dog shit on a porch, ring the doorbell, and run away.

I don't know who they are, what they think they're accomplishing, what message they're sending. For that matter I don't know whose side they're on, if any. But I hate them for making it easier for Trumpists to ignore the meaning of the rallies, to pretend that what they did is the message, not the voices of the marchers in protest. Perhaps that was, in fact, exactly their intention. Happily, they stayed away from the Women's March. Afraid their mothers would see them, maybe.

But they're there, somewhere. Burning garbage cans, looting, breaking windows, hiding. Wherever there are good people, committed, brave people (braver, still, in these times), so are there these self-described but delusional anarchists, who are, at best, nothing more than idiots, pretending to be something they most decidedly are not, afraid to take an actual stand, and be seen.

In this era of fake news as subterfuge and distraction, following false stories of "liberal" protesters being paid to disrupt, who can say these destructive assholes aren't, in fact, organized by Trump supporters, to discredit the waves of protest around the country? I find it entirely possible, with worse to come. On the other hand, such people as these have always been around, as they were here in Seattle during the WTO protests which turned into riots. Deliberate or not, on the "right" side or not, the only thing they achieve is damage.

Whoever they were in D.C. during the inauguration, they're the equivalent of a Trump tweet: superficial, simple, nasty, accomplishing nothing positive.

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Scream, Or Your Head Will Explode

Swear to God: if anyone can watch the video of Kellyanne Conway, this planet's most gifted and unrepentant bullshitter, in this link and not scream or throw something or, at least, feel disgust, horror, and fear for the future, they don't deserve to live. Or vote, anyway.

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"I Like It Better With The Fist," Says Trump

I Felt It, Too.

Stab Wounds

My latest newspaper column, to be published Saturday. Since it has to be sent in before the inauguration, I didn't want to rant about something that might be contradicted by events yet unknown.

Here’s another heavily modified piece from my surgery blog. Entering the Trump era, I need time to let it sink in.

When I picked up my laundry I’d have a little small talk with the proprietor. She always called me "Doctor.” This time, though, she was notably distant, which I didn't understand till I got home and hung up my jacket. On the inside she'd pinned an envelope, into which she'd put a photo taken months before, forgotten in one of my pockets. 

What it showed was a young female torso bearing sixteen stab wounds and the handle of an 8-inch butcher's knife in-stuck to the hilt, a couple of inches below her left breast, ticking, when the picture was taken, with every heartbeat. She’d tried to make herself the second person she killed that day. A cop had accompanied us to the OR. 

Worried that I could cause a catastrophe if I did it blindly, I hadn't removed the knife in the emergency room; the officer needed to maintain "chain of custody." I opened her belly first: with stab wounds to the lower chest, it’s likely there are injuries within the abdomen. Indeed, the knife had skewered her stomach, barely missed her colon, stopping with its sharp edge whispering to her spleen. Holding the spleen out of the way, I withdrew the knife, handed it off to the cop, cool as Steve McQueen: calmly cutting the lady open in front of the officer, handing him the weapon like I did it every day. He tagged it and bagged it, like he did it every day. 

As I attended to the abdominal injuries, the anesthesiologist announced blood pressure zeroing out, cardiogram widening into a functionless sine wave. In the ER, I’d treated her punctured lung with a drainage tube. Now I guessed she’d nicked her heart as well. With no time for tidy entry, I made a fast and ugly, trauma-center-trained, trap-door opening through her ribs. Expecting a blood-filled pericardium, the sac around the heart, I opened that, too, carefully, despite the urgency, to avoid paralyzing the nerve to her diaphragm, which runs along its surface. 

A cut lung can allow air into the pulmonary veins, through which it returns to the left ventricle of the heart, wherefrom it gets pumped out to the body. Departing first from the aorta are the coronary arteries; an air bubble there acts no differently from a blood clot, potentially causing a heart attack. The next exits lead right to the brain. 

While requesting (or screaming, I don’t recall) that the anesthesiologist tilt the table head down so bubbles would rise away from our patient’s head, I clamped the aorta downstream from the vessels going there, called for drugs to raise her blood pressure as high as safely possible, and to run 100% oxygen (in addition to protecting tissues, it speeds up absorption of air). Raising blood pressure might force the bubbles through her heart before doing permanent damage. Clamping the aorta raises blood pressure as well. It's a dangerous combination of maneuvers, but as they say about desperate times... 

Indeed, bubbles were moving through her coronary arteries, lined up like ticket-holders to the Stygian boatman, as frightening a thing as I’ve seen, operating. But, as hoped, they marched on through, and I began, incrementally, to release the clamp; now she was able to maintain her pressure, as she hadn't before. Without obvious signs of brain injury, she awoke later in the ICU, her cardiogram returning rapidly to normal. Sixteen stab wounds, a near-fatal cardiac emergency: not a single after-effect. 

Being young, before experience ground such misconceptions away like centuries of sea on stone, I figured, having rummaged around in her entrails and having held her heart in my hand, squeezing it alive, I of all people should be able to get through to this lady, humbly receiving her gratitude while clearing the demons in her mind. Well, of course, no. Neither could the psych consultant. 

I’d taken that graphic and ill-forgotten picture thinking I might use it in a lecture or an academic paper on penetrating chest injuries, but never did. I kept taking my laundry to the same place, never mentioned the envelope, and our conversations soon found their way back to normal.   

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Showering Us With Lies

My latest newspaper column, scheduled for Saturday:

Only hardcore Trumpophiles deny Donald Trump lies, regularly, about matters large and small. Recently he claimed album sales of the young singer scheduled for his inauguration have soared since the announcement. The opposite is true. Simultaneously he announced that inaugural after-parties are such a hot ticket that you can’t find a single fancy gown in all of D.C. Calls from reporters showed the claim to be false, by the thousands. Simple observation confirms he WAS mocking that disabled reporter. Like all pathological liars, he doesn’t care, and won’t stop. 

The record of Trump’s pronouncements proves truth is not his default setting. About Jackie Evancho and ball gowns, who cares? About mocking the disabled, financial ties to Russia and cahoots with Vladimir Putin, we all should. 

In publishing the alleged report on alleged travesties in Russia, Buzzfeed gifted Mr. Trump. So much is salacious, all of it, the public version at least, unsubstantiated, that he could dismiss it and its implications as “fake news.” (Might the barrage of fake news distributed pre-election by Trumpites, including Russia, have been designed not only to tilt the outcome but as future cover for discrediting actual news?) Until proven otherwise, the “report” reminds me of those fake Obama birth certificates touted by rightwing media: unconvincing. That this specific document stinks, though, doesn’t prove there’s no dead rat nearby. But it gave our next president a platform for, yet again, trying to pre-discredit the press and the intelligence community over future revelations. 

In college, having studied the Russian language for several years, I traveled in the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. From sad personal experience (involving a Soviet citizen, not me) I can confirm that our rooms were bugged. Surely they still are, especially for high-profile visitors like the vulgar, narcissistic, flattery-craving owner of the Miss Universe pageant, a perfect target for gathering compromising data. I don’t much care if the Donald arranged for the defiling of the bed used by the Obamas, per se; I do care if he said or did anything while there that could be used to blackmail him, and so should we all. I do care if he has financial entanglements with and is indebted to powerful forces in Russia, and so should we all. Given his well-established penchant for lying (and his refusal to release tax returns), the last thing we should do is to take his denials at face value. 

If it was effective strategy before the election constantly to flood the public with so many lies that it became meaningless to track them all down, for a sitting president it’s kind of a drawback. Or would be, if his voters hadn’t been taught not to care, and if his party’s representatives in Congress weren’t so euphoric over having an ill-informed, incurious occupier of the White House, likely to sign whatever he’s sent, that they’re already looking the other way on a number of outrages. 

Eight years ago, as the minority leader, Mitch McConnell sent to the majority leader a list of quite reasonable vetting requirements before holding hearings on President Obama’s nominees. Now, to the surprise of exactly zero sentient beings, he says such scrutiny is not only unnecessary; the very act of suggesting them is childish. Democrats, he said, need to “grow up.” Tax returns? Vetting by the Government Ethics Office? Conflicts of interest? That was then! 

Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s mouthpiece, an undeniable genius at obfuscating the outrageous, recently chided the media for focusing on what Trump says. “You always want to go by what's come out of his mouth rather than look at what's in his heart," were her exact, bizarre, and anatomically impossible words. I’ve listened to countless hearts stethoscopically, held a few, beating, in my hands. But I don’t know how to discover what’s in non-patients’ hearts other than by what they say. Daily, we’ve learned that Donald Trump’s heart accommodates a plentitude of lies. How can we know when he’s being truthful, about Russia, bribes, or anything else; and isn’t it imperative, despite his threats, to keep trying? 

Media professionals have to resist Trump’s intimidations; his supporters must become willing to consider the obvious. Sustaining our democracy depends on it. 

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Here It Comes

During his hearing, Attorney-General-to-be Jeff Sessions, a God-botherer of the first order, was asked about the possibility of impending theocracy. Oh, he said, people of different (i.e., wrong) views will be given a fair shake. Asked specifically if he thought secular (i.e., non-Christian) lawyers have the ability to discern truth, he responded, "Well, I'm not so sure."

That is all you need to know.

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Who's Stupid?

So our next president informs us that anyone who doesn't want better relations with Russia is stupid. Well, sure, who doesn't agree we should all just get along, right?

Of course, it depends a little on the intentions of those with whom we're told to get along, and in what way we choose to do it. Or so it'd seem to me. I could be stupid, though.

Anyhow, until we know a little more about why Russia was so anxious to see Trump become president, and why Trump and his basket of horribles are so intent on convincing us it's no big deal, I'm gonna look at his position as the Kent Brockman approach to possible threats.

Looking For Reasons To Be Optimistic

My latest newspaper column, due to be published Saturday:

Looking ahead to the new year, I’m trying to be optimistic. 

We might survive turning public education into religious school, although there’d likely be a half-generation of kids who’d be lost before educators regain influence on education policy. Maybe humanity can even outlast more war in the Middle East or a new one in Asia, to which, based on Trump’s appointments and his personal lack of rigor, not to mention his half-cocked tweets, we look to be headed. And, having seen various rivers and lakes recover from deadly pollution in the past, perhaps it could happen again, if the offing of the land that appears to be in the offing is recognized by enough people to elect better stewards next time around, people who think the environment is worth protecting. Assuming we’ll still be having elections. 

I was pleasantly surprised to see that even Donald Trump disapproved of the latest shameless digital frickative shown to America by Republican congressfolk when they decided, just in time for his ascent to office, to nuke their own ethics committee. Too bad he didn’t show the same concern when North Carolina legislators told their voters to shove off after they booted their Republican governor; or when his campaign co-chair from New York made vile comments about the Obamas. 

Having never met an ethical boundary beyond which he wouldn’t go, Trump’s disapproval of the ethical edict was less about the action than the timing thereof. Still, the episode afforded a glimmer of hope. Enough people retched at the wretchedness that the lawmakers temporarily skulked away. A guidebook, one hopes, for the future, and a reminder to pay attention. 

It all may be moot though, because that from which we’ll not be able to recover is the empowerment of climate change denial and inaction. Scientists (the people Republicans, almost to a woman and man, tell us are to be distrusted and disregarded) have been warning of the point of no return, as we approach a positive feedback loop that makes it self-sustaining no matter what we do or do not. Melting glaciers mean less sun reflection and more heat absorption by exposed land. Warming oceans and tundra release more trapped methane, a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, causing more trapped heat and more melting, more warming... 

Every month, every year, a new record for highest global temperature is set despite dishonest claims of a “pause." How much more obvious must it become before Donald Trump, his appointees, supporters, and practically everyone in his party acknowledge it? When did it become such an irreconcilably partisan issue? Why is ours the one developed nation that refuses to accept it; and where did the fossil fuel industry, the only people who stand to benefit from continued denial, get the power to control the argument? 

The answer to that, at least, is obvious: they have the money, about which the elected of today’s Republican Party care more than they do about the lives of the population they’ve convinced to elect them and sworn to serve. Even less do they care about the planet on which many of us live. The current EPA refused Trump’s ominous demand for the names of its climate-change researchers. The next one, about to be run by a climate change denier, won’t. Because it’s not enough to deny truths that threaten the self-enrichment agenda; they must be hunted down and destroyed. 

Having no time for security briefings, Trump has plenty to tweet about a bad restaurant review, and more than enough to tour the country holding the same self-congratulatory rallies he did before the election, wallowing in cheers, mocking those on the losing side, insulting the press that exposed his lies. Disinterested in healing, our president-elect, since November eighth, has been a neenering fourth-grader. (No offense intended to fourth graders.) Surrounded by rich sycophants on New Year’s Eve, he promised to cut their taxes, rid them of regulations, and end Obamacare, which none of them need. Climate change didn’t come up. Average people weren’t invited. 

The long view is hard. Comprehensive policy is hard. Since winning, our president-elect shares thoughts one-hundred-forty characters at a time, as deep as he goes. 

Optimism? What was I thinking?

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Ethics, Shmethics

It wasn't a mystery, only a matter of time. Seeing themselves fully in charge, Congressional Republicans decided their first order of business was to nuke their own Ethics Committee. Who could have seen that coming, amirite?

Even Donald Trump, who wouldn't know an ethical boundary if it wrapped itself around his neck and honked on his nose, suggested their timing was off. (He didn't criticize the action, per se, as his team made clear; just that it shouldn't have been the first thing out of the gate.)

But then, amazingly, they backed off, after outrage and mockery poured in. (One member felt the need to make it clear that their decision wasn't prompted by Trump's tweet, as if to assure us that he'll have no influence over them, and to remind him that his job is to stop tweeting long enough, between congratulatory rallies, to sign the damn legislation they send him.)

The point, though, is that it seems even those self-centered and mendacious legislators of the hardest right can be moved by enough input. So there's a lesson: in this era of total Republican control, figureheaded by a narcissistic, shallow moron, it behooves us -- even thoughtful conservatives, now in hiding -- to remain vigilant and to speak up as the outrages mount up.

Because, who knows? It's not inconceivable they'd listen to voters if they decide the money from wealthy donors and corporations doesn't do much good if they're voted out of office. Of course, if they've already stashed enough of it away, they needn't give any more of a shit than they already do.

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