Twit

Even diehard Trumpists in our state know he’s lying about vote-by-mail. We’ve done it, scandal-free, for years. His claim that it’s rife with fraud is absurd, so much so that you’d think the aforementioned delusionaries would wonder: if he lies so blatantly about this, maybe the people calling him a constant, pathological liar are right.  

Unless it wasn’t covered on Fox “news,” Trumpists also know the only fraud related to mailed ballots was in the 2016 election, in North Carolina, where Republican operatives collected ballots from trusting people in Democratic districts, promising to turn them in, saving them the trouble. The ballots were squirreled. 

Why are Trump and Trumpists afraid of vote-by-mail? Most studies have shown it favors neither party; in fact, by making it easier for older folks to vote, and since older folks tend to vote conservative, some studies have suggested an advantage for Republicans. Wherefore, then, the obvious lies?  

Simple: voting by mail foils Republicans’ time-tested tools of voter suppression and deceit. Closing or understaffing polling places in Democratic districts, limiting hours -- favorite forms of chicanery in red states -- become irrelevant. Hacking voting machines, in which Moscow Mitch knows Russians have dabbled but refuses to act, and the ease of which has been demonstrated by children, goes away. 

Software-based vote-switching disappears, too. And mailed ballots can be reviewed, which, lacking paper records, most voting machines don’t allow; especially those preferred by red states, manufactured by Republican-donor companies like Diebold. 

By neutralizing GOP voter suppression, voting by mail provides more opportunity for everyone, even Democrats. Mystery solved. 

Parenthetically, the Fox-hyped report of thirty-eight-million “missing” mail-in ballots nationwide included every ballot mailed out and not returned. Ballots sent to the wrong address, ballots sent to people who didn’t vote. A loose definition of “missing.”  

This week, Trump threw another tantrum: his favorite prevarication platform pushed back on his voting lies. Twitter, on which Trump spends hours daily, an activity to which he refers as “working,” attached links to some of his tweets, allowing readers to find the truth. In a signature would-be-dictator’s meltdown, he threatened to eliminate Twitter, showing, yet again, his – let’s call it – “misapprehension” of presidential power. And censorship. Big-tech social media squelches “conservative voices,” he whined. 

If only. He’s been getting away with contumelious lies forever. Plus, if he’s conservative, Jeffery Dahmer was vegan.  

Particularly ironic about this latest Donnie-brook is that his followers don’t care a snowflake’s worth if he’s lying; the last thing any of them would do is follow a link to bubble-bursting knowledge.  

Twitter ought to have kicked him off, permanently. His definitionally insane, law-suit worthy implication that Joe Scarborough murdered an aide violates its rules in ways that are supposed to result in being expunged. But Twitter and Facebook have always allowed outrageous falsehoods to spread like swamp scum. Multi-billionaire Zuckerberg just told Fox “news” he won’t be fact-checking Trump. Twitter, though, says it will continue. Good.  

Given such mendacity from a “president” so disconnected from reality, who models ignorance the way strippers model pasties, perhaps we should excuse our fellow citizens who consider it tyranny to be told to wear masks while hoarding toilet paper. Let’s hope their refusal is only Trump-augmented ignorance. Maybe they’re unaware that, because people can be carriers without being sick, wearing masks protects others from the wearer, not the other way around. If it’s not ignorance, then it’s “Trump doesn’t wear a mask, so I won’t, either. I don’t care if I make you sick.” Such people could properly be called deplorable.  

It’s bad enough that ignorance has become fundamental to Trumpism. To think it’s hate-based, too, is worse. For many Trumpists, though, it is: in great-again America, they hang a Democratic governor in effigy, taunt and spit on people who care enough to wear masks. Asians are their latest target. 

This week Trump sneered that a masked reporter was only being “politically correct.” And said he didn’t want to give reporters the “satisfaction” of seeing him (showing concern for Americans by) wearing one. That’s a deeply disturbed individual.  

States run by denialist governors are now experiencing dramatically increased infections. By contrast, Governor Beshear, that effigized governor, is admirable. Here’s his response to the contemptable act. Improbably, Kentucky contains both him and Mitch McConnell.   

True conservatives should be urging everyone to vote Trump out. Here in Washington, it’s easy. You can mail your ballot in, and you don’t even need postage.    

[Image source]

Memorial Day

Reposting something I wrote a couple of years ago:

(Think about the last two lines, above. If that isn't irony, I don't know what is.)

Monday, Memorial Day, a friend shared a Facebook meme: “Only two defining forces have offered to die for you. Jesus Christ, and the American Soldier. One died for your soul, the other for your freedom...”  

And I thought, those who served in Vietnam as I did, before and after, killed there, didn’t die for our freedom. They died because they were poor, mostly, couldn’t get student deferments, or have daddies who bought them a pair of invisible bone spurs. They died not knowing or caring why they were there. Quoting another veteran, they died for a mistake. Taking and returning fire, they fought to protect themselves and their squadron, not anyone else. All they wanted was to ride those “freedom birds” back to the world with as many of their limbs as possible. The ones I evacuated mostly didn’t. Their Purple Hearts came at a much higher price than mine. And those who died were still dead three days later.  

I served in Danang, not far below the DMZ. “Rocket City,” we called it. When the rockets rained in and we dove for cover, it wasn’t for anyone’s freedom but our own. The beach there, China Beach, was beautiful, though; white sand, mild surf, and warm waters comparing favorably with the occasional nurse from the 95^th Evac stripping her combat fatigues down to a bikini, as choppers patrolled the shore, gunners sitting halfway out the doors, feet resting on the struts, protecting our freedom to swim.  

Just down the beach was the civilian MACV compound, fenced, guarded, green, quartering contractors making big money servicing the war. Someday, I figured, China Beach would be a destination spot, adorned with expensive hotels, win or lose. And so it is.  

Protecting America’s freedom had nothing to do with it. Especially not to the orchestrators. The Domino Theory was a useful selling point. Now our trading partner, Vietnam did fall. And it has hotels and McDonalds.   If the term makes sense, World War II was a good war. There was a definable cause, and undeniable need. It liberated people held in cages, terminating that practice and Nazism forever for a while. And it ended the Depression. 

Afghanistan was justifiable, might even have made us safer, had Rumsfeld not let Osama off the hook, had Bush not bailed to pursue unrevealed intentions. Iraq’s “Domino Theory” was “Bringing Democracy to the Middle East,” as bogus as the former, and as the Gulf of Tonkin incident. It was never about protecting our freedom, even though more who fought there, and more people back home, believed it was; more than was the case with Vietnam. By then, propaganda had found a louder voice. Dick Cheney’s stock in Halliburton made out. Oil companies and defense contractors, too. Most everyone else paid dearly for the adventurism, and the bill still isn’t settled. 

It’s easier to believe our wars have been to defend freedom than to consider other reasons. No matter what, those who died deserve our veneration. And contrition, for the lives we’ve enjoyed since they lost theirs. And for our complicity in sending them, unquestioning, to fight wars instigated by old men whose kids rarely did, for reasons obscured beneath star-spangled bromides.  

It’s wrong, and lazy, to define patriotism only in terms of war; equate it only with those convinced to fight, for reasons they’re made to believe. It’s not their belief that needs questioning: it’s that of those who slap “Support Our Troops” stickers on their cars and trucks, fly flags that say “Behold my patriotism,” coal-roll, vote for tax cuts that deprive veterans of their rightful benefits, and call themselves patriots. 

After serving in Vietnam, Memorial Day makes me more angry than sad. Once a year the tears are real; the absence of those who died is eternal. Yet we remain at war, even as phony platitudes and intimations of future wars from a “president” who dodged the draft by fakery expose the day of remembrance as the manipulation it has always been. My friend, an honorable man who didn’t serve, believes with all his heart. I respect him for that. My anger may be overly self-righteous, but military members aren’t the only Americans protecting our freedom. So are teachers, nurses, housekeepers, factory workers, researchers, parents, climate protestors, plumbers, Social Democrats, the remaining actual conservatives, community organizers… 

But not those keeping us in a state of perpetual war, selling the myth that freedom is the reason.

Conspiracies. They're Everywhere.

More than a few times, Trump has declared himself “the most transparent president” in history. Last week, in only nineteen words, Joe Biden summarized the truth: “It seems the way to get fired by President Trump is not to commit wrongdoing, but to investigate it.” 

Transparent. Perhaps Trump was referring to how easily one can see through his attempts to hide truth, how obvious his lies are to people who aren’t doing the three-monkeys thing. After all, Trump entered the political arena by flogging the lie that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Remember when he sent his “investigators” to Hawaii and said they were finding “amazing things”?

It fit perfectly into the demographic at which he was aiming: conspiracists; resentful people, hungry for lies, long as they fit their worldview. People who harbored unarticulated anger; who needed someone to blame for whatever it was in their world that needed blaming. He spoke, and up their ears they pricked.  

Transparent. Hiding promised tax returns, blocking people from testifying to Congress. Soviet-style purges, ousting revealers of the swampy corruption he brought to the White House; firing Inspectors General, five so far, who looked into it, like Trump’s phony “state of emergency” declaration, allowing arms to Saudi Arabia without Congressional approval. Or the one investigating Moscow Mitch’s wife.

Accountability? Not for Trump. Because these expulsions validate their paranoia, Trumpists are unbothered. People who oppose him are part of a worldwide conspiracy whose aim, among other things, is to rape and sell children in the basement of a pizza joint with no basement.  

If Trump is ignorant of everything a leader of the United States and, until recently, of the world must understand, he’s a stable genius when it comes to knowing his audience. He began with and is now staking his reelection on people who hear noises at night and think flying saucers. Facilitated enthusiastically by the co-conspirators of rightwing media, it works.

As his incompetent coronavirus failures became undeniable, he turned to blaming everyone except himself. And to distraction. Circling back to his original objet d’artifice, he’s feeding them “Obamagate!!!” Echoed by every rightwing disinformationist and Congressperson, this transparent fakery is being lapped up like fetid water by thirsty desert-wanderers. Trump’s confabulations fit his idolaters like a bandoleer. 

And oh, the unmasking! Horrifying!! Jim Croce tried so hard to warn us. How many Trumpists even know what it means? How many find it disturbing that Trump’s unqualified but loyal Director of National Intelligence released names of some who requested unmasking Michael Flynn, as if to suggest a nefarious plot; as if it wasn’t an all-but routine, justifiable request? How many know the unmasking requests fulfilled in Trump’s time number over thirty-five-thousand? Wild guess: none. 

Nor do they see anything wrong with a “president” turning the DOJ and intelligence agencies into instruments of personal power, vengeance, and, in the case of Bill Barr, erasing history. Russian interference? Never happened. Whole thing was a made-up coup attempt. 

Why would Trumpists see anything wrong? He’s not only their ticket to Heaven, but their protector from all the world’s evil, the people coming after them: One World Government, the W.H.O. and CDC, commies (not Putin, though, or his internet trolls), the Trilateral Commission, Agenda 21, lizard people, the Illuminati. The Deep State. Jews, Muslims, the non-white. Climate scientists, doctors, educators, journalists. Vote-by-mail. Liberals. Bill Gates. 

Evolutionary biologists theorize susceptibility to conspiracy theories, currently most associated with Trumpism and certain fundamentalist religious sects, derives from an evolutionary advantage to seeing patterns, even where they don’t exist, as a way of assessing possible threats to survival. Makes sense. But, like creationism, evolution is imperfect. (Hemorrhoids.) 

In America, that proto-beneficial wiring has short-circuited. Trumpists see sinister patterns everywhere, causing them to overlook, excuse, even celebrate his uncaring lies and petty nastiness. Attacking the press; promoting and taking dangerous medicine and, with revelatory ignorance, rejecting evidence of its ineffectiveness; creating distrust in elections; firing those who speak out; scapegoating; claiming he’s treated horribly: these are positives in a God-sent savior who strikes at dangers only they can see. Belief in conspiracies provides community, too, and feelings of control in a world spinning out of it. 

As if custom-made for and by Trump and Trumpists, the ultimate manifestation of this psychic agoraphobia is QAnon. If not all supporters are that far gone, anyone still with him must be close. Have clean underwear handy and read all about it.

[Image source]

Running On Empty ... Lies

Next newspaper column (updated, below):

Golly. Because some of its denizens have tested positive for Covid-19, White House people are finding it “scary to go to work.” It shouldn’t have taken a virus to tell them that. Maybe “scary” is the necessary first step on the way to “embarrassing.” 

With “president” and vice ignoring their own guidelines, even demanding people remove masks before photo-ops, it was inevitable there’d be contagion in the contagion. Even as Trump insists testing is “overrated” and “makes us look bad,” he’s now being tested daily, as are all people coming into the West Wing. Except for him, personnel are suddenly required to wear masks. He’ll make his workplace safe, but not yours. Yours doesn’t need to be. You can be a warrior.  

By now, Donald “We’ve prevailed” Trump’s reelection strategy is clear: lie. All day, all night, Kellyanne. Truth being disadvantageous, lie. And, with Bill Barr’s help, erase history. Because Trump knows he’ll get no pushback from supporters, and because the “fake news” “enemy of the people” have gotten so trounced by the terrifying torrent of transparent Trumpic truthlessness that they’ve tossed in the towel. He knows it takes more time to correct his lies than he spends telling them. Co-conspirator Moscow Mitch just said Obama “left no game plan.” Brazen. Like Trump and Barr, he thinks you’re too stupid to notice.  

For now, Trump’s biggest lie is that he’s handling the pandemic “beautifully.” Which explains, one assumes, his daily blame-placing and responsibility-shirking. Initially praising China’s Xi for his response to the virus, Trump is now not only blaming China and repeating the Putinesque lie that Covid-19 was created in a Chinese lab, about which science says the opposite, he’s implying it was a deliberate attack on the United States, a “worse attack than Pearl Harbor.”  

Commending people who reject the precautions he’s now taking, people braying about rights but not responsibilities, Trump is rallying anger, his ploy of first resort. At governors, Democrats, President Barack Obama, China. As with Muslims, Jews, African-Americans, Latinos, and LGBT Americans since his “election,” attacks on Chinese-Americans are spreading, too, as the xenophobic deplorables wing of the faithful respond to his mendacity. Angry, ill-informed people, Trump believes, will keep him in office. Dr. Fauci is the latest target.  

By defunding American researchers in China, where we need to be if we’re to understand how the virus spread and how to prevent it from happening again, Trump endangers even more lives. He’d rather attach pseudo-credibility to his China lies than prevent another pandemic. 

Anyone who admires Trump’s crisis “leadership” should take nine minutes to watch this recounting of the US response and Trump’s part in it. Or admit a preference for remaining ignorant.  

To the extent that actions have been effective, it’s because governors like ours stepped in to fill the federal leadership void. After ceding responsibility to them, Trump began criticizing and undermining their efforts, calling for resistance while taking credit for what they’d done. Lying. About who got what to whom, when. About how much was available, where. About total US testing compared to other countries rather than per capita. About “numbers are coming down.” On these matters, the record is clear. Trump is trying to ensure you forget.  

Ignorance and anger are key to Trump’s reelection. Rather than a sense of unity during a time of unprecedented crisis, he’s staked victory on creating division. Unfamiliar with helping others for its own sake, he pits Americans against each other, for what he sees as personal advantage. Given Trump’s lifelong mendacity, it’s unsurprising.  

What’s surprising is the ease with which he’s conned so many. All countries have individuals like Trump. But tens of millions? American exceptionalism has become its free-world-leading preference for misinformation, its docility before undisguised attempts to confuse and distract. Trump’s “presidency” fits perfectly with, amplifies, and feeds on the streak of paranoid and credulous conspiracy-mongering that’s always run through American life. After Trump applauded Michigan’s AR-packing protestors, people began calling for lynching Governor Whitmer. If such threats aren’t historically extraordinary, a “president” all but encouraging them is. His latest: “Obamagate.” Because he can.  

Since 1789, we’ve survived isolated outbreaks of ignorance. Now, though, it’s a national movement, the bedrock of a major political party; one that countenances a lying “president” who claims absolute power; that remains silent when Trump calls 
President Barack Obama treasonous, but calls the former president “classless” when he breaks his long silence to speak the obvious.   

[Update, 5/15: since I published this, Moscow Mitch admitted he was wrong about Obama not leaving a plan. The version that will be in The Everett Herald will be a revised one, without the reference to his original claim, and a few extra words about "Obamagate:" that Fox "news" is running with it and Trumpists are swallowing it like a cheeseburger, without chewing.] 

Priorities

Next newspaper column:

Question: If those long-gun-toting, body-armor-wearing, priapic protesters storming the gallery of the Michigan legislature had been African-American, Latino, Muslim, or Native American, would their deaths be considered Covid-19 related? When Trump called them “very good people,” was he distinguishing them from the “very fine people” marching for white supremacy in Charlottesville? 

Or was it random, simply reinforcing his impeachable calls for insurrection and his insecurity around powerful women, like Michigan’s Governor Whitmer? 

What if they’d taken a knee? 

Actual good people are raising thoughtful questions about how to calibrate reopening. Among them, the CDC has produced detailed guidelines, which Trump immediately spiked. But those Michigander embarrassments to the male gender weren’t there to be thoughtful. They were there to intimidate, implicitly threatening violence, cheered on by their “president.” (Swastikas and Confederate flags, evidently indispensable to the movement, remained outside.)  

They were terrorists. That our “president” suggested making “a deal” with such people underscores the obvious: Donald “I’m-treated-worse-than-Lincoln” Trump has neither interest in nor understanding of democracy. Those gunmen have even less. In this democratic republic, they should be heroes to none, no matter one’s views on reopening. But here we are, and there they are. Our “president” celebrates them, and democracy is on a ventilator.  

By contrast, George Bush, with whom I rarely agreed but never considered an empathy-free, self-aggrandizing, full-time liar (only part-time), just produced this.  

President Barack Obama already had.  

How sad that former presidents are needed to fill our current moral leadership vacuum. How sadder that protesting poseurs can’t see what’s behind premature reopening: states can cancel unemployment from workers who refuse to return before it’s safe. Federal aid can be withheld from small businesses who, out of concern for employee and customer health, don’t yet open. 

And if Moscow Mitch’s suggested state bankruptcies were to happen, there goes their employees’ retirement benefits. Meanwhile, troll-bots are flooding social media, fanning the protests. From where, do you suppose, and for what purpose?  

Intended by Trump and his homegrown and trans-oceanic enablers to fracture us, it’s working. In Oklahoma City, McDonald’s workers enforcing rules were shot. A Michigan security guard was murdered over it. We know there’ll be more, and it’s on Trump, urging Americans to rise against each other, if that’s what it takes to crank up the economy. For him, reopening isn’t about you; it’s about reelection.  

Speaking of elections, it’s time to address the Joe Biden sexual harassment claims. That he injudiciously massaged Ms. Reade’s shoulders and/or neck is believable. He’s admitted to being inappropriately “touchy-feely,” and has reined it in. One finds her much-belated accusation of forced digital penetration harder to believe, though, for reasons enumerated by an experienced prosecutor of sexual assault cases, here.  

In a he-said/she-said situation, judgments will be influenced by preexisting suppositions and, yes, by political leanings. For the above-linked reasons, this columnist finds Ms. Reade less credible than the accusers of Brett Kavanaugh and Trump. Unwanted digital penetration is wholly inconsistent with one’s perception of Vice-President Biden, whereas Trump has bragged about sexual assault that differs from Ms. Reade’s accusation only by depth.  

Let’s assume Ms. Reade is truthful. Perhaps she is. Our electoral choice then turns on policy, because we’d be choosing between a man whom we’ve heard gloating about sexual assault, accused of it by at least twenty-five women; and one who admits to overly-familiar touching (think George and Angela) but denies intentional assault. 

If those who voted for Trump, overlooking his lifelong amorality, are above criticism but those who’d vote for Vice-President Biden are hypocrites, who can be surprised? We’re living, after all, in Trumpworld, where inconvenient truth is “fake news” and under-reaction to Covid-19 for months, continuing even now, is considered “a great success.”  

It could be argued, if Vice-President Biden did it, that his and Trump’s behavior offset each other, even though, by multiples, they don’t; so the election becomes, as it should, about issues: What they’ll do about accelerating climate change; about pollution, healthcare, renewable energy, science and research, programs that help the needy become productive. Women’s rights, minority rights, voting rights, early childhood education, Social Security, Medicare. 

Who’ll preserve capitalism by reducing unsustainable wealth disparity; what they’d cut and whom they’d tax to abate skyrocketing national debt; who’ll respect separation of powers; who’ll seek expert advice and who’ll ignore it; who’ll convene truth-tellers and who’ll fire them. And pretty much everything else on which the future of all generations hangs.  

    

Columnists vs. Journalists

Next newspaper column:

There’s confusion, lately, about journalism versus columnists; between fact and opinion. These examples will clear everything up: 

Fact: In last Sunday’s tweet-storm, Trump said journalists who received “Noble” prizes for “fake news” should have them rescinded. Sub-fact: It’s spelled “Nobel.” Co-fact: There’s no Nobel prize for journalism. 

Opinion: Trump is losing it at an accelerating rate. 

Fact: Trump’s tax cuts produced trillion-dollar budget deficits, with the benefits going mainly to the already-wealthy. Corporate tax cuts created shareholder dividends, windfalls for executives, and stock buybacks, but minimal hiring of or salary increases for workers; thus doing little for the economy. 

Opinion: The tax cuts were unnecessary, and detrimental to the future of capitalism. The current crisis shows why tax cuts in economic good times are a bad idea. 

Fact: Trump wondered if getting disinfectants into the body, by injection or other unspecified means, and/or shining light inside, would cure the virus. Having both delivered and received endoscopies, up, down, and sideways, we know light entering via whatever orifice won’t illuminate bronchioles and alveoli, where the virus does its worst. Then Trump said it was sarcasm. 

Opinion: People who continue to defend Trump should be embarrassed. But he’s giving America multiple sarcasms. 

Fact: In medical school, we saw people who’d had disinfectant injected into them. We called them cadavers. 

Opinion: Not opinion. 

Fact: Trump just said he “created” the “greatest” economy ever. 

Opinion: That’s like a new contractor adding the final story onto a skyscraper and claiming credit for designing and building the whole thing. 

Fact: Pence said he didn’t wear a mask at the Mayo Clinic so he could “look people in their eyes.” 

Opinion: Toady. Flunked anatomy. 

Fact: Trump deregulated the pork-producing industry BEFORE Covid-19. 

Opinion: Look what happened. 

Fact: Kushner/Trump claims the federal response to Covid-19 has been “a great success.” 

Opinion: Soviet-style disinformation, which Trumpists will believe.  

As to journalists and columnists: the latter… aren’t. That’s why columnists and other opinionations are found on a newspaper’s opinion page, whereas its reporting (journalism) is in front, making it easy to read only news, and to know where to stop. In fact, if one finds particular columnists annoying, it’s medically advisable to ignore them.   

A recent spate of emails and letters complaining about the lack of “conservative” voices in this newspaper suggests the need to distinguish between conservatives and Trump supporters. Because you can be one or the other, but not both. 

We recall a time when conservatism meant fiscal responsibility. When it disdained the idea of an all-powerful president, and when it understood that an opposing party isn’t an enemy, but a vital component of legislating wisely, via the sort of compromise on which this country was founded.  

Years ago, conservatism supported our Constitutionally-mandated separation of powers; believed in Congressional oversight of the executive; understood the indispensable role of inquisitive, skeptical journalism in a democracy, and why it was enshrined in the very first of the Bill of Rights. Once, conservatism included comprehending the value of an independent (and qualified) judiciary; and belief in free and fair elec… okay, maybe not that. 

You can support Trump – improbably, millions still do – but you can’t, by any definition, call yourself a conservative: he embodies the opposite in every way. Similarly, Trumpists who claim belief in Jesus can do so only by rejecting His teachings. 

This paper carries conservative columnists. Being actual conservatives, they rarely write in support of Trump. Letters from Trump supporters, however, are regularly printed, praising him and, often, announcing cancelation for not having their weltanschauung reinforced. Which, again, is why… oh, well. 

If The Herald carries fewer opinions in support of Trump than ones correctly pointing out his unfitness, it has always done journalism; for example, turning up damning information about a recent Democratic county executive. Even when reporting on politicians, if journalism is factual, it’s apolitical. If reporting reveals malfeasance, it’s “fake news” or “bias” only by the malefactor’s definitions.  

In covering Trump, balance is impossible: physics teaches us that the occasional ounce of truth can’t nullify a ton of lies. For Trumpists, being presented with opinions they don’t share countervails the value of a local news source. That’s Foxification, personified. (Opinion.) 

In a bygone world, none of this would need saying. In Trumpworld, though, wherein facts have given way to fiction, and incompetence (fact) from the White House is both undeniable and denied, the obvious needs stating and restating, over and over.

Twenty-Five For Forty-Five

“I alone can fix it,” he announced, to delirious cheers, after which he proceeded to prove he couldn’t: budget deficits, healthcare, Mexico/wall, coal, 4% growth… It’s a long, well-known list. 

More recently, he claimed “total authority” over when states end stay-at-home rules. Then, maybe realizing he couldn’t avoid responsibility if he failed to fix this, too, he punted to governors.
Which brings us to now, when, in a functioning democracy, the 25^th Amendment would be halfway to dethroning him. 

We refer to fomenting armed rebellion against those governors to whom he ceded authority. “Liberate Minnesota,” he tweeted. “Liberate Michigan.” “Liberate Virginia...” In the last instance, he added, unsubtle and mendacious, “… and save your great 2^nd Amendment. It is under siege.” This “president,” having told governors it was theirs to decide, is inciting citizens to rise up -- armed, by implication -- against those governors and their decisions. Did he mean it? He said it. Like a dangerous lunatic, not a president. Not even a “president.” This should be obvious to everyone. 

It isn’t. From sea to temporarily-shining sea, answering the bawling of their golden calf, people are protesting. Saying, in effect, “We’re not sick, and if we’re asymptomatic carriers who end up infecting others, and if that overwhelms our hospitals, causing more deaths, it’s okay. We may be waving swastikas and Confederate flags along with the Stars and Stripes, wearing armor, packing, urging fellow citizens to die for us, but we’re the real patriots.” 

Like their Tea Party predecessors, they’re acting in the interests of wealthy Republican donors (Family DeVos and gun promoters this time around) and against their own. Possibly fatally. Perfect timing of reopening is impossible, especially with inadequate testing; but these virulent protests are helping the wrong people. 

The point, though, is less about the comparative handful, so far, of protesters than it is about an Oval Office malefactor who encourages sedition. Who’s appealing to the worst of us, intentionally turning America upon itself. Like his transparently cynical, base-pleasing ban on Green Card applications. To “protect” us. It’s what he considers leadership. 

What he doesn’t consider leadership is creating coherent policies to address this crisis; especially a coordinated, federally-managed process for getting protective equipment and testing capability to every state, rather than causing hospitals and states to resort to subterfuge to get and keep them. Instead, it’s thievery and grift from a lifelong crook and grifter, likely so he can dole it out as political patronage. Governors of both parties are speaking out, too.   

Unironically carrying signs saying “My body, my choice,” these easily-exploited protesters are beyond reach. They reject the personal sacrifice and common sense that real patriots have always delivered when America needed them. If this slice of Americana is small for now, the cultish cake from which they’re cut is not. But surely there are former supporters and true conservatives who see how this “president” is undermining his own government, suborning rebellion, to save his particularly personal @$$.  

And, equally importantly, who see what he’s not: an able and empathetic leader, more concerned for others than himself. Who see how he’s preparing to shift blame onto governors (after China, Democrats, President Obama, and the W.H.O.) for his own failings; and who’ve come to recognize he doesn’t care about the consequences for our republic.  

The current occupant of the White House is but one disturbed man, whom we should ignore. The problem, then, is us. Those who’ve become so inured to being lied to that they neither notice nor care. “You’re a commie POS,” was the entirety of a recently-received email. Asked, in response, what he’d read that’s remotely like communism, the sender disappeared. (I didn’t dispute the POS part.) “You’re a liar,” write others, who refuse to provide examples. 

“Say hello to George Soros,” smirked yet another Foxicant, who declined information about the work Soros does defending democracy and supporting resistance to dictators around the world. Giving less to Democrats than the Koch Brothers give to Republicans, my pal George is nevertheless a knee-jerk boogeyman for propagandized rightists. Hook, line, Foxified sinker, regurgitated word for word, mindlessly. 

People like that are why the 25^th won’t be invoked. Integrity began leaking from the Republican Party with the election of Saint Ronnie. And those were the good old days. Fox “news” didn’t exist, and our pernicious “president” was just a pampered draft-dodger who hadn’t yet filed his first bankruptcy.

[Image source]

Lessons From A Virus

My next newspaper column:

Last week I wrote that Rudy Giuliani invested $2 million in the maker of Trump’s touted malaria drug. Though his credibility disappeared years ago, Rudy denies it, and no proof has been forthcoming. I should have dug further. More important were Trump’s ridding himself of oversight, and the preview Wisconsin’s primary gives us of voting in Trump’s America. For some, my carelessness detracted from that. Lesson learned.

The corona crisis is providing lessons, too. In no particular order:

1)   “Government is the problem” only when it’s mismanaged. More so when it’s been gutted, defunded, and filled with lobbyists and yes-people.

2)   Air is clearer, water is cleaner, animals are thriving. This puts to rest claims that addressing pollution and climate change will make no difference.

3)   The aforementioned have resulted from massive curtailing of human activity; but we know how to create non-polluting energy without shutting down. It can’t happen overnight like this has, but the need and means are clear. Uncaring, Trump and Republicans stand in the way, doing everything they can to promote fossil fuel and inhibit renewables. Choosing contributions from oil producers over the health of humanity and the planet is unconscionable.

4)   Tying health insurance to employment is dumb.

5)   Removing healthcare access from huge numbers of Americans endangers us all.

6)   An economy in which millions face bankruptcy by missing one paycheck wasn’t as robust as Republicans were proclaiming. Not to mention the crushing demand on food banks. Low-wage workers, targeted by Republican policies, are vital to our economy and deserve better.

7)  Trump arranged to get his signature on the "rescue" checks. As if it’s his money, his gift. It’s the only responsibility he’s taken lately, and it’s a self-promoting lie.

8)  Republicans filled the “rescue” with giveaways to their rich donors. Billions; unrestricted, unsupervised.

9)  Patriotism isn’t waving flags. Among other things, it’s caring how one’s actions affect others; willingness to sacrifice in order to help, even people you don’t know. Self-described “patriots” who refuse, because “freedom,” are, in fact, the opposite. The virus has stripped away pretense.

10)  Trump ignored warnings for critical weeks, making things immeasurably worse, costing lives. Recent revelations by determined, dogged journalists are undeniable. His intellectual and psychological unfitness for the job should be obvious to everyone by now. Persisting deniers are as dangerous as he is. 

11)  Republicans calling for “opening” the country prematurely value money more than human life. From the “pro-life” party, this is ironic.

12)  In addition to his experienced pandemic response team, which Trump disbanded, President Barack Obama left a sixty-nine-page document, which foresaw and addressed, in comprehensive detail, every challenge we’re now facing: struggling hospitals, shortages, supply chains, manufacturing, the role of each government department, states vs. federal responsibilities, testing. All of it. Despite Trump’s incessant blaming and repetitive lies, this pandemic WAS foreseen. And there were plans.

13)  Trump’s downplaying of testing, to hide the numbers, is immoral.

14)  So desperate is he to shift blame, Trump is lying about and, in the midst of a global health crisis (and flare-ups, around the world, of polio, measles, Ebola, diphtheria) cutting funds for the WHO. It’s another example of how unfit he is for the presidency: to blame his failings on others, he’s willing to cause death around the world. Mostly in poor countries, of course. It’s beyond shameful: it’s evil. 

15)  Claiming “total authority,” Trump neither understands nor respects the Constitution. Declaring himself a “wartime” president, he nevertheless left procurement to the states. If “war” doesn’t require federal management, what does? Worse, he’s making it harder for governors like ours, hurling insults and hijacking equipment they’ve obtained. 

16) Withholding needed supplies from governors who didn’t praise him enough, and granting them to those who did, is despicable. People are in need. Trump doesn’t care. Everything is about him.

17) Lacking federal leadership, several Republican governors are putting their people, and, therefore, all of us, at risk.

18) Suddenly all for it, Republicans who objected to deficits and stimulus packages during the Obama presidency clearly weren’t standing on principle, but on willingness to damage the country to keep President Barack Obama from succeeding.

19) Wisconsin showed why Trump fears mail-in ballots; and that when enough people understand the seriousness of what’s at stake, Republican voter-suppression can be overcome. For America, this might be the most important lesson of all.

[Image source]

Kleptocrat-In-Chief

My next newspaper column:

Anyone having any two of five human senses operating at fifty-percent capacity or greater recognizes that Trump’s government is a kleptocracy. The latest of many examples: Rudy Giuliani bought $2 million worth of stock in Novartis, the company that makes the malaria drug he began hyping as a miracle cure for Covid-19 immediately after the purchase. Trump, Inc., has a stake, too. 

Trump’s “administration” purchased a million doses of the unproven drug, with our money. Anyone surprised? Remember that Novartis paid Michael Cohen $1.2 million for access to Trump. It’s all of a piece with several Republican Congress-dwellers cashing in by buying and selling related stocks right after being briefed on the coronavirus, before the rest of us knew anything. 

Serving in Vietnam, I took the Trump-drug as malaria prophylaxis. Despite seeing several cases while there, I stopped, because it made me sick. That it’s innocuous is another of Trump’s endless lies. Is it effective for coronavirus victims? We don’t know. But the studies touted by such unreliables as Rudy and Trump and Fox “news” fabricators and, unbelievably, Trump’s second-most egregious groveler, William Barr, are equivocal at best, and they’ve been the opposite of scientific. Either way, Trump will take credit for everyone who recovers after taking it, true or not.  

Fear of truth is why Trump fired two inspectors general this week and last, and attacked the integrity of another who’d accurately reported that hospitals across the country are in desperate need of protective equipment. Trump assumes his followers will believe him when he says everything is fine, because he’s done a “fabulous” job. It’s not, and he hasn’t. 

Our hospital, where I’m assisting in surgery, is in better shape than most. Still, PPE is under strict control. Having changed masks between cases for my whole career, it’s now necessary to reuse them throughout the day. Other locations are facing far worse.  

The first I.G. Trump fired was the one who fulfilled his duty by informing Congress of the infamous whistleblower complaint. Informed. Didn’t opine. Informed, as required by law. Trump’s vilification of him was as illuminating as it was disgraceful. The second fired Inspector General was chosen, independently, by IGs from several agencies, to oversee the dispensing of the trillions of taxpayer dollars in the rescue package. A respected, reportedly “dogged” inspector, fired summarily. Has it anything to do with Trump’s hotels’ eligibility to cash in?  

The thievery isn’t just about our money. They’re stealing elections, too. Wisconsin’s this week was the Party of Trump epitomized, demonstrating the ways by which democracy will die they’re allowed to pilfer another four years. Which is, explicitly, their goal.  

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court has a majority of unqualified rightwing ideologues, selected by no-longer-governor Scott Walker, whose “conservative” policies, like Brownback’s in Kansas, ruined his state’s economy. One of those judges is up for election, facing a credible Democratic opponent. Like the national Republican Party, Wisconsin’s is desperate to keep its compliant court majority. Because of Covid-19, far more people than usual requested absentee, mail-in ballots. Surprise: the state was slow in delivering them, especially to minority areas. Days after the election, some still hadn’t gotten theirs.  

To allow time to receive late-arriving ballots, in consideration of the pandemic, Wisconsin’s Democratic governor ordered a delay. Republicans ran to their reliable judges, who invalidated the order. SCOTUS, predictably 5-4, upheld the invalidation. Issued remotely so as not to endanger themselves in person, their decision forced thousands to endanger themselves in person. Trump, who voted by mail in Florida, “because I’m allowed to,” says mail-in voting is corrupt (it’s the least corruptible, as Washingtonians know). He also lied about when and why Wisconsin Democrats requested the delay.  

In cities most populated by Democratic constituencies, polling places were drastically reduced. Milwaukee, which has the highest black population, a demographic hit disproportionately hard by the virus, went from one-hundred-eighty to five. Choosing democracy over threat to life, people waited in lines for hours, just as their Republican legislature wanted, though they must have figured more would stay away.  

A political Amber Alert, Wisconsin warns of nationwide voter suppression, ideologically activist courts, disregard for public health, disadvantaging minorities. With more Democrats voting but Republican-controlled, by virtue of gerrymandering sanctioned by their corrupted court, Wisconsin is Trumpism’s future America. 

Like Wisconsin’s, Trump’s judges won’t protect voting rights or democracy. Absent massive, united Democratic turnout in November (Trump/Russia is already sewing dissension, effectively) it’s over. 

[Image source]

Businessman-In-Chief

My upcoming newspaper column:

If it wasn’t clear before, it is now, to all but the contentedly Foxified: putting a multi-failed businessman ostensibly in charge was a bad idea. What was the Electoral College thinking when it gave him tenure? 

This week, our businessman-in-chief finalized his killing of automotive fuel standards, gifting oil companies at the expense of public health and the future of our planet. Those are things about which he’s never cared, of course. This was well-known before his “election.”  

In one of his recent, beautiful press conferences, the ratings of which he’s touting like he once did his sexual escapades, Trump shared his idea for saving the restaurant industry: let businesses resume deducting expenses of sending their execs to lunch. He was serious.  

Nor is it surprising, having scammed his way through life, that he’d accuse hospitals of doing something fishy with the equipment they’re receiving. Long suspected of laundering mob money, Trump figures everyone’s as dishonest as he. And he needs scapegoats to distract from failure. Hospitals. Democratic governors. China. Impeachment, laughably.  

Republicans were once outraged when Rahm Emmanuel, President Obama’s Chief of Staff, said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Now, as Trump follows the script, they’re silent. His EPA is using Covid-19 as an excuse to relax pollution rules. William Barr wants judges to suspend habeas corpus till further notice. Texas has banned abortions during the outbreak. And, as predictable as it’s cruel, Trump rejected an extended Obamacare signup for the millions who’ve just lost their jobs. People about whom we’ve always known he couldn’t care less.  

Made more challenging by Trump’s unnecessary, business-friendly, trillion-dollar-deficit-creating tax cuts, the too-small economic rescue package is larded with giveaways to large businesses, including – surprise – real estate investors; while sending a comparative pittance to low-income people, who Steve Mnuchin said can live on $120 a week. Democrats managed to force oversight for the half-trillion dollars heading toward corporations. Forthwith, Trump announced he’d not abide by it. Never been his thing, rules. But he wants his name on the checks.  

Also not his thing: reality. While declaring his “decisive” embargo of flights from China saved us all, figuring he’d done everything necessary because the rest was hard, Trump sent tons of supplies to China in January: the very materiel of which there’ve been shortages ever since. Masks, PPE, even ventilators. In early February, Senators met with White House officials, who rejected offers to fund stockpiling supplies. Why? Not good business? Meanwhile, his initial foot-dragging and denial, reinforced by Fox “news,” lingers in many red states, where Trumpism is literally killing people.  

But he just praised himself for not listening to “those” who said Covid-19 was like the flu. “Those” were he, repeatedly. Astounding. If he sold people on Trump University, in Trumpworld, he figures he can sell that lie, too. Also, only in Trumpworld, where facts are anathema, a truth-teller like Dr. Fauci receives death threats.  

After months of ignored warnings, rejecting the pandemic team and plans President Barack Obama left him, and after irresponsibly wasting time downplaying the threat, which Trump wants you to forget, and which the Foxified already have, some things are improving. Where followed, social distancing is working. Still terribly inadequate, testing is ramping up. That’s because, while Trump was claiming there was no crisis, smart people knew better and began preparing. 

PPE shortages remain, including locally; and, notwithstanding Trump’s continual disinformation, struggling states are having to pay inflated prices to outbid the federal government and each other to obtain them. But, hey, it’s good business. What was it Rahm said, again?  

But Trump’s self-praise-fests are getting beautiful ratings, like no one has ever seen (“I’m number one on Facebook,” he said, mid-crisis. Another lie. President Obama has more). Some watch because when he stops congratulating himself, experts speak. For the rest, is it the scripted sycophancy or the made-for-TV attacks on journalists? When a reporter directly quoted him admitting he told Pence not to call governors who aren’t nice, Trump lied he never said it. It’s on tape! 

Trumpists must love the politicization of aid to blue states, though. Perfectly normal. Remember how President Barack Obama did it with Chris Christie after Hurricane Sandy?  

The effort it took to dissuade Trump from declaring victory on Easter to boost his electoral chances confirms his unfitness. Dead people, he had to be told, could threaten reelection as much as a recession. Not the first thought, evidently, of a businessman.

[Image source]