January 2025 Archives

Dear America,

 Did you ever notice that when Donald Trump says something preposterous--often an outright lie--he adds for the benefit of the crowd listening, "you know that."  It's a rhetorical trick by which he avails himself of the credulity of his constituents, which is the only real political asset he has or needs.  He has usurped their free will just as he has co-opted the minds of Republican politicians, virtually all of whom appear to be obsequious poltroons susceptible to Trump's cajoling and existential threats.  All in all they constitute a captive audience, not that he has to worry anymore.  He is a lame duck who can have his way with our country...my country...in whatever perverse way he chooses...or can he.  

Trump is a vermin: If you'll forgive me, you know that.  He is invidious, despicable, mendacious, devious, crooked as a snake, but he is getting away with it   But maybe not.  He has been impeached twice to no avail, and he probably feels that he is now possessed of impunity in that regard.  However, if he commits a high crime or a misdemeanor, that impunity flies out the window because if it is blatant enough, even his adulators will have to accept that he doesn't belong in the White House, right?  Well, that is probably just a prayer, but we can hope, and I believe that he has already committed such a crime, so my hope is that my theory will be tested, and soon.  This is what I am thinking.

Trump took his oath of office just a couple of days ago, and with it, he swore to "preserve, protect and defend the U.S. Constitution of the United States."  He can equivocate all he wants, but we all...many millions of us anyway...heard him so swear, and since the oath is in plain English, we all understood what it meant--except of course our liar in chief, Donald Trump.  And here's why I say that.  One of his first acts was to propound an executive order and affix his grotesque, contrived, magic-marker signature to it purportedly ending the birthright to citizenship afforded every person born in our nation provided for by the 14th amendment to said constitution.  That's right.  Trump had just sworn to preserve, protect and defend even that provision of the constitution and among the first acts he undertook when he entered upon his second term as president was to unilaterally assail one of the fundamental rights provided for in that constitution.  He didn't seek to preserve it.  He didn't attempt to protect it.  What he did instead is attempt to eliminate it.  Instead of defending it, he repudiated it.  That sounds like a high crime to me.  If he had only expressed disagreement with that provision of the constitution that might have been considered free speech protected by the first amendment of that very same constitution.  If he had initiated a campaign to repeal birthright citizenship, that might not have been forgivable, but it would have been his right.  But instead, he autocratically proclaimed that it no longer applied to people in the United States that he didn't want to stay here.  He undertook an act of tyranny like the vile autocrat that he is.  He committed a high crime...not just a misdemeanor...a high crime.  Thus, it is not just the prerogative of our House of Representatives to contemplate and proclaim such to be the case and to then refer the matter to The Senate for trial; It is the required duty of those bodies of our national legislature to impeach Trump, try him for his treason, convict him and then remove him from office.

Let me admit at this point that the members of our legislature have neither the integrity nor the courage to do their duty in this regard.  I'm not fooling myself that there is still any integrity on our national political scene.  All but three Republicans voted to confirm Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense despite all the social sins in which he has indulged and the real questions as to whether he can even be reputed to possess the mettle necessary to run the largest and most formidable armed force in the world, especially under the thumb of perhaps the most erratic politician America has ever elected.  But only three Republicans--and one of them was almost-emeritus Senator Mitch McConnell for whom doing the right thing is something new--voted against Hegseth.  I thought for awhile that John Thune, the incoming Republican Majority Leader, might be possessed of the integrity to lead the Republican Party to the practice of doing the right thing, but so far that's just been an overestimation of his character.  So the idea that Speaker Johnson of The House, who professed to believe that the January 6th insurrection was nothing but a tourism event, and Majority Leader Thune have the fortitude and character to lead the charge against our felonious president turns out to be just a pipe dream.

But that doesn't mean that no high crime has been committed.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

Until today, Trump has just been an American Sophist who seemed to have recruited 76 million voters somehow.  But today, after hearing his absurd, invidious conceit in his speeches yesterday, his oxymoronic executive orders proclaiming an "energy emergency" concomitantly with his reversal of the Biden incentive initiative for development of wind energy projects off our coast lines and his ipsi dixit order reversing the citizenship-at-birth constitutional provision for those born in our country, America, I see Trump as not just a political anomaly that will occur once and then fade into history.  He is no longer a bad joke that the sanctimonious Christian right wing is playing on us out of didactic dogmatism.  He is an existential threat.  He is the next Putin/Maduro/Orban of the autocrat class, and it is only a matter of time until he launches an effort to repeal the 22nd amendment to the constitution so that he can run for president as often as he wants to.  He is venting his nihilistic narcissism and unless we take congress back from the Republicans in the mid-term elections, democratic America will be just a footnote in a world history that features the triumph of oligarchic feudalism, tyranny and repression as a mode of governance.  Donald Trump is no longer a blip in our history.  He is our anti-democratic future if the Republican party--the instrumentality by which Trump has returned to plague us is and will perdure--is allowed to maintain its congressional hegemony.  The Republicans are Trump's captive instrumentality and they have fallen in line with his Machiavellian, self-serving claim that "only he" can achieve what the conservative constituency wants.  Whether it serves posterity or not means nothing to them as long as they continue in power, both individually and as a party.  The Republicans have capitulated to a would-be dictator, and as such they have built Trump's stairway to the throne of a  self-proclaimed demigod.  Donald Trump is a menace and the conservative Republican poltroons are nothing but his minions.  Congratulations to them.  They have finally descended to the shame and infamy they deserve.

Some of Trump's executive orders are downright diabolical.  For example, he is restoring "Schedule F" as a category of federal worker, which will allow him to reclassify some jobs now held by career civil servants so as to fire them and replace them with his personal loyalists.  He also signed an order implementing the "Department of Governmental Efficiency" so that his friend Elon Musk can determine what government agencies should exist and how fully they should be staffed.  Other orders are just plain troglodytic.  Already mentioned is Trump's desire to reverse the push toward further wind energy, but he also has ordered the reversal of the Biden administration's order initiated to require auto makers to reduce tail-pipe emissions for their manufactured fleets by making more electric vehicles.  He has reiterated his first-term withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change and remedying the trends in the wrong direction.  Then there is the anti-social group of orders.  He has promulgated his own legal principle that there are only two genders to the effect that sex-change treatment will be to no avail to those with what science and social science now call gender dysphoria.  And there is the reversal of the Biden administration's ban on further offshore oil and gas drilling, even though the United States is currently the most prolific producer of fossil fuels in the world...in history.  Thus, this measure will serve no purpose other than to enhance oil company profits and further enrich more of Trump's aspiring oligarchs beyond the obscene wealth they already possess, in connection with which he also wants to let those companies resume exploration of the Alaska reserve so that they can drill for even more excess petroleum than they already produce for export.  And that is just some of the intellectual malfunction in which Trump has already indulged.

I would love to be wrong about all this, but I am sure I am not.  The things Trump has mandated his government to do already are worthy of, and consistent with the past history of, Vladimir Putin in Russia.  They are peremptory, self-serving, irrational and averse to the civil liberty of those who would protest or simply object to Trump's autocratic tendencies.  Do not be surprised if people start going to jail just because they said things that Trump didn't like.  I believe the consensus that Joe Biden and his administration were not persecuting Trump with a "weaponized" justice department, but Trump has expressed a desire to do exactly what he accused Biden of: weaponries the justice department and all other governmental agencies against his enemies, adversaries and critics evincing his shameless hypocrisy.  

We're in for it, America.  Trump will not sue or induce the prosecution of Jack Smith, the special prosecutor who brought the charges against Trump related to secret government documents and the January 6th insurrection.  If such a case went to trial, Smith could produce on the record all of the evidence that led to the charges in the first place and then everyone would know that Trump really is the criminal that Smith charged him with being.  But I believe that no one else is safe.  Not even you.  

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

I just saw some of the coverage of the Hegseth confirmation hearing news coverage including commentary from both sides of the political spectrum.  Unfortunately, the Democrats as they often do were misdirected in their questioning to the extent that it was shown by the media, but I have to add that the Republicans took their customary opportunities to avoid their duty to safeguard the American people by eristic misdirection and casuistry.  A Democratic senator focused on whether a record of marital infidelity, drunken debauchery and sexist transgression would be disqualifying for a candidate for a high office, and Hegseth simply brushed the question aside by calling it hypothetical.  Ironically, at least in my opinion, he could have just said no, and in the aftermath of the questioning, a Republican senator made that point graphically.  He asked his fellow senators if they had ever seen fellow senators come to the senate floor for a night vote drunk, and no one spoke up from the gallery on hand.  Then he asked if anyone knew of an example of marital infidelity among senators, and again there was silence...as there probably should have been.  In fact, I personally would have included presidents among the perpetrators of such transgression, including Clinton and, yes, the one who has appointed Hegseth, Trump.  I might even have added Kennedy.  In fact, you could add the same question about sexually inappropriate conversation to candidates for the Supreme Court and get the same response from senators who confirmed Clarence Thomas in spite of the fact that he committed such to the chagrin of one Anita Hill, though in his case I would have voted against him because he lied about other things during his hearing while under oath...but that's another story.

But one Democratic senator asked a question during the hearing that was undoubtedly of central importance for a nominee for the position that controls the mightiest military on earth.  Hegseth was asked if he would carry out an illegal order if Donald Trump gave him one.  Hegseth's answer?  That's hypothetical was not followed up by pointing out that Donald Trump has done a lot of illegal things, not to mention inappropriate things for which he was assessed damages of $85 million, and lying about the subject matter of that case for a second penalty of $5 million.  He was convicted of filing records embodying lies under oath that led to 34 felony count convictions.  Add to all that countless frauds against people with whom he did business of one kind or another.  In that context, the question of whether he would direct Hegseth to give an illegal order is no longer hypothetical.  It is rather just a matter of time, which leads to this conclusion: Hegseth will do Trump's bidding, illegal or not, and that disqualifies him whether even though his past peccadilloes may not.  The man Donald Trump has chosen to chair the Defense Department's operations has confessed that he will be an abettor to a high crime if his patron, even if it violates the Posse-Commitatus Act of 1878 as amended, if then-president Donald Trump asks it of him.  A man like Pete Hegseth is a threat to the lives and liberty of all Americans who disapprove of anything Donald Trump does if those Americans chose to speak out about it en masse, as our constitution's first amendment guarantees them the right to do.  Pete Hegseth is a potential accessory to tyrannical acts of the man who precipitated the January 6 insurrection, and he is unabashed about his allegiance.

So take this all as a portent of things to come.  Donald Trump has nominated people for leadership positions in his administration and cabinet who's loyalty to him is their only qualification and who, in the bargain, share Trump's disregard for the basic values on which our constitutional democracy is founded and on which it depends.  This isn't political.  It is existential and foundational.  Donald Trump has begun to assemble a mafia that will be armed with the most profound power we have seen since Nero and Caligula.

You may find my point hysterical or irrational, but what do you think will eventuate if I'm right?  And by the way, time may be of the essence.  Pay attention to how your senators vote on these nominees because the elections in two years could be your last chance to do the prudent thing, and your last opportunity to protect what I am sure you have heard called "The American Experiment."  We should all be cognizant of the fact that just like forest fires, only you can prevent this.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

While I took solace from the fact that the election was over in spite of the outcome, it didn't last long.  Trump has already trumpeted his psychotic intentions and in effect, initiated his pursuit of those disturbing aspirations.  Immigration, Greenland and the Panama Canal, renewing the tax cuts for the rich despite the already ever-increasing deficits created by them the first time around, persecution of those (including members of congress who held hearings about his attempt to thwart the peaceful transfer of power on January 6, 2021) who dared to say anything derogatory about him or act to reign him in in his deluded grandiosity...all of it evincing our prospects for another four years tiptoeing along the precipice of the abyss of political catastrophe that his second administration surely portends.  It's impossible to just sit and ignore the ominous future for the duration of his administration while he supplicates Putin like he did in that news conference in which he insisted that he could see no reason why Putin would have interfered to effect Trump's first election while practically licking Putin's cheek like a lap dog.  And given the hegemony of the Republican Party in the other two branches of our government, which lets Trump suborn them publicly while they kowtow and grovel in fear, our hope of averting the decline Trump's tenure threatens becomes more remote.  And now he wants to pass one massive "omnibus" bill implementing his perverse intentions all at once...and his skulking sycophantic accomplices march in synchrony with him toward our collective ruination.  

Add to all that his inclination to throw Ukraine to the Russian wolves and his mindless support of Israel no matter how imperialistic and genocidal its policies and Netanyahu's overt Chauvinism get.  By electing him, you have positioned us, America, in concert with the nefariousness of authoritarians all over the world and in jeopardy of the same loss of individual liberty that autocrats have inflicted with the acquiescence that dogmatic populists have endorsed and voted for there and here as well.  You're thinking this is all alarmism, aren't you, and I have to admit that I hope you're right.  I hope it's just alarmist pessimism and Trump will become a creature of selfless reason somehow...miraculously; From your lips to God's ear.  However, he was not chastened by his loss in 2020 by 7 million votes, nor did he desist in his contrived insistence that the election was rigged...without evidence mind you.  And he continues to insist that every charge leveled against him is a "witch hunt," not only demonstrating that he doesn't know what a witch hunt is but he doesn't understand that if you call every accusation such you inure even your followers to your feigns of innocence.  No one believes that Donald Trump is virtuous and innocent of all that with which he has been charged.  He stole those top secret documents and there are pictures of them laying around in his ballroom to prove it.  We all saw the insurrection of January 6 on the news and that includes the violence that Trump supporters committed with the collateral damage they caused.  So his and Tucker Carlson's insistence that they were just tourists is demonstrated to be an almost comically delusional fabrication.  And to top it all off, a jury found him liable to the tune of more than $80 million for molesting a woman in a department store dressing room and a judge and another jury found him liable for slandering her for bringing that case against him.  Add to that the 34 felony counts of which yet another jury found him guilty and you can't help but conclude that as far as the law is concerned, the only thing Trump can win for is losing.  After all, it can't be the case that all juries are trying to burn him at the stake, can it.  But you voted for him anyway.

So as far as relaxing for the next four years is concerned, that is out of the question.  Events over the past four years alone...even if you ignore his previous acts that precipitated his reputation for being something less than laudable...demonstrate that Donald Trump is a miscreant and a liar not to be trusted.  But still, 76 million of you voted for him and put us all in this current jeopardy.  As I have said before, on election day, the American people get what they deserve, but I firmly believe that I, and the 73 million who voted for Harris, don't.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

There is a sense in which the victory of Donald Trump in the 2024 election by a plurality, if not a majority of the voting electorate--I say voting electorate since about 5 million of the voters whose votes redounded to the benefit of Joe Biden in 2020 decided not to vote at all in 2024--provides relief by dint of closure for those of us who dread the next Trump presidency.  While the farcical advent of Trump's early-named cabinet nominees fills most of us with considerable consternation, somehow it all has a predictable, déjà vu quality that does little more than confirm our fear that as in his last administration, he won't actually be draining the swamp, he will just be replacing the old alligators with their bigger, younger brothers and sisters.  I think most of us have resorted to the almost delusional hope that Trump will accidentally do a good job in spite of his prior record and his indefatigably miscreant character.  He may continue to lie, scheme and contrive, but perhaps to no effect as the wheel keeps on turning in its own ineluctable way bringing about the best of all possible worlds.  Some things Donald Trump can't change no matter how hard he tries. But the fact that the election is a fait accompli is meager consolation in that some of the new alligators are far more menacing than the old ones.  Take Elon Musk for example.

He seems to be Trump's constant confidant and companion...a guru rather than a trusted advisor.  Musk's influence on our president-elect appears to be more like a thrall than just a friendship or tutelage.  The two are often seen together and news reports put Musk at Mar-a-Lago more and more often with Trump seemingly beaming with his hand on Musk's shoulder.  All the while Musk looks out at the world with the confidence of an unassailable sage whose place in the pantheon of the Trumpist elite is impenetrable and perpetually assured while he spews his far-fetched ideas as if they were a function of afflatus: Trump's own Rasputin, and a half-trillionaire in the bargain.  It appears that the new oligarchy is going to be a plutocracy as well, and here we are out here worrying about paying for rent and eggs.  Our country is in the hands of rich people who care less about us than they do about how much money they can accrue so that they can brag about it invidiously.  It appears that those in power in the second Trump administration are haughty and bizarre, not empathetic and rational about it.  Trump and Musk see a problem, which is the imbalance between how much the government takes in and what it spends, and their solutions seem to be to reduce or eliminate programs that the government relies on to control the institutions on which we rely--departments of government that regulate corporate misfeasance, education and health for example--and at the same time reduce taxes, presumably on the wealthy as in the last Trump tax cuts.  We are looking at a change in the orientation of our country politically that will employ the corporate orientation toward profit rather than the extant orientation toward the common weal, effectively re-instituting the failed doctrine of Reaganism, which worked on the postulate that if the rich do well, their good fortune will rain down on all of us; It didn't.  Neither Trump nor Musk seems to have heard that the forty years or so of trickle down economics led to an ever increasing decline in the prosperity of the common man relative to the riches of the corporate aristocracy, inflating the gap between them ever wider.  Trumpism will not "make America great again."  It will drag us into a sort of corporate feudalism that will render the working man and woman serfs while it works as a parapet from which the rich watch over us making sure that we don't demand more.


Your friend,

Mike