Dear America,
I am dismayed by how little the press, and the establishment in general are making of Trump's latest usurpation of putative executive power. He is occupying Washington, D.C. with federal troops, be they part-time national guardsmen or full-on army or marine soldiers. It is the equivalent of federal occupation of a city. It is easy to characterize this overreach as just another example of Trump's self-aggrandizement that will blow away in the wind when he gets bored, but that is whistling in the dark. What is happening in D.C. is far more profound and egregious than a peccadillo or a character flaw run amok. In light of Trump's threat to occupy other cities, specifically Democrat-run Chicago most overtly, consider the implications of Trump's self-proclaimed intention to go to congress and demand an extension of the thirty day authority extended by the law he has invoked to justify his current imperious action purportedly to stem crime in our nation's capital. Congress is controlled by his captive poltroons in the Republican Party, and good sycophants that they are, there is more than a small risk that they will permit Trump to run rampant in the city indefinitely. Ask yourself what that portends.
If you were president and your intention was to name yourself dictator for life in America, how would you start the process? You would start like other dictators have started elsewhere in the past: you would declare marshal law, and what would that entail. Federal troops would be dispatched to the largest major cities with orders to neutralize resistance, including local law enforcement agencies. You would justify your arrogation of power by claiming that there was a threat to liberty emerging in the governing bodies of the cities and that the federal troops being deployed were being so to protect the rights of the citizenry. You would characterize what you and your allies were doing as the defense of liberty, not the curtailment of it. The next thing you would do is neutralize your critics, like John Bolton for example; former colleagues who had turned against you, and who were thus trusted by your supporters in the past and potentially still trusted now that they have seen the light of your boundless ambition. But as a predicate for doing so, you would do everything in your power, from naked vituperation to proposed, and if successful, actual impeachment of those who have the power of law behind them institutionally who are potential adversaries in your attempt to seize power. Then, once the threats to your power had been neutralized you would use the power you already had to legislate your hold on power, such as, say, Vladimir Putin did with the elimination of term limits for the presidency. With that never-ending power you would cow your legislature into legislating bars to critical speech and even the use of specific words, like "war," which in today's Russia is euphemized as "special military operation," which transgression against would result in long-term prison sentences. And then, in the next election you would manipulate the results, if they ran against your continued authority, to perpetuate your occupation of high office, much the way Maduro has done in Venezuela: overtly and shamelessly, which you might say is the way Trump does everthing.
Of course it is easy to opine today that this is alarmism and to dismiss it as aversion to Trump's lawful ascension, so far anyway, to power and control of the nation and its ethos. And I have to admit that I am imbued with such an aversion. Trump is to me an aberration in American politics and culture born of excessive conservative, anti-democratic zeal such as led to the coining of the term "woke" because liberal and progressive weren't sufficiently pejorative. Those who coined it lacked the erudition to fixate on something more apt and recognizable as what they were trying to convey, so they just made something up. I've never heard anyone explain it in any terms other than those already in use, so what was the point other than to demonstrate disdain for those who weren't like them. Those people will cheer Trump on because they don't have the foresight to recognize that it is their freedom too that is being stripped away.
So dismiss all this as a grim, dystopian fantasy propounded by some "woke" critic of a great man seeking to force a nation into what he conceives of as propriety. Ignore the prospect of Trump declaring marshal law in the nation once he has done so in enough cities and states. But don't ignore Omar Kyam: "The moving finger writes; and having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit shall lure it back to cancel half a Line: nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it." The moving finger is writing, and it looks like an executive order.
Your friend,
Mike
Dear America,
All this "sturm und drang" over concocting a settlement of the Ukraine invasion by Russia is nothing but a vast subterfuge without any real meaning. Vladimir Putin has never kept a promise in his life and the truth is like a foreign language to him. That's probably why Trump likes him; they have that in common. Even if Volodomyrr Zelensky could be prevailed upon to cede both Crimea and the entire Donbas region to Russia, any concomitant promise from Putin would be no more than dust in the wind. If he didn't just flout his commitment and invade Ukraine without excuse, he would fabricate some kind of pretext eventually to ostensibly, at least for the purpose of giving lip service to his treaty commitment to Ukraine, excuse himself for invading Ukraine again toward the end of usurping its sovereignty and installing some greedy toady to give lip service to the notion that Ukraine had just experienced a change in leadership rather than a conquest. In short, Trump is propounding a mythical pursuit of an impossible outcome. As long as Putin lives, he will never be brought to heel regarding any nation previously a member of the soviet union existing as an independent national entity...unless... Putin's sole ambition is an empire with himself on the throne, figuratively or literally, so the only way to rein him in is the one thing that will work, which is the one thing that everyone is conceding to Putin that it won't happen. Unless Putin would be risking an existential threat to his power, nothing will deter him from persisting in his abuse of international law toward the end of annexing Ukraine. The point is, unless Ukraine is admitted to NATO, no settlement of the current conflict perpetrated by Putin and Russia will be a permanent solution.
I would say that the only reasonable prospect for peace would be constituted by three things, each of the three being a sine qua non for enduring tranquility. First, Ukraine has been without Crimea for sixteen years now, and on that basis the Russian seizure of the peninsula should be something that Ukraine can swallow. And if Ukraine can then prevail upon the international community to make an exception to international law by recognizing Russia's soverainty over the territory, that sine qua non is feasible. But whether you call it national pride, an eye toward the perdurability of the nation or simply justice, the retention by Ukraine of the Donbas is also a sine qua non, and the reason is this. Something has to be demanded of Putin in the way of a sacrifice of his original ambitions in Ukraine in order to make palpable for him the fact that the peace agreement arrived at is a treaty embodying a compromise by all parties, and thus a fair exchange of benefits though the rest of the world will see no justice in Putin getting anything but the gallows. And then there is the third, most pivotal sine qua non: membership in NATO. Not some simulation of NATO's Article 5, not even an exact replica. It must be the case that any reneging on his commitment to refrain from invading Ukraine again constitutes an existential threat to Putin and an internationally recognized nation of Russia. In order to keep Putin from just recapitulating his imperious and imperial fantasy and marching into Ukraine again, he must know with absolute certainty that he will be confronting an entity comprising 32 nations covering an area, including the United States and Canada, of more than ten and a half million square miles with an enlistable population of more than 980 million people compared to Russia's less than 150 million people on less than 6.5 million square miles. Add to that disparity the fact of military power controlled by NATO with all of its resources all over the world compared to Russia's largest potential military muster, all of it in Russia proper, and it becomes clear that a breach of faith by Russia if NATO membership is granted to Ukraine would be like a petulant petty criminal challenging the largest police force in the world. Despite Putin's ever-present bravado he isn't stupid enough to risk everything he has accrued, including his personal wealth and his Dacha, against such precipitous odds. Even if you want to consider the nuclear saber that Putin would certainly rattle, his nuclear foe would be at least four well-armed nations, and then there would be the aftermath.
In the final analysis, this three part requirement of the parties to the Ukraine war is the only viable way to end that war and keep it from continuing to simmer until it erupts again. This is not the time for timorous rationalizations of the reality that prevails. I am not saying that Putin will certainly not engage in the folly of taking on most of the affluent, powerful world, but he will threaten to do so forever if he isn't confronted at some point. This is the time. Note, I am a pacifist, but enough is enough, especially when there is no workable alternative.
Your friend,
Mike
Dear America,
Once again, Donald Trump met a "strong and powerful" Vladimir Putin, and once again he went into the meeting a bull dog and came out a lap dog. Putin engineered yesterday's meeting--Trump said it was Putin's idea and that he agreed to it but would walk out in minutes if Putin was stringing him along one more time--and it was obvious in the end that it went just as he had planned and satisfied his purpose in manipulating Trump into it. At the podium after the meeting, Putin read a speech obviously written before he even got on his plane for the purpose of saying absolutely nothing of substance by stating indubitably that his position is now what it has always been. He will accept nothing but what he has wanted all along: Ukrainian submission and the annexation of 20% of that country...at a minimum. It was all premeditated and designed to make it clear that it was so. Putin listened to Trump's bluster for a month or so and then decided to make him eat his words in front of the entire world with the crowning invitation to come to Putin next time in Moscow, to which the best Trump could respond was that it might be interesting. The irony of all this is that Trump touts himself as the ultimate negotiator and deal maker, and all he had to do on this occasion was to say virtually, or even literally nothing. If after the meeting Trump had declined to hold the press conference that occurred, Putin would have been thwarted and Trump could have, albeit falsely, proclaimed himself the leader of the free world. In other words, he could have prevailed by doing nothing...but n-o-o-o-o. He had to take the stage and have the last word, even though he had nothing to say and wound up hopelessly prevaricating about what had transpired, which apparently was nothing.
As we all know, Trump is our president, and as such he is our face in the rest of the world. He is supposed to be the embodiment of American might, principle, integrity, perseverance and indomitability, but as such, he is an embarrassment. Rather he is an example of the antithesis of all those things. Putin has played him like a trump card (sorry, I couldn't resist, and it is apt) every time their paths have crossed. And now, Putin has done it in public as if to laughingly tell the world that Trump wets his pants when confronted. Trump's plan to show Putin and the world who's boss turned out to be a contretemps that left Trump disgraced and put our capacity to wield the power of the strongest nation in the world in doubt. I would not be surprised if the next step in Trump's TACO humiliation were the EU telling him publicly to, "go ahead and impose those tariffs. We'll match you tit for tat and see who yields first." Yesterday's embarrassment was an invitation to the world to flout every attempt by us, America, to exercise moral leadership in world affairs. Our formidability has been put in question if not completely debunked, and the Great Lump is responsible...along with his Republican Party enablers.
I raise the issue of Republican culpability for Trump's failure on this profoundly visible occasion because we are just over a year from the mid-term elections, and the party has ridden Trump's ostensible invulnerability to victory since he won the electoral college vote in 2016 despite losing the popular vote. They continue to indulge him with things like his "Big Beautiful Bill," of which it turns out the majority of Americans disapprove. And then there are the other misadventures, like the usurpation of control of Washington, D.C. and his refusal to comply with court orders regarding deportations, which the majority also disapproves the modality of incidentally, as well as spending tax payer dollars for things like "alligator Alcatraz" and Qatari luxury jet renovation at a cost of a hundred million dollars. He can fly wrapped in gold now, and though the plane is to be government property, the plan is for it to be donated to his presidential memorial library, from which you can be sure he will be "borrowing" it whenever he chooses for the rest of his life. It is through these Republican poltroons that he has been able to indulge in self-dealing that has made him even more rich than he was thanks to the hundreds of millions he has been reputed to have purloined from his father's business when old Fred began to suffer from dementia.
It is not enough for Trump that he already has more money than he could ever possibly spend while he steam rolls poor people living in tents because he thinks they're unsightly. He isn't satisfied that he finagled the dismissal of cases against him that obviously had merit like that alleging that he stole secret documents when he left the White House in 2020. He has to "weaponize" the DOJ to persecute everyone who participated in making the case. He has to continue to play the unstoppable wise-guy. I think the voters will remember that he couldn't have done all that without his party...not your party...his party in 2026. I think everyone is sick of sycophants, and that's all the Republicans are: Trump's rubber stamp.
Your friend,
Mike
Dear America,
It was just a few days ago that Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) because he didn't like the job creation numbers last month. That was ominous enough, but since then, the omen has become a threat. Trump has now dispatched the National Guard to Washington, D.C. on the pretext of stemming a tide of violent crime that the statistics, once again, belie. Violent crime is down 30% in DC, rendering it neither a tidal wave or even a neap tide. Violence is ebbing in our nation's capital, but Trump propounds and elaborates on a convenient contrary myth, and people seem to just accept that it is only another Trump effort to congratulate himself for averting something that has already been averted. But I tell you, America, it is nothing that preposterously innocuous. Trump has had the troops deployed around the national monuments, not in the neighborhoods in which crime, would it occur, would take place. The press and Trump's critics are satisfied to characterize this charade as nothing more momentous than Trumpous vainglory, but I believe it is far more menacing.
During Trump's first term, he eagerly deployed troops to quell the riotous behavior that started after the killing of George Floyd in various cities. That wasn't the first time a president did so under such circumstances, but such circumstances are the sine qua non for ordering troops into the street to deal with American civilians. The reason is two laws: the Posse Comitatus and the Insurrection Acts as amended. They were enacted to prevent use by government of the military to control civilians and enforce the law against them. I won't claim to have any expertise regarding these two safeguards against tyranny, both of which have been invoked by presidents in dire situations a few times, but their purpose in the abstract has been, and is, to prevent the use of military force by an emerging dictator while allowing it when necessary in various specific circumstances. They were stop-gaps against tyranny. As such, they have always before been used sparingly as justification for applying military force to dire situations: the refusal of a governor to honor Brown vs. Board of Education during the Eisenhower administration for example. Notably, when George Floyd was murdered by a police officer and civil unrest evolved, Trump declined to invoke the Insurrection Act when national guard troops were deployed in DC, bit it was not necessary in consequence of the provisions of the Posse Comitatis Act and its sequelae, at least one of which designates the guarding of DC as an exception to the constraints of The Act, though Trump threatened to do so, which would have expanded his range of peremptory military options.
Notably, he is employing the same strategy now to deploy national guard troops in DC on the pretext of dealing with epidemic violent crime, though he has not sought to deploy them to the kind of neighborhoods in which crime does still occur. Instead, he has sent them to federal monuments and such areas as the National Mall, and even some military staff have asked why as those places are not the sites of criminal activity of any significance. But concomitantly--and this is what is so ominous-- while he declined to take any action on January 6, 2021 as the capitol building...our capitol building...was under siege by his supporters, he is threatening to invoke the powers available in consequence of the Home Rule Act, effectively an amendment of the Posse Comitatus and Insurrection Acts passed in 1973 to allow use of the military in DC when the President deems it necessary to protect the rights of the people and peace in the district. Trump is portending to importune congress to allow him to continue the military occupation of Washington for more than the 30 days permitted under the law. This is all in light of his decisions not to invoke such powers on January 6th and his subsequent pardons of the perpetrators of the acts of violence against capitol police officers at our nation's capitol that day--not at a monument but at our capitol.
Given the way in which Trump's mind overtly works and his lack of shame or discretion about abusing power and then fighting for his right to do so, you can see where this most recent abuse of power will lead. He has already threatened to broaden these marshal actions to include cities across the nation, Democratically controlled cities in particular. It's only a hop, skip and a jump to declaration of at least limited marshal law in various places averse to Trump and Trumpism, and then who knows how far he will go. If you want to call this alarmism, go ahead. But if it happens, don't say you had no idea it could.
Your friend,
Mike
Dear America,
Trump's latest departure from the norms of presidential behavior may be the most ominous one yet. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released last months job creation figures a couple of days ago, and they were startlingly divergent from what we have come to expect. Monthly job creation numbers have been in six figures for years now...since a few aberrations in the early days of the pandemic...until this past Friday when the monthly number of jobs created was only 73,000, and the figures for the two previous months were amended downward by 258,000. It was startling, especially for President Trump, who was outraged by the negative implications the number portended and promptly them "rigged." He immediately fired the head of the BLS: He fired the messenger because he didn't like the message. In commonplace circumstances such a reaction could be seen as petulance, or just a bad day, but when our national chief executive has it, the significance becomes profoundly disturbing. This abreaction to bad news suggests a dysfunctional relation to reality of our presidents thinking because of either incompetence or mental illness, and neither would be a thing to dismiss out of hand. Trump's willingness to fix blame on others for things he doesn't like isn't just a quirk anymore. It is paranoia on a pathological scale, and as such it is an ominous threat to every American. Trump is no longer just despicable. He is a menace who now seems to feel free to wield tyrannical power on a whim. He is maniacally functioning not just as a king, but now as an imperious dictator with complete peremptory impunity, and the Republican Party is his enabler. Donald Trump should no longer be impeached: he should be removed from office for his inability to do his job in a sane fashion under the 25th amendment to the constitution, though replacing a lunatic like Trump with a devious demagogue like Jimmy Vance isn't much of a remedy for this dire problem, much like jumping from the frying pan to the fire. This is a national crisis, and that isn't hyperbole.
Observations to the effect that our democracy is in jeopardy or that Donald Trump is an aspiring autocrat are nothing but seemingly partisan plaints that sound as much like campaign slogans as cautionary exhortations by comparison. This latest episode, narrow as its significance is by comparison to Trump's wont to indulge in self-enriching financial schemes and playing golf while "Rome" burns, is not just a sign of something corrupt in principle. It is a manifestation of an existential threat to the nation. True, the firing of one bureaucrat will not bring the nation to its ruination, but the next thing of its ilk, whatever it may be, may be of far larger consequence, and as such far less susceptible to remediation. A new BLS director will be appointed, and though he or she will likely be as much a toady as the rest of Trump's appointees have been, the BLS will go on, and the worst consequence of the new directors obsequiousness will be merely an illusion of economic prosperity. But designating Barack Obama a traitor and ordering the now actually weaponized DOJ to investigate him is far more significant and Trump's minions, like Tulsi Gabbard, are more than willing to collaborate with their naked emperor. But even that seems benign in light of the possibilities. The next denial of reality on which Trump obsesses might be something existential like a Putinesque delusion to the effect that sovereignty over Canada for the United States is a matter of right meriting military action, or, speaking of Putin, that the Russian version of Trump is demonstrating bellicosity toward the United States accompanied by the Trumpian delusion that the Russian demagogue is about to launch his nuclear arsenal against us. I know. Fear of a nuclear holocaust seems extreme, but extreme seems to describe much of what Trump has done so far. He has ignored the orders of the courts to the length of seeking impeachment of at least one judge for bemoaning the lack of candor on the part of more than one of Trump's DOJ henchmen when they appeared in court and failed in their legally mandatory duty of "candor toward the tribunal." Under the rules that all lawyers and the courts abide by as the ultimate mandate for those who practice law, all lawyers know better, but Trump's champions are ignoring something that every lawyer knows, whether he admits it or not. And then there's the threat of impeachment Trump has directed toward all of the judges who have ruled against his executive excesses, calling those judges "lunatics" rather than acknowledging their authority to act as they have under the aegis of established law.
The emperor is stomping down the streets of Washington in his stoop-shouldered oblivion, naked with his obsequious entourage marching behind him in lockstep beating the drum as he struts wearing his imbecilic smile. What we need now is for an undaunted politician in the crowd to yell, "The emperor has no clothes!"
Your friend,
Mike
