Inciter-in-Chief

 

 

 

No doubt in my mind, Donald Trump is responsible for the Capitol Insurrection on January 6. He told his supporters that they had been grievously harmed by a stolen election and called for them to march on the Capitol to encourage them to prevent Congress from certifying his defeat. And they did. Now, he did not exactly tell them to occupy and ransack the Capitol. Nor did he tell them to detain and execute the vice-resident and members of Congress. He didn’t have to. The crowd had long been prepped for violence.

Trump has been feeding that monster nonstop from his earliest days as a candidate. He encouraged participants at his rallies to attack counter protesters and the press. He suggested that police rough up (“not be so nice to) criminal suspects. Neo-Nazi rioters in Charlottesville were “fine people”. Mass murderers from Pittsburgh to New Zealand have launched their massacres listening to Trump’s voice in their heads. He has broadly characterized Black Lives Matter and other police reform advocates as thugs and looters who should be shot. On January 6 he told an angry mass rally that the Deep State has robbed them of his landslide re-election victory and that they should do something about it. Trump has been piling up tinder for years now. Last week it erupted in flame.

While Trump sparked last week’s conflagration he’s had plenty of help from Republican elected officials and right-wing media that largely ignored his fascination his influence on the violence that seems to always follow in his wake. “It’s just Trump being Trump” has been the typical excuse when Trump’s words result in mayhem, injury and death. Somehow that is OK. Even now his apologists try to separate Trump’s exhortations to the crowd--”be wild”, “march to the Capitol”, Giuliani's call for “trial by combat”—as not really calls for violence. Bullshit! Trump yelled “Fire! In a crowded theater and is responsible for the chaos and death that ensued. His orcs, minions and catchfarts who’ve acquiesced and remained silent in response to his calls for violence and refusal to accept the results of an election that was by all accounts one of the best administered in recent history (despite the springtime problems caused by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic) share a large portion of blame as well.

That said, Trump and his enablers are not solely to blame for the disaster at the Capitol. Congressional authorities responsible for Capitol security also failed miserably. Twenty years after the 911 attacks that supposedly “changed everything” an inchoate mob can storm, occupy and vandalize the Capitol of the United States. Like 911, intelligence an information indicating the possibility of and attack was available and either ignored or dismissed. Last week’s failure may exceed 911 in that the evidence was more specific as to time, place and the intent of the more violent factions within Trump World. Reading the accounts of the online chatter leading up to January 6, it seems pretty clear that violence at the Capitol was a very real possibility and yet Capitol security was wholly unprepared for what happened. I can’t pinpoint who did or did not do what—responsibility for and coordination of security around the Capitol is shared among Congress, DC government and the federal executive branch (mainly the Department of Defense, I think)—but the bottom line is eminently clear: the citadel of American democracy was successfully attacked and disabled. The success was only temporary but the damage to America will be permanent.

Trump’s refusal to accept the election results and commit of a peaceful transfer of power clearly violates his oath of office. So, too, does his incitement to violence. I don’t know if this is a cynical Trumpian ploy to avoid accepting defeat or if he truly believes that he won by a landslide. Either way, he is clearly unfit for office (disclosure: I’ve never considered him fit for office) and should be removed from office immediately. I realize his term ends in a few days but I sure as hell do not want him to continue to have sole authority to launch nuclear weapons one minute more. But the VP and cabinet are unwilling to act and Congress has impeached the president for a second time. Inciting a deadly riot more than meets the requirement of “high crimes and misdemeanors”.

At best, impeachment will be a permanent record of Trump’s cancerous presence in office. Whether Congress can proceed with impeachment against an ex-president is an open legal question and also raises complications for the incoming Biden Administration which would prefer to have Congress focusing on confirming appointments and addressing Biden’s initiatives on the pandemic, economy and the other fires set by the Trump Administration as they exit.

Impeachment is a very blunt instrument. Apparently that is the only thing likely to make a dent in Trump’s oversized ego.

Following a Trail of Tears

My 2020 reading ended with an interesting juxtaposition:  Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory by Claudio Saunt and An American Sunrise by Native American poet and current Poet Laureate of the United States Joy Harjo.  The former presents in some considerable detail America's efforts under Andrew Jackson to remove Native Americans from the eastern US.  The latter reflects in poetry and vignettes on the indigenous experience during the removals and how that experience continues to inform contemporary Native America.  The two books offer what I would call a full spectrum understanding of a very ugly event.   

 

 Unworthy Republic--the title comes from an opponent's description of the removal policy--documents the motives, methods, financing and multi-pronged attacks on Cherokees, Chickasaws, Creeks and Seminoles who stood in the way of the expanding southern slave labor empire.  It's a pretty grim read.  History already tells us how it turned out but the detail shows that it was not simply the inevitable result of expanding "civilization" but rather a murderous land grab that dispossessed many tens of thousand Native Americans of land and property.  Author Claudio Saunt notes that America's Indian Removal Act provided the model for the 20th century's mass deportations.  The only uplifting aspect of the entire affair is the principled and determined resistance of the Native American communities.  And in the end the resistance could not overcome capitalist greed and American military force.

 

An American Sunrise speaks to these same events but from a personal perspective.  The effects of the Removal still haunt Native America in the 21st Century.  As a member of the Creek Nation, Harjo is no stranger to the inequity between Native America and the rest of America.  She is also acutely aware that the Removal turned her ancestors from a self-sufficient people deeply rooted in the places they lived into dependent refugees in an alien land.  Harjo gives voice to the refugees who confronted the hardships inflicted by the dispossession and removal.  An American Sunrise also speaks with a modern voice, articulating not just the difficulties that plague Native America but also indigenous resilience and connection to their ancestral lands and heritage.

 

One theme that runs through both works is connection to the land.  Another is resistance.  Where Unworthy Republic informs about the tribes' various efforts, ranging from learned legal and moral arguments to armed resistance, An American Sunrise reminds us that Native America is still very much a part of America. 

 

Splitting Hairs in Impeachment and War

Listening to Republican Senators  say that what Donald Trump did in that phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky was "wrong" or "inappropriate" but not rising to the occasion of an impeachable offense reminds me of my own  sophistry in deciding what to do about military service during the Vietnam war.

By the time I graduated from college in 1970, I knew the war was clearly a mistake.  That was evident from the lack of discernible progress against a determined insurgency and the increasing illegitimacy of the South Vietnamese government we were propping up against that insurgency. Revelations about the My Lai massacre, secret bombings and expansion of the war into Cambodia led me to question the entire moral premise of the war.

Since my plan to ride out the war behind a four-year student deferment did not get me past the possibility of being drafted into the war, I wrestled with the morality of serving.  In the end I convinced myself that that the war was a policy error, not a moral issue, and accepted military service as a legitimate demand that my country could make of me.

Not only did I accept military service, I carried a rifle and other implements of destruction in combat, ready and willing to kill.  Even at the time my moral hair-spitting bothered me but I just put it aside and did my "duty" just wanting to get it all behind me.  As it happened, I didn't get it behind me.  My military service has haunted me ever since.

I wonder if Lamar Alexander, Lisa Murkowski and other Republican senators who recognize that Trump's actions were improper will ever be haunted by their legal hair-splitting.

Resurrection

Lead sentence intoday's Washington Post: “Republican candidates appear to be coalescing around a central line of attack for the midterm elections, describing their Democratic opponents as protesters at odds with American patriotism.”

Since we seem to be celebrating all things 1968 this year, I guess it shouldn't be surprising that Republicans are resurrecting Richard Nixon's most cynical and divisive ploy—branding dissenters as un-American and haters of our sainted troops. The WP story quotes the newly nominated Republican Senate candidate in Arizona, Martha McSally characterizing her (also newly nominated) Democratic opponent, Kirsten Sinema, as a protester not a patriot because she opposed US military action after the 9-11 attacks. “While we were in harm’s way in uniform, Kyrsten Sinema was protesting us in a pink tutu and denigrating our service,” McSally, a retired Air Force colonel, said.

That strategy worked for Richard Nixon against both Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and George McGovern in 1972. George W. Bush and Karl Rove were equally successful with a similar strategy in 2004 against John Kerry. In the latter two of those elections Republicans were able to redefine decorated war veterans as anti-American and disrespectful of American forces serving in combat because they questioned America's war in Vietnam.

So, once again, the stage is set for another election filled with lies and distortions. The WP article cites the additional example of Ted Cruz of tarring his opponent for US Senate in Texas, Beto O'Rourke, for disrespecting the American flag and veterans by defending the right of black athletes for kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice. Republicans don't have much to offer the electorate these days, so it makes sense for them to divide the nation with whatever weapons are available. Using false patriotism as a cudgel has worked before, so why not try again.

The strategy is cynical. As a veteran I don't see where my military service gains or loses meaning based on how people choose to participate or not participate in civic rituals. Like the American War in Vietnam itself, what I did in the Army contributed nothing to America's safety or security.  It has no inherent meaning beyond the hard-earned knowledge that comes from experience and whatever I could do to help my buddies stay alive.  We lost the war and yet our freedoms were not curtailed or destroyed by our victorious adversary.  Far more dangerous threats to our freedoms are the politicians like Richard Nixon, G.W. Bush and now Martha McSally, Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and the many others who brand dissenters as beyond the pale.

It's funny, too, that these proud defenders of American freedom object when we exercise those rights for purposes which they disapprove. Apparently the freedoms that our troops defend are only supposed to be exercised in certain ways. “Freedom isn't free,” I am often told but those same “patriots” decrying protest and labeling protesters un-American leads me to think that only certain freedoms are allowed.

And that is not freedom at all.

Violence is Not Left or Right. It is Violence.

In the wake of the GOP ballpark shooting, politicians and pundits have been warning about the dangers of "left wing violence" and calling for restraint.  Which is fucking balderdash when you consider that in the past 10 years right-wing extremists have been responsible for about 74 percent of murders committed by domestic extremists in the United States. 

But more important than left- or right-wing violence is the fact of violence itself.  Violence is violence, an unfortunate human trait that is not always easy to predict or prevent.  What we can do, though, is look for the clues.  One clue is a  history of domestic abuse.  Maybe, just maybe, their previous violent behaviors could disqualify them from owning a weapon, especially weapons of mass destruction such as assault rifles and high-capacity automatic handguns.  That way, even when we miss all of the clues, the carnage is likely to be much less.

One of the enduring lessons of my military service is how easy it is to kill another human being.  Walking through the jungle in Vietnam with an M-16 in my hand it was disturbingly obvious that I could kill the guy in front of me just by pulling the trigger.  Any number of reasons, including the fact that such an act would be just plain wrong, kept me from acting on that thought.  You don't need any imagination to know what carnage an individual blinded by ideology, well-armed and acting with the element of surprise can inflict.  We have too many actual examples.

Donald the Diversion

For his first major television interview after taking office, Donald Trump spends his entire time asserting his greatness, questioning the electoral system that brought him to office and repeating claims that have been repeatedly demonstrated to be false.  I didn't think that my opinion of Donald Trump could fall any lower but this interview does that.

Thoughout the campaign Trump described America in apocalyptic terms both domestically and internationally. Now that he is installed as President of the United States (vomit a little) I expect him to  speak as a leader about how he will address those problems.  Some of those problems are actually real and have grave consequences for the nation and the world.  Instead, he wastes our time with his grousing about the vote, crowd size and the media.

But Donald Trump is useful for the Republican ideologues.  While Donald rants and raves, his mostly white male cabinet of billionaire businessmen, Wall Street insiders, and public officials who are fundamentally opposed to the missions of the agencies they will head can go about killing off what remains of the New Deal.

The Wizard of Ooze will give cover to the Republican wrecking crew if we are not vigilant. 

Bloviator-Elect

“I win an election easily, a great ‘movement’ is verified, and crooked opponents try to belittle our victory with FAKE NEWS. A sorry state!”

Donald Trump, responding to reports that Russians may have gathered potentially compromising information about him. 

Um...Donald, you did not win an election easily. 

• Hillary Clinton beat you by almost three million votes.  

•  You squeaked to an electoral college victory  due to Republican-sponsored voter surpression in several states.  

• Your "great movement" is based hatred, fear and desperation.  

•  FAKE NEWS is very much your own creation after a campaign based on repeated lies and falsehoods.  

You prevailed in a rigged election.  You get the keys to the castle but don't ever think you earned them legitimately.   

You Call That A Mandate?

The sacking of the New Deal begins tomorrow. I can't change that fact that Republicans now control the federal government but I will dispute their claims to a mandate.  Donald Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 2.8 million votes while winning  the Electoral College.  Repbulicans won the House of Representatives with a total margin of 3 million votes--51 percent.  but ended up with 57 percent of the seats through creative gerrymandering in Republican- controlled states.

These results do not consitute a Republican mandate but rather a deeply divided nation.  Nevertheless, Republicans will not be shy about claiming their complete control of Congress and the presidency as justification for enacting all of their libertarian free-market wet dreams.    

Republicans may have the institutional power but they have nothing that resembles a legitimate mandate.  All the more reason to resist at every turn.

Voter Fraud My Ass!

Growing up I remember public service announcements on television urging viewers to register and vote. The one I remember most vividly declaimed “Vote and the choice is yours. Don't vote and the choice is theirs.” A strong bold statement, to be sure but one that even before I became aware of the systematic racism of the segregated South, sounded ominously divisive. As I grew older and became aware of who “they” were I came to appreciate the protections afforded to fellow Americans who had been systematically denied the right to vote by a web of Jim Crow laws.

That's why the wave of “anti-fraud” legislation enacted by Republican states pisses me off. Not only has anyone demonstrated voting fraud that even remotely approaches a level that would warrant restricting the exercise of a fundamental right, but legislators specifically crafted provisions to target minority and working-class voters.

The most egregious example is North Carolina where the legislature took advantage of the Supreme Court's decision to gut the most effective provision of the Voting Rights Act. HB 589 enacted a raft of changes that significantly increased the barriers to African-American and other minority voting. We know that legislators specifically targeted minority voters because lawsuits against the changes have disclosed legislative requests for information about minority voting patterns before they eliminated practices that encouraged minority voting and established identification requirements that reduced minority voting. Given the absence of any real voter fraud anywhere in the US, I can't imagine that other states' motivations for enacting ant-fraud legislation are any less suspect.

Much of the restrictive voting legislation is promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which describes itself as “America's largest nonpartisan, voluntary membership organization of state legislators dedicated to the principles of limited government, free markets and federalism.” I would call them and agenda-driven clearing house that produces templates for business-friendly legislation. I first heard of ALEC when I worked for the Arizona State Legislature in the 80's. Several of the more conservative legislators joined the newly-formed ALEC because they thought the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) formed in 1975 was too liberal. Given the legislation that has come out of Arizona in the past few decades I can understand why they thought so.

So in the end, anti-voting fraud legislation is an unwarranted restriction of a fundamental right fostered in the interest of a wealthy business class by a well-funded front group.

Ya gotta admire their success.

Fortunately, America still has a somewhat independent judiciary.

A Festering Carbuncle on America's Ass

So, Donald, you say in response to Khizr Khan's accusation that you have not sacrificed, that yes, you have sacrificed.

I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard. I’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs,.

If you think that building a business with a "small" $1 million loan from your father and stiffing contractors and creditors is is in any way comparable to military service, you are totally out of touch with reality.  You took some business risk and profited, that is all.  You risked nothing but money.

Captain Humayan Kahn risked his life.  He lost his life in service to his country.  That's what soldiers do.  What have you ever done that comes close to this level of sacrifice?  Have you ever come under attack?  Have your ever dodged incoming rounds?  Have you ever seen your buddies killed and maimed?  Have you ever wondered whether you will live to see another day?

That, you fatuous asshole, is sacrifice.  And you don't even come fucking close.

With all due disrespect from this veteran. 

Informed Debate

Donald Trump "reprimands" a woman who called Ted Cruz a "pussy" by repeating the epithet.  In Orgegon the remaining holdouts at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge taunt the federal law  government by spinning donuts in federal vehicles in support of their demands.

Democracy in America 2016.

Suicide Sainthood

The man who said he preferred to die rather than face incarceration did just that.  Clever man that he was, LaVoy Finicum used his death to purchase a martyrhood that his fellow sagebrush rebels can use as both justification and inspiration for continuing their disruption of life in Burns, Oregon.  I can't say that he willingly planned his death but I don't put it past him.  He presented himself as a principled man, a grandfather, risking his life for his beliefs.  I won't gainsay his belief, however dubious, nor do I question his calculation so, yeah, he could have decided to take a bullet for the cause.  After all, Jesus did the same and look what that started.

Getting killed by police is pretty easy, even for a white person.  Brandishing firearms and making threats for weeks on end will make police edgy.  Trying to run a roadblock, and then dropping your hands toward a weapon that you've bragged about to the entire nation  is guaranteed to elicit an armed response.  A man who wanted to live would have raised his hands well into the air and frozen in place as soon as he exited the truck.  Instead, he taunted the beast and died.

Maybe Finicum wasn't that clever but he got what he said he wanted.  His fellows have another grievance to stoke their anger and challenge the government.  I don't doubt that Finicum would approve.

Quick End to Oregon Occupation

ISIS supports the Oregon occupiers.  Urges supporters in US to join in the rebellion to "...degrade and destroy [America's] corrupt, evil, and oppressive government, or at the least severely damage its operations.”

That's going to make the occupiers even less welcome and far more suspect. 

A Veteran Looks at His Country's New War

This time the veteran is Russian, a veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan. 

"Every soldier who was there thought about life and death," Vladimir recalls. "We all thought we might not make it out alive. I felt such a need to leave something of me behind on this Earth. So I began writing songs.
"The main lesson of Afghanistan is that politicians should think twice before getting involved in a military conflict. War is always bad. It shows the weakness of politicians."\

No matter the flag or the language, war is the failure of political leaders.

Hiding Behind the Troops to Save His Sorry Ass

In his sputtering, stumbling walk back of his Iraq gaffe Jeb Bush resorted to America's "last refuge of scoundrels" in 2st Century, he hid behind the troops.

In Tempe, Bush tried to explain his difficulty articulating his views on Iraq as the result of being reluctant to say anything that might suggest he was ungrateful for the sacrifice of the U.S. armed forces and their families during 12 years of war. “It’s very hard for me to say that their lives were lost in vain,” Bush said. “In fact, they weren’t. We have the greatest military in the face of the earth.” He added, “Their sacrifice was worth honoring, not depreciating.”

Which set me off like a rocket.  Of course their lives were lost in vain.  No strategic objective was achieved.  Anti-American insurgency has metastasized throughout the Middle East, and America is caught in a never-ending military intervention that simply breeds more resistance.  All that American life and treasure, not to mention the dead and maimed Iraqis, for nothing.  And no, Jeb, George did not bequeath Obama a stable Iraq in 2009.  All George did was buy a decent interval with the surge.  That interval turned into the rise of the ISIS. 

But Jeb Bush won't admit that the troops' sacrifices were in vain because admitting that means his brother, Dick Cheney, John Bolton  and all of the other architects of the war squandered those lives and that sacrifice.  Acolytes like Jeb cheered them on and now suggests that questioning the war means "depreciating" the sacrifices of our armed forces.  I say that Jeb Bush dishonors that sacrifice by using it a as a shield to save his sorry ass.

Disappointments

My expectations of President Obama were never high so I never thought he could disappoint me.  I was wrong.  Betweenhis ill-advised Afghanistan surge and the expanded drone war, Obama has been far more of a war president than I expected.  Add Syria on top of that and he's a typical "shoot first" American hawk.  He's a bit smoother than his predecessor and I'm sure he ponders the situation more than GWB but in the end, he sends in the drones and cruise missiles.   Somehow I was hoping that Obama would be smart enough to maneuver the US in the world without resorting to military force. 

I agree with the president that using chemical weapons should not be ignored.  I don't know what the most effective response is but I know that it is not a unilateral American missile attack.  Upholding and enforcing an international norm is an international responsibility.  America has plenty of allies who also condemn chemical weapons use in Syria but few share our taste for military force.  Obama would disappoint me less if he sought to mobilize serious diplomatic and economic international actions against the Syrian regime rather than simply launching a missile attack.  Something like this, maybe.

Even more than Obama, John Kerry has disappointed me.  Here's a fellow Vietnam veteran who once spoke eloquently about a mistaken war now shilling for an uncertain military action with no clear objective in the midst of a civil war and regional unrest in which the US has no good choices.  I was disappointed with Kerry as a presidential candidate so I guess this is no surprise.  I was proud of him as a Vietnam Veteran Against the War, speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during Dewey Canyon III.  He was a powerful image of veteran opposition to war at a time when I was humping the boonies in Vietnam.  Later as a member of VVAW, I learned that Kerry was regarded by some VVAW leaders as a self-promoting opportunist.  He certainly never acted strongly on those anti-war in later years as a senator and his "I was before the [Iraq] war before I was against it" was a barely-concealed attempt to play both sides of the issue.

So these days John Kerry is playing the hawk who would protect us from another Hitler at Munich, another Holocaust and a world full of proliferating nuclear weapons starting with Iran's.  These are the same arguments we heard about Vietnam and so many of America's military actions in the years since.  Those canards are as bogus now as they were then.

Barack Obama was smart enough to see the folly of the Iraq war in 2003.  John Kerry saw war's folly his youth.  Age and experience does not guarantee wisdom.

Common Sense Across the Pond

UK Parliament votes against military action in Syria.

Hear! Hear! 

Syria

What Ranger said.

No Futher Comment Needed

Tom Toles in The Washington Post:

Speaking Aid

Republicans who disparage Obama for using a teleprompter and view “Front Row Seat: A Photographic Portrait of the Presidency of George W. Bush,” will no doubt want to skip the photo of Bush addressing the nation as he launched the Afghanistan war.

Images such as President Bush addressing the nation from the Treaty Room of the White House that U.S air strikes were underway in Afghanistan, portrays Bush not as the war time leader one may think but rather in a light of smallness, as he is seemingly engulfed by the teleprompters text. 

 Aside from reminding us that Obama is hardly the first president to use a teleprompter, the image described sounds like an honest portrait.