Politics
This is a personal evaluation of the first year of U.S President #45 in office.
(NOTE: PLEASE REALIZE THAT WHEN YOU MAKE A MISTAKE YOU DO NOT HAVE TO LIE TO YOURSELF TO JUSTIFY IT. The better path is to admit to yourself made a wrong call. We all make mistakes. Tell yourself the truth now and you can do so in the future. Lie to yourself now about getting taken in by a con-man and you set yourself up to be conned again and again. Just think about it.)
We have now had more than a year to watch and hear #45 in office. (He has insulted and demeaned so many people and events, and some so many times, that he sets almost the worst imaginable role model for our young people. I find him so thoroughly disgusting that since he seems to respect no one unless they think as he does and acts as he wants them to, I no longer respect him enough to speak his name. Barack Obama was the 44th President of the United States. The present Fake President or Pseudo-President or President #45 (or the S**t**le President– his own language—he just forgot to look in the mirror as he was speaking) is for me now just #45. I know others who are doing likewise. Please note that the paragraph is not an impartial factual statement, but rather my own personal evaluation of #45 to date. (This is a distinction that #45 has apparently not learned how to make.)
In the past there have been a few slogans. Theodore Roosevelt’s “Fair Deal.” FDR’s “New Deal.” JFK’s “New Frontier.” And a recent cartoon aptly referred to #45’s “Raw Deal.” What does it consist of? Just a some of the visible things we’ve learned are that he:
- Is probably the most skillful con-man that the U.S. has seen in the past 100 years—before the election he claimed to be a “populist” but his policies are for the billionaires.
- Is a pathological and probably compulsive liar. More that 2000 of his statements (many of them Tweets) have been formally documented as lies.
- Doesn’t even seem to know the difference between a truth and a lie. Apparently if he agrees with something he considers it true. If he disagrees with it he lies to both himself and others about it.
- Is far less concerned about foreign treason against the U.S. government and people than about possible discovery of any role he and/or his associates played in it.
- That he cares far less about the well-being of the country and its people than about the fortunes of the Republican Party, despite his once having said that if he ever ran for politics he would run as a Republican because Republicans are so dumb that you can put almost anything over on them (my paraphrase)
- That he is so deficient in kindness and compassion that his tax policies and proposals steal food, health, and shelter from those who are poorest in order to shovel huge additional amounts of money toward those who are already extremely rich, and more huge amounts of money to the military-industrial complex even though the U.S. War Machine ‘s budget is already larger than those of countries with the second through eighth largest military budgets put together.
- Has appointed a cabinet primarily composed of people whose entirely previous careers consisted of OPPOSING THE MISSIONS AND WORKS THAT THOSE BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT ARE MANDATED TO CARRY OUT, because he personally has a different agenda than those that all our nation’s previous legislatures designed to be intelligent policy for our country.
- Doesn’t give a damn about beautiful places such as national parks and monuments, no matter how spectacular. Apparently he views everywhere in country as potential oil and gas drilling and coal and uranium mining territory.
- Unlike any president in U.S. history except Warring Harding, hs is blatantly using the Presidency to enrich himself personally even though he is already a billionaire.
- Speaks of “bringing us together” out of one side of his mouth as he consciously sets one group against another and refuses to act or even speak against prejudice and bigotry out of the other.
- Is a pawn of the Vatican in his initiatives to make it harder for women (especially poorer women) all around the world to obtain birth control and family planning information at the very same time that he talks about holding down population growth to make jobs more available.
- Rails about “fake media” when almost all the mainstream TV and radio stations and magazines and newspapers are owned by just six corporations, and at least one publication (the National Enquirer) has bought and suppressed stories critical of #45, while he himself is relentlessly driven to tweets that are lies.
- Received more than 200 million votes less than Hillary Clinton, and instead of instituting a government of national reconciliation that addressed both their concerns, ramrodded through his own agenda and completely ignored the concerns of a majority of the nation’s voters.
- Whenever criticized or challenged about anything, changes the subject or the meaning of the question (that is, “drags a red herring across the trail to throw a dog following the scent off the track.) He almost never admits the truth of almost any legitimate criticism or objection, or point of view different from his own.
- Has been accused of cheating at golf by various people who have played with him. No big deal, but it says something about what he is.
#45 has drawn attention to one of the most egregious deficiencies in the U.S. Constitution: It has no provision for a vote of no confidence to remove a defective chief executive from office. The impeachment process is far too cumbersome and political. This deficiency should be remedied when the time is right. In the meantime, a massive mobilization on every front, nationally and in every town and city, against the ANTI-POPULIST, VAMPIRE CAPITALIST provisions of the present government is one option. This could include national days of prayer and fasting (on which of course no work except that essential for public safety would be performed and no merchandise would be bought.) Perhaps someone else has a better idea.
In my view, Russia entirely aside, #45 is guilty of TREASON AGAINST THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, LAND, AND REPUBLIC. He is for the 1/10 of one percent against the 99 9/10 percent, even though he has lied and conned so effectively that a deluded minority still support him.
If we draw a historical parallel with ancient Rome, he ranks with Caligula and Nero, and even worse than Commodus. His presidential portrait should show him behind prison bars.
That’s the first year. Now on to what the rest of the second year brings.
Note: This image is from Pinterest. I don’t know the copyright owner. If you’re him or her and you’d like it removed, just let me know. Thanks.
Politics
HEY DONALD, WHAT’S REALLY “FAKE”?
I never liked Donald “FAKE NEWS” Tweeter Trump. I thought he was one of the most thoroughly disgusting and disreputable blowhards in public life long before he ever had a TV show. I am not saying that he was or is either disgusting or disreputable, but that those were and are my own personal reactions to him.
I suggest this: Don’t believe me. And don’t believe him. With every twitter posting, every speech, every statement, ask yourself, “Who’s lying here?” “What is this an attempt to distract us from thinking about?” ‘“What’s getting covered up?” Be your own honest judge of all that. Just don’t lie to yourself, or tell yourself that you’re not lying to yourself when you are. It’s not too late to save your soul. If you voted radically wrong, thinking president #45 would look out for regular folks when its obvious that he’s serving the interests of the ultra-rich (including himself), it’s okay to admit it. You can be truthful with yourself IN THIS MOMENT.
So. . . don’t believe anything #45 says unless you’ve verified it with truly unbiased sources. Why? Because he’s one of premier con men in the world today. He lies about almost everything. Can he actually recognize truth when he sees or hears it? It’s an open question But apparently he figures he can cover up that particular personality defect by insulting anyone and everyone who disagrees with him.
Nonetheless, #45 has done us a tremendous service. He has taught us ever so much about the word “fake.” Of course he exaggerated when he egotistically claimed that he invented the word, as any dictionary printed before he was born will show. Still, he clued us all in about how useful it is.
“Fake news” is one of his favorite tweets. He apparently dislikes CNN most, and worships Fox. But he’s all mixed up there. No other mainstream media source broadcasts biased opinions and pretends that they’re genuine news as consistently as Fox. I don’t mean the local news anchors—I like those in my own area. I mean the network’s national programs. In fact, much of what we get from all the mainstream media is fake news, in which I include s real events that matter little and are meant to distract us from paying attention to events that matter much. But that’s just the start.
Fake importance is #45’s personal specialty. That’s something that may or may not be so, but it has nothing to do with our main concern and is meant to make us think about something else entirely. Logicians this is called a “red herring.“ It means dragging a fish across the trail of a scent to confuse a dog that’s tracking someone or something. #45 typically does this again and again in any given week, so that you and I and his fervent supporters won’t think about whatever he wants us to forget.
Fake labels, usually personal insults of one kind or another, are hurled out onto the net by the Great Faker himself with careless abandon. Many of these are projections. Typically #45 refuses to acknowledge anything even slightly negative about himself or his own behavior, refuses to take responsibility for almost anything, and accuses or blames someone instead. The best known example is his incessantly mantra “that crooked Hillary Clinton.’ Crooked, he claims, for using personal email servers for business just as Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice before her did. But not a word about his own truly crooked actions in bilking hundreds of contractors working for him out of two thirds of what he owed them, or setting up an illegally named “university” that resulted in his having to pay $25 million to hundreds of students who say he cheated them out of their tuition money.
Fake patriotism also can’t be overlooked. When one football player, quarterback Colin Kaepernick, knelt instead of standing as the national anthem was played, to protest treatment and especially police treatment of minorities, throughout the nation, instead of saying “The Constitution guarantees freedom of expression. Now let’s fix what’s broken in the system,” #45 tweeted that all football players who kneel during the anthem should be fired. Meanwhile he himself stashed billions of dollars of profits in overseas and offshore banks and shell corporations to avoid paying U.S. taxes on them. That’s fake patriotism if I’ve ever seen it. And if it’s not, then selling U.S. democracy down the river to the Russians to help himself get elected surely is. Some are calling it treason.
Fake government is even more important. #45 has appointed heads for most of the main government agencies whose entire careers have been devoted to opposing the objectives those agencies were set up to realize. Like militantly anti-environmentalist Scott Pruitt, who now heads the Environmental Protection Agency and spearheaded letting coal companies dump their waste in the nation’s rivers and people’s drinking water and trying to kill alternative energy so Big Oil and Big Coal can make Bigger Bucks. (Thanks for nothing, Mr Pruitt. And no thanks, #45, for appointing him and the rest of your cabinet members who have no business whatever being put in charge of their agencies.) Go down the list. #45 is using a sledge hammer to turn almost every agency in the executive branch into a Creature from the Black Lagoon who is dedicated to sabotaging the agency’s mission and screwing he American people and nation
Fake democracy goes hand in hand with fake government. Alexander Hamilton would probably have loved #45. Hamilton was responsible for putting the electoral college into the U. S. constitution. He was afraid we would elect Presidents who would truly serve the people’s interests instead of the moneyed aristocrats. And so a Republican-dominated Supreme Court stopped the 2000 election in which Al Gore won the popular vote and appointed George W. Bush as President, and our fake election overruled a popular vote in which Hillary got two million more votes than #45, but #45 became President anyway due to the electoral college system. And then instead of bringing a divided country together by assembling a government that reflected the diverse interests of the country, #45 went “winner take all” with a billionaires-first agenda that is tearing the country apart more deeply than has been seen in more than a century.
Fake brains ought to be self explanatory. #45 plans to build a phenomenally expensive wall between the U.S. and Mexico when he knows that the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea is riddled with literally hundreds of tunnels, some at incredible depths and some twenty miles long. And the U.S. Air Force and Army have deep undermountain bases composed of vast networks of tunnels that are said to be able to withstand nuclear bomb hits. Check out Google Images on your computer, search for “tunnel drilling machines” and you’ll be amazed at what you find. Former Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano summed it up: “If you build a 50-foot wall, it won’t be long until someone perfects a 51-foot ladder.” Except that in this case the ladder is likely to be a tunnel.
And you sure can’t get much stupider than firing most of the government’s climate scientists because you don’t want to know the facts they might find out and bring to your attention. But wait—it is possible to do something else at least as stupid. That’s to put enormous efforts into reducing immigration, while at the same time cutting off all funds for family planning and birth control, especially in high-birthrate countries that send many immigrants in our direction because they can’t find work or food at home—and going even farther, exerting heavy pressures on other countries all around the world to stop funding family planning and birth control. The two goals totally contradict each other. And the “libertarian” ideal of letting each woman be in control of her own body? Oh, I guess we just won’t think or talk about that. (For the record, “Mr. Conservative” Barry Goldwater was strongly pro contraception and abortion.)
There is also fake conservatism. Our country has seen some real conservatives who had a measure of honesty and integrity—like Goldwater. They’ve almost all gone down the River of No Return at this point. We’re left with a motley crew of fake conservatives, who make up most of the present Republican Party’s senators and congresspersons. When a big corporation wants to build a pipeline across your land (such as the Keystone XL) and you say “No thanks, I’d rather conserve my farm and environment as it is, you are the conservative, and the company is a wild, screaming radical, and so are any legislators who support it. Real conservativism has nothing to do with most of what gets that label today. Much of it is just plain greedy or even actively vicious.
The Emperor has no clothes. With every new tweet, it becomes more obvious that we have a fake president. Two million more Americans voted for his opponent than for him. He’s tearing apart the government by destroying its agencies’ abilities to carry out their missions. His invective, insults, and unending stream of just plain lies are setting the worst possible example for our young people who need a role model who is honest and responsible. Captain Conman campaigned on a platform of helping working people and instead is helping the country’s billionaires get even richer.
So thanks, #45, for dredging up the old word fake and making it more useful. You’ve helped to make it easier for us to see and hear its meanings—which are mostly just the opposite of what you try to tell us they are. Except for the one that’s truly obvious: “FAKE PRESIDENT”
But just getting rid of #45 via impeachment creates a whole new set of problems, since today’s Republicans who hold power and would succeed him are committed to fake democracy as a fig leave to cover plutocracy. It’s a real dilemma. We can make a start toward solving it by doing our best to become aware of what’s real and what’s fake in contemporary politics and politicians.
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Cultures, Politics
A few thoughts on the Supreme Court.
One of the issues in this year’s presidential elections is the appointment of new Supreme Court judges. Long ago Plato wrote, “Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as it firs resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.
That’s an admirable ideal. It is also often violated. French poet, journalist, and novelist Anatole France said, “Justice is the means by which established injustices are sanctioned.” In a similar spirit, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once told a young man who had a case before the court, “This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice.”
But justice is possible at all only if the Justices aspire to it. Article III, Section I of the U.S. Constitution declares, “The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their Offices during good behavior.” “Good behavior” must surely include fairness. Fairness must surely include removing oneself from being a judge in cases where the judge owes something to one of the parties in a case before him. Two recent and present justices have violated this principle. Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas have both refused to recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses had received substantial sums, primarily in cases that involved the promotion and defense of extreme right wing ideology.
This is odd for two reasons: One, their personal gain from imposing their ideological biases on the country; Two, because the Supreme Court was not meant to “legislate from the bench.” It gave itself that power when John Marshall was the first Supreme Court justice, with no checks or controls on its opinions, and Thomas Jefferson declared himself horrified by this action and precedent.
Failure to recuse in a case that involves a supreme court justice’s conflict of interest must certainly be termed “bad behavior.” The Constitution specifies that a Justice shall hold office “during good behavior,” but unfortunately does not specify a mechanism for removing a judge who engages in bad behavior. And in the country’s entire history, no Supreme Court judge has ever been impeached or otherwise removed for bad behavior.
Therefore it seems clear that a brief Constitutional Amendment is needed that clearly specifies the conditions under which a Justice shall be removed and exactly how he or she shall be removed — and what constitutes an acceptable defense against such removal. With such a provision, Alito and Thomas would both have been off the court long ago.
Furthermore, consider the contradiction between right wing extremists’ screams that the Court should not “legislate from the bench” and their calls for the appointment of a justice to replace Scalia who is at least as ultra right-wing as Scalia himself. That’s not a call for impartial justice, but rather exactly a call for legislation from the bench in accord with their own agenda.
Finally, there is the pathetic disgrace of the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate refusing to engage in confirmation hearings for the President’s nominee to replace Scalia. This complete dereliction of their constitutional duty is unprecedented in the entire history of the United States. There ought to be a provision for the removal from his responsibilities of any Senate leader who acts in such a disreputable manner. When there is more than enough work for nine justices, and one of the eight who remain is checked out much of the time (Thomas), then it is absolutely incumbent on the Senate to put confirm someone in his place. I advocate a provision that if the Senate has failed to act after a specified time, the President’s nominee will automatically assume the position.
For more detailed thoughts about the judiciary and Supreme Court, see “Justice for Whom — Down the River of No Return?” in The Radical Wrong: Lies Our Founding Fathers Never Told Us (online booksellers — e-book or hardcopy)
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