A VERITABLE ONE-MAN SHOW…PT BARNUM WOULD BE PROUD (REAGAN NOT SO MUCH)

 I don’t know if anybody has  noticed, but Donald “The Don” Trump is dilapidating eighty years of US leadership history in a matter of days.

I’ll get to the mobster-style ambush Vice President JD Vance laid with Trump for Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky in a minute, but first, let’s talk about the right-wing propagandist who got himself a coveted White House press pass and used it, in his role as a fake-news promoter, to ask perhaps the most inane yet incendiary question ever formulated at a summit meeting venue. I’m talking about the idiot (there’s just no other word if we’re giving him the benefit of the doubt, and if we aren’t, then it makes that question malicious, and him a provocateur—although, perhaps, the adjective “useful” before “idiot” would be appropriate here) who, in the midst of a major discussion between two heads of state, broke in to ask President Zelensky why he didn’t wear a suit.

Such a moronic, taunting, disrespectful and mal-intentioned query could only have come from the quarters in which it originated: the so-called Right Side Broadcasting Network, best known for adoring live-stream coverage of Trump’s rallies, town halls, and public events. With the new rise of Trump to the presidency, the network, which relies heavily on YouTube and Rumble for its audience, currently has nearly two million largely MAGA subscribers. In other words, the “reporter” was a MAGA-fake-news plant.

Trump with MAGA minion Brian Glenn

As for the name of the moron who asked the question, it was none other than Brian Glenn, there for a far-right propaganda outfit called Real America’s Voice. That might not mean much to a lot of my readers, many of whom tend to seek out fact-based news outlets for their information. But if you’re one of many Americans who, unfortunately,  subscribe to wild conspiracy theories and Trumpian prevarication, then Glenn may be something of a minor god in your world (where Trump is the big-dog god) since he is a champion conspiracy-theory disseminator.

Oh, did I mention that, among other achievements, Glenn is also the high-flying MAGA celebrity-climber who has scaled Mount Marjorie? That’s right, Brian and Marjorie (Taylor Greene, a.k.a. “Moscow Marjorie”) have been going steady for some time now. So he clearly has direct access to a fecund source of conspiracy gossip and MAGA dogma. 

Brian and Margie, going steady

The question could not have been more crucially timed if it had been planned in advance—or was it? It served as the lit fuse that touched off the fiery shouting match between the Vance-Trump tag-team and the Ukrainian president. It seemed specifically aimed at infuriating President Zelensky, when he was already being badgered by Vance, who seemed thoroughly amused at that sort of question’s being put to a foreign dignitary. It was the sort of question that, had it been asked of Trump by—oh, I don’t know, say, The Associated Press—would have gotten that news medium banished from the White House press core. (Oh wait! The AP was banned for less, simply for refusing to add the fictitious name, Gulf of America, to its stylebook).

Suffice it to say that Glenn’s network  was selected to fill a “secondary TV” role in the White House press pool—CNN has been relegated to that same category, which didn’t exist before last week. Indeed, the White House granted that press pass to Glenn, even as Trump continued to block reporters from The AP, one of America’s most major sources of objective news coverage, from attending. This policy began last week, with the White House handpicking the reporters it permits to attend  presidential meetings held in reduced settings, such as the Oval Office.

Glenn’s query could not have been more impertinent or captious: “Why don’t you wear a suit?” asked Glenn. “You’re at the highest level in this country’s office, and you refuse to wear a suit.” And then, insultingly, he doubled down, asking, “Just want to see if—do you own a suit? A lot of Americans have problems with you not respecting the office.”

President Zelensky, a wartime leader

President Zelensky sought to keep his cool, answering eloquently in his second language, “I will wear costume after this war will finish." The word for “suit” translates into Ukrainian as  kostyum. But whether intentional or not, the word “costume” in English couldn’t have been more accurate, since the only participant in that room not masquerading as a gentleman, when they were far from it, was the Ukrainian head of state. He was the only one who dressed honestly for the occasion, wearing the combat fatigues of a leader defending his nation and Europe against a war of aggression perpetrated against it by Russia, a dictatorial imperialist power. A power that, until six weeks ago, US leadership still recognized as what it is, one of America’s two most threatening rivals, and, currently the number one  most imminent threat to international peace and security.

As if to lighten the shocking and uncomfortable moment Glenn had created, President Zelensky then quipped, “Maybe something like yours, yes. Maybe something better, I don't know,” sparking laughter in the room. Then he added,  “Maybe something cheaper.”

The Ukrainian leader’s skill as a former comedian could have defused a tense moment. But that wasn’t the game plan. Vice President J.D. Vance—an Ohioan, I’m ashamed to say, like myself—wasn’t going to let this opportunity slip through his fingers. He seized on Glenn’s “disrespect” comment to say, “For four years, the United States of America, we had a president who stood up at press conferences and talked tough about Vladimir Putin, and then Putin invaded Ukraine and destroyed a significant chunk of the country. The path to peace and the path to prosperity is, maybe, engaging in diplomacy. We tried the pathway of Joe Biden, of thumping our chest and pretending that the president of the United States’ words mattered more than the president of the United States’ actions. What makes America a good country is America engaging in diplomacy. That’s what President Trump is doing.”

Zelensky countered, “OK. So he (Putin) occupied it, our parts, big parts of Ukraine, parts of east and Crimea. So he occupied it in 2014. So during a lot of years—I’m not speaking about just Biden, but those times was (Barack) Obama, then President Obama, then President Trump, then President Biden, now President Trump. And, God bless, now, President Trump will stop him. But during 2014, nobody stopped him. He just occupied and took. He killed people…

Trump, who apparently has the attention span of a gnat, and was evidently not listening, said, “Oh, 2014? I was not here.”

And Vance, ever quick to repeat anything Trump says, added, “That’s exactly right.”

Again Zelensky countered, saying, “Yes, but during 2014 ‘til 2022, the situation is the same, that people have been dying on the contact line. Nobody stopped him (Putin). You know that we had conversations with him, a lot of conversations, my bilateral conversation. And we signed with him, me, like, you, President, in 2019, I signed with him the deal. I signed with him, (French President Emmanuel) Macron and (former German Chancellor Angela) Merkel. We signed ceasefire… But after that, he broke the ceasefire, he killed our people, and he didn’t exchange prisoners. We signed the exchange of prisoners. But he didn’t do it. What kind of diplomacy, JD, you are speaking about? What do you mean?”

Seeing that Zelensky was getting the upper hand in reminding the press that Russia was the aggressor, Vance quickly doubled down, and acting as if he were the head of state and not Trump, lectured Zelensky, saying,  “I’m talking about the kind of diplomacy that’s going to end the destruction of your country. Mr. President, with respect, I think it’s disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media. Right now, you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems. You should be thanking the president for trying to bring an end to this conflict.”

Clearly, of course, litigating it in front of the American media had been exactly what Vance and Trump had been seeking to do. Usually, when there is a visiting head of state coming to negotiate a deal, the photo op will be short and nothing of consequence will be discussed publicly until negotiations have ended. But the Trump White House seems to have decided to use the presser simply as a means of humiliating President Zelensky, of showing him that the only ones that mattered in talks about Ukraine were the two major powers involved, the US and Russia, since Trump has also blithely ignored Europe completely as an intimately and strategically interested party. The clear purpose was to demonstrate to Zelensky (and to Trump’s base), in mob boss style,  that he didn’t matter. That Ukraine didn’t matter. That only Trump and Putin mattered.

Indeed, Trump would later tip his hand, saying as much when, after the blow-up, he crowed, “I think it’s good for the American people to see what’s going on. I think it’s very important. That’s why I kept this going so long.” Then, addressing Zelensky directly, “ You have to be thankful.”

Having tired of Vance’s impertinence, President Zelensky asked the VP, “Have you ever been to Ukraine that you say what problems we have?”

“I have been to –” Vance muttered, obviously caught off guard.

“Come once,” Zelensky suggested.

Then like a kid in grammar school who hadn’t done his homework, Vance said,  “I’ve actually watched and seen the stories, and I know that what happens is you bring people, you bring them on a propaganda tour, Mr. President. Do you disagree that you’ve had problems, bringing people into your military?”

“We have problems…”

“And do you think that is respectful, to come to the Oval Office of the United States of America and attack the administration that is trying to prevent the destruction of your country?”

“First of all,” said the Ukrainian president, “during the war, everybody has problems, even you. But you have nice ocean and don’t feel now. But you will feel it in the future. God bless –”

That’s when Trump blew up and talked to Zelensky in his best mobster style, telling him not to tell the US how it would feel. Talking down to him like the principal scolding a school kid,  saying “You don’t know that. You don’t know that… Because you’re in no position to dictate that.” He and Vance went on tag-teaming President Zelensky, and Trump’s lecture continued,  “You’re not in a good position. You don’t have the cards right now. With us, you start having cards.”

Zelensky, appropriately, said,  “I’m not playing cards. I’m very serious, Mr. President. I’m very serious.”

“You’re playing cards,” said Trump. “You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people. You’re gambling with World War III.”

Vance returned to his sophomoric “magic words” argument, again asking, “Have you said thank you once?”

To which President Zelensky answered, “A lot of times. Even today.” Anyone who has ever listened to anything the Ukrainian president has ever said about US aid knew this was true. Perhaps no other recipient of American aid in history has been more expressive about his appreciation than President Zelensky.

But Vance doubled down: “No, in this entire meeting…” And then in a complete non sequitur, he added, “You went to Pennsylvania and campaigned for the opposition in October.”

To which President Zelensky said, “No.”

Vance continued to badger him, “Offer some words of appreciation for the United States of America and the president who’s trying to save your country.”

Overwhelmed by such a lack of manners and propriety, President Zelensky said,  “Please. You think that if you will speak very loudly about the war, you can…”

And was immediately interrupted by Trump, who blustered,  “He’s not speaking loudly. He’s not speaking loudly. Your country is in big trouble.”

 “Can I answer —” President Zelensky tried, to which Trump barked,  “No, no. You’ve done a lot of talking. Your country is in big trouble.”

It was an utterly vile display of disrespect and bullying, and it is difficult to believe that it wasn’t planned that way, since Trump ended the contentious meeting by saying, “This is going to be great television. I will say that.” And coming from a former reality show star, who does everything necessary to stay at the top of the daily news schedule, that says a lot.

Make Russia Great Again

But the tone is nothing new. Such displays of disrespect have come to typify how the Trump regime treats America’s natural allies. Meanwhile, his most fawning, laudatory, and embarrassingly acquiescent behavior has been reserved for America’s natural enemies, and for predators bent on preying on democratic nations.

Putin’s spokesman, Dimitry Peskov said it all. Obviously pleased beyond all expectations with  the blow-up and with the ignominious expulsion of President Zelensky from the White House, Peskov said,  “The new (US) administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations.  This largely aligns with our vision.”

He could not have stated it more accurately. Under Donald Trump, in just six weeks, the US has all but abandoned its Western allies and democracy, and embraced authoritarianism and the world’s most repressive and dangerous regime. He has, in a word, surrendered the US to our principal enemy, and turned his back on our friends.

 

CONSERVATISM DEFINED

 Definition of a conservative: Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values.

NOTE TO MAGA: Stop calling yourselves "conservatives". Your leader is a far-right populist autocrat who is systematically trampling every tradition, institution, custom and value that the US stands for.

Thanks in advance.

 

IF IT WALKS LIKE A DUCK AND TALKS LIKE A DUCK…

 

“A massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”

—Former President Donald J. Trump—

He never should have gotten this far. Donald Trump never should have been a candidate for president and certainly never should have been endorsed by the Republican Party. Many of us said this from the outset—screamed it from the rafters, in fact. Okay, so a lot of people refused to listen, refused to see the warning signs, refused to face reality. We had to learn the hard way.

But even after Trump clearly demonstrated that he was not only as bad as, but actually even worse than some of us had warned, even after he abused power for four years, usurped the leadership of the GOP and bastardized its traditional party line to fit his ambitions, even after he engaged in nepotism, pardoned his cronies of their crimes and heaped praise on every ruthless dictator he met, after he tried his level best to demonstrate unequivocally that he was an enemy of our allies, an enemy of American traditions and ideals, an enemy of the Constitution and an enemy of liberal democracy, even then, the majority of the GOP leadership backed him to the hilt. And leading Republicans who were appalled and refused to bend to Trump’s inexplicable power in the party were ousted from positions of leadership and opposed for reelection in their own camp. In most cases they also received threats against their lives and those of their families, in tactics usually circumscribed to the world of gangsters and organized crime, when not to the world’s worst dictatorships—Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Xi Jinping’s China, Mohammed bin Salman’s Saudi Arabia, and Kim Jong Un’s North Korea, among others, where opposing the authoritarian leader exposes rivals to mortal risk.

Then, this would-be authoritarian president of the United States did the unthinkable and, for the first time in the history of the country, refused to accept the results of a free and fair democratic election—the most transparent election in American history—that he lost, went to more than sixty courts to try and find a judge who would quash the election results, and when that flatly failed, sought to elicit help from the Supreme Court, which he had heavily weighted in his favor by appointing three far-right justices during his time in office, but was rebuked once again. And when all else failed, he tried to pressure election officials to alter the results of the elections in their states by “finding” the necessary votes to overturn his loss—votes that clearly weren’t there. Then, when any sane person would have just accepted clear defeat—in his case, marked by a seven million popular vote margin and a definitive majority for the other candidate in the Electoral College—he again made dubious history by inciting an insurrection in which his most radicalized supporters violently attacked and sought to take over Congress, in an assault that left one police officer dead, one hundred forty-four injured, the Capitol in shambles and lawmakers and Trump’s own vice president, whom he abandoned to the attackers, having to run for their lives.

And yet, the Trump-infected GOP—it’s hard to think of the party any other way, since Donald Trump is like a virulent virus that has attacked and continues to attack liberal democracy and all other core American values—refuses to flatly reject Donald Trump or to question his party leadership. Like infected cells in an infirm body, his vast majority of enablers in the party have been killing off the remaining healthy cells—true conservative democratic Republicans like Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Anthony Gonzalez, Jaime Herrera Beutler, Peter Meijer, Tom Rice and John Katko, all of whom were either primaried by Trump-groomed candidates or decided not to run again.

Only two of the ten who voted to impeach Trump after the January 6^th, 2020 insurrection have survived the authoritarian onslaught (namely, California Republican David Valadao and Washington State Republican Dan Newhouse). Instead of being praised for standing up for democracy and against Trump’s authoritarian designs, the GOP leadership (in the person of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and his merry band of election deniers and insurrection justifiers) ousted the likes of Cheney and Kinzinger for daring to sit on the House January Sixth Committee, an investigative body that has been doing what all sides in Congress should be devoted to doing: investigating the role of the former president in a plot to overthrow the US government and install a dictatorship in 2020.

Even after the drama of the January Sixth Revolt and its attendant aftermath, the GOP leadership has remained too cowed by Trump and his minority base to call the former president out, and has once again permitted him to register as the main Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential race—this, despite the fact that all serious political opinion polls are showing the only other apparent GOP candidate so far, Ron DeSantis, to be far ahead of Trump in popularity.

Continuing to embrace Trump, as if in some sort of trance from which they can’t seem to wake up, the GOP leadership suffered a veritable trouncing in the recent midterm elections. Widely predicted to win a resounding victory in both chambers of Congress in those elections, the party’s decision to support Trump-backed election deniers and conspiracy theorists in major House and Senatorial races cost them dearly as those candidates, by and large, suffered humiliating defeats. In the end, the GOP shared that humiliation, far underperforming pre-election expectations and once again losing the Senate to the Democrats and only eking out a razor-thin majority in the House.

It wasn’t, however, like it should have come as a surprise to the GOP leadership—or to the less than oracular pundits who predicted a GOP shutout—since the party had already made the same mistake twice before in elections in which they took a beating because they misread just how sick and tired the majority of Americans are of Trump and his narcissistic quest to be a king rather than a president. What is more, opinion polls since the midterms seem to be clearly demonstrating that disillusionment with Trump is only growing, with his popularity plummeting following the vote.

The message is that it is clear to swing-voters, independents and traditional conservatives that Trump’s politics are toxic and un-American. They are no longer willing to put up with a supposedly conservative party that looks more like a three-ring circus with a modern-day P.T. Barnum grifter as the ringmaster. They want to see a new face in 2024 and for Trump to be a four-year “wonder” who finally fades away.

The more unpopular he is becoming, nevertheless, the more Trump is typically doubling down on his anti-democratic rhetoric, still vehemently resisting conceding his 2020 election defeat, still spouting conspiracy theories and claiming “massive election fraud” in the 2020 General Elections. The Supreme Court that he thought he “owned” after naming three hand-picked justices to it during his White House tenure has stubbornly rejected his every attempt to use the Court as a tool to help him legitimize his false claims of a fraudulent election. And the three justices that he appointed have, to their credit, shown that they, unlike him, will continue to defend the US Constitution and the rule of law, that they are, in other words, the exact opposite of what he has just accused them of being: namely, an institution that, in his words “has lost its honor, prestige, and standing, and has become nothing more than a political body…” On the contrary, the Court remains a bastion of justice that opposes the designs of a would-be despot—even if it’s the same tyrant who named a third of the Court.

Trump’s meltdowns are growing more and more worthy of concern. They would be of no concern at all, it should be pointed out, if it weren’t for the fact that prominent Republican leaders continue to render him relevant on the American political scene, instead of treating him like the raving madman that he has become. In this latest phase of the Madness of King Donald, he is now calling for the Constitution to be “terminated”. This is rhetoric that is, by any standard in American life, qualifiable as “batshit crazy.” And yet, way too many powerful Republicans are either going through a thousand sweaty contortions to act like they’re not sure what he meant, or are ignoring the pronouncement completely, with only a handful unequivocally criticizing him for saying it.

This begs the question, if the GOP has lost three elections because of Trump, if they got trounced because of him and his conspiracy-theorist candidates in the latest midterms, and if, with their own ears, they’re hearing him call for the dissolution of the rule of law in the United States, is it still all about the party’s being cold-sweat scared of “losing the Trump base”? Because if that’s the case, don’t look now, guys, but that base is shrinking by the minute, proportionate to the growth of Trump’s own legal liability—because, slowly but surely, Justice is coming for him.

Instead of thinking of the Trump “base” as some magical key to success, the GOP should be thinking of it as an ice cube, and if they continue to try and hold onto it against all odds, they had better start thinking of 2024 as what is very likely to be the sweltering summer of the party’s electoral discontent.                

 

INSANITY

For anyone who is not a radical supporter of the current US president, it is next to impossible to understand how Donald Trump managed this past week to congregate thousands of people for two presidential campaign rallies in Oklahoma and Arizona in the midst of a national health crisis. Despite the fact that both events were hardly the blockbuster populist outpourings that Trump would have wished for (he was reportedly furious about the relatively paltry turnout) they still brought together a combined total of around ten thousand supporters in conditions that, considering the times we’re leaving in, were utterly insane—zero social distancing, practically no face masks, and an attitude demonstrated by the chief orator of derision toward the recommendations of those in charge of organizing the country’s fight against the worst pandemic since the 1918 worldwide influenza plague. 

Largely as a result of the confusing, unsystematic, generally lax and basically capricious policies put in place by the Trump administration in the face of the devastating COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, the US has garnered the dubious distinction of being, certainly, the Western nation that has worst handled this global health crisis at a federal level, and the country that has been worst affected by this modern-day plaque worldwide. Deaths as a result of the pandemic in the US have soared to nearly one hundred twenty-five thousand. Comparatively, that figure surpasses by nearly twenty-five thousand the combined total deaths of US military personnel killed in the Korean War, Vietnam, the Gulf War, the Iraq invasion and the War in Afghanistan. And it represents twenty-five percent of all coronavirus deaths worldwide, in a nation that boasts only a little over four percent of the global population.

These figures are a catastrophe by any reasonable standard. Especially since, as medical experts, including the Center for Disease Control’s Dr. Anthony Fauci, keep telling us, many of the infections and deaths that the United States is suffering are easily avoidable by following simple rules of what should be compulsory use of masks and the implementation of logical social distancing measures. Neither of those precautions was in evidence at the president’s populist-style rallies. Trump’s event organizers did offer masks to participants, which they rightly assumed the vast majority of attendees would not accept, due to their adherence to their leader’s contempt for this preventative measure. But offering them—like signing a waiver, which the organizers also required of those attending—let the president off the hook in case of potential laws suits based on the grave health risks to which his followers were being exposed.

And the risks were, undoubtedly, grave. A good indicator of this is the fact that the Secret Service agents who accompanied the president to the rallies have been placed on sick leave and preventatively quarantined. And several members of the point team organizing the event have tested positive for the virus, which, medical experts now know, can cause permanent damage to the victims’ lungs. Considering that the US is in the grip of a new and soaring peak in infections and death, the idea of holding this sort of indoor rallies, even if masks had been required, was nothing short of madness.

The non-use of masks is fast becoming a battle-cry issue among Trump supporters who take insistence that masks save lives to be an attempt to infringe on their freedom. There is no doubt whatsoever that they are taking their lead from their singularly powerful mentor, the president of the United States. Seeing the use of masks as somehow wickedly invasive is, of course, ludicrous. Requiring the use of masks in the midst of a lethal pandemic should be compared to using a seatbelt when driving a car or wearing a helmet when riding a motorcycle. Except that in the case of masks, one is not only helping save one’s own life, but also the lives of others. People have come to understand that smoking in closed public places endangers the health and infringes on the rights of others. As such, prohibiting the practice is deemed valid under law, despite the protests of many smokers who complain that “their rights are being impinged.” One tenet of law is that my rights end where yours begin, and vice versa. But Trump and his most dogged supporters seem selfishly unwilling to accept the fact that their not wearing a mask in public violates the rights and health of their peers.

Having the access to sound information that the administration has at its disposal and still organizing ego-stroking campaign events like these latest ones is a criminally intentional act of mass harm. Those people who, in good faith, attended the events, to—for heaven only knows what illogical reason—lend their support to their president, trust him. We’ve even heard them in on-the-street TV interviews say, “If the president doesn’t think he has to wear a mask, why should I,” and “If the president isn’t worried, neither am I.”

Trump supporters argue that liberals are giving Trump a bad rap, blaming him for the disease. Not true. His critics are blaming him for not taking the hard and necessary measures to combat the disease, preferring popularity to efficacy. And it shows in the statistics. Three hotspot states this week posted the most alarming one-day rise yet in new infections with a combined total of more than seventeen thousand. No one is pleased to comply with quarantine, social-distancing and mask-wearing measures. But just as in the case of a hurricane, a tidal wave or a forest fire, it is the job of a real leader—like Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, for example—to impose emergency measures to ensure that people stay safe, and to save as many of their lives as possible, often in spite of themselves.

Even if they refuse to admit the imminent danger of this disease to the US population, Trump and his political advisers are in possession of the best scientific data available on COVID-19. They know the horrific danger that it implies. They know that there is absolutely no guarantee of “herd immunity” by simply letting the plague run its course, because immunity to it is, infectious disease experts now believe, short-lived and incomplete. They also know that, until there is an effective vaccine, only strict social-distancing, heightened hygiene, disease tracing and masks can keep the plague from spiraling out of all control. So if they refuse to recognize that the virus will run rampant through the US population if the measures recommended by Trump’s own administration’s Center for Disease Control (CDC) are not adhered to, then they are intentionally placing the country’s population in grave peril. And doing so can only be described, I repeat, as sheer insanity.

James Jones, perpetrator of an historic
mass-suicide-murder pact

The president’s staunchest and most stunningly naïve supporters, like those who are attending multitudinous rallies that he is insisting on holding, blindly believe their leader when he reassures them that there is nothing to fear despite the dire warnings of the nation’s disease experts. They trust him as many of them trust their evangelist religious leaders when the latter tell them that there is nothing to fear because if they are “saved” the virus can’t trump God. Those attending the most recent rallies obviously couldn't see the highly infectious viral disease swirling around them. But calling it a perfect storm is a good description of the risk to which they were effectively subjected in obeying their leader’s call to congregate. It was almost literally as if they had been asked to gather together and cheer the president in an ego-stroking exercise organized in the direct path of a hurricane.

In 1978, a hypnotically charismatic American evangelist and alleged faith healer known as Reverend Jim Jones managed to convince hundreds of his followers to take part with him in a mass murder-suicide pact in a commune-like island religious colony known as Jonestown. His most loyal followers ensured that all but a handful of survivors who managed to flee committed suicide by drinking grape Kool-Aid (actually a cheaper imitation called Flavor Aid) laced with cyanide, with many of those who refused being executed. The victims included scores of children, often fed the drink by their own parents who believed fanatically in Jones, who promised them that they had nothing to fear from death, that it was just the passing of the spirit from the body to a new and higher level of existence. Chillingly, Jones reportedly ran several dry runs previously in which he urged his followers to drink perfectly harmless Kool-Aid while telling then that it was poisoned and insisting that if they had faith in him and in God, they had nothing to fear.

Jonestown shortly before the massacre

The grim and horrifying event gave birth to the term “Kool-Aid drinkers”—popularized, ironically, to a massive degree by the president’s own favorite information outlet, Fox News—to describe hopelessly naïve individuals who blindly believe PR hype and celebrity proselytizers. Clearly, the rallies that Trump is organizing with no precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19, risking not only the infection of hundreds of their number but also the spread of the disease to hundreds or thousands more, strike a parallel with the Jonestown mentality. They are yet another Kool-Aid-drinking moment in the unfolding history of the Trump Era, one that threatens to have devastating effects on an enormous segment of the American population.

THE WAY TOWARD CHANGE

VIRAL CHICKEN

ORWELL REVISITED

US President Donald Trump is once again engaging in a tactic used by authoritarians the world over: namely, inventing “national emergencies” and creating the illusion that the country is under attack as a means of bolstering personal power and circumventing the legislative branch. 

In his now classic novel, “1984”, British writer George Orwell imagines a world in which countries have basically ceased to exist, with rule of the planet being divided among three major powers: Eastasia (China and its satellites) Eurasia (Russia and its satellites), and Oceania (the merged US and UK and their satellites). All of these powers, it can be inferred, apparently have similar authoritarian systems governing them. And if Oceania (where the novel is set) is anything to go by, each uses the other as a “boogey man” with which to frighten their respective peoples into submission by holding out the probability of imminent invasion (while, in fact, no such threat exists since the so-called “perpetual war” among these powers is a three-way series of skirmishes that take place in a buffer zone bordering on the territories of all three states which are too evenly matched for any to vanquish the other). 

Big Brother—the omniscient, omnipresent leader of Oceania—is pictured as the great protector, ever watching over his people and protecting them from immediate external and internal threat. He, they are led to believe, has their back. In reality, however, the powers that be, in Orwell's dark, oppressive, fictional world, are watching their subjects' every move and weeding out the slightest sign of subversion, before the perpetrators have a chance to create a following. Oceania is a nation of sheep kept in line through constant fear of internal and external threat. And it is this constant state of fear that takes the minds of the common people off of their ever more enslaved and repressed existence. 

Orwell may have gotten it right. He just got the date of initiation wrong by three and a half decades.

THE RISE AND FALL OF SCOTT PRUITT

The resignation this week of Scott Pruitt as EPA “administrator” (more like liquidator) was immediately and resoundingly hailed by virtually all environmental protection groups, wildlife conservationists, scientists and friends of the earth in general. But his successor promises to be little if any better—if, hopefully, less flamboyant and corrupt.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was one of the first to weigh in. He observed that, “instead of protecting our environment and combating climate change, he (Pruitt) has worked to protect the interests of the fossil fuel industry and polluters all over the country.” Senator Sanders opined that, “his resignation is a positive step forward for our country. I will do everything possible to see that the next EPA administrator actually believes in environmental protection.”

Scott Pruitt...out

All I can say is, good luck with that, Bernie. The man who, as deputy director, will likely replace Pruitt permanently is none other than Andrew Wheeler. Until now in the Pruitt EPA, Wheeler has been in charge of the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. His qualifications for the job? He is a former executive from the American Chemistry Council—a grouping of major chemicals manufacturers—and a former lobbyist for the coal industry. That makes him likely to act as an advocate for the interests of some of the very industrial activities that the EPA was formed to monitor. Oh, and, by the way, he is understood to have made a three hundred thousand dollar contribution to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Wheeler is the Trump administration’s fallback, after it permitted Pruitt to be its fall guy. Whenever the swampy water starts reaching the gunwales of this US president’s lifeboat, somebody gets thrown overboard, and this time it was Pruitt’s turn. But replacements are seldom if ever any great improvement, because, in the end, what is flawed is Trumpian policy and the dysfunctional administration as a whole. That’s because, to survive for a while in the Trump administration, all you have to be willing to do is his bidding—no matter what that might be. Anyone carrying a knapsack full of ethics with them need not apply. Pruitt, then, was a shoo in...until he wasn’t.

Lately, Pruitt’s personal antics have been giving the administration headaches, as the news media has tracked down his multiple indiscretions in running his shop as if he were a moneyed prince rather than an environmental agency administrator. The chain of scandals had gotten so bad—from the use of taxpayer money to purchase luxury furniture and contract high-end travel to secretly scheduled meetings and close relations with industry lobbyists, and from firing anyone in the EPA who questioned his most controversial maneuvers to using his post to garner business opportunities and jobs for his immediate family—that White House aides are reported to have been strongly urging the president to cut him loose.

Someone, then, evidently made Pruitt see the writing on the wall. But at least he didn’t miss the White House Fourth of July picnic and fireworks!

Andrew Wheeler...in

If I were to try and second-guess Trump, I would say that he didn’t fire Pruitt sooner because the former EPA director’s serial delinquencies served as smoke and mirrors to take attention off of the serious business of rollbacks that he was seeking to institute on the president’s behalf—rollbacks that have literally attempted to take environmental protection back half a century, to when American industries trashed the air, water and land of the US and the world with utter impunity.

Scott Pruitt’s job—what Trump has defined as “a very good job”—has been to deny science and to deny the need for the measures that have been instituted progressively since the late 1960s to mitigate, alleviate and repair gross environmental damage inflicted on us all by low former industry standards that completely ignored the human cost and lasting consequences of unaccountable production and corporate irresponsibility. In short, his job was to make things easy for Trump and Trump’s industry friends (and Super PAC backers) in their industrial operations.

There can be no doubt that Pruitt was serving the interests of Donald Trump, not those of the United States. In his resignation letter, he proudly (if unwittingly and a little insanely) alluded to this fact, seeming to have considered Trump’s rise to power and, by reflection, his own, as acts of God. And I quote:  "My desire in service to you has always been to bless you as you make important decision for the American people. I believe you are serving as President today because of God’s providence. I believe that same providence brought me into your service. I pray as I have served you that I have blessed you and enable(d) you to effectively lead the American people..." He might have added to this last...over the brink of environmental disaster.

Among other “achievements” that Scott Pruitt engendered in his service to God and King were the following, as compiled by the environmental news site, EcoWatch and the Environmental Integrity Project, and with comments of my own added:

• Convinced Trump to pull the US out of the historic Paris climate accord.
• Effectively blocked an expected ban on a pesticide so toxic it causes brain damage in children.

• Rolled back the Obama era Clean Power Plan at the behest of the tottering coal industry. The plan would have helped, among other things, to dramatically reduce asthma attacks in parts of the US, especially among children.

• Tore entire sections about climate change out of the EPA website because they directly contradicted (based on scientific facts) his own ridiculous and dangerous theories on the subject—basically, that it doesn’t exist.

• Delayed action to regulate a highly toxic paint-stripping chemical that kills people on contact.

• Cut EPA staff by 50 percent—mostly the scientists and researchers—and boasted publicly about it.
• Rolled back the EPA Clean Water Rule that was designed to protect US streams and wetlands from environmental devastation that eventually affects navigable waterways and the drinking water of an estimated one in three Americans.
• Indefinitely halted compliance deadlines on the 2015 Effluent Limitations Guideline, a federal regulation instituted to limit toxic water pollution from coal-fired power plants. 
• Announced “reconsideration” of the EPA Coal Ash Disposal Rule, the first federal rule governing disposal of coal ash, the by-product created from burning coal. Coal ash contains toxic pollutants including arsenic, cadmium, and hexavalent chromium (if you don’t remember what this last one is, see a re-run of the movie Erin Brockovich) that, without proper disposal controls, can leach into groundwater, surface water, or air and threaten health and the environment.
• Announced a “review” of the Greenhouse Gas Rule, saying that, “if appropriate”, the EPA would initiate proceedings to suspend, revise, or rescind the rule. Greenhouses gases are the number one proven cause of climate change, which Pruitt—evidently quoting his gut and his boss, but not proven scientific fact—has denied.

And the list goes on, all part of the septuagenarian president’s “to-hell-with-the-environment-I’ll-be-dead-soon” attitude toward effective stewardship of the world that current and future generations will inherit from him and other world leaders.

Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, said Scott Pruitt would “go down in history as a disgrace to the office of EPA administrator. He will forever be associated with extraordinary ethical corruption and the abuse of power for petty personal enrichments. Sadly, the ideological fervor with which Pruitt pursued the destruction of environmental regulations and the agency itself live on in the Trump administration.”

A 2018 study in the American Journal of Public Health said that already in the first six months of Pruitt's tenure as EPA head, the agency moved to a pro-business stance unlike that of any previous administration. So marked was the change, according to the study, that “the Pruitt-led EPA has moved away from the public interest and explicitly favored the interests of the regulated industries.”

The only bright spot in Pruitt’s tenure as EPA administrator is that his policies were so faultily enacted that most are being legally challenged and promise to get mired down in litigation for a long time to come. Legal experts are quoted as saying that the legal and scientific bases of Pruitt’s measures are so fragile that it makes them easy to challenge.

Still, there is virtually no hope of advances in environmental protection as long as Donald Trump remains in office. And the machinations of the village idiots that he is placing in charge of perhaps the most sensitive area of government—because of its far-reaching effects on humankind and nature—could have disastrous consequences for the future.

COVFEFE - A NEED TO KNOW SECRET

ARE GOP HOPEFULS HOPELESS?

The other day, I read something that lifted my spirits. It was an article by some supposed Republican “think-tanker” (can’t recall his name) who said (complained, in his case) that US President Barack Obama can't possibly lose in the next election, no matter WHO runs against him!

Later, I did some checking (spent a quarter-century as a newsman and old habits die hard) and found out the article in question was a hoax. The guy denies ever having written it, despite the fact that it was all over the Internet under his name.

But I’m guessing it did come from a real think-tank, despite the bogus by-line and is, maybe, the work of some backroom conservative dirty tricks department (you know, the kind that gave us Watergate, the Iran-Contra Affair, and Monica Lewinsky’s presidentially sullied dress, among other things) seeking to prepare its constituency for the worst.

I mean, a number of the reasons this bogus article gave for predicting an overwhelming reelection win for the president made a certain amount of sense:

It said that African Americans would vote “blindly” for Obama. “It’s a race thing,” it said. This is, of course, only a truism, not a truth. It’s obvious that a very large number of African Americans will vote for Mr. Obama on the sole basis of color. He is, after all, the first black president in US history. John Kennedy took about half of the Irish vote in the United States just on the basis of his coming from an Irish immigrant family. And he got still more votes because he was Roman Catholic—the first RC president in the country’s predominantly white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant political history. It makes sense. But I doubt Mike Steele, for instance, will be red-rovering to the side of his “African American brother” any time soon, even if former fellow Republican icon Colin Powell indeed did. And Herman Cain is hoping to run against him. So, yes, the President will surely get a lot of black votes on the sole strength of the color of his skin, but not anything like all of them. (After all, the president is half white even if not the half that people see, and there are radical segments in his natural constituency who will vote against him for that reason alone if for no other—just as white supremacists would vote against him if he looked white and were half black).

***

It said that college-educated women would vote for Obama. It added that “though they will be offended by this, they swoon at his oratory.” And went on to say that it was “really not more complex than that.” Once again, truism, not truth and much more complex than that. Indeed, many college-educated women will vote for President Obama, but not because they “swoon at his oratory”. They will do so precisely because they are educated and understand that many of the policies the president is trying to put through—in a process that Congress and the Republican conservative wing are making about as easy as pushing a concrete-filled bank vault up the side of Mount Whitney—are good for the United States, socially, ethically, culturally and in terms of the country’s economic and social future. They are also women who have learned enough to know that the United States must consolidate a liberal process that will allow it to draw back from the brink of tyranny on which it teetered during the eight-year corporate junta led by Dick Cheney—seconded by George Dubya Bush, whom Cheney allowed to sit in the driver’s seat and pretend to be in charge, because…well, who the heck would have voted for Dick Cheney? I mean except for the bozo Cheney mistook for a duck and shot, and who apologized when he got out of the hospital for getting in the way and causing the poor VP all that trouble. (In case you hadn’t heard, the guy was behind Cheney at the time of the shooting, so it was like apologizing to Annie Oakley for screwing up one of her trick shots).

***

But that doesn’t mean all college-educated women will vote for Obama. Just ask Ann Coulter and her waspy friends at Fox News. Or Sarah Palin, who managed to patch together a bachelor’s degree in communication/journalism over a five year period in a series of brief stays at University of Hawaii at Hilo, the Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu, the North Idaho (community) College at Coeur d’Alene, Matanuska-Susitna College in Alaska and the University of Idaho at Moscow—that’s Moscow, Idaho, not the one she can see “from her house”. (Hey, in all fairness, what Palin actually said in her September 11, 2008 interview with ABC's Charlie Gibson —and that comedian Tina Fey picked up on—was, "They're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska”). Despite her checkered college attendance Palin also won a college scholarship: She got it for being Miss Congeniality (and third runner-up) in the Miss Alaska Beauty Pageant. And she’s certainly not voting for Obama.

***

It said that liberals would vote for Obama, since “he is their great hope.” Well, duh! Probably their greatest hope and America’s greatest hope since John Kennedy, despite the ungodly mess he has inherited and in which he has gotten progressively mired down. But there will be liberals who won’t: the ones who haven’t had the patience to see his policies through to fruition, the ones who expected overnight solutions to essential problems that have been brewing since the Reagan era and that flourished and exploded under the Bush administration’s two terms, and the ones who find he’s too middle of the road for their taste and would like to see someone less ready to seek compromise and congressional consensus.

***

The piece said Democrats would vote for Obama. Geez, ya think?! It added, rather obviously, that “he is the leader of their party and his coattails will carry them to victory nationwide.” Clearly, there are going to be very conservative and very liberal Democrats who are going to wish that they could vote for someone else, and some even might, but most of those probably will just not vote at all, which would be a shame for their party. But, yes, card-carrying Democrats will surely not want to lose the White House four years in (like they did in the Carter era) after sweeping it out of the hands of the Cheney/Bush dynasty (and its continuers) in the last election.

***

The article later claims Hispanics will vote for Obama. Reason: “He is the path to citizenship for those who are illegal and Hispanic leaders recognize the political clout they carry in the Democratic Party.” Well, this is a jingoistic, racist, ignorant thing to say, and if I’m right and this paper has come from an ultra-conservative think-tank, then it just goes to show how out of touch with reality conservative Republicans are regarding this massive minority of nearly 50 million people from across the political spectrum. For one thing, Obama’s immigration policy hasn’t been nearly as liberal as anybody expected, including many of his own co-party leaders. Furthermore, there is no zealot like a converted zealot, and some of the toughest stances I’ve ever heard against illegal aliens have come, precisely, from Hispanics who have gone through proper legal channels, gotten their citizenship and become part of the mainstream North American community. Many of these Hispanics, and many more of their children, who try their best to forget their Hispanic heritage, are as ultra-conservative as any “Anglo” you’d ever want to meet. Particularly so if their families were exiled from communities like Castro’s Cuba, an experience that tends to turn them violently anti-communist and, therefore, way right of liberal. But, yes, many Hispanics will vote for him in gratitude for his defense of civil liberties in openly opposing the kind of police state legislation Arizona has implemented and which some other states have threatened to emulate.

***

The “bogus” story said that Union members would vote “overwhelmingly” for Obama. One can only hope…But in the end, it depends on what “overwhelmingly” means. The fact is that, while his campaigners at Organizing for America immediately showed how anxious they were to give nationwide vent to the union protest movement that took shape in Wisconsin, the administration eventually pulled back a bit from this stance, by making sure everyone knew that the Obama camp saw this as “a grassroots story” rather than a Washington one. And this has placed the president in the midst of a sort of delicate dance (as described by the Huffington Post) with unionists ever since. Nor are workers as enthused as they once were about Obama, since the new jobs he promised are materializing rather more slowly than expected. Still, there’s no denying that the president has a very strong base in labor. And frankly, if you were a union worker and had the choice of voting for Obama or for The Donald, The Huck, The Mitt or Citizen Cain (yet another CEO), what would your choice be?

***

The piece claimed that Big Business would support Obama. Well, yes and no. True, to the utter chagrin of many staunch liberals, it has been on President Obama’s watch that a new rule has come into play, allowing removal of the ceiling on what corporate America can donate to political campaigns, and the president does indeed seem to have an almost carnal relationship with GE and eccentric liberal tycoon George Soros. But from there to thinking that, say, Big Oil, or Big Defense or a lot of other major Big Business segments would ever be anything but conservative Republican is a bit of a reach. Still, perhaps the friends Obama has made in the corporate world will be more than enough to put him over the top in the 2012 campaign.

***

The media, this “spurious” article says, love him. This is a half-truth. Obama had a major honeymoon with the media (well, not Fox News, but, certainly, the serious media) in the beginning of his administration. But he has taken considerable criticism since then, and it’s not like the media as a whole remains “in the tank” for his administration. It is true, however, that the president himself remains something of a rock star. He has charisma. In fact, he and his whole family have charisma and the press loves leaders it can idolize. And come on, admit it, it’s nice having a president that doesn’t make you want to hide you head in a paper bag every time he opens his mouth. Eight years of that was enough already.

***

Finally, the article said that half of all Independents would vote for Obama. Personally, I’m hoping that there’s a greater percentage of intelligent Independents out there. I’m hoping more like 80 percent. But still, according to the story that no one’s claiming, “he doesn't need anywhere near that number because he has all of the groups previously mentioned. The President will win an overwhelming victory in 2012.” All I can say is—as the old Spanish expression goes—may God hear you.

***

Wherever the article came from, you kind of wonder whether there’s not some truth to the notion that the Republicans have seen the future…and they’re not in it. Why? Well, just look at the potential candidates!

I mean, maybe that's why the Republicans are gathering such a list of clowns to run against Obama. As an old rural Argentine saying goes, why waste gunpowder on a buzzard? They're cannon fodder! I mean Gingrich, Huckabee, Palin and The Donald ‘Gump’? Or is it that they really just don't have anybody else? Of course, there's Mitt Romney—wonder what that’s short for, Mittens maybe...like, maybe he was named after George Romney’s favorite cat(?)—who has, at least, an outwardly presidential look. But in some of the latest polls, he's barely tying with Huck Finn...I mean, Mike Huckabee. What does that say about his popularity?

Then there's Cain (maybe they figured that with a little white-out, they could use the leftover posters from the last election). He does have some executive experience: He ran 400 Burger Kings and did such a good job that Pillsbury bumped him up to CEO of Godfather's Pizza. And he's another (though lesser known) Fox News regular, so he's got a foot in the door with the GOP propaganda machine, but so far they're not paying a whole lot of attention to him.

And finally, there’s wild card Sarah Palin. She’s been out making some noise again, so there’s new speculation that she might yet announce her candidacy. She and The Donald have also been courting each other in the media (she talking about his ‘frankness’, he talking about her ‘energy’), so the United States might yet see the horror of a ticket formed by two of the most self-confidently ignorant players in politics. What am I talking about? Here are just a few quotes from the former Alaska governor:

When asked by CBS anchor Katie Couric which newspapers she read regularly, Palin couldn’t think of a single one. Showed how “quick on her feet” she was though, by answering, “All of 'em, any of 'em that have been in front of me over all these years.”

Also in that now infamous 2008 interview, Couric was trying to establish why Palin thought she would be qualified to handle foreign policy. Her answer, “As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where…where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border.”

But then you think, well, maybe she’s wised up a bit in the past couple of years. Alas…At the end of last year, in a radio interview with Glenn Beck (now, we’re talking Fox News, not CBS, these are people who like Sarah Palin and were trying to keep the questions gentle), when asked how she would handle current hostilities between the two Koreas, she blithely danced onto another foreign policy land mine by saying, “…Obviously, we've got to stand with our North Korean allies.”

Of course, The Donald doesn’t lag far behind in the dumbest quotes department. Asked by ABC News about the possibility of his running for the presidency he talked about, what else, money—campaign money in this case— and said, “I mean, part of the beauty of me is that I'm very rich. So if I need six hundred million dollars, I can put six hundred million myself. That's a huge advantage…” In a celebrity interview he once said, “All of the women on The Apprentice flirted with me—consciously or unconsciously…” This speaks to his general grip (or lack of same) on reality, I think. And how about this The Donald gem: “In life you rely on the past—and that’s called history.” I mean, the guy makes Dubya look like an intellectual.

One thing you can say for Donald ‘Gump’, though: He has keenly honed diplomatic skills. In a radio interview with star radio and TV journalist Larry King, he once asked, “Do you mind if I sit back a little? Because your breath is very bad.”

Oh, and I almost forgot Christine O'Donnell: She's a declared enemy of masturbation—talk about platform planks(!)—so she's probably lost 99 percent of the male vote (the other one percent is made up of liars) and an estimated 60-70 percent of the female vote before she even gets started! Plus, listen to these gems from Pristine Christine's lips:

"Co-edness is a radical agenda forced on college students."

"We had the ‘60s sexual revolution and now people are dying of AIDS."

"Creationism, in essence, is believing that the world began as the Bible in Genesis says, that God created the earth in six days, six 24-hour periods. And there is just as much, if not more, evidence supporting that." (Huh?!)

O'Donnell/Huckabee or Huckabee/O'Donnell, now there's a ticket ya gotta love! When a Bible-thumping Huckabee was once asked if he thought Jesus would support the death penalty, he said “Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office…that’s what Jesus would do.” He also said he was “pretty sure there’ll be duck hunting in Heaven and I can’t wait.”(He said it to a gathering of the National Rifle Association). Huckabee, who holds a theology degree, also made clear his understanding of science when he claimed that “Darwinism is not an established scientific fact. It is a theory of evolution. That’s why it’s called the theory of evolution.”

I know, I know, they haven't rolled O’Donnell out yet for 2012, but give them time. Everybody who's ever been a Fox News commentator ends up on the campaign list. Well, except for Bill O'Reilly, because he's an Independent. If you don't believe it, just ask him. That’s why he gets 20 million a year to be the star anchor on a channel whose secret logo is a red elephant.