Tomorrow will be the first day that President Trump will have a fully operational confirmed Attorney General. Let that sink in. Mueller will be gone soon.
This past Sunday afternoon Attorney General William Barr released his summary “interpretation” of the Mueller report. Containing just a handful of sentence fragments from the actual Mueller report, the summary was even more lacking in detail and more focused on providing an extremely narrow and slanted view of Mueller’s conclusions than I had predicted in my column from this past Sunday morning (See: Mueller Plays His Dominoes). Until we see the actual report submitted by Robert Mueller, and we learn how and why the Special Counsel’s probe ended, we know very little about what Mueller actually discovered, or might have failed to discover if it turns out his investigation was terminated prematurely. Barr’s letter summarizing the Mueller report appears every bit as reliable as one of Trump’s self-written notes from his doctor.Continue Reading >>
What happened aboard Air Force One in the early morning hours of October 8, 2018? What was said and what deal was brokered between President Donald Trump, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly that day? If we knew the answer to that question, the things that are happening now might make much more sense. Will the public release of the Mueller Report answer that question?
With the Mueller Report being delivered to the Department of Justice this past Friday, it marks “the end of the beginning” of investigation and public insight into understanding Russia’s efforts to interfere with America’s election process and the criminal and unethical acts of Donald Trump and those close to him.Continue Reading >>
Marchers in London protesting the visit of Donald Trump, July 2018, via “The Other 98%” on Facebook.
I don’t want to keep beating the children, but you are making me do it. I don’t want to refuse to give you the money you need to buy groceries and pay the rent. It’s a humanitarian crises, all because you won’t do what I tell you to do.
I know we once took an oath that all our decisions would require mutual agreement. I intend to live by that oath. That’s why I’ll keep beating the children until we both agree that you will do exactly what I tell you to do.Continue Reading >>
How much damage Trump will do to America, and to the world at large, as his presidency goes up in flames is an open issue, but as I’ve written in the past (See: Really Bad Things Are Going To Happen Now), this is going to be very, very bad, and quite possibly a very lengthy process as well.
Many disasters have impacted Trump and America this week. The utter fraud that was the Trump Foundation is being shut down. Trump is being investigated for the serious financial improprieties of the Trump inauguration committee. A Federal judge took former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn sternly to task for his betrayal of America. Trump attorney Michael Cohen has implicated Trump in multiple felonies designed to defraud America. Russian spy Maria Butina entered into a cooperation agreement with the US government. Paul Ryan spent the week living in an alternative reality while patting himself on the back for what a tremendous job he’d done the past two years helping Trump destroy America (See: The Self-Delusion of Paul Ryan). The stock market is in a free fall, with the NASDAQ today closing in its first bear market since the Great Recession, a drop of 21.9% from its peak on August 29, 2018. The Executive Branch is drowning in staff vacancies at the highest levels. But let’s just focus on some of what has happened over just the past couple of days:Continue Reading >>
The Domino Principle’s forecast for the next two years in American politics.
Trump Presidency Time RemainingCountdown
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If you think the past two years have been a nightmare, then you’d best buckle up tight, because we ain’t seen nothing yet compared to what is coming during the next two years. While there will surely be many unanticipated and horrifically shocking surprises, based on what we already know we can project with a fair degree of certainty how many aspects of political life in America will play out as the dominoes fall. And it isn’t even remotely pretty.
We stand by the graphic we published prior to the election last week… and the verdict is now in. We WILL get the government that WE deserve. At least for the next two years, America will have a government that will continue to march strongly down the path to demagogic authoritarianism (see CNN: Midterm fury fuels Trump’s assault on constitutional norms). And that trek is backed by nearly half of the American public voting to embrace a degree of dishonesty, moral deplorableness and self-destructiveness never before seen at such scale in our lifetimes.
Even in a state like California, often seen as the heart of American liberalism, Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter, who is currently facing 60 federal charges, ran a massively racist campaign that tried to label his opponent as a terrorist. He got re-elected to the House by a nearly 10-point margin. Californian Devin Nunes, who has spent the past two years doing everything possible to use his position in Congress to obstruct investigation into Russia’s attempts to interfere with our elections (and with the Trump campaign’s related collusion with Russia), was easily re-elected. It was a real bright spot see Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican member of the House who has consistently shown more loyalty to Russia than to America, narrowly lose his re-election bid, but that was the exception rather than the rule (see The Atlantic: Putin’s Favorite Congressman Has Lost His Reelection).
“the fact of the matter is that in three short years the face of America has profoundly changed. A significant fraction of the society has been lured into moral degradation by the siren song of a demagogue.”
“We learned that the American public as a whole has reacted to the first two years of an unfit, delusional, mendacious, malevolent, incompetent authoritarian as president … with relative equanimity.”
“So where does this point us? To nowhere good, I’m afraid. The trouble with a normal election cycle in 2018 is that we do not have a normal president in 2018. We have a deranged, fabulist bully. For a presidency like Trump’s to generate less opposition after two years than Clinton’s or Obama’s is a rather chilling sign of how far down the rabbit hole we have already gone. To greet what is an emergency for liberal democracy as a business-as-usual political cycle, is de facto a big win for the whole idea of strongman rule. And on the key issues of a free press and the rule of law, the strongman is winning.”Continue Reading >>
August 21, 2018 was a good day for America. One that America really needed.
There is a long way to go, but the events of August 21 provided at least a measure of hope that the rule of law will prevail and democracy will survive.
Never forget that the President is a career criminal who has committed both crimes against America and crimes against Humanity.
Never forget that the President has historically, and continues to effectively, run an organized crime operation whose objective is to loot America while defrauding the American people.
And finally, never forget that those who continue to support him have made a decision to betray America too, and that their admiration of such a man is a reflection upon their character as well.
🎶Hey now, hey now Don’t dream it’s over Hey now, hey now When the world comes in They come, they come To build a wall between us We know they won’t win🎶
Donald Trump and Vladamir Putin in Helsinki, July 16, 2018. Via www.kremlin.ru and used under license.
In a disaster entirely of his own making, the President of the United States stood alongside Vladamir Putin at a press conference in Helsinki, Finland on July 16, 2018 and confirmed to the entire world what so many of us already knew: Donald John Trump has betrayed his duty to America, and acts as though he is beholden to and under undue influence of Putin in ways that constitute an extraordinary betrayal of his oath of office.
And that’s just what we know from Trump’s public statement with Putin. Because Trump has been silent on the matter, we still have virtually no specifics about what Trump discussed and promised to Putin in their private meeting. There are reports coming out of Russia that agreements were in fact reached, and given that Trump won’t say anything about them, it seems likely that they could very well constitute an even vastly greater betrayal of American interests. See: US offers no details as Russia claims Trump and Putin reached military agreements.
In addition to Trump’s apparent universal adulation of murderous dictators in general, Putin’s specific leverage and influence over Trump seems to also stem from a variety of financial, sexual, and criminal factors. My previous column: The Man in the High Castle: Trump has committed high treason provides elaboration on each of these issues. A new column in The New Yorker this week, A Theory of Trump Kompromat also provides further insight.
I’ve received considerable correspondence since Trump’s spectacle in Helsinki, all centered on three key questions:
How can anyone still support him?;
Given how apparent it is that Trump’s loyalties are to Russia, why won’t Congress do anything about it… RIGHT NOW?; and
What can each of us do about it… RIGHT NOW?
Why People Still Support Him
The entire spectacle of Trump’s capitulation to Putin in Helsinki made it essentially impossible for anyone to claim to be pro-Trump and to love America and the values for which it has historically stood, and not seem, in the very best possible light, a complete and utter fool, and in the very worst possible light, a traitor to America as well. As John Pavlovitz’s noted in Don’t Say You Love This President and America. One of Those Things Isn’t True:
“when you refuse to name it all as treasonous, when you choose to remain silent, when you pretend you don’t see it—you declare who you are. We see it. The world sees it.””
So one must face some grim realities to explain Trump’s continued support:
There really are Americans who truly want America to move away from democracy towards authoritarianism, particularly if an authoritarian leader pretends to support their political and social agenda and remove it from possible change via democratic processes.
There are Americans who support Trump because they profit greatly from his policies and agenda, and some of them are extremely wealthy… and their wealth can and does buy political influence.
There are Americans who truly want to see the subjugation of America to Russia.
There are Americans who simply don’t have the intelligence to understand the issues involved (remember, half the population has an IQ of under 100) — they are easily persuaded by the gaslighting distortions and distractions of Trump and his enablers, and/or they blindly support anyone who identifies as Republican because it is their cultural heritage to do so. The Dunning–Kruger effect is real.
There is also a considerable segment of Americans who are attached to Trump in such a cultish fashion that they essentially see him as being anointed by a higher power to lead us… these people don’t care if he is a traitor… they will follow him anywhere.
And there is a segment of Americans who will refuse to back away from Trump because it would mean admitting that they were wrong about something that they were once passionate about, so they will just keep digging in no matter what he does.
So in total, the evidence is that these factors combined explain the behavior of about 30% of the American electorate. We are forced to conclude that even if Trump should publicly come out and claim that he wants to make the United States a republic in the Russian Federation, a sizable portion of his supporters would applaud him for having another brilliant idea, while repeating the gaslighting distortions he manufactures to justify it. That’s the America we live in, and only by recognizing this scary reality can we find a constructive path to move forward.
Why Congress Won’t Do Anything RIGHT NOW
After the Helsinki summit, Former CIA Director John O. Brennan noted:
Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of “high crimes & misdemeanors.” It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???
While Adam Schiff, ranking member of the House Select Intelligence Committee, stated:
After his summit with Putin, Republicans can no longer ignore the fact that, whether he is or not, Trump acts like he’s compromised.
Why else would he side with Putin, a former KGB officer, over his own intelligence agencies, bash Europe and favor the Kremlin over NATO allies? pic.twitter.com/7WTJ7e4hb6Continue Reading >>
Donald Trump learned last week of indictments being handed down by the US Department of Justice confirming what he already knew, namely that Vladimir Putin’s military launched a coordinated cyber-attack on America in 2016. Some of these attacks appear to have taken place within hours of Trump’s direct request for Russia to undertake them.
Trump then stated this past week, publicly, “Putin’s not my enemy.”
Russia, and it’s murderous dictator, Vladimir Putin, are clearly the enemies of the United States. Yet, Trump says Putin isn’t his enemy. Why?
The answer now seems clear: it is because Trump is a Russian asset and the most perfidious traitor to America to have lived within our lifetimes.
“During a phone call with Mr. Putin in March, when the president was urged by aides not to congratulate the Russian president on his electoral victory, Mr. Trump did just that. He told Mr. Putin that Russia and the United States should get along better. And he described as ‘stupid people’ the unnamed Trump administration officials whom the Russian president said had tried to prevent the call from happening, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversation.”Continue Reading >>
As we celebrate Independence Day, it is a good time to remember that we owe our heritage to those who had the courage to stand up to tyranny, and who fought for freedom and democracy. At no time, at least within my lifetime, has our country needed to remember this more than today.
Our President has declared war on Western democracy and on Western values, as he flirts with neo-fascist leaders around the world, and he gaslights to declare war on truth and the rule of law here at home.
After I published my last column (Patterns of Force – Realizing Which of our Friends Would Have Supported Hitler), perceptive reader Paul Tergeist noted that if Hitler were alive today “Trump would have hosted him at the White House and gushed about what a strong leader he was.” Those words ring with hypothetical plausibility.
Today is a good day to remember the evening that 20,000 Americans, waving American Flags, singing the Star-Spangled Banner, chanting the Pledge of Allegiance, and claiming to be “Patriots” gathered in Madison Square Garden in New York City on February 20, 1939. They were all American Nazis. Listen to their chilling words here:
At the same time, in Europe, Hitler was finishing construction of his sixth concentration camp. Seven months later, the Nazi army invaded Poland.
It seems more like an episode of The Twilight Zone than reality… but it really happened. And people seem emboldened to express similar value systems again today. Those who do not acknowledge the past are condemned to repeat it.
“patriotism cannot be surrendered to the right-wingers, the zealots, the jingoists and the racists. It is time for the rest of us — the vast majority, who support a pluralistic, forward-looking vision of America — to reclaim it.
“Flying the American flag upside down in protest on this Fourth of July holiday can also help to sustain and inspire other types of political behavior, including protests, strikes, voting, organizing and the day-to-day corporeal politics of resistance that are necessary to protect American democracy from Trump and his allies.Continue Reading >>
“Like any number of us raised in the late 20th century, I have spent my life perplexed about exactly how Hitler could have come to power in Germany. Watching Donald Trump’s rise, I now understand.” — Harvard professor Danielle Allen
Social media provides a window into how our friends, neighbors and acquaintances view the world that wasn’t present when Hitler rose to power. One of the best, and, at the same time, most terrible things about the current political situation in America is that it provides a glimpse of our community that did not exist in times past. And while social media is often justifiably blamed for exacerbating how lies, distortions, and false narratives are shared and adopted in support of those promulgating nefarious agendas, it can also play a highly positive role in debunking falsehoods, in uniting people together in positive directions, and in understanding whom within our circle of friends and acquaintances does not support the basic democratic ideals that have traditionally united us as Americans.
As a 6th grade student nearly half a century ago, I remember learning lessons from World War II. The familiar adage that “all tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent” became expressed through the ode written by German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller. He described the cowardice of German intellectuals following the Nazis’ rise to power and subsequent purging of their chosen targets, group after group (See: ‘First They Came’: The Poem of the Protests):
“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Our lesson also taught that what had happened in Germany could happen again, and that it could even happen in America. And my classroom lesson predicted that if another authoritarian rose to seek power by moving us from democracy towards fascism, 70%+ of the populace would not speak out and object, and a non-trivial segment of the population would actually actively support him (or her).
As a 12 year old in the early 1970s, I was incredulous to believe that people would remain silent and that such a thing could ever happen again, with the world having witnessed what happened during World War II in Europe. I was full of questions: Was this prediction really true? Who were those people who would be silent or would actively subvert democracy? Were some of them my friends and neighbors? How could we tell who those people were?
Today, because of social media, I finally have answers to many of those questions.
Is Trump like Hitler? How is America’s support of Trump like Germany’s support of Hitler?
While many similarities between Trump and Hitler can be drawn, what is happening today in America isn’t genocide and the aim isn’t extermination (See: It’s Not the Holocaust). Hitler’s objective was world domination and “purification.” Hitler was a mass murderer who aspired to take over the world for the glory of the Fatherland. Unlike today’s America, which has a reasonably strong economy and low unemployment, Hitler came to power in the wake of Germany’s loss during World War I. The Treaty of Versailles leveled reparations on Germany and the ensuing depression had caused incredible hardship throughout Europe. Hitler promoted established German values of hard work, honour, and a strong military.
Many of the Germans saw Hitler as a saviour and ignored his racist views. Hitler’s racism and persecution was focused primarily on “infestation” from Jews along with Roma (Gypsies), Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, Afro-Germans, political dissidents, Jehovah’s Witnesses, people with disabilities, homosexuals, along with various other “asocials and non-conformists.” Trump’s animus seems to be primarily focused on Muslims, Mexicans and refugees who he claims are trying to “infest” America. In both cases, fear-mongering against minorities was/is used as a way to motivate followers.
“Alongside the viciousness of much of German politics in the Weimar years was an incongruous innocence: few people could imagine the worst possibilities. A civilized nation could not possibly vote for Hitler, some had thought. When he became chancellor nonetheless, millions expected his time in office to be short and ineffectual. Germany was a notoriously law-abiding as well as cultured land. How could a German government systematically brutalize its own people? German Jews were highly assimilated and patriotic. Many refused to leave their homeland, even as things got worse and worse. “I am German and am waiting for the Germans to come back; they have gone to ground somewhere,” Victor Klemberer worte in his diary – he was the son of a rabbi and a veteran of the First World War who chose to stay, and miraculously survived.Continue Reading >>
Strategies for taking command of our lives through seeing "deep repercussions" in world events and realizing how chain reactions can produce future outcomes.
