Look away! Political distractions and more...

Distract! That’s the GOP ‘strategy,’ ever since it became clear that there was screaming "quid" for every howling "quo."

For example, there are no legal bases for Attorney General Barr’s ‘criminal investigation of the FBI’ for following hearsay leads that led to overwhelming evidence, that led to jury convictions for real crimes. But unleashing the probe will get Trump off Barr’s neck. All of you have RASR cousins etc. who buy into the core Fox line, which boils down to: “Don’t look! There’s nothing under that smoke, so don’t even look! I don’t want to know!” … 

Here are 9 one- or two-sentence answers that demolish their “don’t look!” party line:

1- Rules about hearsay, or ‘bias’ by investigators or witnesses all apply during a TRIAL. Rules of admissibility are far looser during investigations or indictment proceedings, which can hear secret testimony, as happens in a Grand Jury. 

While there might be cause to “confront” all witnesses during a trial, at this stage protecting whistleblower identity is not only fair, it is traditional and paramount.

2- The House is that Grand Jury, deliberating indictments that the Senate would then try.

3- Impeachment is Constitutional, not judicial. Moreover - and dig this well - it’s not even remotely analogous to criminal trial, where life or liberty might be deprived. The closest parallel is that it’s about an employment issue - far more like a company’s board of directors deciding to fire a corrupt CEO.

4- The House can make its own rules on proceedings leading to a vote of impeachment, as when the GOP rammed through impeachment of a husband for fibbing about a 3rd base consensual infidelity. Only here’s a fact conservative Judge Napolitano made clear, discomfiting whining Fox hosts: Pelosi, Schiff etc. are now following - precisely - rules established in 2015 by a Republican House under John Boehner, when Republicans hoped to impeach the utterly stain-free Barack Obama.

5- Having declared an absolute right of Congressional oversight over Clintons and Obama (who handed over everything and prevented no one from testifying, amid 25 years of never-fruitful “investigations”), many of the same men now howl that a GOP president needn’t cooperate at all, may stonewall and declare himself above all law, even for “shooting someone on 5th Avenue.”* (Yes, Trump’s attorney just said exactly that. See the cogent cartoon by Clay Bennett.))

6- Oh, about those evidence-exclusion” rules that sometimes tossed as inadmissible “the fruit of a poisoned tree….” Conservatives long railed against that doctrine! Now, suddenly-hypocritically, it’s their favorite! 

7- Again: 25 years and half a billion dollars of our money spent chasing Clinton-Obama accusations, including Koch/Fox bribes offered to scores of witnesses - (“Bengahzi!”… “Emails!”) - found nothing whatsoever, a result repeated just last week by Pompeo’s State Department when they cleared Hillary Clinton of any serious or deliberate wrongdoing.

8- There are obvious reasons why the rising oligarchy wants secrecy and darkness enshrined in our political processes. From the Panama Papers to a wave of likely blackmail, we see how much they have to fear from light. Take the link below and see Polemical Judo!

9- Every Trumpian defense consists of “Don’t look! The people mustn’t see facts or truth!  Tax returns, financials, Deutsche Bank records of laundering for Russian oligarchs, testimony from administration officials who never spoke a word to the President and hence have no basis for “Executive Privilege…”

… the actual contents of Trump’s private meetings with communist dictators and “ex”communist KGB-agent mafia dons…

…and Trump’s beloved “Great Wall of NDAs” (the best wall ever) keeping scores of past settlements secret. And the contents of David Pecker’s safe. And the blackmail that turned William Barr into a mafia stooge…

…and for all of that, your “ostrich republican” cousin has one desperate response, keeping his head in his Fox-tuned hole, repeating incantations and chant-rationalizations for why he should not know about any of those things. “I don’t wanna know. Nobody should know. Look away… look away!”

== It can be painfully funny ==

And yes…Our Constitution is under attack. Our civil servants will save us, wrote Elijah Cummings.

Che Shows The Way! On Saturday Night Live, last week, Weekend Update host Michael Che voiced (brilliantly) a meme I had been spreading about a new and clever way to deal with the weird-crazed phenomenon of Donald Trump. ““I don't know how to ask this, but are we sure that it's OK to make fun of this guy?” he asked. “Did you ever read Of Mice and Men? Remember how Lenny was really ‘strong?’ What if Trump is really strong? I've got a cousin who is also strong. And he loves alligators too, but we don't make fun of him.”

It got some good laughs and cheers, but I am quite serious in proposing that some mid-level democrat or pundit use this powerful meme weapon.  Imagine if say Mayor Pete were to hold a news conference and — with tongue only barely in cheek — *denounce* fellow Democrats for their unsympathetic pestering of an addled old man! An emotionally and cerebrally challenged senior who clearly qualifies for extra care and kindness. Feigned outrage that liberals and dems are ignoring their obligations to Trump, under the Americans with Disabilities Act.  

Not only would it draw huge attention and seize that day’s news cycle. It would also directly undermine what George Lakoff calls the fundamental basis of Trump’s base-support — his illusion of playground bully “strength.” Envision what a tweetstorm that would rouse from Two Scoops! It would obsess him and possible burst a blood vessel… and so, on second thought, maybe let’s not. The last thing we want is a Trump  martyr!

Can anyone pass this on to Mayor Pete?  

== Where we're headed ==

This Vox article on “9 scenarios for how the Trump-Ukraine impeachment process could end” is a pretty interesting conversation starter. But it leaves out at least half a dozen more. Such as party leaders talking Trump into taking a leave of absence, or several different weird scenarios under the 25th amendment. 

And the scariest of all… the one that makes Bond-villain logic for Putin and McConnell, giving them their only chance at a win win win scenario, eliminating the liability while riling up his supporters to a rabid frenzy… That scenario is martyrdom.  God Bless the United States Secret Service! I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes. Good luck guys! (And if anything happens, you fools better not celebrate! You must be enraged at the deliberate-cynical disposal of an addled old man, just because his usefulness to our enemies came to an end.)

I am a fan of AOC and I am glad the Democratic "Roosevelt wing" is very active. Still, it is vital to avoid splitterism and falling for tricks to harm our enlightenment-patriotic coalition against the Putinist Cabal. Especially, all this piling onto Nancy Pelosi is both unfair and intemperate/shortsighted -- an example of 'sumo' politics that always, always falls into Republican traps. The Judo approach requires timing. Those who question Pelosi's courage or determination bear a steep burden of proof. Under what scenario do they even imagine she is shy over combat? Of course she is being strategic! Why assume anythings else? What matters now is not going for formal impeachment, followed by a failed Senate vote. What matters is:

1-  that formal impeachment hearings might corner Chief Justice John Roberts into ruling in favor of Congressional subpoenas, since that is a process specifically described in the the Constitution. This is paramount! Nothing else matters as much, because once the subpoenas and hearings are unleashed, the Trumpists face evisceration. (And we must be prepared with a plan in case Roberts betrays us.)

2- that the impeachment process must not wind up being seen as just "revenge for Clinton," allowing the Red Base to rally around their martyr. If you think it will be enough just to defeat the GOP in 2020, you have ZERO memory of 2010 and 1994 when they came roaring back. They must be crushed for all this criminality and treason, and removing Trump a couple of months early is less urgent.

3- If you want a huge symbolic victory, then time impeachment so that the senate trial is held in the new Senate that takes hold a couple of weeks before inauguration in 2020. Think about that.

4- tune the meaning. A tsunami of corruption revelations during 2020 will win us defections from the confederacy, while a Senate trial that happens before those defections will win us an earthquake of Timothy McVeighs. Above all, our audience is the so called "deep state" - a fictitious, slanderous term for the brave and devoted men and women who have been preserving the republic by adhering to the law, during a lawless regime. If they see us dotting the i’s while revealing crimes, we keep them loyal.

5- Pence. OMG have folks any concept of reality at all? Trump is largely cauterized by his own blithering moronic behavior. Pence gets in and ALL THE DAMAGE TO THE REPUBLICAN BRAND goes away as he smoothly croons about peace and reconciliation, winning large numbers of relieved officers back into the GOP fold... the leaky Trump White House gets replaced by one packed by Pence with devout Book of Revelations Dominionists, utterly disciplined and dedicated to the end of the world. Literally. Absolutely and literally.

Pace yourselves. Radicalize! Fight! By getting your neighbors ready with tumbrels and torches.

== Consider this ==

The National Rifle Association acted as a "foreign asset" for Russia in the period leading up to the 2016 election. Um duh? Today’s traitor U.S. right is absolutely gaga in love with the Putin mob, which has coordinated all out war against all of our institutions and professional castes.

Roughly 500 Soviet commissars were aided by cronies of George H.W. Bush around 1990, in “converting the Russian economy from communist to free enterprise.” Now drop the last two words and replace them with “mafia oligarchy.” All they had to do was replace hammer-sickle emblems with orthodox crosses and wink slyly at the western partners who funded their grab of every USSR state asset.  And that’s just one of two reasons why Bush Senior was – by far – the worst U.S. president of the Twentieth Century.

Finally... Here’s a review article “The Culmination of Republican Decay” - from The New York Review - of the recently released book American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War - and the Rise of President Trump, by Tim Alberta.

And "Trump tries to banish the specter of impeachment with red-state campaign tour." 

And in my new book - Judo Polemics - one of my 100+ tactics - is to make him and his campaign pay ALL costs of such trips, In advance.

Those were the days... When was America 'great'? And who has Steve Bannon reincarnated?

Have you heard of “Godwin’s Law?” It asserts that: “If an online discussion (regardless of topic) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will invoke Hitler.” In practice, it is used to shame or chastise those who make any sort of comparison to the fascist hellscape of the mid-20^th Century.*  To be sure, an overused, hyperbolic cliché can be tiresome.** 

Mike Godwin must be going crazy, right now, amid the tsunami of post-election comparisons. For the record, I do not think Donald Trump wants to, or will, become a Hitler. Parallels with Mussolini are creepy though, starting with Il Duce’s fervid rallies and relentless slogans, calling on Italians to rebuild classical glories and — translated literally— “make Rome great again.” 

Sure, I’ve made my own parallels with 1933 Germany, and they remain apt. Just as the Prussian barons, or Junkers aristocrats, fostered the racist-populist brown shirts as a counterweight to socialists and communists, so Fox News, Breitbart-Limbaugh-Jones and the Kochs deliberately whipped non-college white male boomers into a froth… exacerbated by their grouchiness over getting old and seeing the world change around them.

As those so-clever 1930s lords did then, today’s oligarchs stare in disbelief that a gifted shaman leaped aboard their carefully-trained beast, threw off the intended jockeys and grabbed the reins for himself.*** Back eight decades ago, at least a few of the Junkers had enough honesty to proclaim: “Mein Gott, what haf we done?” Alas, do not expect any such honor or decency from Rupert Murdoch, or the Worst Man in America, George F. Will.

Yet, I take solace from history. Back in the 1930s, as today all over the planet, common folk were mesmerized by new communications technologies. Back then it was radio and loudspeakers, that amplified the hypnotic voices of gifted, polemical svengalis, who took over almost everywhere, plunging humanity toward an abyss.

But not in the English speaking world.  Our parents and grandparents were captivated by gifted orators, too. But here, and in Britain, those gifted speakers were on our side, urging us — as Pericles did in Athens — to make the most of our democracy. Which brings us to a question that blue Americans really need to ask their red neighbors:

When do you envision that America had its “great” golden age?  “Make America Great Again” implies a clear notion of a time. So when was that?

It would seem that generally folks are referring to the era of the Greatest Generation – the boomers’ parents -- who overcame the Depression and Hitler, contained communism, built a booming market economy and got us into space, while too-gradually, but deliberately, taking on so many longstanding prejudices and injustices they inherited from their parents and a thousand other generations. 

Oh, but a funny thing about those folks in the World War II generation. They voted high taxes on the rich, which the rich patriotically paid. And they admired labor unions.

Above all, that clade of Americans had one favorite living human, a man adored by his people, his fellow citizens.

No wonder the New Lords have spent hundreds of millions and decades portraying Franklin Delano Roosevelt as Satan, incarnate.  All while invoking nostalgia for the “great” American era of the 1940s and 1950s, sweeping aside one fact -- that every notable aspect of that period was Rooseveltean. A time - I must reiterate - when unions thrived, the rich paid taxes, science was admired, and moving forward was in our blood. 

Oh, you sour boomers, don’t you dare to invoke the Greatest Generation!  They were union men, democrats mostly, held no truck with foppish billionaires, preferred facts over assertions, built giant projects, gave the world its first general peace and… oh, yes, can I say it again? Their favorite living human was FDR. And do you know who followed Roosevelt in that slot? Who was the most-admired American during the 1950s? A fellow named Jonas Salk.

Oh, they were far from perfect, my parents and their friends. Their faults were monumental! But they emulated the American Founders, and the soldiers of a righteous, abolitionist blue Union, and others who pushed our fine Experiment forward, not wallowing in nostalgia.  (See how I answer right wing adoration of the 1950s.) Moreover, we are not lesser beings than the Greatest Generation. We benefit by living in the great civilization they built. But they raised us to launch from their shoulders. And yes, we have mightily amplified all of their accomplishments with creativity, science and compassion. 

(BTW, the next generation – millennials, especially – are so much better than us boomers that there’s no comparison. Calmer by far. Generally wiser, nicer, smarter. As a parent I’ll take some credit. The best thing we boomers ever did! And we so owe the kids an apology, right now. We need to get out of their way.)

== They built ‘great’ America. FDR merely summoned their wills. ==

No, fanatics, you don’t get the Greatest Generation, who would be appalled by your quiver-lipped wrath and shrill, drama-queen wails. No. You must flee farther back from their Rooseveltean era, in search of your earlier “great” time!

Here’s a candidate period for you -- one admired by the alt-right and Fox – lauded in a song you might recall:

“Mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.

Didn’t need no Welfare State.

Everybody pulled his weight.

Gee our old LaSalle ran great.

Those were the days.”

Is it 1929 then, that alt-right and the folks at Trump rallies yearn for? Surely the oligarch-junker lords financing the movement would be pleased to crank-back before FDR.  And yet, we all know that’s not it. 

Forget 1929.

It’s 1861, they yearn for. Only this time a confederacy that’s victorious. Plantation lords and their fervid vassals finally overcoming the blue forces of science, facts and progress. (And let us admit that this round of the civil war, with help from the Czar, the Confederacy has taken Washington.)

Alas, stupidly, they ignore real history and where this can only lead.

Their conspiracy will carry us to Paris, 1789.

== Back to Godwin ==

Okay, we’ve drifted. Yes, it is vital to nail the Trumpists by demanding they say when they think America was Grrrrreat! ****  

Still, circling back to the beginning, we started with Godwin’s Law. Recall that I dismissed the likelihood that Donald Trump wants anything Hitlerian. So don’t exaggerate! It just harms your credibility. I doubt he’s personally very racist, while cynically egging on those who are. Though parallels with Mussolini seem apt.

No, I’ve taken you on this journey in order to convey a chilling moment of realization that I had today, when looking at Donald Trump’s White House appointments. A shiver of recognition that can only have come from watching way too much History Channel (before they became the Bigfoot Channel.)  Specifically…

…I looked at the epically prototypical brownshirt who is Donald Trump’s chief aid and ‘strategist’ — Steve Bannon, whose silver-spoon life and cushy parasitism at Goldman Sachs then subsidized a plunge into manipulative populist cant, raging against the civilization that benefited him for decades. (Forecast; no bills will be introduced to actually change Wall St. parasitism.)

I know him, you see. Not directly, but every howl against modernity. Every appeal to Cyclical History (the central incantatory touchstone of the reactionary right.) His contempt-drenched ragings against science and every other knowledge caste. I know the cult of neo-feudalists who aim for a return to the standard human condition of 6000 years, and his raves are identical to their calls for a return to kingship, to dominance by Aryan males, to Church and hierarchy and empire, stirring mobs to crush citizenship. 

Using populism to wreck government by-the-people.

Moreover, in all traits he seems eerily reminiscent of (may Godwin forgive me) a certain historical figure whose arc and ambitions and face strike chilling parallels. A fellow named --

Martin Bormann. 

The chief aid, factotum, ear-whisperer, private secretary and ‘strategist’ who controlled the flow of information and access to you-know-who. The Grima Wormtongue of humanity’s darkest time.

A stretch? Then photoshop-modify the hair. Ditch the peach fuzz. Hell, drawl the name. 

Now guess which of them said: ““Darkness is good… That’s power. It only helps us when they get it wrong. When they’re blind to who we are and what we’re doing.”

Okay, that was Bannon. Here’s the full paragraph: “Darkness is good. Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power. It only helps us when they get it wrong. When they’re blind to who we are and what we’re doing.”

And now some of you are mumbling: "Brin are you insane?  Bannon will surely see this! It will stand out and get you on a list." To which I answer, well... ******

I do have to ask: has any member of this generation actually read Mein Kampf? Anyone? At all? Read it! Or at least skim -- look past the screeching racism and rage at the deeper threads of romanticism and the incantations of cyclical history. The calls for not improvement or progress, but restoration of a spectacular purity and glory that never, ever existed in the past.

Then note while flipping through those pages, it isn’t Donald Trump whose voice you can hear, speaking the lines. (Trump is more like Huey Long or Father Coughlin or yes, Il Duce.) But Bannon is there. His voice.

Oh my Godwin.

== Best friends ==

Do I exaggerate?

Check out who are Donald Trump’s most fervent foreign admirers.

---

Enough...

---------------------------

* I was a participant in a long-ago, early-primitive message group, when attorney Mike Godwin coined his famous ‘law.”

** Speaking of clichés, it can be apt to swap the phrase “Godwin’s Law” into Godwin’s Law: “If an online discussion (regardless of topic) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will invoke Godwin's Law.” 

*** As DT eagerly toes the line of Koch orthodoxy, I have to wonder if he experienced recently a moment like that in the film NETWORK, when Howard Beale meets Ned Beatty's wonderful mogul, Arthur Jensen. Watch it. Watch Network, including the classic "Mad as Hell!" scene... and then my response to it.

**** Tony the Trumpeter Tiger?

******  Will I be put on lists? Oh, sillies, of course I'm already on lists. And other lists of people whose 'accidents' would be probed. I do have some courage and sense of duty to a civilization, planet and species that I love, and so willingly take some risk. But probably foremost is the fact... that I wrote the character Nathan Holn, in The Postman. And there are some tough hombres out there who don't care that I portrayed Holn as a villain. They adore him, anyway. And me as Holn's 'creator. And hence, I've been offered shelter in places where... let's just say it would take an army. Martin Bormann would have envied these 'redoubts.'  Of this I have little doubt.

******* Oh! Late breaking development. I'm not the first to notice the resemblance!  Aw shucks.  And also... relief. 

We are in it, all right. But “figuratively”? … or “literally”?

Tis the season for post-mortems… for pompous declamations and dissections, explaining to us all what the F— just happened. And so, across the next week or so, I’ll offer summaries and links to a panoply of rationalizations for this bizarre turn of events.  How liberals, conservatives and other pundits got it wrong… and what I think may be glimmers of actual insight.

We’ll start with those doom-casters out there who proclaim that the sky has fallen. Sure, I fought against this as hard as anyone… and I do deem this to be a ‘disaster.’ But more because of something others find boring -- the 5,000 or so appointees whom Donald Trump will sign off without even meeting any of them. Most will be standard, Bushite factotums from the GOP/Fox go-to list. Forget the flashy cabinet posts. Those mid-level, supervisor positions were the real prize, opening the way for massive graft and crippling of our institutions. I’ll discuss that another time. And yes, it is a calamity.

Nevertheless, to all you Chicken Littles out there, let’s be clear on one thing, that prediction is often led by emotion. When Barack Obama was elected, tens of millions of our fellow citizens likewise envisioned apocalypse. Their confederate catechisms -- nurtured by Fox shills and the darker right -- forecast not only economic collapse, but that black U.N. helicopters would soon be strafing every small town in America. We’d see gun-owners thrown into ATF camps and universal Sharia Law. 

Not even the mildest of these ravings – say about the economy or timid gun control - came remotely close to happening. But refutation doesn't matter, hence the same jeremiads were simply repeated, about Ms. Clinton. 

Doom-meister score: Zero.

I don’t expect us to be anywhere near so lucky, now that the shoe is on the other foot, because in fact the two parties are different. In contrast to the Obama Administration -- the first in U.S. history to be entirely free of indictable scandal -- both Bush administrations blended corruption, incompetence and outright treason, to a degree that was unprecedented in my lifetime. Hence, certainly, some hand-wringing toward a coming Bush III – with extravagant Donaldian flourishes – is justified. 

Many, from Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman to famed environmentalist Bill McKibben, from Putin opponent Masha Gessen to activist-for-veterans Jim Wright, are sounding gloomy alarums. If any of them are right, then Californians were wise to legalize pot. 

If the worst fears prove true, then expect 1861 to be followed by 1865.

And yet, I am strangely sanguine that we can limit such behaviors, this time. In part because G.W. Bush was given generous benefit of the doubt, in his first years.  (Democratic Congresses always negotiate with GOP presidents. In contrast, except in 1995, Republican Congresses have never negotiated, even slightly, with Democratic presidents.) Obviously, we have learned a lesson; Donald Trump will be scrutinized from the very start. His crew will be watched with new technologies of transparency. Schemes will be secretly recorded and then leaked. Civil servants and military officers will protect us, passively or even (I pray it will never be necessary) actively resisting the worst things.

Oh, sure. The KKK is marching. Militias are jubilant. I’m getting waves of emails citing my novel – The Postman – that showed where it all could lead. And yet, here’s a thought that you probably never entertained till now – that John Roberts and Samuel Alito are not just conservatives. They are, foremost, jurists imbued in modern American principles. Are they biased and political? Sure. They will, alas, help to block any reform of the gerrymandering depravity. But they have limits. Anyone aiming to send Black Helicopters after you will have to get past them.

Nor am I convinced that Donald Trump wants to do the worst things that he’s proclaimed at those damned rallies, where throwing red meat to the mob – living for those rabid cheers -- became more about DT’s own thrill addiction than actual policy intention. 

== Did he mean what he said? ==

Oh, he’ll build a wall. He’ll do some deporting and say crude things and propose some lunatic “first hundred days” actions. (Five or six of the forty or so goals he just issued actually make some sense.)  And yet, the (by far) smartest human in Donald Trump’s advisory circle – Peter Thiel – made a comment that I find hopeful. Thiel observed that Trump’s followers take everything he says “figuratively” rather than “literally.”  

Oh, I will be following up on that!  There are several angles, disturbing ones. But for here and now, the question is simple. How many of the crazy things that Trump promised will he actually try to do?

Indeed, looking across Donald Trump’s life, there are plenty of abhorrent things – relentless lying, cheating, bullying, egomania and personal sexism.

On the other hand, there’s little sign of longstanding commitment to livid racism, or religious zealotry, or isolationism, or supply-side voodoo... nor any extensive record of hating science. Those central tenets of the Murdochian cult are more pertinent to policy!  Policies that could either veer the nation into hell… or else leave us well-enough alone to find ways to fend for ourselves.

Yes, he paid lip service to those latter horrors – to racism, religious zealotry, isolationism, supply-side voodoo, and hatred of science -- along with affection for foreign dictators. Boy, did he, during the campaign! And it’s likely he’ll continue ranting. But these aren’t baselines to the jarring cacophony of Donald Trump’s life, the way that self-indulgence, bullying and cheating have been.

In other words, it is conceivable he’ll veer away from dogmatic purity, in favor of just being impressively and astoundingly Donald. Indeed, he might even do the most un-Republican thing of all: negotiate. In which case “The Art of the Deal” might … er… trump the treasonous Hastert Rule. 

(Yes, I predicted this might happen during the debates. But at that time the rallies… those damned rallies… dominated his every thought.)

If my tentative hopefulness is justified, then DT’s commitment to policy-pertinent turpitudes will turn out to be shallow. Perhaps even somewhat reversible. If so, then I (for one) will look away if he steals a few billions (as Bush/Cheney did), builds an absurdly symbolic-useless wall, or outdoes Bill Clinton’s consensual adventures in that windowless White House hallway.

Much will depend upon his gatekeepers. Nancy Reagan made sure that Ronnie would hear no stories that might rouse his compassion, knowing that RR was a softy, at heart. If Eric Trump and Donald Jr. and Steve Bannon similarly control access to DT, then we will, indeed, be royally and literally screwed. But if the gatekeeper is Ivanka? 

Well, as I said, hope springs, eternal.

== In case I sounded too hopeful… ==

Will The Donald decide, at last, to grow up? Or at least get practical? I made a case for it, above.  

Now let me tell you that the signs aren’t good. Again, it’s the rallies. Those damned rallies, where a weak-willed egomaniac has had the greatest time of his life. It seems that the President-Elect of the United States of America – faced with a four year prison sentence of reading reports and holding sober meetings in the Oval Office – is already concocting an escape plan.

“Returning home to Trump Tower from the White House may not be Mr. Trump’s only embrace of the familiar. His aides say he has also expressed interest in continuing to hold the large rallies that were a staple of his candidacy. He likes the instant gratification and adulation that the cheering crowds provide, and his aides are discussing how they might accommodate his demand."  -- from The New York Times.

So do not confuse me with an ‘optimist!’ Let’s be clear. I am volcanically pissed. For the second time in this young century the Democrat wins the popular vote and the Republican wins the White House.  Moreover, the Confederacy used a zillion foul tricks to get here... 

...from gerrymandering and voter suppression to rigged voting machines, Russian hacking, and lies, lies, endless lies. 

I intend to fight hard against the damage that they openly intend to do – to our rights, our planet, our nation and our species’ chance of achieving the kind of civilization yearned for in Star Trek and the best science fiction, or in the dreams of our children. The master-hijackers of American conservatism are doing everything they can, to end our Great Experiment and return us to 6000 years of inherited oligarchy and feudalism.

Case in point: folks at the ACLU have undertaken a constitutional analysis of Donald Trump’s most controversial policy proposals. These include his pledges to deport over 11 million undocumented immigrants, to ban Muslims from entering the United States, to surveil American Muslims and their houses of worship, to torture again, and to revise libel laws. “We have found them all wanting, to say the least. According to our analysis, Trump’s proposals taken together would violate the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution. Have no doubt about it: Donald Trump’s policies, if implemented, would trigger a constitutional crisis.”  (Naturally, I appeal for donations to the ACLU. Pony up.)

But we need the big picture. How did the Trumpists and the Murdochian GOP nobles – together - convince a majority of white male baby boomers without college degrees… and too many white women… to vote eagerly against their own self-interest? The way that a million poor white Southerners marched to war in 1861, to protect the “rights” of slaveholding plantation lords? 

The specifics are different this time, but the basic memes are shockingly similar. We in the Blue Union – America – won’t win this phase of the Civil War till we start parsing out what’s happened, much less reflexively and far more carefully.

Next time, I’ll focus directly on post-mortems written by conservative ‘sages’ about how they won. Then on the hand-wringing diagnoses of liberals. And even some theories that are straight out of sci fi!  As it happens, many of them offer a little insight…

…like blind savants groping at an undead, diseased elephant.

But for the most part, they are all dead wrong.


Continue to Part II...and Part III