Crisis in the Offing

The stink bomb that is the Trump presidency should have as its motto “Thanks for the votes, suckers!”

“Aha!” you say, “because of the tax cut for billionaires!” Yes, but for so many other reasons as well. Anyway, let’s start today’s tour de farce with a glance at that tax bill. This bill is one of those Congressional actions that makes ordinarily cynical people say, “Good God, I haven’t been nearly cynical enough!” Or, as the venerable Onion put it, “GOP Leaders Celebrate Decisive Win Over Americans.”

If Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell were normal human beings with normal standards of honesty they would have put forward their tax plan with these words: “We want to cut taxes for corporations and rich people because they pay for our campaigns. We will throw a few temporary cuts to some middle-class Americans hoping they will let us get away with this, even though they and their children will have to pay for the 1.5 trillion dollars we are borrowing to fund our bribes to our wealthy donors. Of course, middle-class insurance premiums will go up, but maybe voters will forget that our tax plan caused that. Now, if our rich corporate friends will only give us a boost here by suddenly showering their employees with hundreds of dollars (from the billions the taxpayers are giving them), that would help us cover up our scam. In the meantime, thanks for the votes, suckers!”

But such honesty is alien to the likes of Ryan and McConnell. However, Dear Reader, please don’t refer to Washington as a Swamp, because any ordinary, self-respecting swamp would recoil in horror and disgust at the rank and slithery morass that is today’s Republican Congress. But I digress.

The other gross blunder committed by Trump and his enablers last week was the follow-up to a previous gross blunder: the promise to move America’s Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This incredibly stupid and provocative gesture resulted in a UN vote of condemnation that was supported by almost all of America’s erstwhile allies – including Britain, Germany, Japan, and France.

The Trump administration should have accepted that the UN vote was a rational reaction its own blunder - a blunder which, by the way, further undermined America’s already shrinking influence in the world. But instead of quietly accepting the vote of condemnation, the Trump administration reacted with the belligerent anger of a common street thug. America's UN Ambassador, Nikki Haley, promised that she was taking the names of those countries that hurt Trump’s feelings by criticizing him, and that they would pay.

Even worse than the tax cuts for the rich and Nikki Haley’s thuggishness were the attacks that various Republicans have begun to level at the FBI. 
Orchestrated by the Stink Bomb White House and in close coordination with propagandists at Fox News, Congressmen like Devin Nunes (R - CA) and Jim Jordan (R - Ohio) are trying to make Americans distrust the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Obviously, what they want to do is weaken Robert Mueller so that Trump will be able to eliminate him and wipe out the Russia investigation. Trump wants to eliminate Mueller because the special counsel is all but certain to reveal very damaging information about the corrupt behavior of Donald Trump and/or his family.

Here’s what Republican Congressman Jim Jordan said about the FBI last week: “Everything points to the fact that there was an orchestrated plan to try to prevent Donald Trump from being the next president of the United States.”

Yes, Jordan actually claims that the FBI, under the direction of James Comey, was trying to get Hillary Clinton elected. Can you get your head around that? Probably not, if you’re a normal American patriot. Well, MSNBC host and normal, patriotic American Nicolle Wallace can’t. Here’s what she had to say about her fellow Republicans:

“I can’t get my brain around the insurrection in the Republican Party against Republican-led law enforcement agencies. I can’t shove the round pegs into the square boxes. It’s making me crazy.”

It’s making a lot of us crazy, Ms. Wallace, and it’s going to make the entire country crazy next year if Trump orders Mueller fired and Congressional Republicans support him. There will be crowds in the streets, lots of them and for a long time, I guarantee you.

I believe Trump will have Mueller fired because that’s the kind of person Trump is: crude, bullying, and unconcerned with anything but his own sorry hide. If we had enough decent, patriotic Republicans in Congress to stop Trump from doing this or, at least to replace Mueller with an equally dedicated and competent investigator once he is fired, the country would be fine. But look at the recent behavior of GOP politicians. What do you think?

                           (Photo from Salon)

Mob Sourcing

Godwin’s Law says that as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazism or Hitler approaches certainty. So let me cut to the chase here and refer directly to Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi propaganda film, Triumph of the Will. This extraordinary film concluded with an impassioned crowd screaming, “Make Germany great again!” and (with reference to Hitler’s main political foe) “Lock her up!”

OK, I lied about those last two things.

However, the Republican convention crowd did give me the creeps. I mean, why were those mad screamers shaking the heavens with cries of “Lock her up!”? Don't they care that the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email usage found no basis for indictment, much less conviction? Have Donald Trump’s followers given up entirely on the rule of law? Of democracy itself?

Well, yes. And this to me is the most disturbing aspect of Trump’s rise. Not only does he have a weird tendency to praise demagogues and dictators like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un, but he also seems to relish mindlessly hostile and violent mobs.

Lots of observers have talked about the emotional appeal of what we might call Trumpism. A big part of it is racism and the feeling on the part of all too many white people that Trump has given them permission to let their bigot flags fly. But in addition to this there is the economic distress of people with dwindling resources. These folks harbor a feeling that “the government” isn’t responding or even paying attention to them. The resentment born of this idea leads a lot of voters to want to send Trump to Washington even if he makes a shambles of everything. They seem to be thinking that at least he will kick some ass while he’s there.

And they may be right, though I am much more worried about the shambles he would create than the ass kicking he might indulge in.

But back to the RNC mob: the single most unsettling thing about Trump’s rise is that it reveals just how vulnerable many Americans are to the appeal of “the Great Leader.” Like almost everyone, I have been amazed at how successful Trump is at whipping up a following, and I continue to be amazed (and troubled) at how it reveals that a lot of Americans don’t care as much about democratic institutions as they do about kicking ass.

But we may, at last, be seeing the beginning of a turning point, if not an actual repudiation of mob madness. Trump has stumbled by stepping on some sensitive patriotic toes with his blustering swagger. Today he is being lambasted for criticizing Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the Muslim parents of a fallen American Army Captain. Of course, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have as yet declined to criticize Trump by name, but at least Senator John McCain has stepped forward to defend the honor of the Republican Party (and by implication, the entire country) with these words:

“In recent days, Donald Trump disparaged a fallen soldier’s parents. He has suggested that the likes of their son should not be allowed in the United States — to say nothing of entering its service. I cannot emphasize enough how deeply I disagree with Mr. Trump’s statement. I hope Americans understand that the remarks do not represent the views of our Republican Party, its officers, or candidates.”

Thank you, Senator McCain. But as for Ryan and McConnell, I guess they have drunk too much of the Trump-Aid. They continue to run with the mob.

Compassion is for Wimps: Paul Ryan and Ayn Rand

I don’t blame Mitt Romney for picking Paul Ryan as his running mate.  If I were in his place, I would do the same thing.  That is, if I were a 65-year-old, doofusy, out-of-touch Republican with a losing presidential campaign, I would definitely want to bring the fiery Paul Ryan on board.

Ryan is not an out-and-out doofus.  His manner does not say, “I’m a socially inept yet hyper-ambitious stuffed shirt.”  No, Ryan’s manner is more along the lines of the mad scientist, the guy who buries himself in a basement lab while cooking up some fiendish formula.  In Ryan’s case, it wasn’t a dank, cobwebby lab but the intricacies of the tax code in which he immersed himself.  Then, finally, when his formulation was complete, he came busting out, eyes aglow, shouting, “Eureka! I’ve discovered how to balance the budget!  All we have to do is slash Medicare and a bunch of other programs that serve poor and middle class people!  Am I a genius or what?”

             I only want to cut Medicare this much.


Ryan’s budget would have been considered nuts even by Republicans, twenty years ago.  But today, giving tax breaks to millionaires and asking the rest of us to pay for them has become standard GOP doctrine.

I think It’s worth remembering where Ryan gets his interesting ideas.  Let’s let the fiery-eyed congressman speak for himself:

“The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.”

Now, as James Rainey points out in today’s L.A.Times, Ryan has since claimed to have backed away from the Randian philosophy.  But this he apparently did because the Catholic Church, his church, chastised him for promoting the philosophy of an atheist.  In fact Ryan seems only to have backed away from Ayn Rand’s atheism, not her belief that society’s “takers” are parasites on the “makers” – the makers being the geniuses who are responsible for all the good things that happen.  No doubt Ryan places himself among those “genius” makers.

Who is John Galt?*  More to the point, who is Ayn Rand?  Her most famous novel is Atlas Shrugged, a work that is not regarded by scholars as serious literature, but it is still widely read.  No doubt its popularity stems from its offering readers the opportunity to identify with society’s “geniuses.” Its basic premise is that Americans are a bunch of moronic “takers” who will essentially shrivel up and die if the great genius leaders, like Ayn Rand (and, I suppose, Paul Ryan) withdraw from society taking their brainy brilliance with them.

But, you may ask, is Atlas Shrugged really such a load of cockamamie horseshit?  Yes it is.  It is also the book that Congressman Ryan once gave to his staff members as Christmas (!) presents.

Just how serious was Ayn Rand about holding non-genius Americans in contempt?  Well, here, from Jennifer Burns’ recent biography, is one illustration of Rand’s self-regard:

“When the tabloids filled with the sensational case of William Hickman, a teen murderer who mutilated his victim and boasted maniacally of his deed when caught, Rand was sympathetic rather than horrified.  To her, Hickman embodied the strong individual breaking free from the ordinary run of humanity.  She imagined Hickman to be like herself, a sensitive individual ruined by misunderstanding and neglect…”

You see, Hickman’s victims were “takers” while Hickman himself was a sensitive individualist who, like Ayn Rand, thought compassion was for weaklings. 

              Ayn Rand - I am one sensitive genius!

Now, I’m guessing that Congressman Ryan, despite his devotion to Ayn Rand’s philosophy, would disagree with her about the serial killer Hickman.  But I suspect that he shares her contempt for compassion.  This would explain why he believes that some Americans deserve to be financially ruined by medical emergencies and poor children deserve to go hungry.  These beliefs, after all, are ensconced in his budget proposal.

Ayn Rand may not have believed in the immortal soul, but she surely would have been pleased to know that her spirit lives on in our newest vice presidential prospect.

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*You’ll have to read Rand’s crappy novel to find out.  I confess I couldn’t get through it, though I’ve read some of her other work.