Trump Is Killing Democracy

It is well established law that you cannot shout fire in a crowded place, but Trump being Trump insists that you can shout “Reichstag fire!” Lets call Trump's law and order ploy what it actually is. It is the worst and most dangerous form of demagoguery – the kind that kills democracy. What Trump calls federal law enforcement personnel have been perverted; wittingly or unwittingly they are now his Brown Shirts, and they are trying to create a Reichstag fire situation in Portland, Oregon in order to help the most corrupt, incompetent, vicious and dangerous despot, Donald Trump, hang on to his power. This is a tactic right out of the NAZI play book, which is rather remarkable considering the fact that Trump is Putin's man ho. Ah, but one has to bear in mind that Putin has morphed from communist thug to kleptocrat just as Trump has morphed from tawdry conman to kleptocrat, and kleptocrats have no ideology other than avarice and a lust for power! It is impossible to overstate how dangerous Trump is to our constitution and our democracy.  Trump's has sent his brown shirts to intimidate the citizenry of Portland and to deprive those citizens of their right to free speech and their right to peacefully assemble. And now Trump is announcing his plan to send his brown shirts to other cities to deprive the citizens there of their rights. He has not said anything about how long he intends to terrorize those cities, or if he intends to keep expanding the scope of this terror.  The greatest fear expressed by several commentators, and it is not an unwarranted fear, is that Trump will use his brown shirts to intimidate voters or otherwise interfere with the 2020 election.


I have always recoiled in disgust when I have heard right wing idiots babble about the “second amendment remedy.” We have a system. The remedy is the vote, or so I thought. But what do you do when one of the major political parties is complicit in an attack on our constitution and our democracy? What do you do when members of that party will not respond to a grave threat to this country and instead they prevent anyone else from legally removing that grave threat? What do you do when the courts cannot or will not defend the people and the constitution of this country from a lawless president who is intent on usurping all power and robbing us blind? What do you do when the system fails, and because of voter suppression, intimidation and/or foreign interference you cannot count on the next election being a legitimate election? This, I am afraid, is what we are facing; this is the very real dilemma Trump poses to those of us who believe in the rule of law. Having to act outside of the law in order to preserve the law sounds like the illogical rationalizations of a despot. But what if there is no legal way to prevent Trump from becoming an autocrat? What if Trump and the Republican Party refuse to acknowledge and abide by the results of a legitimate election? What if the so called second amendment remedy is all that is left?  We have to stop Trump, his morally and intellectually bankrupt party, and his brown shirts before it is too late!  

The Torch Is Passed

As I sat in front of my television this morning listening to people eulogizing John Lewis and C.T. Vivian I could not help thinking that the greatest patriot is the person who willingly suffers condemnation from his fellow citizens and even physical injury in an effort to make his or her country better. John Lewis and C.T. Vivian did that and more. You do not have to be black to know that they were great patriots, and we are better because of them.

As the death of these great men attests, we are losing the moral giants, the leaders who fought and sacrificed so much to make liberty and justice for all a reality. In an homage to Abraham Lincoln let my say: it is now for us the living to dedicate ourselves to completing the work that they have thus far so nobly carried on. I think that homage to Lincoln in a tribute to John Lewis, C.T. Vivian and other civil rights leaders is fitting because those courageous leaders did indeed dedicate themselves to completing the unfinished work of emancipation, reconstruction, and the implementation of the full rights of citizenship as guaranteed by the fourteenth amendment:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

We shall dearly miss John Lewis, C.T. Vivian and so many others, but as we celebrate their lives and their work we should understand that their great cause, their struggle has entered a new phase. The torch has not been passed to new charismatic leaders but rather to a ground swell rising up from the citizenry and a moral imperative that defines what this country must become. Unfortunately, the resistance to this ground swell is as unrelenting as it is immoral. That is why we need to keep pressing forward. Any hesitation, any lapse into complacency will result in the sort of backsliding that has been so frustrating to everyone working for social justice and racial equality. As we honor our civil rights lions for their work let us do so with our work.

Ignorance And The Pandemic

Almost since the dawn of civilization educators have been conducting a war on ignorance, and since the beginning of the twentieth century Republicans have accused those educators of being socialists or radical liberals. That Trump and the far right are anti-intellectual is perfectly understandable. The Republicans and their wealthy donors depend on the gullibility of the uneducated and uninformed. Who else is going to ignore reality and buy into the absurd conspiracy theories of the radical right? What I find so perplexing is the fact that most of the news media and the pundits actually let Donald Trump and the other feckless, fascist fools define who and what is radical left or too liberal. Seemingly the Republican's ideological attacks work. So it should not surprise anyone that the most ignorant and intellectually challenged American president anyone living today can recall is taking the intellectual attacks on ignorance personally. How dare anyone fact check Donald Trump!

Trump and the Republican Party want you to believe that facts are merely partisan tools used to refute cherished beliefs, and that is bad - so bad, so very bad! Just ask Galileo. Trump also wants you to believe that people who insist on facts are too busy trying to find out out what the facts are to do anything else. Moscow Mitch, comrade William (Beria) Barr, and what is left of the Republican party would agree. Indeed those Republicans insist that Trump is just what this country needs. He is too aggressively ignorant and neglectful to be encumbered by any knowledge of history or concerns about the ramification of his actions or his inaction, and he has no conscience! Short term goals and immediate gratification, that's the ticket, that's what Trump promises.

So take your damn Hydroxychloroquine, drink bleach, rip off those ridiculous masks, and go about your business the way you did before the pandemic. Take Trump's word for it: Dr. Anthony Fauci and those other doctor downers don't know everything. If Covid-19 does not kill you, you will be better off for standing up to it!

Needless to say that Trump is at war with the truth and the truth is asserting itself with a vengeance. The attendance at Trump's last rally was underwhelming, but the virus bearing droplets causing so many of his followers and so many members of his entourage to catch the Covid-19 virus were anything but underwhelming.  Much to the chagrin of the Republicans even the dumb asses are beginning to catch on. Many of them now realize that Death by virus is not be such a good thing, and it can happen to them. This is forcing Trump's spokespeople to say, “okay, you scaredy cats, wear the masks if you must, but go to the Trump rallies.

As the pandemic rages through the nation taking the lives of our loved ones and our neighbors approval of Trump's performance plummets. Unfortunately for Trump, the more unpopular a president becomes the more he is scrutinized and the greater the evidence against him becomes.  The Republicans who were too cowardly to oppose Trump are now watching in horror as he bumbles them into a disaster. Trump's “sleepy Joe” and “scary china lover ads” are falling with a dull, pathetic thud. Other Republicans, the ones involved in the Lincoln Project are not just calling out Trump for his corruption, incompetence, and disloyalty to this country, they are also calling out the senators and members congress who chose to function as soggy diapers covering Trump's ass and hauling his water rather than keeping the oath they took to defend the constitution. It is too late for any of those senators or members of congress to distance themselves from Trump now. They had their chance to do the right thing by voting to impeach Trump or by convicting him in the senate, and they did not to do it.

If you are looking for a silver lining in regard to the pandemic it is that it is doing what investigations, public hearings, and Trump's transparent acts to obstruct of justice could not do; it is making the people who are too lazy or indifferent to pay attention to politics look at just how incompetent and dangerous Trump is. That the price the pandemic is exacting for performing this service is far greater than we ever wanted to pay goes without saying, but so is the price of having the corrupt and malfunctioning Trump as our chief executive.