TrumPutinLand

Here’s another parallel between Putin and Trump. Both are opportunistic, greedy, self-aggrandizers who have nonetheless managed (they are skillful propagandists) to convince great numbers of people that, no, despite their appearance of privilege, they are actually—like the aggrieved folks they have been “sent to save”—VICTIMS of globalists and perverts and corrupt, satanist forces “out to get” ordinary good folk—i.e., southern evangelical white nationalists (in the US) and the long-oppressed, fascist-threatened masses of the non-western world (in Russia and India and Venezuela and China). In Trumputinland the bad guys are identified as the western “liberals” and “progressives” who oppose both a) Putin’s brave efforts to “take back Ukraine,” (on behalf of Mother Russia, to whom it clearly belongs) and b) Trump’s heroic struggle to “take back America,” (on behalf of Christian dominionists, to whom it was given by God). Trump and Putin, on the other hand, are portrayed as the good guys in this holy war against the evils of Enlightenment values and American/NATO hegemony. They may win. Never underestimate human brutishness.

DeSantis and the Metamorphosis of MAGA

Ron DeSantis is decidedly a mean, ruthless SOB, but I doubt that he could ever compete with Trump for the wackadoodle vote. He’s more of a Richard Nixon type, isn’t he? Dirty, devious, but neither demented nor, hard as he tries, certifiably covfefe. No, he just isn’t sufficiently (and unabashedly) bonkers to inspire cosplayers wearing horns and warpaint to assault the U.S. Capitol.

So, if DeSantis becomes the Republican candidate in 2024, the GOP’s character will necessarily change. Certainly, Mr. DeSanctimonious (as Trump calls him) will retain both the racists and the evangelicals (where else would they go?), but—oh, mercy! — they will be such a grim and grumpy lot when deprived of the delirium of Trumpist hoopla. Where has all the fun gone? The rallies? The torchlight parades? The glossolalia? What a bummer!

Because, let’s face it: Ron is little more than a conventional gangster from Central Casting—tricky, calculating, creepy. Nothing fantastical or fabulous or woo-woo messianic about him. Less a con-man than a thug, DeSantis really IS what he IS, and truthfully (c’mon man) that ain’t much of a show!

I suspect, therefore, that a whole passel of the most zealous MAGAS—should The Mad King Donald finally be dumped—will simply lose their will to live—or, what basically amounts to the same thing—their will to dress up like horned Vikings and throw lethal tantrums in the King’s honor. A few may even feel so crappy about being abandoned that they simply slide off into the nearest gutter and metamorphose into gigantic dung beetles. So it goes.

Will Democracy Be Lost?

In these days preceding the 2022 mid-term elections, many Democratic pundits are prophesying darkly that a Republican takeover of Congress (which seems likely) would signal that “democracy has been lost.” Frankly, though, I find that formula both simplistic and calculating—intended mostly to arouse an apathetic electorate to vote for Democrats.  Still, beneath the agit-prop cliché lies a deeper, more genuine anxiety—primarily about the nature of  our “democracy” itself. 

Because, truthfully, what people generally mean when they voice concerns that “democracy will be lost” is not really a fear that government expressing the “will of the people” (the American demos) will disappear. (Where would it go? What external power would suppress it?). 

No, what they worry about is that this demos—this “we the people”—has in recent years undergone such a fundamental shift in attitudes/values that it may (by “democratic” vote, but also by “democratic” apathy and “democratic” stupidity) acquiesce to unconventional forms of governance that are incompatible (and indeed irreconcilable) with our long-established legal structures and with the rights guaranteed by our current constitution. Thus, the fear is not that democracy may be lost, but rather that it may have already been irreversibly changed, whether by conscious choice or by mere absent-mindedness of the “people.”

In short, when someone says “save our democracy,” what he/she really means is “preserve our present constitutional conventions!”—i.e., democracy, of course—only not brute and unrestrained mob rule, but rather “limited democracy as we now know it.” 

Isn’t it interesting that, viewed from this perspective, the Democrats seem to be the real conservatives in this election?

Trump’s Nuclear Stash

Frequently, in coffee shops and take-out joints, condiments and sweeteners are displayed in self-serve bins. Predictably, I suppose, many customers of such businesses have an irresistible urge to cram handfuls of these “freebies” into purses or pockets. It’s a compulsion, isn’t it?, generated by some atavistic “get ahead” instinct. The freeloaders have no real physical need for such extras, and they have no actual plan for what they might ultimately do with them. Indeed, these items will probably wind up in a junk drawer or a glove compartment—only, in time, to be tossed away.

Yet there’s a delicious little thrill in “sneaking away” with this stuff, and the freeloaders feel vaguely self-satisfied and, yes, self-aggrandized by their preposterously cheap (albeit minor) acquisition. (Yeah! King of the hill!) They “took” something that some dumb bunny had stupidly made available and that others, therefore, couldn’t take, and they (the freeloaders) thus added to their personal STASH of stuff—a stash that they figure makes them somehow richer, more powerful and, well, “better” than those poor suckers who don’t have, somewhere in their junk drawers, multiple individual packets of powdered coffee creamer and artificial sweetener.

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THIS, I think, is the best analogy for Trump’s seemingly heedless, almost knee-jerk absconding with truckloads of classified documents. They were available, they might be handy sometime, and so, why not? Ya never know. Most of all, they added to the vast STASH of stuff that he—king of the hill—“owns” and “controls.” (And no, he probably wouldn’t ever use them or even know exactly what or where they were: he really is too intellectually lazy to be that organized.) 

Only trouble with this analogy is that, as most ordinary crap-collectors know, it is not illegal to sneak away with random handfuls of help-yourself condiments. But it IS illegal to cram your personal basement with nuclear plans and codes—even if you have no idea what to do with them and have merely taken them in order to punk the suckers who made the stuff available, at a preposterously cheap price. That, after all, is the Art of the Deal, isn’t it—acquiring lots of stuff by punking suckers?

How Con-Men Get Off Scot-Free: the “Think System.”

Donald Trump has always reminded me of another great con-man— “Professor” Harold Hill in “The Music Man.” The phony professor—who in reality knew nothing about music—conned people into believing they would somehow instinctively “know” how to play musical instruments by merely “thinking” about a nice tune. No other instruction was provided—because Hill had no actual skill and no actual plan other than absconding with the money he had bilked from the townspeople. 

Similarly, Trump conned his “patriots” into believing that they could stage a coup d’état by merely “thinking” about a nice government overthrow. No other direct instruction was provided by Trump, who himself had no clear plan (other than staying in office and on TV for four more years), but who apparently figured that his “think system” would work and that those goons and village idiots would somehow instinctively “know” and DO what was necessary to keep him in office. 

They did stuff, of course—but it was as disastrously horrible as Professor Hill’s boys’ band’s rendition of Beethoven’s Minuet in G. 

So here’s my question:  can a con-man who basically DOES NOTHING—other than rile up and encourage people to “think about”fantasies—be charged with a crime? If so, what crime? Stupidity? Selfishness? 

Laziness? Greed? Assholery? All of these behaviors are, of course, deplorable—but surely too widespread to be criminalized, lest most of the populace wind up in prison. No, only the people who actually DID something illegal—breaking, entering, assault, etc.—i.e, only the village idiots—will ever be brought to trial. Certainly not the do-nothing con-man-in-chief.

The con-men, Professor Hill and Donald Trump, both get off scot-free.

Mind the Gap!

A few observations on travel to Europe after an absence of three years: 1) Europeans no longer use money. They use cards, mostly with little contactless symbols. They will not take cash, even at Mighty Burger in the food hall of St. Pancras Station. 2) Bicycles rule everywhere, especially in Paris, and the “bike-bastards” don’t stop for stop signs—or pedestrians. 3) All reservations for everything must be made online. It’s pointless to try to phone or drop by the box office. 

 4. Supermarkets, especially in England, have rows of self-service checkout machines and perhaps two machines that (unwillingly) take cash. A lone, harried attendant supervises all of this confusion—and there’s always confusion. In France, the self-service machines tend to be out-of-order, which means that the frazzled cashier must “help” you outsmart the system. 5. French trains still run exactly on time. English trains do not. 

6. Everybody hates Boris Johnson, and almost everyone hates Emmanuel Macron, so naturally, they both remain in power. 7. Public transportation—in both Paris and London—is superb; they are SO far ahead of rinky-dink, user-unfriendly American systems. 8. So you see, the Londoners are right: there will ALWAYS be a gap. A gap between Europeans (concerned about improving the quality of human life) and America (concerned about carrying firearms in public). ALWAYS. Mind the gap.

Certain Alienable Rights: Il faut cultiver notre jardin!

 

It is comforting, but false, to assert, with Thomas Jefferson, that some ineffable, omniscient and omnipotent authority--Nature, God, Nature's God, whatever--has endowed all of humankind with certain "inalienable" rights. Strictly speaking, nothing in the universe, except entropy (i.e., disorder, deterioration and death), is inalienable. In fact, in the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was writing high-falutin' humbug--intended, quite unabashedly, to justify revolution and political alienation from bonds connecting the colonies to Great Britain. To this end, Jefferson--magisterially but without evidence--proclaimed that the Universe itself had willed immutable and infinite rights--"life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"--to our very mutable and very finite species.

But—and this is an important “but”—some rights DO, if accepted and sustained over appreciable periods of time, become so “deeply rooted” (a favorite notion among Supreme Court conservatives) that they are viewed by society as fundamental, necessary, and beneficial to the proper functioning of the commonwealth itself—i,e, as “constitutional.” Thus consecrated by "use" if not by the "universe", they come to be simply taken for granted as a part of the nation’s legal framework, as “settled law”—stare decisis. These long-internalized rights face little threat of being eliminated or changed for (Jefferson’s words) “light or transient causes.” Other rights, though—rights more recently accorded in response to changes within the society itself—and actually vital in present-day society—because their roots are not yet deep, because they are not yet simply taken for granted—such rights ARE indeed subject to alienation by powerful authorities not yet persuaded of these rights’ settled (i.e., “constitutional”) status.

Now, in the ongoing course of human events, it has become necessary for Americans to face the very real likelihood that one such recently-granted right—a woman’s personal control of her own reproductive processes—will be withdrawn by a SCOTUS so obsessed with deep roots that it is willing to ignore the value of the growing plant itself. Roe v. Wade is about to be overturned, and with it, the incipient constitutional right of a woman to control her own pregnancy. 

I'm not sure that my term "incipient right” is quite appropriate. But TIME is the key factor here, isn't it? Though rights are never inalienable, as we have seen, they do become firmly "constitutional" OVER TIME. What SCOTUS is attempting to do, it seems, is "weed out" a growing plant that they themselves planted (with Roe v. Wade). They don't want to acknowledge that its root system is already firmly established; they don't want Americans to come to regard this plant as an essential element of our  collective garden.

We must make them see that they are wrong!

Which means, I guess, that we all have more gardening work to do. Il faut cultiver notre jardin. This valuable right must be planted everywhere, nurtured everywhere, defended everywhere--from pests, predators, and stupid jurists, who--alas--don't seem capable of distinguishing a right from a rutabaga.

And we must persist—OVER TIME. Only thus, through our very human actions and interventions—and our persistence—will we ultimately ensure that this 'incipient' right to choose becomes, for  all practical and conceivable purposes, inalienable within our constitutional framework. I know, I know: everyone is SO tired, and America’s women are so legitimately pissed off. SCOTUS itself is dishonoring the Constitution and breaking faith with its pledge to the American people. Sad, sad. But onward!