Continued Stray Thoughts on the Current Political Climate

With the cascade of stupid, immoral, illegal, subversive, un-American, and possibly treasonous things emitted by der Sturmtrumper, his pet Congress, his supporters, and his administration reaching levels that make it nearly impossible for any sane person to keep up with, I’ve started just keeping a running list of observations on the matter.  Every time the list reaches critical mass, I suppose I’ll post it and start a new one.  Can’t hurt; might help.  Here’s the most recent list:

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1. Good God, man, take a freaking break.  Nobody can keep up with this!  I spent the better part of a week more or less outside of the news stream, and when I poked my toe into the fetid waters of der Sturmtrumper’s latest antics the undercurrent nearly pulled me in to drown.  Remember when we used to have screaming arguments in this country over actual political issues – even trivial ones – instead of the latest grotesque criminal incompetency perpetrated by a kleptomaniac authoritarian regime?  Good times, man.

2. Seriously, if someone doesn’t take away that man’s Twitter account he’s going to start a war with it.  He’ll probably be just as surprised as the rest of us.

3. Given the avalanche of right-wing hate directed at Obama – the lynching photos, the gorilla memes, the coded and sometimes overt threats of assassination, the “Second Amendment Solutions” nonsense, and so on – I’m really kind of enjoying their crocodile tears over vaguely famous person Kathy Griffin’s tasteless and juvenile photograph.  Seriously, if you weren’t offended by the right-wing avalanche, you don’t get to be offended by the stupid photograph.  I thought her photograph crossed the line.  But then I felt that way about the avalanche of right-wing hatred toward Obama too, so I suppose I have earned the right to do so.

4. Griffin was fired from her New Year’s Eve job over that, and so be it.  Free speech does not mean freedom from consequences, and if you’re going to do stupid things like that you should expect to be shat upon from a great height by all sorts of people.  But if you think that death threats are an acceptable response to this then you really need to take your computer keyboard, grease it down with lard, and insert it into your lower intestine until you can taste it.  It’s surprising how thin-skinned right-wingers are.

5. Remember when Ted Nugent threatened to kill President Obama and the right-wingers all thought ol’ Ted was just a helluva guy having some fun?  Those were the days.

6. And now some freeze-dried whackaloon has decided to exercise his Second Amendment privileges at a GOP Congressman (ironically enough, a Congressman who recently crowed about beating back proposed restrictions on guns and ammunition – karma is a bitch).  Let’s be perfectly clear here – this is an outrage, a monstrous crime, and if the whackaloon hadn’t been killed by security forces he’d be first in line for execution at the end of a rather speedy trial and nobody, least of all me, would mourn.  What I find most aggravating, however, is that the same party that spent eight interminable years loudly and proudly urging its followers to find “Second Amendment Solutions” to political problems as long as those guns were aimed at Democrats is now outraged by the fact that the guns are pointed at them.  What goes around comes around, folks.  The sheer maddening hypocrisy of the GOP is enough to make Ghandi take up the axe.  I suppose it’s too much to ask that these people understand the soul-crushing irony of what just happened.

7. Just so you know I’m not making this up, here’s a representative sample of Second Amendment Solution quotes and actions from various GOP mouthpieces, collected by David Gerrold for our edification and quoted directly from him:

GOP House candidate Robert Lowry held a campaign event at a Florida gun range in October 2009, where he fired gunshots at a silhouette that had his opponent Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s printed on it.

“You know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies.” - Sharon Angle

“If I could issue hunting permits, I would officially declare today opening day for liberals. The season would extend through November 2 and have no limits on how many taken as we desperately need to ‘thin’ the herd.”  -Brad Goerhing

“Get on Target for Victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office,” read an advertisement for the event called “Shoot a fully automatic M16 With Jesse Kelly.”

“Don’t retreat, instead- RELOAD!” - Sarah Palin after circulating a map with crosshairs over lawmakers who supported the ACA

“You know but other than me going over there with a gun and holding it to their head and maybe killing a couple of them, I don’t think they’re going to listen unless they get beat.” - John Sullivan

“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.” -Donald Trump

8. Or, to put the whole thing in further perspective, from Andy Nicastro:  "So let's get this straight. A rabidly anti-gay congressman who recently voted to let mentally ill people have access to guns and who wants to repeal the affordable care act had his life saved by a lesbian when he was shot by a mentally ill person and is currently under hospital care that is being paid for by government-funded health insurance. Sorry, there is way too much irony here to interrupt it with punctuation."

9. So der Sturmtrumper has officially announced that he will withdraw the US from the Paris Accords because short-term profit is so much more important than long-term survivability.  Well, he’s 70 years old – he’ll be dead before the whole thing crashes down so what does he care?  Two things are impressive here.  First, that there seems to have been almost no thought whatsoever regarding this decision – nobody, of any party, is suggesting that there was anything like calm, reasoned consideration of the pluses and minuses of this action.  Instead, once again, we are treated to the toddler in chief extending his middle finger to the rest of the world because he got his feelings hurt when the European leaders took him exactly as seriously as he deserved to be taken and no more.  Tantrums are not a substitute for policy, boyo.  Second, it is abundantly clear that der Sturmtrumper took this action in direct opposition to the will of the American people (hell, 57% of REPUBLICANS favor remaining in the Paris Accord, let alone everyone else), a fair number of his own administration members (Rex Tillerson, Exxon’s own Secretary of State, is said to have been particularly thrown under the bus with this one), and a surprising number of American corporations including most of the big fossil fuel companies (because oil rigs need stable sea levels and predictable weather, among other reasons).   If you’re really interested in this disjunction, just ask the good people of Pittsburgh, 80% of whom voted against der Sturmtrumper, what they think of his claim that this was done in their name.

10. Of course nothing der Sturmtrumper has said on the decision has risen to the level of remotely plausible, let alone factually accurate.  The list of lies that he told to justify his action is long, thorough, and depressing.  And in truth the decision has little practical impact immediately – nothing can happen officially until the day after the next presidential election in 2020, in fact.  So it’s mostly symbolic at this point.  But think about the symbolism of the United States – historically the world’s largest carbon emitter – joining exactly two other countries in rejecting this treaty: Syria, which may or may not qualify as a country at all at the moment, and Nicaragua, which hasn’t signed because they think the treaty doesn’t go far enough.  Sweet dancing monkeys on a stick but this man is an international embarrassment and a national disgrace.

11. To anyone reading this outside of the US, as an American citizen I hereby apologize for the actions of this administration.  Most of us didn’t vote for him, and we’re just as appalled as you are.

12. Meanwhile, the Wisconsin GOP – you know, the group of chowderheads that has cut over two billion dollars out of education since Governor Teabagger (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries) seized power in 2011 – has decided that public schools should have gun classes.  Because they can’t pay for teachers, books, infrastructure, school lunches, arts programs, or supplies, but by the foot-long beard of Right Wing Jeebus Hissownself (a blond-haired blue-eyed heavily armed bigot not to be confused with any actual deity or Savior) they can find money to put guns into schools.  Wasn’t it just a couple of months ago that half the schools in southern Wisconsin were either closed or on soft lockdown because somebody wanted to bring their guns to schools and exercise his Second Amendment privileges at other people’s children?

13. And yes, I meant “privileges.”  The Second Amendment has a long and sordid history of being reserved as a privilege for white men only, and nothing about that has changed that in my lifetime.

14. It’s hurricane season and this year is predicted to be a big one, with an above-average number of hurricanes likely.  And thanks to the incompetence/malevolence/authoritarianism/etc. of der Sturmtrumper, there is currently nobody in charge of NOAA or FEMA.  Heck of a job, Donnie.

15. Der Sturmtrumper did finally nominate someone to be the new FBI guy, though.  I wonder if this guy is going to be the toady that his new boss thinks he will be, or whether he will have a spine and actually enforce the law.

16. As a general rule, you can seamlessly substitute “I like behaving like an asshole” anytime someone uses the sentence “I’m tired of being politically correct.”  They mean the same thing, which is why they’re so popular on the right wing these days.  Nobody on the left has used the phrase “politically correct” seriously since 1991.  Whenever you hear people complaining of being forced to be politically correct or not being able to do what they want because it’s not politically correct, remember that they’re just whining about how hard it is to be an asshole in a world that is tired of their shit.

17. This is why der Sturmtrumper and a handful of his minions, lackeys, and cronies have been firing up the twitter machine in the wake of the recent terrorist attacks in Britain, complaining that political correctness is preventing them from being the monstrous assholes they would like to be to anyone who isn’t straight, white, male, evangelical Protestant, and, preferably, wealthy.  Seriously, folks – so tired of this shit.

18. Also, have you noticed that whenever there is a terrorist attack on foreign soil der Sturmtrumper jumps right in with offers of support with petty and juvenile tweets insulting the political leaders on the ground while politicizing the tragedy in order to push the most recent collection of semi-random hormonal urges that masquerades as his agenda?  While at the same time whenever a white male American engages in a terrorist attack here in America there is a strange and deafening silence?  Odd how that keeps happening.

19. Being lectured on tolerance by a Trump supporter is almost as funny as when they think they understand economics.

20.  It looks like the Party of Cruelty is following its Wisconsin playbook with the new Republicare bill.  They’re working on it in secret – thirteen old white men writing a bill that will affect hundreds of millions of Americans, most of them negatively.  They are allowing nobody to see it, holding no public hearings, and admitting no actual reality into their cabal.  And they’re going to ram it through Congress without so much as a reach-around.  Those of us in Wisconsin have seen this movie – it’s been playing in Madison since 2011 – and it never ends well.

21. As a general rule, if you have to write laws in secret you shouldn’t be writing those laws.

22. I’m not even going to comment on James Comey’s testimony.  Anyone who can continue to support der Sturmtrumper after that brutal takedown clearly has no respect for law, morals, or the Constitution, and just as clearly deserves no respect from those of us who do.

23. Although the stark contrast between Comey – who was professional, eloquent, and damning in his specificity and pointed responses – and our Confederate Attorney General, whose stonewalling was so blatant that it’s an open question whether he was lying or simply a victim of dementia, is astounding.

24. The big takeaway from Comey’s testimony, though, is just how little Congressional Republicans care.

25. Apparently Mike Pence – a man so vehemently opposed to treating homosexuals as actual people that one begins to wonder just how deeply closeted he really is – has decided to lawyer up in light of the continuing investigations into Russian meddling in the American election.  This is normal, right?  A sitting Vice President hiring attorneys to defend himself on upcoming criminal charges months into his term in office?  Totally normal!

26. Michael Cohen, der Sturmtrumper’s lawyer, has now hired a lawyer of his own.  It’s just turtles all the way down.

27. If der Sturmtrumper actually fires Robert Mueller it will trigger a very dark time indeed in this country.  Even his staff has figured that out, though they may be powerless to stop him.  And if that doesn’t sum up this rogue regime nicely, nothing does.

28. Newt Gingrich – a man so twisted that he can suck the spaghetti sauce out of a rotini without moving his tongue – has publicly declared that the president by definition cannot obstruct justice.  Leaving aside the obvious Nixonian echoes here (“if the president does it, it’s not illegal”), there is also the fact that said Twisted Man presided over the impeachment of a different president of a different party on charges of – wait for it – obstruction of justice.  This is the problem you get when you start listening to people who think truth is whatever they happen to believe most fervently at present.

29. According to Reuters, der Sturmtrumper is planning to revamp a federal program designed to counter all forms of ideological terrorism so that it focuses slowly on Islamic extremism and no longer pays any attention to violent right-wing white supremacist groups here in the US.  Doesn’t really look good to be investigating your own base, I suppose.

30. Looks like the Kansas Experiment has come to the ignominious conclusion that anyone with any economic or historical knowledge saw coming years ago.  Kansas – home of Koch Industries (the very billionaires who own Wisconsin’s Governor Teabagger) and Governor Sam Brownback (who makes Governor Teabagger look like Bernie Sanders) – embarked on a trial run of everything the modern right wing wanted out of a government: drastically slashing taxes on businesses and the rich, destroying the public education system, and generally turning the state into a supply-side libertarian dystopia.  This, of course, was supposed to generate all kinds of prosperity, jobs, and general ease and comfort for everyone, and perhaps it would have in some kind of bizarro alternate universe where facts don’t matter and math doesn’t work.  In this one, as predicted, Kansas lurched from one budget crisis to another, jobs evaporated, the poor got poorer, the middle class got smaller, and the rich hoarded their lucre and laughed.  Brownback even got into a pissing match with the State Supreme Court when the court demanded he fund public education according to the state constitution – at one point he threatened to defund the entire state judiciary, which would have put Kansas in violation of the federal Constitution’s guarantee of a republican (small-r) form of government for every state.  But that’s what happens when you elect right-wing authoritarian ideological fools.  It got so bad that the Kansas legislature – dominated by Republicans even now – took matters into its own hands, repealed some of the most egregious tax giveaways to the wealthy, and began the process of returning to sane fiscal policy (within the current limits of GOP orthodoxy, but still – progress).  You will want to keep this lesson in mind as der Sturmtrumper and his Swamp attempt to impose the exact same policies on the entire US.  The GOP may well institutionally incapable of learning the lesson of Kansas, since it contradicts half a century of their most precious and mindlessly held ideology.  But that’s reality for you – it doesn’t care what you believe.

31. Apparently der Sturmtrumper’s minions have taken to threatening theater groups performing Shakespeare this summer, because a play that depicts the assassination of a tyrant is hitting a little too close to home?  Apparently a specific production of Julius Caesar hit a few nerves, but these threats are now being directed at pretty much anyone who has the nerve to produce any Shakespeare play here in the Land of the Free.  Which means, of course, that not only are these minions stunted enough to threaten people over a 400-year-old play, but they’re stunted enough to threaten the WRONG people over a 400-year-old play.  The jokes write themselves, folks.

32. Maryland and DC have now formally filed lawsuits accusing der Sturmtrumper of violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which adds a certain legal heft to that particular avenue of impeachment (there are so many avenues these days!).  I expect that the GOP will continue to stonewall on this as so many other things because law, morality, and Constitutions are so much less important than raw power however obtained, but perhaps this will be another good whack at that wall.  Eventually the wall will come down, though how much it will take down with it is anyone’s guess.

33. How bad are things when the President of the United States is being trolled by a vodka company.  “We’d be happy to talk about our ties with Russia under oath,” says Smirnoff.  That’s more than der Sturmtrumper is willing to do.

34. When all this is over, whatever optimism I can summon (not a lot – I’m from Philadelphia and pessimism is my birthright) makes me think that maybe, just maybe, this whole sordid fiasco of a regime might be enough to make Americans care about the quality of their leaders and the benefits of a well-run government in a way that has not been the case for decades now.  I’m not holding my breath – the ignorance and apathy of the average American voter is breathtaking – but a lot of people have figured out that not knowing or caring leads to Very Bad Things for both self and country, and perhaps that will be enough to get people involved again.  Maybe.