Election 2020: No Longer Worthy

The 2020 US Presidential election is tomorrow. I almost wish I believed in gods, so I could pray to them to have mercy on us all. I don't; and if I'm wrong and the gods are real, they would seem to have a twisted sense of humour.

I hope Biden wins. I truly do. He would at least slow the American republic's descent into the abyss. He would give America a chance. That's worth hoping for. For American citizens, it's worth fighting for. But no matter what happens in the next few days, the rotting heart of America has been exposed for all to see. 

Trump and Biden with former President Obama, in 2017 as this nightmare got underway.
(U.S. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Cristian L. Ricardo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

What Is This I Cannot Even

Reading the news seemed a harmless habit, even virtuous; but that was before the world went wrong.

I miss the old days, when we could be concerned about a stained blue dress or a guy eating a bacon sandwich. Paying attention to current affairs is becoming too much to stomach.

Blogging here has been light for a while, and nonexistent for a month. That's partly because I'm still settling into my new life in Toronto. Maybe some of it is blog fatigue, after four years of posting on a weekly basis. But mostly it's just... how do you react to absolute and total madness?

What They Want Is Everything: Part 3

What endgame will there be for Trump?

This is not a fairy tale. The knight does not slay the dragon. Everyone does not live happily ever after.

What They Want Is Everything: Part 2

It's taken me a while to write this, because it's hard even to think about. It strikes close to home. I am referring to President Trump's policy of separating immigrant children from their families.

There have been a few milestones in the sorry tale of ineptitude and hate that is the Trump administration. There are moments when anyone with an ounce of humanity, paying even minimal attention, must recognise: We are witnesses to evil.

What They Want Is Everything: Part 1

The Trump administration has reached new depths of obscenity over the last couple of weeks. It's going to take me more than one post to address it.

First, consider the Supreme Court vacancy. Anthony Kennedy, appointed by Reagan but generally regarded as a moderate, has chosen to retire. The fact that his replacement will be appointed by a Republican President and Senate may or may not have influenced his thinking.

I'm not the first to observe that if your political system hinges on one octogenarian's decision to retire, it is a stupid political system.

Be that as it may, the reason things have come to this pass is the Democrats have lost and lost and lost.

Perspectives on Annihilation

Trump could destroy us all.

This statement deserves further consideration.

It's become a commonplace thing to say. It's the new normal. The United States' nuclear arsenal is commanded by a man with all the foresight, empathy and self-control of a spoiled child.

Nuclear explosion over Nagasaki, 9 August 1945.
Source: MaxPixel

American Torture

The moral degradation of US politics goes back long before Trump arrived on the scene. This was reiterated by the blogger known as Mike the Mad Biologist:

Time was, in popular culture, torturers were viewed as evil, not as heroes ‘doing what needs to be done.’

Leaving aside “the score of efficacy”–though in isolation, torture is useless and requires a regime of mass torture, doesn’t work, and offers the temptation of manufacturing false evidence–once you have normalized torture, there is nothing left that can not be normalized. Telling ridiculous lies, spouting racist rhetoric, or offering laughably unrealistic policies is nothing by comparison to the brutal and vile degradation of human beings.

The first sentence got me thinking.

It's not hard to find older movies in which torture is shown as unequivocally evil. In Return of the Jedi (1983), it's a simple and convenient shorthand.

To establish that Jabba the Hutt is nasty and scary, we have a brief shot of a dungeon in which droids are being tormented with red-hot irons. There's no need to stop and explain that Jabba is a Bad Guy Torturer, as opposed to a Good Guy Torturer. He orders torture, so by definition he's evil. We can move swiftly on and watch Luke fight the Rancor monster.

Newer films, by contrast, tend to be more ambivalent about torture -- if not openly endorsing it as Okay When A Good Guy Does It.

The examples I'm going to use are a couple of light-hearted comedies. They aren't extreme cinema, setting out to break taboos and push the portrayal of violence to its limits. They're films in which torture is present and important, but tangential to the main story. As such they may be a better representation of mainstream beliefs.

Consider The Princess Bride (1987), which as most of us know includes "fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles."

Junior Officer of the TSA

Short blog entry this week, on account of jet lag. Back to normal next week.

Meanwhile, my son has been deputised as a junior officer of the TSA -- or to give its full title, the Transport Security Administration of the USA. They gave him an official sticker while we were waiting for our turn in the scanners.

The TSA has a reputation for unseemly and unprofessional behaviour. This may have grown out of the sheer absurdity of airport security theatre. They may overcompensate for the fundamental insanity of their job by carrying it out in the most rigid and inhumane way possible. Enforcing rules which make no logical sense, and exist largely to give the impression of doing something, does not strike me as a task which is likely to attract the best and brightest. This is unfortunate; last week we observed the sixteenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and real failures in airport security are a serious matter.

To be clear, I don't think a sticker can possibly excuse any misbehaviour by the TSA. I'm more impressed that they are trying at all to be friendly, instead of relying on their overwhelming power to make your life unpleasant. It's as if the Uruk-hai offered the hobbits a nice cup of tea instead of threatening to eat them.

Maybe the sticker is part of some kind of public relations counteroffensive; or someone, somewhere in the humourless bureaucracy of the TSA has retained a sense of fun; or a two year-old could in fact handle airport security just as well as they do. Although my son is a US citizen, if he wants a career in law enforcement I think I'd encourage him to choose some other agency.

On Statues

Concerning Trump and this week's events in Charlottesville: It's been clear for a long time that Trump is a racist and unfit to hold the office of President. Now, the last shreds of cover have been stripped away.

No decent human being can stand with Trump. Anyone who does so is standing with a man who defends Nazis. This isn't complicated; the right-wing marchers in Charlottesville were carrying swastika banners, shouting Nazi slogans, and making fascist salutes. They're Nazis.

White nationalist rally in Charlottesville.
Source: Samuel Corum / Anadolu Agency / Getty

The only possible excuse for supporting Trump at this point is extreme ignorance. In the case of elected officials, media commentators, and others whose profession is to know about politics, that excuse is not viable. The time has come for them to choose sides. We will see what develops from this.

I still think Trump is likely to hold onto power. He won't resign, not least because he might well face criminal prosecution resulting from Robert Mueller's investigation. As long as his base is loyal enough to threaten Republicans with primary defeat, he is unlikely to be impeached. One day he might go too far for even the dead-eyed sociopaths of the Republican Congress to stomach, but my guess is we are some distance away from that.

The violence in Charlottesville was touched off by plans to remove a statue of the Confederate general Robert E Lee. I've been thinking about the wider issue of statues and what they represent.

The Poisoned Well

President Trump's latest director of communications barely lasted a week. Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone accurately predicted Scaramucci's tenure would be "freakish, embarrassing and all too short."

Rumour has it that the Mouth of Sauron turned down the job.

Mordor may be a volcanic wasteland, but the job security is better.

Ed at Gin and Tacos evaluted Scaramucci's appointment as a sign that Trump had given up on being President. I think it's worse than that: Trump hasn't given up, but he is so far gone that this is what trying looks like.

Faulty Mechanism

Six months in, the pattern of the Trump presidency seems clear, for however long we continue to be subjected to it.

Trump blusters, rants and tweets. He combines swaggering arrogance and pathetic insecurity, often in the same speech. He can't manage to address the Boy Scouts of America without making it all about him and the many things he hates. He appears not to understand what health insurance is, let alone have any ability to direct health policy. He is unwilling, and probably unable, to perform even the most basic duties of his office.

Donald Trump is the 45th President of the United States.
If this fact does not terrify you, you are not paying attention.

Worse Than We Imagined

Most fictional Presidents are better than Trump, even the really bad ones.

It's not hard to find noble and inspiring fictional Presidents. They may be wise and sagacious leaders (The West Wing); steely-eyed crisis managers (Deep Impact, Tom Clancy novels); or even kick-ass action heroes (Air Force One, White House Down, Independence Day). This is to be expected; the office of President attracts a certain amount of reverence, and stories need heroes.

The White House.
Source: Adrian Grey / Flickr

Peculiar Institution

The American healthcare system is a moral abomination and a practical failure. This matters to me for personal reasons. For the world at large, it's a human tragedy; and a cautionary example of where bad policy decisions can lead, and how difficult they are to undo.

The Baseball Disconnect

There is a lot of understandable anger directed at Trump voters just now. Charles M. Blow writes in the New York Times:

This is why I have no patience for liberal talk of reaching out to Trump voters. There is no more a compromise point with those who accept, promote and defend bigotry, misogyny and xenophobia than there is a designation of “almost pregnant.”

This is rather extreme. Even Hillary Clinton only put half of Trump's supporters into the infamous "basket of deplorables". If we take Blow's words at face value, every single Trump voter is beyond redemption: Bearing the mark of Cain, forever exiled from the progressive Eden for their act of kinslaying.

E pluribus unum?

It makes no logical sense. It's a statistical certainty that many voted for both Obama in 2012, and Trump in 2016. A minority of Trump voters to be sure, but a significant one; more than his margin of victory in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, even Ohio. Have these erstwhile Obama voters really fallen so far, it is not worth even trying to speak to them?

Remarks on Trump by a Toddler

Another toddler disavows Trump.

Listen up, people, because I have some things to say about Donald Trump. I'd rather be playing with my building blocks, but the time has come for me to speak up on behalf of the toddler community.

Over and over again, news reports depict Trump as a toddler. This is a grievous slur upon me and everyone else in my age group.

It's really frustrating getting through life when you have a vocabulary of less than fifty words, and the world is run by grown-up people who do things for incomprehensible reasons. Sometimes the frustration gets the better of me and I throw a tantrum. I admit it, Trump and I have that much in common.

Give me a break, though. I have kindness and empathy. I'm learning to share. I like to help people.

I take joy in the simple things of life. Last week when Daddy was deciding what to get me for dinner, I yelled "potato" and got the bag of potatoes out of the cupboard, and he got the message and made me a baked potato. That was awesome, I'm telling you.

I love stories and animals and splashing in puddles. This Trump guy needs a good splash in a puddle, or a nice puppy he can play with, or someone to read him a story with funny pictures. Maybe then he wouldn't be so angry all the time.

Then again, maybe that wouldn't work. I've got a reason for emotional immaturity. I'm only two. My neurological development isn't up to delayed gratification or parsing complex subjects. Trump's seventy, and I can't count that high yet, but I know it's really old. So I don't know what his excuse is.

Be that as it may, you grown-ups should know better. Calling Trump a toddler is an insult to toddlers, so knock it off already.

Now if you'll excuse me, the cat just walked by and requires my urgent attention. Kitty!

The Protective Bubble

Donald Trump is unfit to be President of the United States; but the very forces which propelled him to the Republican nomination will make it extremely difficult to remove him.

We're doomed.

Four weeks in, and the overwhelming impression from the Trump administration is one of incompetence. Trump is hopelessly ignorant of the most basic functions of government. I expected the extremism, but even I am a little shocked by the stupidity:

• He can't get through a telephone call with the Prime Minister of Australia, one of America's most loyal allies, without causing a diplomatic incident.
• Trump discussed a North Korean missile test with the Prime Minister of Japan in the middle of a public dining room, at a club he himself owns.
• His executive order on immigration was immediately overturned by the courts.
• He was warned Michael Flynn, his National Security Advisor, had illegal contacts with Russia; but took no action until weeks later, when the matter became public and Flynn was forced to resign.
• Retired Vice-Admiral Robert Harward was Trump's first choice as Flynn's replacement; but he has turned the job down, allegedly because he considers the administration a "shit sandwich".
• Republicans in Congress are preparing no less than three separate investigations of the Trump administration's conduct.
• Trump has failed to nominate anyone for most of the deputy- and under-secretary positions in his Cabinet.

Parliament: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

It's been an exciting week in the UK Parliament. Some MPs should be proud of their actions, others thoroughly ashamed. Herewith are some of the heroes, villains and victims.

The Deplorables of Punxsutawney

Yesterday was Groundhog Day, so I watched the excellent film of the same name. It is set in the town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, and I couldn't help thinking of it in relation to Trump's election victory.

President Zuckerberg

A Vanity Fair piece by Nick Bilton asks, Will Mark Zuckerberg Be Our Next President?

According to Betteridge's Law of Headlines, the answer is no. But in his opening sentence Bilton insists this is a serious question, so let's play along. (The same question has been picked up by The Atlantic.)

Mark Zuckerberg.
Photo credit: By Presidência do México - Flickr, CC BY 2.0, Link

Full Circle

In the 1999 novel The Business, by the late Iain Banks, a character describes contemporary Russia:

The Russians have created their own form of capitalism in the image of what was portrayed to them as the reality of the West by the old Soviet Union's propaganda machine. They were informed that there was nothing but gangsterism, gross and endemic corruption, naked profiteering, a vast, starving, utterly exploited underclass and a tiny number of rapacious, vicious capitalist crooks who were entirely above the law. Of course, even at its most laissez-faire the West was never remotely like that, but that's what the Russians have now created for themselves.

This portrait was written before Putin's rise to power, in the chaotic reign of Boris Yeltsin; but it still contains much truth.

Modern Russia practices a particularly vicious form of gangster capitalism. The only truly effective institutions of the state are the military and security services. Those the state perceives as enemies are met with overwhelming force. A hollow charade of elective democracy is not allowed to disturb the oligarchs who truly wield power.

Here is the bitter conclusion which Banks did not live to see: The United States of America is now controlled by people who see the nightmare vision of Russia as a model to follow.

What was imagined as a grotesque caricature of America is now becoming its reality.

Symbol of a republic in grave peril.
Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Many of Trump's senior advisors openly admire and align themselves with Russia. His cabinet picks are heavy with retired generals and sociopathic business executives, the better to secure an oligarchy. For their part, the Republican majorities in Congress will find a White House which indulges their most rapacious ideas.

In a previous post, I made fun of a Washington Post columnist who urged Democrats in the Electoral College to vote for Mitt Romney.

In point of fact, the Republican leadership can still make Romney President without a single Democrat vote. All they need to do is flip thirty-seven Republican electors from Trump to Romney, so that no one candidate receives a majority in the EC. Under the Twelfth Amendment to the US Constitution, the three candidates are then voted on by the House of Representatives, where the Republicans hold a majority.

But why on Earth would they want to do a thing like that? Then they would have to own their opposition to Trump. They would have to take responsibility for angering his supporters. They would have halted his coronation, in favour of a candidate who might occasionally show some glimmer of conscience.

Trump will not stand in their way. He is fluent in the language of rage and hate spoken by the Republican base, in a way that bloodless ghouls like Paul Ryan cannot match. They think he will be useful to them, distracting the rubes while they get on with asset-stripping the country; and they are probably right.

The present incarnation of the Republican party has stopped even pretending it wants to build anything of value. All it cares about making are walls and prisons. All power to the billionaires, the police, and the army; everyone else is there to be crushed and discarded.

From their point of view, the main risk is that Trump might blunder into a nuclear war or some other disaster; one so bad, it casts down even the billionaires and their most highly placed servants. Evidently, that is a chance they are willing to take.

In a way, this movement reminds me of the so-called Islamic State. It is not subtle. It goes out of its way to think of the most sadistic and destructive things it can do, and then does them. It takes joy in the horror it inspires in anyone with a sense of decency.

I am very cautious about talking of politics in terms of good and evil. I don't apply the word "evil" to normal, democratic politicians with whom I happen to disagree. However, Trump and his henchmen are anything but normal.

Trump and the leadership of the Republican party are evil. It's not a secret; they openly celebrate their cruelty. Their one saving grace is that they are not terribly competent. I hope the better angels of America's nature, from both conservative and liberal traditions, prove capable of standing up to them.