Category Archives: Political Rants

Political Rants

Bad side of Buchanan.

The historic second impeachment of Donald Trump got under way this week. I have to say that it was more engaging than the first impeachment in some respects. The House impeachment managers seem a bit sharper to me, though they are working what seems like an open and shut case. At some level this is all performative, as it seems unlikely that a sufficient number of Senators whose constituencies are made up of rabid Trump supporters will vote to convict the man. Still, anything that reminds people of the shit show that led up to this last election and the rabid, racist attack that followed it can’t be bad. Trump himself said something like “never forget this day” to his supporters. I embrace that entirely: we should never let Republicans forget January 6, 2021 for as long as they live. That should be one of our political obsessions moving forward.

If the jury (i.e. the United States Senate) in this proceeding were inclined towards acting in good faith rather than in their own narrow political self-interest, it might be relevant to emphasize the fact that, despite the similarities, an impeachment is not the same as a criminal trial. The standard of guilt is quite different, as are the stakes. I realize that barring someone from high office isn’t a small thing, but it’s certainly not what most people would consider a severe punishment. It’s not like a conviction in the Senate would send Trump’s ass to prison; no, it would simply keep him from holding office again. It’s not taking away your rights, because no one has a right to the presidency – it’s an office that must be earned. In that way, impeachment is kind of like a reverse job interview. I think people have a tendency to forget that, sometimes kind of conveniently.

I don’t know if you’ve ever perused one, but on the web there are a number of rankings of presidents from best to worst that get updated every year or so, as per historians’ assessment of the various chief executives and their impact, good and bad. I believe all of these polls put James Buchanan at the very bottom, though he is sometimes challenged in this honorific by Andrew Johnson, who most often appears second to last in the rankings. (Of course, these two putrid presidents flank Abraham Lincoln on either side, Lincoln being ranked number one almost universally.) Now that Trump is an ex-president, he will be included in these surveys. If I were a gambling man (which I’m not), I would put my money on him landing on the bad side of Buchanan. Trump likes to call himself “The 45th President of the United States” as a way of avoiding being referred to as a former president and, therefore, admitting failure, defeat, etc. Actually, the nomenclature might fit the next time these historians render their judgment. My guess is that he will, indeed, be named the forty-fifth president in the line up from best to worst.

We shall see what judgment the Senate hands down on Trump, but I think history’s judgment has already landed and it’s not pretty.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Lying in state.

The body of Officer Sicknick lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda this week – the same Capitol he died defending about a month ago when bloodthirsty right-wing thugs invaded the building by the thousands, hoping to forcibly stop the Senate’s counting of the electoral votes which, somewhat remarkably, reflected the will of the majority of American voters in denying Trump a second term. For all of the failings of law enforcement that day, Sicknick and many of his fellow officers fought fiercely to keep the insurrectionist mob at bay long enough so that members of Congress and the Vice President could be moved to more secure locations. As I have said before, this was nothing less than an attempt at a self-coup, and though there are many in the political class who would prefer that we forget about it and move on, that is the absolute last thing we should do. We forget this at our own peril – they have provided the template for future attempts, and we must be prepared.

I’ve talked about this quite a bit on my podcast, Strange Sound, but I think it bears repeating, hopefully by people with larger audiences than mine. There’s a lot to criticize about our federal government. It has inequities built into its very constitutional foundations, such as slave economy measures like the electoral college, the Senate, and so on. Even the 13th Amendment, which abolished chattel slavery, explicitly allows that toxic institution to persist for incarcerated people. Bernie Sanders is right, in fact, when he says that we need a kind of revolution in governance, but I think he would agree that he’s not talking about an actual political revolution involving a forcible overthrow of the U.S. constitutional order. Actual revolutions are a bloody business, and you never know where they’re going to end up. They also require more effort, energy, and suffering than just hardscrabble organizing in all fifty states. So from a left perspective, in my humble opinion, overthrow of the national government is a bad idea and an unnecessary one for the promotion of positive change.

That’s the left. The right, on the other hand, are bomb throwers. The people who attacked the capitol last month were bent on autocracy. They had been fed the big lie for years, with a ramp up over the course of the 2020 campaign – the election is rigged, vote by mail is rife with fraud, the whole thing is fixed, etc. This was Trump’s plan A in 2016. It never got implemented because something unexpected happened – he won. This past year he resurrected Plan A, and it nearly led to the gutting of the federal legislature, the murder of our representatives, and the installation of someone who plainly lost the last election, hands down. Do these deluded right-wingers want a revolution? I don’t know, but they almost got one, and that is some pretty scary shit. For all the “defense” bluster our government puts out on a regular basis, all the posturing on terrorism, all the billions it spends on war materiel, it seemed somehow powerless to stop a bunch of white Americans from trashing the center of government. Plainly all that anti-terrorism prep, like that clause in the 13th Amendment, was not meant for whitey.

R.I.P., officer Sicknick, and condolences to your family. We’ll have to work harder to ensure that his loss was not in vain.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Week One.

A lot might be said of any administration’s first week in office, Because we’re coming off of a presidency like no other, and not in a good way, there’s going to be a tendency among members of the press to be more deferential than might otherwise seem appropriate. On a human level, that’s understandable – White House correspondents are happy to see the daily briefing return, and to see it managed with a lot less tone. After four years of being subjected to withering attacks from Trump and his crew, reporters are breathing a sigh of relief and, I’m sure, hoping that this signals a return to the normal routines of previous presidencies, when there existed a more generally congenial symbiotic relationship between the press and the press office. (There was symbiosis between Trump’s administration and the press, but it was of a more corrosive variety.) They want their cheap-glamor White House Correspondents Dinner back, roast and all.

I’m not sure they’re going to get their wish this time, not entirely. The media universe is much more fragmented now then it was even five years ago, and the broad flaccid consensus that the mainstream media so worships may prove elusive. This is a divided country, with what looks like a larger number of people on the side of our standard mediated democratic governance, and a large minority seemingly (and in many cases openly) advocating for autocracy. It’s really more than advocacy, though – large numbers of them have been moved to violence, murder, and active disruption of the constitutional order, such as we saw on January 6. Now the vast majority of the insurrectionists have melted back into their home communities, unmolested, perhaps celebrating their success at delaying the electoral vote certification beyond the statutory deadline. Millions of people believe ridiculous lies about fraudulent votes in the last election – it’s hard to move on from that fact.

As we approach an impeachment trial in the Senate, Trump’s second, Republican senators are taking issue with the process, attempting to stop the trial by arguing that because Trump left office, the issue is moot. When the facts aren’t on their side, Republicans always go for process. They’re doing everything they can to obstruct the majority. I have to say, it is not surprising but still shocking that, after that Trump-fueled hate mob busted into the capitol looking for Pence’s head and those of the Congressional leadership, these senators can still casually tut tut over the effort to hold the former president accountable. They were almost impaled on the end of a pitchfork just three weeks ago, and yet they still go to bat for the outside strategy … and for every rube to remain duped. Un-effing-believable.

I started critical coverage of the Biden administration on this past week’s episode of Strange Sound, with a focus on foreign policy. I encourage you to do the same, even if just for your own edification.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.