Category Archives: Political Rants

Political Rants

The unitary peril.

Happy Independence Day, everyone … and welcome to the next phase of our slide towards authoritarianism. It’s a track we’ve been on for decades, frankly, and our pace has accelerated with the dubious election of Donald Trump (a.k.a. Drumpf) as our president. Trump is taking the concept of the unitary executive, popularized under Bush II, to a whole new level, testing institutional constraints on presidential power, many of which apparently boil down to voluntarily-observed norms of behavior, ethical standards, etc., but very little in the way of black-letter law. Even in the case of explicit legal constraints, this president is demonstrating that there is very little in the way of available recourse to a chief executive that ignores or even violates the law. Who holds the president accountable, particularly if the Senate is a perennial no-show?

Now, as Trump prepares for his big, honking, tank-infested fourth of July show in D.C., his administration is contemplating an executive order that would violate a Supreme Court decision regarding exclusion of the citizenship question on the U.S. Census. If they move forward with this, welcome to the dictatorship. When our institutions cannot compel a president to comply with a duly-rendered opinion handed down by the highest court, that amounts to a constitutional crisis far beyond anything we have seen up to this point. What higher authority is there to compel a change of behavior on the part of the administration? There’s no inspector general, no ombudsman overseeing the presidency – just Congress … and honestly, if Congress finally gets up on its hind legs and tells Trump “enough!”, what happens if he ignores them?

Trying to keep the mad king happy.

We have a long tradition of republican rule in the United States, obviously attenuated by a foundational regime of racial, ethnic and gender-based exclusion that has kept whole classes of people from participating in the political process (and continues to do so). But that long, troubled history does not immunize us against dictatorship. Military rule in Chile was once thought impossible in a country with longstanding civilian rule, then came their September 11th (1973) and the Pinochet dictatorship. The fact is, it not only can happen here, it almost certainly will happen here if we don’t stand up and resist.  It is cliche to say that democracy is not a gift – that it must be fought for. Let’s remove that notion from the context of pointless wars. We need to fight for our freedom right here, right now.

How? Stand up. Call, visit, petition your representatives to hold the president accountable. March, protest, and participate in strikes when tactically appropriate. Make your voice heard. We have to turn this thing around and put authoritarianism back in the box … before some slightly more competent “Great Leader” comes along and takes up the reins from our current clown-president.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Debatable.

I’m starting this post while watching the first Democratic debate.  Too many candidates, of course – I think that’s obvious. It’s kind of dizzying, frankly. John Delaney wants to double the earned income tax credit … whoopdee doo, right? What the hell is that fucker doing there? He wants to keep what’s working, like … private health care? What the fuck. This is like some kind of game show.

Highlights? Well, on night one, Elizabeth Warren put in a strong performance, but with nine colleagues to compete with on time – and sixty second answers – it’s hard to get to a substantive level on any issue. Foreign policy was, as always, a rough spot, with questions about “red lines” and “duty to protect”. In my mind, this points to one of the biggest drawbacks of these corporate-sponsored, major network hosted candidate forums. The questions strongly reflect what the mainstream media considers the broadly held political consensus on major issues.

With respect to foreign policy, when Lester Holt asks candidates where they would draw a “red line”, he’s drawing on the Syrian war debate during the Obama administration, when hawks backed the president into a corner of his “red line” comment, hoping to get another American invasion of the middle east out of it. Obama disappointed them, but has been called out for “fecklessness” ever since by the Joe Scarboroughs of the world. The idea that there should be some “red line” beyond which we plunge ourselves into a murderous, costly, and self-destructive conflict is simply ludicrous. I’m not a huge fan of Tulsi Gabbard, but she was the only one on that stage that seriously pushed back on that and on the “humanitarian intervention” question.

Probably six too many.

Then there was the question, again from Holt, to Elizabeth Warren about whether she would agree to any restrictions on abortion. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out the premise for that question. Trump has been running around the country, describing with glee his fairy stories about newborn infant executions at the hands of craven women and their nefarious abortion doctors.  This question was an attempt to get the candidates to weigh in on mythical late-term abortions, and thankfully no one took the bait, though I wish one of these candidates would just swat that bullshit down, once and for all.

The second debate was kind of a crap show. I will return to that in next week’s installment.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Iraq 3.0.

Despite the occasional bleat that no one wants war and that we are not seeking conflict in the Gulf, the United States continues to move closer and closer to some kind of clash with Iran. Administration officials are blaming the Iranian government for attacks against tankers owned by nations who still do business with Iran, citing non-existent evidence of sabotage by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard – evidence contradicted by the owners of the Japanese ship that was attacked. Right wing blowhards like Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas are advocating for strikes against Iran, and this is treated as a serious policy proposal. Various spokespeople for the administration’s ever-emerging policy even raised the possibility of the U.S. providing naval escorts for commercial ships in the Gulf, modeling it on the tanker war phase of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

Who says I'm blowing smoke out of my ass? It's the ship, damn it, the ship!

This last bit fascinated me. It’s so unusual for our leaders to even mention the Iran-Iraq war, I suspect largely because we had a dog in that fight … and the dog was named Saddam Hussein. (Also, one of the ships we sent to the Gulf on that particular mission was the U.S.S. Vincennes, which on July 3, 1988 shot down Iran Air flight 655, killing all 290 passengers on board, 60 of whom were children.) If this is the mark of a successful policy to be imitated, god help us. Few Americans will recall that Saddam Hussein started that war, in 1980, using chemical weapons liberally against the Iranians – weapons whose primary components were purchased from (West) Germany, I believe. One of the principal outcomes of the Iran-Iraq war was the invasion of Kuwait, subsequent Gulf War, then the 12-year strangulation and ultimate invasion of Iraq by the U.S.

This is to say that war can sometimes sound a lot simpler than it actually turns out to be. People like Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, of course, are driven by ideology and really don’t care if their war with Iran turns out to be a disaster. But aside from the very crucial questions of whether the policy is right or legal, I think it’s fair to say that this administration’s deliberate push from functional diplomacy to the brink of armed conflict is reckless and potentially catastrophic, given the current state of international affairs. We are desperately in need of action on the ensuing climate crisis, and these nutjobs are driving us into another pointless war, damn the consequences.

I strongly suggest you contact your congressional representatives and urge them to oppose this policy. The switchboard is 202-224-3121. You may also want to use the Stance app, which is very easy to use when phoning your house member and senators. Right now, it’s our best chance at heading off this madness.

luv u,

jp