Tag Archives: Donald Trump

Political Rants

American carnage.

It is possible to kill people with your mouth, particularly when you’re president of the United States. I’m referring to the kind of rhetoric that has broad public impact rather than speech that sets deadly official policies in motion – both kill, and we should take both very seriously. In the wake of the El Paso shooting, it’s that first kind that calls for extra examination. A president’s public expressions of hate, bigotry, whatever, provide space for extremists and overzealous citizens to act.  Nixon called student anti-war protesters a bunch of bums, and before long we saw Kent State. Now Trump has done the same thing, except to a much more explicit degree.

As he did three years ago, Trump is centering his campaign on fear of brown immigrants. Not immigrants in general, you understand – he doesn’t seem to have a problem with people from Canada or “Normay”. The president claims repeatedly and consistently that the United States is being “invaded” by large numbers of undocumented aliens bent on committing serious felonies. He and his administration have implemented multiple scare campaigns about dark caravans moving northward, populated by Muslim terrorists and criminals from “Mexican countries”, your placid suburban backyard squarely in their sites. They have pushed for a Great Wall of Ignorance along the southern U.S. border, though I have yet to hear of any corresponding structure along our northern border (or, for that matter, around our airports, as that is how so many people who overstay their visas enter this country).

Photo of sociopaths posing with orphan infant

We’ve all heard the administration’s childish gaslighting on this issue, as well as that of their supporters in Congress. Good luck with that. They can’t run away from their own shouted words. They have been waving the bloody shirt since before they arrived in Washington … it’s a little late to claim that they don’t mean to rile people up with their contant talk of demographic Armageddon. In his poorly-crafted inaugural (honestly, Steven Miller is objectively the worst speechwriter ever to serve a president), Trump spoke of “American Carnage”. What we are seeing now is exactly that – a continuation of the mindless death toll generated by our gun-obsessed society, but also a resurgence of right-wing violence directed at the targets of Trump’s tirades. Ordinarily these movements fade during Republican presidencies, but this time around they know they have a friend in the White House, regardless of his hostage-video statements of condemnation against white supremacy.

This administration is an American fascist’s dream come true. Now all they have to do is keep him in office. That’s what we’re up against.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Ugly truth.

He did it again. Trump flapped his jaw and violated the UN charter without even blinking. This past week, he was sitting in the White House with the Pakistani leader, chatting with reporters, and out came this:

“We’re not fighting a war. If we wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I could win that war in a week. I just don’t want to kill 10 million people. I have plans on Afghanistan that, if I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the Earth. It would be gone.  It would be over in, literally, in 10 days. And I don’t want to do that—I don’t want to go that route.”

I don’t have a lot of Afghan friends or acquaintances, but the one I have any regular contact with was appalled by this, and rightfully so. This, of course, isn’t the first time Trump has casually tossed out the notion of blowing some country sky-high, whether it was North Korea or Iran or Venezuela. But I believe this is the first time he has made this careless threat against an allied (if invaded and occupied) nation. The man is just a total sociopath, and one in possession of nuclear launch codes. It’s a sobering thought.

More of this for Afghanistan?

Of course, what’s interesting about this utterance is more in what it says about the power of the presidency than about the madness of this president, and in this respect Trump is almost performing a public service. When he says he has “plans,” he’s likely talking about actual contingency plans the Pentagon has presented to him – I’m certain they have contingency plans to reduce every nation on Earth to rubble. That is the underlying threat that makes every President a potential mass murderer (or an actual one, in many cases). The part about “winning” by destroying is largely self-inflation and imperial hubris, but it’s not that different from the kind of arrogance we’ve seen from America’s leaders in the past, as well as its military commanders. “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it,” as one U.S. unnamed U.S. major famously said of the bombing of Ben Tre in Vietnam in 1968. The formula still applies.

Since the dawn of the atomic age, our government has consciously chosen the path of greatest risk, not because it meant greater safety and security for the people of the world, but because to do so conformed to the logic of global empire. And because Trump says the quiet parts out loud, we can see this madness on full display. Yes, I am grateful that he apparently doesn’t think the mass killing of Afghans is a good way forward. What bothers me is that such a policy remains an option for this … or any president.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Fading to black.

We all knew he would get an early start, and true to form, sixteen months before the general election, Donald Trump has completely poured himself into being Drunk Uncle Twitter Troll, spewing overtly racist attacks on duly elected members of the House of Representatives while his Republican colleagues lamely play rhetorical defense, desperate to hold onto their party’s precious rubber-stamp chief executive who is giving them all they ever wanted and more. Pretty amazing to hear the likes of GOP congressman Tom Cole on NPR gaslighting us all on the issue of whether or not Trump is race-baiting (clue: Cole says “no”), then engaging in some truly ridiculous what-about-ism (speaking to NPR correspondent Noel King):

KING: You just don’t think it was racist.
COLE: No, I don’t.
KING: OK.
COLE: And frankly, I also think that if you – you have to remember here, too, there’s – we’ve had colleagues that are routinely called down by presiding officers for using inappropriate language toward the president. We’ve had people that have said federal workers are running concentration camps. We’ve had people that have said if you support Israel, you do it for the money. We’ve had people that have referred to the president with vulgar epithets and said they’re going to impeach him. None of those people were subject to resolution. So the double standard here, in terms of accepting comments on your own side of the aisle and criticizing essentially – what, you know, others might think are a similar thing to another is just – you know, it’s breathtakingly inappropriate.

(NPR Morning Edition, July 17, 2019)

See what he did there? He literally attacked the same four representatives Trump baited on Twitter. Cole predicated this on his earlier statement that the president’s tweets about the four congresswomen of color were “inappropriate” and “offensive”, but not racist. That little twist makes the president’s comments equivalent to, for example, Rashida Talib’s using the word “ass” when talking about impeaching Trump, or Ilhan Omar making virtually the same observation about the effect of AIPAC political contributions that Thomas Friedman made without any negative reaction. This is a standard package of what-about-ism that Republican strategists whipped up quickly over the last day or two, and they’re all reading from the same hymnal.

Drunk uncle twitter troll strikes again.

Of course, the corporate media spends a lot of time pondering whether or not Trump is racist. That’s immaterial. We should have zero interest in what that fool thinks or how he feels. It’s what he projects and works to engender in other people that should concern us. It’s no accident or mere caprice that he chooses the targets he chooses, as I’ve said here before. It all follows the same theme, from the birther conspiracy, to bashing immigrants from Mexico at his campaign launch, to announcing his Muslim ban, to telling the toxic lie about Muslims celebrating 9/11 in New Jersey, to calling out Colin Kapernik or any one of a dozen women of color in Congress. It’s about othering people. It’s about framing black, brown, and non-Christian people as not true Americans, somehow disloyal, a fifth column, from somewhere else. Even his claim that 3 million undocumented immigrants voted in 2016 rolls into this – he’s basically saying that the margin of popular vote victory for Clinton was delivered by people with no right to vote … people of color.

This is not just Trump being Trump. This is his 2020 campaign, and it will get worse, just wait and see.

luv u,

jp