Tag Archives: Nixon

Political Rants

How the hearings stack up against hearings past.

As someone who tends to pay attention to these things, I watched the first night of the January 6th Committee hearings with some interest. MSNBC spent a week winding up to these public meetings, and the committee did not, in my estimation, disappoint. I don’t know who in America remains persuadable on this issue, but it’s hard to watch the proceedings and not come away thinking about what an outrage January 6 was.

When I say January 6, I mean the whole enchilada. The day was just the culmination of a long process which the president at the time set in motion. As shocking as the attack was – and I, like many, watched it unfold with disbelief – Trump had long demonstrated his contempt for elections, and spent much of 2020 undermining the credibility of mail-in and absentee ballots. This was because he knew that Democrats were more likely to opt for vote by mail than to show up at the polling place. The hearings are highlighting this dynamic, and it’s all to the good.

Haldeman’s racist lawyer

Not surprisingly, many commentators have invoked the Watergate hearings back in 1973 to give context to the current proceedings. I’m old enough to remember these being broadcast on television, though I can only recall the high (or low) points, like when Haldeman’s shriveled old lawyer called Senator Dan Inouye – a wounded WWII veteran – “that little jap”. That was world-class.

The thing that’s notable about the Watergate scandal was its iceberg-like quality of revealing just the tip of what was hidden from view. Author Jefferson Morley talked about this on Majority Report this week. Several of Nixon’s “plumbers” were CIA assets or agents with a long history of involvement in the Agency’s abuses at home and overseas. More of the truth came out during the Church Committee investigation a few years later, but it was kind of a controlled burn, according to Morley. (Practically at the same time as Church, Cuban exile Agency assets blew up Orlando Letelier on Embassy Row in D.C. and the Cuban Olympic Fencing team in mid-air.)

Reagan’s little game

Perhaps the second most well-known Congressional investigation was Iran Contra during the Reagan administration. This, too, represented a tiny corner of a much larger enterprise. The select Committee (led by Inouye, incidentally) looked into Reagan’s circumvention of the Congress’s law barring direct aid to the Contra terrorists operating in Nicaragua with our assistance. (We had essentially created the force out of thin air.) The crime was breaking the law passed by Congress, not the persecution of Nicaraguans.

Beyond that, though, Reagan’s team headed by Oliver North and General Secord sold TOW missiles and some spare parts to the Iranian government, which was defending itself against an invasion by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq – an invasion supported by the United States! Interestingly, very little about America’s role in the Iran-Iraq conflict came to light through these hearings. Neither did the committee touch on how the U.S. government was supporting murderous dictatorial regimes in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and elsewhere.

Old fashioned grift and graft

The January 6th Committee proceedings are looking at something kind of different. This is more garden variety corruption and authoritarian tendencies, though as always, racism is part of the story. Trump tried to lie his way into permanent status as president, and has thus far failed. He bilked his own supporters out of hundreds of millions of dollars, saying they were contributing to a legal defense fund. Guy has no shame.

I guess the thing that ties them all together is authoritarianism and a strong desire to override the will of the people, either by discounting their votes or ignoring their elected representatives. That much hasn’t changed.

luv u,

jp

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

Froggy’s getting warmer by the minute

It’s worth remembering that, before the 1973 coup, Chile had a long stretch of stable electoral democracy. A military takeover was beyond the imagination of many, and yet it happened. Of course, it happened with full support from the United States under Nixon, but the administration found plenty of willing collaborators in country.

Granted, we’re not faced with a similar threat of powerful foreign intervention. Indeed, the current generation of Americans – and more than a few back – has never faced an all-powerful foreign foe like Chile had in the U.S. We don’t exactly walk around on tip-toe, and practically every nation of the world bears marks left by us at some point. But we ourselves don’t know what it’s like to get skull fucked by an empire.

Models exist – there’s one you’ll choose

You may have heard that Trump recently endorsed Viktor Orban, the Hungarian Prime Minister, for re-election. He’s a right-wing electoral strong man, a bit like Putin but with less opponent poisoning, and a particular favorite of the American right. Then there are the garden variety dictators that our networks never mention – Sisi in Egypt, MBS in Saudi, etc. Those countries hold demonstration elections as an unconvincing means of conferring legitimacy on the autocrat.

As hard as it may be for most people in America to accept, we really are on the brink of losing even the weak, highly attenuated say we have over our government. The Republican party would very much like to see us move more towards a Hungarian model. Say what you like about it, it’s a great way to stay in power permanently, and since that’s what they want above all things, they’re likely to try to bring it about. And if that doesn’t work, there’s always Egypt.

Old boys club, once again

The problem we have is what might be described as the curse of false expectations. Things have always been a certain way. Republicans and Democrats alternatively win an election, lose House and Senate seats in the mid terms, then usually (though not always) rebound on the re-elect year. The normal political cycle is burned into our brains and into the brains of our television pundits. We normalize everything, almost autonomically.

The trouble is, what we’re going through now is not normal. This is not the same thing that happens every two years. As I’ve said before, every time they come back they’re worse, only this time it’s worse than merely worse.

The extremely aged leaders of the Democratic party seem incapable of treating this situation as uniquely dangerous. Biden holds international conferences on Democracy. Garland encourages everyone to be nice to one another and to do what we can to preserve Democracy. Like with the climate crisis and COVID, they seem hyper focused on maintaining the appearance of moderation, at the expense of taking the kind of bold action that’s needed.

And if they’re wrong, well …

Let’s face it, a gradual coup is still a coup. The Republicans are putting the pieces in place to seriously game national elections. Democrats are acting like deer in the headlights. The right is out-organizing the left, and it’s clear that if they win the fall elections, they will finish what they started last year.

The water in this pot is getting hotter, folks. It’s time we leapt the hell out.

luv u,

jp

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

An extra shaky finger on the button … again.

I’m not an avid reader of blockbuster books about the current political moment, whatever that moment might be. On the contrary, I tend to spend my time listening to what others have to say about it. That’s my approach to the new book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa entitled Peril.

As with practically every book about the Trump administration, Peril sounds like a rough mix of the hilarious and the terrifying. In the first category, there’s a supposed transcript of a call between Mike Pence and his fellow Hoosier, former VP Dan Quayle. Quayle reportedly talks Pence down from any thought of giving Trump what he wants, namely the nullification of the 2020 election result. That’s right – Dan Quayle as the savior of democracy. Who would have guessed it?

Hands across the water

Now, I’m not suggesting that the Quayle call isn’t scary – it is, as we came very close to a coup. More disturbing, though, is the passage about Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair General Mark Milley taking steps to separate a psychotic president from the means of starting a war. If true, this adds another layer to Trump’s plan to stay in power indefinitely, and a particularly toxic one at that.

This is what the pundits call “pulling a Schlesinger,” in reference to Nixon’s late-stage meltdown and Defense Secretary James Schlesinger’s orders to the Pentagon not to follow Nixon’s commands. (Scarborough used the example of Kissinger during the 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict, telling allies not to freak out … though to suggest Kissinger was a steady hand on the tiller is kind of a reach). It’s kind of worse than that, though. Milley’s contention was that Trump was toying with starting a war against China in order to distract the public into allowing him to cling to power. That’s just nuts, and not at all out of character, as previously noted.

Best laid plans

I think it’s fair to say that Trump became fond of the office of the presidency and all the power and protection it afforded. He most certainly did not want to let it go. I wasn’t the only one who thought throughout 2020 that Trump wouldn’t leave if he lost. And now it looks like he had a plan for doing so.

Fortunately, the plan broke down at every level. But someone around Trump is paying close attention to this issue. The ex-president is pushing for replacing pretty much all of the officials who stood in his way last year. He might not end up the direct beneficiary of these moves, but someone in his party will.

Already, the cries of fraud are rising from the smouldering ruins of California’s recall effort. That is 100% the playbook for the GOP now – yell fraud, like the thief who cries “Thief!” We’ll have to see how far they can get with this strategy.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.