Tag Archives: Nixon

Political Rants

Donnie in Nixonland.

Our president offered a little fascist theater performance this week. The resulting spectacle was simultaneously ludicrous and terrifying, as most reality television tends to be (at least for anyone who is sane). Pumped up by his most reactionary advisors – Barr, Stephen Miller, etc. – the Cheeseburgler-in-Chief waddled out to the microphone to deliver a Miller-esque train wreck of a statement, then waddled over to St. John’s Church, freshly cleared by the 82nd Airborne, to have his photo taken while awkwardly clasping a bible. (Not clear that he was happy with the tome they handed him, perhaps preferring an edition with “Holy Bible” written in enormous gold letters on the cover.) This sorry spectacle was had at the cost of gassing, pelting, and beating thousands of peaceful protesters, journalists, and bystanders in an effort to drive them back from the vicinity of the White House.

What did the president gain from this effort? A badly produced propaganda video featuring scenes from his baby elephant walk to the church. (And I mean really bad, like every video they’ve ever made, starting with that laughable intro reel they ran at the 2016 GOP Convention.) He obviously wants to take advantage of the national anti-racist uprising to push a law and order narrative similar to the one used by Richard Nixon and George Wallace in 1968. This sounds a bit like the work of Steve Bannon, though perhaps not clever enough … more Miller’s or Barr’s speed. Honestly, they have little else to run on this year. They obviously blew the COVID-19 crisis, the economy is in the toilet, and Trump shows no interest in expanding his appeal beyond people in white hoods.

Here’s the problem with the 1968 strategy: It’s not 1968. At that time, the ruling party had been in power for eight years. The Vietnam war, vastly expanded by LBJ, was at its peak of violence, and young people in particular were in open revolt over the killing, the draft, etc. It was a much more openly, deeply racist country back then as well, and many Black Americans were only just beginning to get the franchise. What’s more, Nixon was the challenger, not the president. The “I’m going to clean up this mess” gambit doesn’t work if you’re the incumbent. For that to fly, you need to be calling out a party in power whose coalition is divided and hostile to their office holders. That’s not to say that the law and order tactic won’t work – nothing is beyond the scope of possibility these days. But if Trump is once again walking in the footsteps of Richard Nixon, he might want to be careful where he steps.

More than seven hundred billion dollars appropriated this year to spend on the U.S. military, and Trump uses them to liberate Lafayette Park. Worth it?

luv u,

jp

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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

Old glory, old story.

Flag day is next week – as it happens, the very day I’m scheduled for a colonoscopy. (Coincidence?) That said, it has felt like flag month – or even flag year – in this obligatory cheap seat reality show known as the Trump era. Literally must-see t.v., right? This past week we were treated to the hilarious spectacle of our trust-fund baby president with his hand over his heart, faking his way through a martial rendition of God Bless America by what looked like the Marine band. (Bad Lip Reading did a good version of this.) The occasion was Trump’s decision to un-invite the Philadelphia Eagles over the National Anthem “take-a-knee” controversy, which he exploits as a means of race-baiting and working up his bigoted base.

Stand beside her ... This transparent political ploy prompted some complaints among talking heads that this was in some way unprecedented. Nothing could be further from the truth. The national anthem, the flag, all of these superficial patriotic symbols have been used for political purposes pretty much my entire life through. Nixon rolled out the flag all the time, as did Reagan. The now-sainted George H.W. Bush made the pledge of allegiance a kind of litmus test for patriotism during the 1988 election. And protests like flag-burning become a major culture-war issue from time to time, particularly when the Republicans are in power and they have little else to complain about (because they’re getting their way).

So aside from being a far more transparently pathetic pantomime, there’s nothing unprecedented about a president demagoging the flag, the national anthem, etc. Trump is just talking to that 25 to 30 percent of the U.S. population that would follow him off a cliff and then back up the mountain again. He may be a big, greasy, over-privileged ball of shit, but to them he represents the very embodiment of white aggrievement. The bulk of his followers – not all working class by a long shot, by the way – respond to this kind of symbolism as well as his complementary attacks on people of color, with particular attention to those who attain some level of status (like professional athletes).

Reality television has taken over the Republic – that’s kind of new. But speaking as someone who has lived through the Nixon administration, the Iran hostage crisis, 9/11, and more, wrapping abusive politics in the flag is anything but.

luv u,

jp