Tag Archives: Republican Party

Political Rants

Unfit.

In the main, there are two things that the ongoing impeachment trial of Donald John Trump bring to my mind. One is that this man is perhaps the least suited individual in America for the high office he now holds. The second is that the office of the presidency is far too powerful for a single person to hold, and that if we do not act to constrain that power, we will be in the same situation again before we know it. So in a certain respect, you can say that the Trump administration was an accident waiting to happen, made inevitable by the weak constraints on executive power, particularly in the era of U.S. global dominance following World War II (i.e. the era we remain in now).

Brother Matt took a whack at the hyper paternalistic imperial presidency back in 1991 with his song, “World War II”, the refrain to which went like this:

Daddy likes things done in a big way
Daddy's back with bargains from D-Day
Daddy chose a game for the lads to play
Daddy showed his hand with Enola Gay

We have had mad men at the helm before, to be sure. I’m thinking Nixon towards the end of his Watergate troubles, certainly, but even before, during the terror bombing of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. The crazy, drunk Nixon whose Defense Secretary told fellow staffers to ignore the president’s orders – that Nixon was what people typically term crazy. The mad bomber president, not so much. It is emblematic of the imperial presidency that while Nixon could get away with dropping massive ordinance on defenseless populations, his administration was ultimately brought down by his attempts to spy on his political opponents. The power dynamic is obvious.

The inevitable impeachment ensues.

Why is Trump different? Well, if nothing else, he demonstrates the degree to which even the weak constraints we thought we had had on the presidency were only voluntarily complied with – that these were traditions and norms, not laws. Every president in my lifetime had some substantive exposure to constitutional law and therefore felt compelled in a minor way to observe some limits to their power. Not this president. He knows nothing about constitutional law (inasmuch as he knows nothing, period), and so he acts outside of the usual bounds, and there appears to be no remedy or even accountability for that. I think I’ve mentioned previously on this blog, I had tacitly assumed that the weak controls on the presidency were statutory in some respect, but apparently not so. This needs to change.

If a Democrat wins this year, I’m sure there will be plenty of cooperation across the political spectrum for constraining the presidency (in ways that can easily be reversed by Republicans). But the only truly reliable constraint is an energized, organized citizenry. Unless we put down our electronic devices and start working together on these weighty issues, we can’t expect any better from any future president.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Borders.

If there’s one thing about the Trump administration that’s consistent, it’s their laser focus on immigrants – specifically the ones with dark skin or non-christian religious beliefs. This is basically Trump’s political brand, though it’s nothing new in American (and particularly Republican party) politics. This specific strain of bigotry has made its way into national elections for decades, most noticeably since the early 1990s and the Buchanan direct mail scam …. I mean, presidential campaign, right through right-wing hacks like Tom Tancredo and up to the now-sainted (by the phony “resistance”) Senator-elect Mitt Romney, who ran to the right of his fanatical GOP competitors on immigration.  So it makes little sense to assign this tendency exclusively to Trump – scapegoating immigrants is central to Republican politics, and as for Democrats, Obama was the deporter-in-chief, despite his uplifting rhetoric.

These are are the people you're supposed to fearThat said, it’s hard to deny that Trump  takes a certain special joy in his work, promoting the basest forms of ignorance, painting refugees as criminals, rapists, etc. The furor around the immigrant caravans from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador ranks among the most despicable initiatives thus far in his putrid presidency, right alongside family separations. This is, of course, a contrived “crisis” intended to gin up the Republican’s racist base in time for the mid-term elections as well as set the stage for clashes at the southern border. They did this by prohibiting asylum seekers from applying for asylum anywhere other than at designated points of entry. This violates the relevant statute (8 U.S. Code section 1158), as asylum seekers are entitled to due process regardless of how they enter the country.

By funneling these refugees to the major border crossings, the President has ensured that there would be a kind of mini refugee crisis in Tijuana. This is all about how it looks on TV, specifically FoxNews. He wants his followers to see hordes of dark people surging toward the border fence, looking angry, being repelled by our brave men in uniform with a generous use of CS gas (a.k.a. chemical weapons). The President thinks this works for him politically, and to a certain extent he is correct. Older white people, pummeled by the gig economy, terrified of losing what little status they have, are susceptible to this anti-immigrant trope along with its sidecar appeals to anti-black, anti-Latino, anti-Muslim sentiments. They want Trump’s wall, and they want him to build it around their lives. Since that’s impossible, they will settle for a TV show about teargassing refugees.

We are way beyond the point of wondering whether this is the kind of country we want to be. We need to stop wondering and start working towards better policy … now.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

One of them.

Weeks like this give the lie to any suggestion that Donald Trump does not reflect the true character of the Republican party. If there has ever been a more nauseating display of fawning over an American president, I have yet to see it. The celebration over the passage of the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” was reminiscent of those bizarre, banana-republic type cabinet meetings where officials take turns falling all over themselves to praise the Dear Leader. This time, it was congressional leaders (many of whom have momentarily taken issue with the president) crowing about what a great legislative partner he is, and Mike Pence, who mostly delivered the national security strategy speech he memorized from earlier in the week. I could see my own Trumpite Representative, Claudia Tenney, in the front row, applauding, gawking at the president in apparent awe, taking snapshots of his ample ass with her phone like some teen fan at a concert.

Where's my Rep? Too close, that's where.The conventional wisdom on talk television, of course, has it that Trump is his own invention; that he sprang fully formed from a crack in the Earth’s crust sometime in 2015; that he was never a conservative but, rather, a “lifelong Democrat”; that his views represent only himself, not the broader party. Total bullshit. Trump is the end-stage product of a Republican party that his been careening to the right for more than 30 years. Sure, he has been in the public eye for that long and longer, as a big-mouth heir to a real estate developer, shameless self-promoter, casino magnate, serial financial failure, and reality show star. America’s right-wing media, its nutcase reactionary movements, and its corporatist Republican party made the very space that he moved into in 2015 as a presidential candidate. He makes perfect sense from that perspective, and almost seems inevitable.

The charge about being a lifelong Democrat, leveled by the likes of Joe Scarborough and others, is perhaps the most laughable. Trump has no ideology other than himself. He was pro-Democrat, mildly, as a real estate developer in New York and New Jersey because the prominent politicians in those states came from the Democratic party. It was a completely transactional relationship; when he began to have national ambitions, he moved away from that and towards his natural place – namely, the core money party, and the one most favored by the KKK (of which his father was once a proud member).

No, the true picture of Trump’s place in the Republican party was illustrated by that moment on Dec. 20, when he was being cheered enthusiastically by the lot of them. Remember in November.

luv u,

jp