Tag Archives: Trump

Political Rants

Playing (and losing) at the same old game

There was an old saying among politicos in Albany, according to noted New York State Government scholar and CEO of WAMC public radio Alan Chartock. It went something like this: “Don’t break the other guy’s rice bowl.” (I always felt there was some element of latent racism in this saying – why a rice bowl? – but let’s set that aside for a moment.)

This is, in essence, the principle of you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. A legislator will not attack the pet project or campaign funding source of another, and therefore can rely on the same deference from their counterparts. While Chartock’s example is specific to New York politics, it applied at a national level as well, to some extent, and I think the Democratic leadership still plays by these types of rules. Trouble is, their opponents have changed, and they have not changed their tactics in response.

No Justice, No Peace

Honestly, I sometimes have to slap myself across the face to be certain I’m not having some weird, surrealistic dream. The leadership of the Republican party attempted a coup d’etat at the beginning of this year, and the Democrats are treating it like it’s some run-of-the-mill corruption issue. Let me say that again: TRUMP AND THE REPUBLICANS TRIED TO OVERTHROW THE CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT, and thus far NO PLOT LEADER HAS BEEN HELD ACCOUNTABLE.

This is not business as usual. Whatever you think of the U.S. government (and I have plenty of criticism for it), the degree to which we have an elected government is a function of the Constitution, and that was very nearly set aside. Trump was actively lobbying state governments to throw out the legitimate results of the 2020 election. He sent an army of thugs into the Capitol to stop the tabulation of the electoral vote and take revenge on the clueless vice president. Again, this is NOT the usual shit.

Proud to be an authoritarian

This all wouldn’t be so bad if it were confined to just a cabal of nutcase politicians and hangers-on. The problem we have, though, is that propaganda works very well. All of that blather about supposed fraud risks associated with mail-in voting has convinced a large number of Americans that the last election was stolen. They are not the majority, but there are enough of them to ensure that the next insurrection will be successful.

Some of these people are truly out of their minds. I mean, we’ve all heard about the Q-anon types who gathered in Dallas last week, anticipating the arrival of John F. Kennedy Jr. They are part of a broader death cult that fantasizes about overthrowing the government, installing Trump as a dictator, and executing people associated with the Democratic party, shooting them in the streets. That’s a pretty dark vision to be shared so broadly.

Who you going to call?

The thing is, the police are doing practically nothing about these people. Some of them are even threatening election officials with murder, torture, you name it, and the cops are AWOL. The FBI is making noises, but little else. They are under very little pressure from Democratic office-holders to hold people like this accountable. It’s obvious that law enforcement do not see these people as a threat. It’s up to our elected officials to change their minds about that. We need to urge them to do so, before these authoritarians act on their warped fantasies.

luv u,

jp

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

Time to do that thing we’ve got to do

Has it been a year already? Mother of pearl. Election day is almost upon us, and the pundits are out in force, telling us what to expect, handicapping races, reminding us of historical trends, etc. We are defenseless against their onslaught of conventional wisdom! How can we stop the madness?

Well, as you can see, I’ve been watching (or at least listening to) way too much cable television. Every election is unique, as much as the talking heads want us to think otherwise. And while I know many of my friends on the left don’t like to focus on voting, I still feel strongly that we need to take the time to do it if only to stop the reactionaries from running everything into the ground.

Anyway, for those who are interested, here are my thoughts on this year’s elections.

Ballot measures in New York

Like most years, I wasn’t aware of any of the ballot measures in New York State this year until a handful of days ago. My sense is that three of them are no-brainers. Ballot measure #2 is a constitutional amendment that gives New Yorkers the right to clean air and clean water. Can’t argue with that. Measures #3 and #4 are about election law, the first eliminating the waiting period on registration (allowing for same-day registration) and #4 loosening the restrictions on absentee voting. Again, all good.

Measure #1 is kind of a mixed bag, but I think on balance it’s worth supporting. It would allow the legislature to pass a redistricting plan with a simple majority rather than 2/3. In a state run by Democrats, I think that’s a good idea, given that Congressional Democrats will be losing seats in red states like Texas. (Fixing gerrymandering has to happen on a national level; until then, no unilateral disarmament, please.)

Measure #5 is about access to lower courts in New York City in civil cases. I don’t have a strong grasp on the implications of this one, so I can’t really recommend one way or the other, but I am likely to support this as well.

Yes, Virginia, there is an election

One of the things pundits love telling us is that Virginia always chooses a governor from the party that did not win the White House in the previous year’s election. This year, Republicans are hitting hard on what they now call “critical race theory” in public schools, depicting red-faced parents scared of having their children read Toni Morrison. Democrats, on the other hand, are running Terry McAuliffe, who is …. Terry McAuliffe.

Okay, I know it’s hard to get enthusiastic about an old Clinton money-man like McAuliffe. The thing is, we don’t have the luxury of relying on enthusiasm every time an election comes up. I know you’re probably sick of hearing me say it, but we neglect voting at our own peril. We’re living with the results of having sat out multiple elections in sufficient numbers to ensure the victory of reactionaries. Trump was a manifestation of that failure, and the Republican party is the party of Trump – not because he took it over, but because it created him as a national figure.

Don’t say uncle

There’s no question but that the Biden budget agenda is not sufficient. And yet, it’s better than what it would have been had we not pushed Bernie to the front of the pack. And there’s no question but that the leadership of the Democratic party is fucking things up across a range of issues. But that’s because we haven’t elected enough progressives.

The fact is, we’ve got more progressives in Washington now than we’ve ever had previously, and it shows. And instead of getting frustrated over how difficult it is to pass meaningful legislation, we should redouble our efforts to expand those numbers in the next election cycle, and the one after that, and the one after that.

Yes, we need to do a lot, lot more than just vote. But we need to vote every freaking time, particularly now that we are seriously under the climate change gun. There’s simply no choice.

luv u,

jp

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

Albright: He always told the truth

Former General Colin Powell died this week of complications from COVID-19. I’m sure you’ve heard this about a million times by now. You’ve probably also heard that he was a hero, a man of great stature, an inspiration, etc. I can tell you that a lot of hagiographic remembrances came floating up from the television on Monday and Tuesday.

I don’t think it will surprise any readers of this blog that I was not a fan of the former Secretary of State. Yes, like many on the left, I never forgave him for his Feb 5, 2003 performance at U.N. headquarters in New York – a key moment in the rush to the Iraq invasion. (Some may recall that they draped Picasso’s Guernica during Powell’s presentation, which was just a little too on-the-nose.) But his career had a lot of bloody patches.

Spinning from the beginning

Powell was a Vietnam veteran. He did, actually, play a small role in concealing the My Lai massacre, suggesting that the story was unrealistic because Americans and Vietnamese had such a great rapport. What? (For more on that love fest, I suggest Nick Turse’s Kill Everything That Moves.) This has been kind of a consistent pattern in Powell’s career – deflection from the facts and subservience to power.

He served in various capacities during the Reagan administration, working closely with Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger. When Weiberger was under scrutiny by the Iran-Contra special prosecutor, Powell helped the Secretary conceal his knowledge of that operation by initially supporting Weinberger’s contention that he didn’t keep a diary. (Powell later admitted that he observed Weinberger writing in a book or tablet that he kept on his desk.)

Worthy adversaries

One of the Powell sound bites the corporate media never tires of playing is the General’s comments at the start of the Gulf War: “First we’re going to cut it off. Then we’re going to kill it.” The “it” he’s talking about was a third-world army principally comprised of conscripts. The U.S. military did just what Powell said, killing thousands of Iraqi soldiers in full retreat along Route 80 from Kuwait – the “Highway of Death”.

Of course, his most notorious failing was in laying out the case for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Most of the media describes this case as having fallen apart in the years that followed. Actually, the cobbled-together garbage that Powell handed out that day was debunked almost immediately, and the truth was available to anyone willing to see/hear it. That was immaterial to Powell – like many senators, he was thinking of his political future, not the human cost of what was being contemplated.

Mythmaking in America

The Trump phenomenon has brought many political dynamics into stark relief. But one of the most troubling effects of his presidency is the tendency to frame any conservative alternative to him as virtuous. This is what’s been done with regard to Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, etc. Powell was ahead of all of them, frankly. It largely involves reputation laundering on the part of media figures. We saw a lot of that this week.

When Madeleine Albright appeared on Morning Joe a few days back, her closing comment was that Powell “always told the truth.” It’s a little hard to know what to do with that. It made me think back to that moment I saw at the start of the Iraq war, when Powell mischaracterized the testimony of an Iraqi defector, Hussein Kemal. I had just read the transcript, and I have to think he had seen it in some form. The man just freaking lied about what it said, straight up.

If you can make Colin Powell into a man of peerless virtue, what value does truth have?

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.