P.M. Carpenter

Trump's sleepy kickoff campaign

Have you ever seen a more lackluster, exhausted, spiritless kickoff to a presidential campaign?

He really sounds as though he's thrilled to be back in the Palmetto State, no?

If Trump is to have any chance at the GOP nomination, that chance will be left up to still-potential competitors. He can win only by waddling amidst a sea of primary candidates, pulling out bare plurality wins because of the severely fractured vote.

Which is the way he won in 2016. Most primiary-voting Republicans voted for someone other than Donald J. Trump.

So far, his competitors seem determined to help him on his way to the nomination. They include Ron DeSantis, Glenn Youngkin, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Tim Scott, Mike Pompeo, Larry Hogan, Chrises Christie and Sununu, Ted Cruz and Kristi Noem. Yet others are likely pile into the fray as well. 

Only one of them has the muscle to beat Trump — DeSantis. The rest of the gang is hopeless; each would be better off if he or she simply lobbied the Florida governor for the veep slot, which is where one of them will land anyway, should DeSantis gain the nomination. (Trump's probable sidekick would be the indefatigably gibbering Kari Lake.)

But party discipline is history. There was a time when both major parties selected their preferred presidential candidate — all others were unwelcome. Today, each pol is a power base unto himself, with his own fundraising operation, his own media consultants and pollsters, his own surrogates and a gaggle of flatterers whispering sweet presidential nothings into his ear.

The most entertaining of the lot is the evangelical pol who assures his audiences that God shall take him to the White House. Remember Mike Huckabee? Pat Robertson? Does God even remember them? Not once did I hear their post-primary reasons for the Creator's seeming disinterest in their candidacy.  

At any rate, the silliest of seasons is upon us. Enjoy this one. Because if Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis wins the White House, this may be the last presidential campaign we ever see.    

I should say right off, I really tried to postpone asking for your financial support at least until February. But I can't make it. I'm now having to substitute teach whenever I'm free of unwanted medical appointments for the day, and this work has the unfortunate effect of cutting into a lot of writing I'd prefer to be doing rather than babysitting rowdy middle schoolers. That hurts worse; the time away from sharing thoughts on current affairs with you. (You might have noticed I posted today's two pieces simultaneously, at about 7 a.m., a real time-squeeze. I awoke at 4 a.m. to read the papers, research and write the posts, and then get off to work. I try my best to get something written each day.) So here I am, asking for your support — again, and sooner than I had planned. Forgive me, but numbers are intractable things, and the financial numbers propping up this site are woefully limping along. Please contribute today simply by visiting the Make A Donation button in the sidebar. Contributing is a fast, easy process. And, as always, you will have my sincerest thanks. —PM 

Palestinians armed with "stones and firecrackers" battle Israeli bullets and bombs

What's now occurring in the West Bank and other illegally occupied Palestinian land is a classic case of asymmetric warfare, if, indeed, "warfare" can describe violence between neolithic combatants and soldiers armed with modern weapons, including jet-fueled pterodactyls that drop bombs.  

The asymmetry is, no doubt, one reason why Palestinians see themselves not as "victims" of right-wing Israeli governments, but as enslaved people. Military occupations are rarely conducive to peace, as Nazis discovered in France and Americans learned in Afghanistan. Slaves revolt.

Also infuriating to those in bondage is this type of reporting: "Recent Palestinian attacks ... have targeted Israeli settlements and settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The settlements are considered illegal under international law and by much of the international community."

They're not considered illegal. They are illegal. After a New York City bank robbery, does the Times report that the act is "considered" illegal? 

"The [most recent] violence comes as Israel's new government, the most right-wing administration ever, has signaled even tougher actions against the Palestinians." Bebe is back, lavishly praising his country's incomparable firepower as did George W. Bush after the U.S. defeated Saddam's pathetic, ragtag Iraqi army. One would think they'd be embarrassed to hail such a mismatch, but in politics, shame is a scarce commodity.

Prime Minister-on-an-official-lam Bebe Netanyahu's equally far-right minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, seems to believe that Israel's shock troops are just too constrained by law. Hence he has advocated "open-fire regulations" when confronting Palestinians armed only with "stones and firecrackers." Ben-Gvir also desires immunity from criminal prosecution for reckless, homicidal security forces.

Even Israel's military leaders oppose such changes, and so they remain unimplemented. The security minister's recommendations, however, reveal the government's deadly, take-no-prisoners approach. Palestinians have noted that Israeli soldiers in the West Bank already possess "near total impunity." 

What Israel's far-right government is doing is freeing the military and police to execute more arrests of Palestinians, to loosen regs on search-and-seizure raids, and to speed gun licensing for Israeli citizens. All of which, as the Times writes, will "further inflame the situation and stoke violence."

The violence now raging in the West Bank and Jerusalem resulted from an Israeli military raid on Thursday, which killed nine people. The government's answer is to stage more raids. The pitiable Palestinian Authority called the killings "a massacre" and pledged to file a U.N. complaint and heave this one atop many others already piled before the International Criminal Court.  

Today, a Palestinian man was shot and killed outside an illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank, and Israeli settlers there have "carried out nearly 150 attacks on Palestinians and their properties across the region."

What does the U.S. State Department have to say about the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem's infinite carnage? "With both Israeli and Palestinian leaders, the secretary [is underscoring] the urgent need for the parties to take steps to de-escalate tensions in order to put an end to the cycle of violence that has claimed too many innocent lives." That should settle matters. 

Peter Beinart, probably the most astute Jewish observer of all things Israeli and Palestinian, writes in his newsletter that he is "frustrated with a lot of what I read about American foreign policy in general and Israel-Palestine in particular. I don’t think the US possesses any inherent right to run the world. If America wants moral authority, it must earn it. And I believe that the best way to secure the safety of the Jewish people, my people, is through equality and justice for Palestinians."

His premise is so prima facie as to make Occam's Razor seem complicated. One reels at the U.S.'s refusal to coerce Israel to withdraw from illegally occupied Palestinian lands, for to support the occupation is to mock our "moral authority." Coercion might fail, but at least we would have tried to right several wrongs. 

Beinart's other endless battle is that of sorting out allegations of antisemitism — based on criticism of Israel's government — from the real thing. Last month, in a discussion with the Times' Tom Friedman, Beinart smartly observed that "the conversation about antisemitism has had a tendency to exceptionalize antisemitism and disassociate it from other questions of bigotry against other people. Not to center the question that the point that antisemitism is wrong, because bigotry—to deny the dignity and humanity and equality of any group of people—is wrong. Instead, what happens I think often is antisemitism is discussed in isolation."

For that matter, Palestinians, as are all Arabs, are Semites. Thus Israel's assaults on the Palestinian people could be branded antisemitic. They are not, however, for that would be a contradiction of a term. Rather, the Israeli government is hegemonic.

And the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem's violence will persist as long as Israel's hegemony persists. It really is as simple as that.  

In 20 years, will Putinism be seen by Russians as they now see Stalinism?

Former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul asks, "Are we seeing the beginning of the end of Putinism?" The suffix is more significant than its proper noun, for if the latter were abruptly removed, a like-minded hardcore nationalist would only step into his place. Russia's more distant trajectory is McFaul's targeted question.

But first, Putin himself must demonstrate that his authoritarian, warmongering style of governance is out of sync with the long-term interests of Russia — i.e., the Russian people. And so far, he's been doing a bang-up job of it.  

Consider this contrast. Why did FDR keep Gen. Dwight Eisenhower as his Allied Commander in Europe? Simple. Because we were winning. President Putin, however, just 17 days ago canned Gen. Sergei Surovikin, who held his job as commander in Ukraine for a mere three months. "The only reasonable conclusion," notes McFaul, is that "Putin understands that Russia is losing." 

There are other signs of essence-grasping, if you will. For the first time in 10 years, Putin canceled his year-end news conference, undoubtedly troubled by the prospect of aggressive questions about Ukraine from Russia's otherwise complacent press corps. McFaul also notes his "subdued appearance" at a Moscow cathedral on Orthodox Christmas. And his erstwhile mouthpieces — those rowdy propagandists of recent yore — "sound depressed," observes McFaul.

One, Sergei Markov, summarized the Year of Putin's Unhelpful Lord thusly: "The USA was the main winner.... Especially Biden." A prominent newspaper reporter said on a talk show that Russia's — rather, Putin's — "special military operation" has failed in achieving any of its goals, as initially announced. And a former Putin adviser, Sergei Glazyev, said in public that Russia has neither a clear objective, a sound ideology, nor the resources to win a war against the West. (The last being Nazi Germany's rolling downfall.) 

Ambassador McFaul expects Putin to hang on — but not as an "all-powerful and all-knowing leader," because he'll never recover from his monumental miscalculations in Ukraine. 

About that — Putin's hanging on, that is — I'm not as convinced as McFaul. I'm no professional Kremlinologist, but some familiarity with Russian history and a few intestinal instincts suggest to me that the Federation's president could go down much as the USSR's premier did in 1964 — not, however, as is popularly thought, because John Kennedy embarrassed Nikita Khrushchev in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Foreign affairs had little to do with Khrushchev's removal. Instead, the peasant-as-premier had increasingly gotten on his colleagues' nerves. Khrushchev had a habit of being stubborn, arbitrary and singularly disagreeable in his governing style. He had also constructed a massive bureaucracy accountable to him only, rendering party members and the party itself less influential. As well, Khrushchev fancied himself a crackerjack agriculturalist, which had the unfortunate effect of catapulting Russia into a domestic crisis of food shortages.  

These factors — these homegrown factors — combined and conspired against Khrushchev, leaving Leonid Brezhnev to lead a quiet palace coup. No gaudy stabbing, no unseemly, late-night firing squad, not even a primetime show trial. The conspirators just shipped the old boy off to a rustic retirement. (Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be [further] run / Along [Khrushchev's] hills the setting sun — Lord Byron)

Now Vladimir is behaving as a Nikita². He has incurred Western wrath, resulting in sanctions, thus displeasing the homefolk — and their displeasure is going to become much, much more intense. He's been ruling as a one-man party — stubbornly, arbitrarily and rather disagreeably. His puppetry may extend downward to the vast Russian bureaucracy, but laterally it is pissing off the Kremlineers. All which could lead to a quiet palace coup (assuming there is someone in Moscow's upper circles as stealthy and wily as Mr. Brezhnev.)  

Furthermore, Putin's troubles, unlike Khrushchev's, are directly tethered to his foreign affairs, which are in a bloodbath of shambolic blundering. It wasn't enough for Putin to botch things on the homefront in this way or that; he had to double down on maladministration by remaking Ukraine as a martyr state and ostracizing Russia. And now it's quite unlikely that he'll ever see military victory on Ukraine's battlefields.    

Last, writes McFaul, "Putin’s societal support is soft and declining." I happened to read McFaul's dubious assertion just before stumbling on this retweet by commentator Max Boot. After which, one must strike any future references to the dubiousness of Putin's "declining" societal support. For this is earthshaking:

Wow. 4 Moscow residents said *on camera* that they basically welcome the tanks because it will help Ukraine and help end the war. A brave thing to do! Suggests there is less support for the war than Putin pretends. https://t.co/0RiVakksZ0

— Max Boot 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@MaxBoot) January 28, 2023

Those courageous, videoed souls — each of them willing to risk 15 years in prison for high-fiving Ukraine's new tanks rather than watching more young Russian men go to their deaths — are the most powerful testament yet not only to Putin's softening public support, but to his forehead-stamped expiration date. 

McFaul concludes with: "The most likely scenario is Putin will remain in control for the near future, albeit discredited and diminished.... [But] even if the process of unwinding begins in earnest only once he is out of power, Putin’s colossal failure in Ukraine could well be the beginning of the end of Putinism." 

My emphasis. Because for global peace and a sustained world order, it's Putinism more than Putin that has to go, just as Trumpism in the United States is more poisonous than Trump himself. 

A former insider on Trump's "journey" - oh, the irony

A brief, rather amusing note.

Yesterday, while in the car listening to BBC news, I heard the tail end of an interview with Mick Mulvaney, one of Trump's numerous chiefs of staff and a former congressman from South Carolina. The interviewer, evidently, had asked Mulvaney for his opinion about Trump's acute unraveling of mind. 

Mulvaney answered that the former president's advisers had once been of first-rate stuff, such as Chief of Staff John Kelly, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. Hence Trump's idiosyncracies, peccadilloes and frightful eccentricities were kept largely in check.

But today, said Mulvaney, his top advisor is a former heroin addict who's now a pillow salesman. 

And that's a quote. 

Mulvaney neglected to mention that, as a congressman, he was a part of the incoming 2011 Tea Party caucus which agitated for prolonged shutdowns of the federal government, or that he was a founding member of the Freedom Caucus, a loose association of dissociative goons who have extorted the House speakership, insisted on seating the chamber's most unhinged members on the most important committees, and are about to drive the United States Treasury into bankruptcy, default and globally reverberating calamity.

And yet Mulvaney, a youthful mayhem addict turned snake-oil salesman, wound up as a White House chief of staff.

Where he sees a psychotic break in Trump and his management affairs, I see the starkest of continuity — which launched well before Trump's ascendence.  

A spring offensive. Ukraine's or Russia's?

Ten days ago the Daily Beast was reporting on Vladimir Putin's plans for a massive spring offensive. Today the publication is hedging, reporting that "Russia is building up a network of fortifications and trenches along the front in Ukraine" — because the Kremlin fears that Ukraine is planning a massive spring offensive.

It still could be, however, that Russia is "preparing its own offensive to try to seize more Ukrainian land," reports the Beast. The Institute for the Study of War agrees; "Russian forces are preparing for an offensive effort in the spring or early summer of 2023," its assessment taken from the Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate. Ukraine itself has been coy about its plans.

For the world's spectators — far far worse, for targeted innocents — anticipating springtime in Ukraine is like watching two boxers circling each other in the ring, keeping their gloves up, each looking for telltale mannerisms, pondering his opponent's every shift, and eying opportunities to strike first — or rope-a-dope.

In the Russia-Ukraine contest, the spring season may ultimately bring a knockout. Or it could all be over like lightning, like the second Ali-Liston fight. In the meantime, the world — most of it — is rooting for Muhammad.

Either way, Putin is going to need a lot more troops. The U.S. estimates he has already lost 100,000 men; Norway's estimate is 180,000. A Russian human rights activist claims that of the Wagner Group's 50,000 prison draftees, "40,000 are now dead, missing or deserted." As Politico Europe reports, "It appears it’s only a matter of time before the Kremlin orders another draft to replenish its depleted ranks." 

So much for Putin's core problems.

President Zelensky's are lodged in analysts' assessment that his army is in need of 300 tanks by spring to be effective on the battlefield, whether defensively against a Russian offense or offensively against Russia's defenses. Yet Ukraine will possess only about 40 tanks, some of them Germany's Leopard 2s. Maybe. 

As The Washington Post reports, "the broader package pieced together this week by the United States and other European nations includes a hodgepodge of tank models, each with different delivery times and unique logistical hurdles ... and Ukrainian forces still need to be trained on how to use them."

Says Franz-Stefan Gady of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, “It is unlikely that the Leopard 2 will play a significant role in any spring offensive." Germany simply stonewalled for too long.

The next move in the bloodied ring of the mismatched Russia-Ukraine contest, then, would seem to be Putin's. Another mass conscription could be domestically perilous for the genocidal dictator, especially coming so soon after the last one, which resulted in a mad Russian exodus. It would also signal to everyday Russians that his costly war may endure for years — meaning everyday Russians, too, must endure.

But on paper, at least, throwing several hundred thousand more hapless young Russians into this human meatgrinder could overwhelm Ukrainian troops in the northeast, east and south. Some analysts suspect this was the motivation behind Putin's rather abrupt sacking of Army Commander Sergei Surovikin — "Gen. Armageddon," who turned out to be apocalyptic for Russian troops instead — and re-appointing Gen. Valery Gerasimov. 

The next four months, most likely, will determine one of two eventual outcomes: because of the West's chronically inadequate supplies of necessary armaments for Ukraine, Russian authoritarianism and military aggression triumphed, or a free, democratic, plucky little nation that screamed for Western assistance all along, but always received it too late, won the war anyway.       

For now, the next punch — thrown or withheld — is Vladimir's. 

Sorry I just now had to spend 30 minutes on the phone with Apple support to get a worthless Apple mouse to charge from my worthless Apple MacAir. You have been forewarned. Save yourself. And your money. Apple has gone to shit. 

'Sein Kampf': A university student's struggle with crazed administrators

The Stanford University "incident," notes FIRE — the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression — reminds the free-speech publication of a 2008 Indiana-Purdue Universities occurrence in which campus administrators charged a janitorial employee with racial harassment "for reading a book about defeating — defeating — the Ku Klux Klan." Merely the mention of the KKK, his coworkers grumbled, was intolerably offensive. And so the campus' vastly overpaid, infinitely witless administrators commanded the book-reading employee to cease learning during his breaks.  

On to Stanford, last Friday. It was then that a student snapped a photo of another student reading Mein Kampf. The picture "circulated on campus" — and all hell broke loose. Two campus rabbis emailed the university's Jewish students, seeking "a process of reckoning and sincere repair." The student newspaper, The Stanford Daily, then reported that selfsame witless administrators were working "swiftly" with the two students to "address" the horror of independent reading.

In their email, the rabbis, Jessica Kirschner and Laurie Tapper, opined that "It can be upsetting to hear about incidents like this. Jewish people belong at Stanford, and deserve to be respected by our peers." Added The Stanford Daily: "The filing of the report follows a string of challenges Stanford’s Jewish student community has faced during this academic year." 

Unmentioned by the Daily was the superior challenge faced by at least one student in trying to read a book, which, by the way, as FIRE also notes, has been required reading in a Stanford humanities class and sits in the university's library.

Why was the student reading Mein Kampf? That's the sort of question a Gestapo agent would have asked a German citizen "caught" reading an American tome on the evils of Naziism. In the United States, non-incumbent on citizens are explanations of their reading habits. In 1960, when D.H. Lawrence's 1928 Lady Chatterley's Lover was finally published in the liberated states, many an American read it only in search of its shocking f word. Whatever the philistinism involved, that was nevertheless the reader's business — and no one else's.

What might Stanford administrators next need to "swiftly address"?  Perhaps some literate student on a fine spring day will recline on the campus quad to read Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Oh how the snapshots will ensue, for feminist critics have long despised and denounced the novel, whose moral is that of a wantonly adulterous, spendthrift wife whose iniquities bring her and her husband to ruin. Of such samizdat reading at an institution of ever-lower education, university administrators — who would have made superb Gestapo agents — must be alerted.

The Mein Kampf-reading "incident" was reported via Stanford's Protected Identity Harm system, a modern-day Inquisition chamber that investigates "conduct ... that adversely and unfairly targets an individual or group," whereupon clueless university muck-a-mucks "provide a path to resolution for the affected individuals or communities who need to heal," principally through a "menu" of Northern California-Madmen exercises such as "mediated conversations, restorative justice sessions, or Indigenous circle practices."

Sort of takes your breath away, does it not? So much gibberish in a postmodern age — in which, theoretically and insistent in practice, critical and cultural "standards" are out. Here, however, even though they're "in," the university's Torquemadas have characteristically misidentified the "unfairly targeted individual."

God save us and all college students from do-gooders — who routinely do so much harm.   

More on Shakespeare

So glad to see that Esquire's Charles Pierce is a reader of this site. From his column today, in which he references my morning piece on Nebraska's anti-transgender bill:

"Not even Shakespeare would be safe, as P. M. Carpenter helpfully points out. The law...

"would apply to any show whose 'main aspect [is] a performer which exhibits a gender identity that is different than the performer’s gender assigned at birth using clothing, makeup, or other physical markers; and the performer sings, lip syncs, dances, or otherwise performs before an audience for entertainment.'

That's quite the broad wording. As such, Nebraska's bill would outlaw the public presentation of several Shakespeare plays: "The Merchant of Venice," "As You Like It," and "Twelfth Night." Gone would be Portia as a law clerk, Rosalind as Ganymede, and Viola as Cesario. In Shakespeare's era, female characters were played by cross-dressing males. Today, women actors dressed like men in Omaha or Lincoln would still be banned from performing Shakespeare.

"I'm thinking that thoughts of Twelfth Night were not thick in the chamber of the Unicameral when this law got passed. 'I am not what I am,' as Viola says."

I tried to leave a comment on his page noting that it was Iago (Othello) who said "I am not what I am," which, when read in Shakespeare's context, is a chilling passage. My attempt was unsuccessful, something to do with a pop-up blocker. Perhaps Mr. Pierce will see the editorial correction here. 

Facebook's Emancipation Proclamation for Trump

What, exactly, motivated Facebook to readmit Donald Trump to its site? Has he shown any remorse for inciting an insurrection? Has he forsaken his idiotic lies about a rigged election? Has he said or done anything to redeem himself?

He has, rather, become even more unhinged since his Facebook ban two years ago — schmoozing with QAnon posters on Truth Social, dining with black neoNazis and white nationalists, scribbling incoherent conspiracy theories incubated outside of Q's asylum. 

But Facebook's reasoning in liberating Trump is stated in its Fact-Checking Policies: "Our approach is grounded in Facebook's fundamental belief in free expression, respect for the democratic process, and the belief that, especially in mature democracies with a free press, political speech is the most scrutinized speech there is. Just as critically, by limiting political speech we would leave people less informed about what their elected officials are saying and leave politicians less accountable for their words."

Think Elon Musk and his remark that Twitter's similar ban was "morally bad" (although Politico mystifyingly says Musk's decision was "different" from Facebook's — would not the latter's ruling be deemed at least morally neutral?). 

Some Democrats, such as Jan Schakowsky, declared Facebook's decision "dangerous," since reinstating his account "will only fan the flames of hatred and division that led to an insurrection," said the Illinois representative. The consensus, however, appears to be ... no matter, not to worry. Says Eric Wilson, the managing partner at a Republican investment fund for campaign technology, "The big question mark is, are people going to be as interested in him as much this time around? We’re seeing evidence that there’s not as much enthusiasm for Trump."

And free speech advocates are saying what you'd expect them to say: "In weighing the impact on the speech environment, ultimately, it’s better to let his speech back," says Katie Fallow of Columbia University's Knight First Amendment Institute. "Keeping him off is not going to fix the presence of misinformation on social media platforms.” The ACLU's Anthony Romero says it's "the right call..... [Social media firms] should err on the side of allowing a wide range of political speech, even when it offends."

The Washington Post's Will Oremus writes a smart piece, one similar in sentiment to Eric Wilson's: Trump's reinstatement feels "oddly anticlimactic.... At this point, there’s a sense in which Facebook and Trump almost feel made for each other. Both appeal chiefly to boomers and Gen-Xers; both are fountains of falsehoods, sensationalism and simplistic memes. Both appear to have passed the peak of their powers." 

As for Trump himself, his reaction to Facebook's announcement was typically coquettish and worthy of another CAPPED,  THREE-exclamation-pointer: "Such a thing should never again happen to a sitting President, or anybody else who is not deserving of retribution! THANK YOU TO TRUTH SOCIAL FOR DOING SUCH AN INCREDIBLE JOB. YOUR GROWTH IS OUTSTANDING, AND FUTURE UNLIMITED!!!"

The underlying message of Trump's thought-disjointed post was that he'll not return to Facebook anytime soon, but return he shall. He needs the site for scamming funds from rustic Know-Nothings who think Kyane West is one of Florida's southern isles.   

As a free speech enthusiast myself, I agree with Ms. Fallow and Mr. Romero. Trump's re-addition to Facebook (and probably Twitter) cannot possibly poison social media any more than the putrid servings of disinformation swill already on it.

And Romero's comment merely echoes the logic of Louis Brandeis as published in a 1913 Harper’s Weekly article, three years before his Supreme Court appointment: "If the broad light of day could be let in upon men’s actions, it would purify them as the sun disinfects."

Brandeis may have been excessively optimistic in his expectations of sunlight and disinfection. He neglected to calibrate the potential of an ill-informed, civically reckless, unrepublican electorate. But censorship is not, and cannot ever be, a serviceable or "morally good" remedy.

If we as a nation are to plunge into Trump-style chaos, nihilism and rank authoritarianism, we should do so openly and with whatever aforethought we can muster. No excuses. The klaxons were there, all around us in social media, in news reporting and bund rallies.

In short, we knew what we were getting ourselves into, whether by voting for it or staying home on Election Day.

So let Donald Trump jibber-jabber like the bloated Joe Goebbels he is on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and every other social media embarrassment. He, or Ron DeSantis or Glenn Youngkin, won't decide the 2024 election. Only we can derail America.    

What does Nebraska have against Shakespeare?

Plenty. Although the Cornhusker State's antipathy toward the greatest writer of the English language is not immediately recognizable.

A bit of background. Several states — red states, of course — have proposed more than 150 anti-transgender bills that ban, for instance, "transition care (not just surgery, but counseling and the like) into young adulthood" and teachers using pronouns that match a student's gender identity, while also mandating that school officials "'out transgender students to their parents."

Are these states — the usual suspects — proposing these bills because they believe transition counseling or certain pronoun usages are harmful to young people? No. They're doing so because "this is a political winner," as Terry Schilling, president of the conservative American Principles Project, told The NY Times in what was probably an unguarded moment. To such cynically opportunistic minds, anti-transgender mania is but a natural progression of the right's anticritical-race-theory hysteria which it so successfully whipped up.  

But this piece of legislation, in Nebraska, wins the much-coveted Savonarola Prize for witless censorship:   

[It] would apply to any show whose "main aspect [is] a performer which exhibits a gender identity that is different than the performer’s gender assigned at birth using clothing, makeup, or other physical markers; and the performer sings, lip syncs, dances, or otherwise performs before an audience for entertainment."

That's quite the broad wording. As such, Nebraska's bill would outlaw the public presentation of several Shakespeare plays: "The Merchant of Venice," "As You Like It," and "Twelfth Night." Gone would be Portia as a law clerk, Rosalind as Ganymede, and Viola as Cesario. In Shakespeare's era, female characters were played by cross-dressing males. Today, women actors dressed like men in Omaha or Lincoln would still be banned from performing Shakespeare.

My guess would be that the farmer-legislators of Nebraska aren't particularly familiar with the world's greatest plays and greatest playwright, and therefore knew not what they did. But that's the nut of it, is it not? The far right's various cultural campaigns for political profit are carried out with no real knowledge of real culture. The apotheosis of this quasi-fascistic ignorance — book burnings — occurred in Nazi Germany.

And so with each day and each countercultural bill, America's far right looks more and more like ...

The thorn of Mike Pence

You thought you knew what a Q&A session is, but you were wrong, according to Kevin McCarthy

Let's say you ask PseudoSpeaker Kevin McCarthy if it's snowing or raining outside. McCarthy replies, "It's 7:15." This, according to the Taliban 20's imprisoned hostage and main squeeze, so to speak, is an answer to your question.  

This is no exaggeration. 

Yesterday, at a press conference, McCarthy told a reporter that he removed Adam Schiff from the House Intelligence Committee because he repeatedly lied to the American people. So why is McCarthy appointing the youthful granddaddy of all liars (barring Trump, of course), George Santos, to committees? asked the reporter.

Because "he got elected by his district," said McCarthy. This is the usual method by which one becomes a U.S. representative, with which Adam Schiff also complied. 

Thus, as you might expect, the reporter was unsatisfied. "That's not an answer to my question," she said. To which McCarthy said:  

"Let me be very clear and respectful to you. You asked me a question. When I answer it, it's the answer to your question. You don't get to determine whether I answer your question or not."

We have consumed only 22 days of Kevin McCarthy's two-year(?) term of rhetorical oddities, synaptic misfires and extraordinary blockheadedness. But good God, it already seems like decades. 

'Springtime for Putin and Russia / Winter for Zelensky and Ukraine'

After nearly one long and bloody year of autocratic Russia's brutalization of democratic Ukraine, the West is provisioning President Zelensky's army with tanks, the most common machinery on battlefields since the First World War.

This straining evolution of Western armaments in defense of Western ideals emerged after Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced today that his country would send Ukraine 14 of its roughly 500 Leopard 2 tanks.

Scholz's offer was conditioned on President Biden's pledge to send M1 Abrams as well, which he'll also announce today. The U.S. has roughly 8,000 of these tanks; it will transport 31 of them. Like Germany, Britain is sending 14 of its tanks, the Challenger 2.

Other NATO nations are being encouraged to send their German-made Leopards to Ukraine. Finland, the Netherlands and Spain have agreed, while Poland has most aggressively pushed for providing Ukraine with what can only be called the most essential battlefield resource.

The total count so far comes to 59 tanks — although America's Abrams may be stuck in the pipeline for years, say U.S. officials — with some yet-determined number coming from around Europe. Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine's top military commander, has estimated that his army needs about 300 tanks. (And about 600 armored fighting vehicles.) 

Spring will arrive well before Ukrainian soldiers are trained in the use of Leopards and Challengers. As for the Abrams, retired Gen. Robert Abrams — son of the man for whom the tank was named — said: "The time it would take to get there — to be able to build up the supply stockage, to deliver the vehicles, to train the crews, to train the mechanics, to gather everything you’d need — how long would that take? I don’t know, but it ain’t like 30 days, I can tell you that."

Once there and with training completed, however, Gen. Abrams said the Abrams' 120-millimeter gun "will shred" Russian tanks. "It’ll put a hole in anything," he added. 

This assumes there will be a functional Ukrainian army in existence after spring. Russia is universally expected to launch a massive new offensive, possibly before spring's arrival, while frozen ground can better facilitate its movement of tanks. 

Put another way, Western tanks — and long-range rocketry and air defenses (and fighter jets) — should have been on their way to Ukraine at least by the night of 24 February 2022. Western intelligence should have, and perhaps did, put the date much sooner.

For this is not only an existential war for Ukraine; it's an East-West throwdown between belligerent authoritarianism and peaceful self-governance. What's more, China is watching. And Western timidity is no doubt encouraging President Xi.

Of all the remarkably asinine reasons for the West's diffidence in defending an Eastern European democracy so recently freed from Soviet totalitarianism, this one, repeated today in The NY Times and repeated elsewhere ad infinitum, is the most vacuous: "Ukraine’s allies have sought to strengthen its military without prompting Russia to further escalate the war." 

Reading that passage with no prior knowledge of recent history, one would think that Ukraine had invaded Russia.

The West mustn't aggravate Vladimir? Because it fears escalation? Putin took escalation to the apex of international confrontation when he crossed sovereign Ukraine's borders with nearly 200,000 Russian soldiers, and has since been mass-murdering and terrorizing Ukrainian citizens.

The latter must be dumbstruck when they read of the West's worry.   

Wagner Group criminals are awarded free land - for all eternity

One thing can be honestly said in Vladimir Putin's favor: He is doing his part to rid the world of murderers, rapists, robbers and drug traffickers.

Videos have emerged of their burial plots in a massive grave near the small, southwestern Russian town of Molkin. The deceased were members of the mercenary Wagner Group — soon to be designated by the U.S. as a transnational criminal organization — recruited from Russian prisons to fight in Ukraine.

The dead bargained that they could survive Ukrainian onslaughts and the Russian military's indifference to their welfare in exchange for commuted sentences. They bargained poorly, as their vastly expanding cemetery shows. Most were in killed in action in eastern Ukraine, where the heaviest fighting is now taking place. As the battles intensified, the graveyard grew in size. 

U.S. officials estimate that the Wagner Group's casualties run in the thousands, and that "90 percent of them are inmates who were recruited [from prisons]." The group's leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is shown in the video piously crossing his unChristian chest. 

Of course the cemetery fails to show the number of casualties who were cremated. And so to "the thousands" one must add thousands more. The burial plots shown have increased in numbers "to nearly seven times that seen on satellite imagery just two months ago," reports the Times.

Of Yevgeny Prigozhin, popularly known as "Putin's chef," who encouraged Wagner's criminals to throw away any chance they had of redemption in this life, Olga Romanova, a Russian activist who counsels convicts, says: "He works a lot on heroifying — it’s now a sort of Russian policy: why hold onto this life, when you can die so heroically. Death is not horrific. What’s horrific is the opposite: not to die for the Motherland."

Counterarguments from the dearly departed were unavailable at the time of this writing. 

"I did a GREAT job as President"

Paraphrasing H.L. Mencken, "Sixty cents reward to anyone who will offer one good excuse for Donald Trump's existence." And the winner is: Donald Trump.

This is quite the list for a twice-impeached president who engineered the needless deaths of thousands of Americans plus a devastated economy, and who now sits at the base of a coming avalanche of felony charges — all stemming from his four years of magnificence. Imaginary accomplishments abound, from "strong borders" to "total respect all over the world."

Though narcissism is a formidable disorder, popular gullibility is more powerful. An Emerson College poll (A-) released yesterday shows that in the silverback Republican primary race, Trump leads Ron DeSantis, 55% to 29%. Some of his sizable edge may come from a sense of inevitability; the poll also found that 55% of Republican voters "expect Trump to be the nominee, regardless of whom they support." For DeSantis, the corresponding percentage is 35. 

I, for one, expect these numbers to flip. Big money is bailing on Trump and DeSantis is still busy Stalinizing Florida; he has yet to dazzle the national rabble with assurances of DeSantian authoritarianism. Once the rubes comprehend that he's as recklessly unprincipled as Trump, they'll warm to him en masse.

This is the preemptive juncture at which convention demands that the obvious be written: We're a long way off from a Republican nomination and — brace — things could change. That said, and as things now stand, let us briefly ponder the decadence of the American electorate.

In the Emerson poll, Trump leads President Biden, 41% to 44%. These numbers reflect a 3-point gain for Trump and a 4-point loss for Biden. Essentially a tie also exists (given margins of error) in a Biden-DeSantis showdown, 40% to 39%.

Most voters contend that there's nothing like the state of the economy when it comes to determining their presidential preference. This is utter hogwash. Under Biden the economy has thrived and under Trump it cratered. What actually determines their vote is the relative presence of indefatigable ignorance and bigotry, both of which Trumpers possess in spades.      

Hence the above percentages are unlikely to change except marginally — same as in 2020, 2016, 2012, 2008 und so wieder. You can lead a jackass to water, but you can't make him think.    

The same stagnation of numbers would most likely hold true for a Biden replacement, since partisanship — not personality or progress— drives modern American politics. Marginally offsetting this lamentable state of affairs would be a major Biden offensive this summer. Fence-sitters harbor badly depleted memory banks, thus blitzkrieging reminders of Trump's four abominable years are advised.     

Otherwise, many of those fence-sitters might be persuaded by Trump's Truth Social post.