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Finally got back on; this time let's hope the technical issues are no more. By now it's too late in the day and I'm too pooped to do much of anything writing-wise, but I did want to post this cartoon, from the NY Daily News' Bill Bramhall, which I found very powerful — and even more true.
For a strongman, he sure is weak.
He bows to his generals, he caves to his party, he's led around by Stephen Miller, he grovels before Wayne LaPierre and the N.R.A. They're in charge, not Trump, who said yesterday that "he had spoken with the 'top people' at the N.R.A. … and come away believing that 'they’re ready to do things.'" When it comes to the lives of America's schoolchildren, the N.R.A. acts as the fourth — and most formidable — branch of government. It must be "ready to do things." The would-be authoritarian trembles before the real power: "I don’t think I’ll be going up against" the N.R.A., confessed Trump. Even in the president's exclusive arena of executive orders, his policy, reports the NY Times, is to consider none that might "rile gun control opponents."
On the campaign trail, Trump alone would "fix it" — it being whatever ailed us. In the White House, Trump is a quivering, befuddled, rudderless weakling who couldn't fix his own breakfast.
President Obama took a lot of grief for "leading from behind," as one of his aides unfortunately described it. Whatever it is that Trump is doing, he's doing it from the sidelines. His leadership omits leading in its entirety. From the sidelines, at best he mimics. LaPierre bellowed yesterday that we must "harden our schools" by staffing them with Home Ec teachers packing heat. Minutes later, Trump "us[ed] the term 'harden' more than a dozen times in less than an hour," while endorsing the cretinous idea of arming teachers.
"I don’t want teachers to have guns," clarified Trump. "I want certain highly adept people, people that understand weaponry, guns — if they really have that aptitude," he continued. This, one presumes, would include "adepts" such as Scot Peterson — Stoneman Douglas High school's armed cop who, when the shooting started, "ran to the west side of Building 12 and set up in a defensive position, then did nothing for four minutes until the gunfire stopped." Yet, Peterson's cowardice may have saved lives. Notes the Times' editorial board: "If New York is typical, analyses show that its officers hit their targets only one-third of the time. And during gunfights, when the adrenaline is really pumping, that accuracy can drop to as low as 13 percent." The stray bullets often hit innocent subjects.
But, I guess I just don't understand. "What many people don’t understand, or don’t want to understand, is that Wayne, Chris and the folks who work so hard at the @NRA are Great People and Great American Patriots," tweeted Trump. "They love our Country and will do the right thing." They will do the right thing. The president? He'll sit on the sidelines, waiting to be told what to say and what to do.
So why do I fear this unimaginative patsy so much? I'm afraid his one original, autonomous idea will someday come in the form of a mushroom cloud.
Yesterday Trump asked, in tweeted form (naturally), "Why didn’t Obama do something about [Russian] meddling?"
The president's defensiveness via this facile counteroffensive is enormously popular in the comment sections of right-wing websites. Upon any outsider's mention of L'Affaire Russe, hordes of Trumpeteers will vomit back Trump's fuller tweet nearly verbatim: "If all of the Russian meddling took place during the Obama Administration, right up to January 20th, why aren’t they the subject of the investigation? Why didn’t Obama do something about the meddling? Why aren’t Dem crimes under investigation?"
Mixed throughout these tedious observations are also numerous references to the outsider being an idiot, a moron, a slow-witted Clinton-lover and the like. I have learned, as an occasional commenter myself (a pastime hobby), that right wingers are simply incapable of expressing an opposing opinion (it's always someone else's, namely Trump's) without saturating their remarks with ad hominems. But, I digress.
There's a straightforward answer to the right's question. President Obama did them a huge, thankless favor by not doing "something about the meddling" while Trump's campaign was in progress. He kept largely silent about it so as not to be seen as meddling himself in the presidential campaign, which would have ignited howls of outrage and protest from the right. In short, Obama did what he believed was the prudent, even honorable, thing to do.
Had he done otherwise — had he indeed done something about the meddling as the presidential campaigns proceeded, just as the right now says he should have done — today we'd be hearing, from the right, how utterly and brutally Nixonian President Obama was in 2016.
Which brings us to the second lesson I've learned in commenting on right-wing sites. You can't win; they always have a stock comeback, in which the other side is entirely at fault.
Republican Claudia Tenney of upstate New York, who, in 2016, squeaked into the House with only 44 percent of the vote in a multi-candidate race, is doing some other imitations of Donald Trump as well. That is to say, she's open about being a crackpot.
In a local radio interview, her host noted in a display of the commonplace that more Americans are killed each year in the inner cities than in mass shootings. Rep. Tenney thereupon decided to turn a commonplace into the spectacularly bizarre. "It's interesting," she replied, "that so many of these people that commit the mass murders end up being Democrats." (No doubt they all supported Hillary Clinton, too.) Tenney added, "But the media doesn't talk about that."
CNN, a member of the willfully blind media, got word of Tenney's Trumplike absurdity — and very much wanted to talk about it. Suddenly it was Tenney who turned reticent. She didn't care to talk to CNN, so she sent the network a statement instead, which read:
"I am fed up with the media and liberals attempting to politicize tragedies and demonize law-abiding gun owners and conservative Americans every time there is a horrible tragedy. While we know the perpetrators of these atrocities have a wide variety of political views [which is not what she said], my comments are in response to a question about the failure to prosecute illegal gun crime [which was not what was asked]. I will continue to stand up for law-abiding citizens who are smeared by anti-gun liberal elitists."
Damn that's impressive, in its own twisted kind of way. In a mere 78 words, the Republican congresswoman managed to work in virtuous gun owners, the evil media, virtuous conservatives, the evil courts, virtuous law-abiding citizens and those evil anti-gun liberal elitists. That, in this age of Trump — which is now in its fourth decade — is what passes for Republican analysis of the gun issue.
(Trump would also be proud of Tenney for this: "Last week … she questioned in a radio interview in the wake of Rob Porter's firing from the White House whether the two previous wives who accused Porter of assaulting them should be believed since charges have not been filed." Thus did the congresswoman accuse the abused wives of a felony, since, in Tenney's view, they had lied to the FBI about their mistreatment.)
It should go without saying that a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee reacted rather poorly to Tenney's assessment of mass murderers-as-Democrats, saying it was "unhinged, shameful and disgusting," and adding that Tenney herself is "completely unfit … to serve in Congress." The Washington Post asked Tenney's office about the DCCC's, ahem, counter-assessment, but of course the congresswoman did not wish to talk to the Post, either.
The objection might be raised that devoting a post to one wombat of a (seemingly) insignificant Republican congresswoman is a waste of space and time. To that I would say, except for a couple dozen moderate Republicans who are retiring (fleeing), today the Republican Party is Ms. Tenney — plus 44 percent of NY's 22nd congressional district, as well as roughly 40 percent of voters nationwide.
The good news is that a majority of Americans see the Tenneys as indeed wombatty; the bad news is that the majority isn't pretty much unanimous. The even worse news is that given the sizable minority's temperamental closure, there is no way to get to them — to explain just how "unhinged, shameful and disgusting" they've become.
A lot is being made of Trump's handwritten reminders to actually show some interest in what Parkland, Florida students and parents had to say at yesterday's White House gathering on gun reform. A Washington Post photographer caught this image of his notes, which revealed two of five prompts for Trump, should he find himself in an extemporaneous bind. Almost unbelievably, he required a reminder (No. 5) to say: "I hear you."
Are we surprised? We shouldn't be. Unless Trump is yammering at one of his Bund rallies, where he is free to let loose whole chapters of despicable speech on dirty immigrants and the life and criminal times of Hillary Clinton, he requires meticulous guidance. Ordinarily politicians are at their best when they can just be themselves — "Let Al be Al," that sort of thing. Not in Trump's case. There's always a chance he could say something unimaginably stupid, such as, oh, I don't know, maybe joking about some "Pocahontas" to a group of native Americans?
That, however, is not the point of this post. Which is this. An AP photographer got a shot of Trump's notes from a different angle, which I have reproduced below.
Notice anything unusual (other than his freakishly little fingers)? How 'bout a closeup?
Yes, a monogramed "45." And the Washington Post says nothing?
All I can say is that next time I see a number on Trump, I want it to be eight or nine digits long, right above his left shirt pocket, and in black and white.
The saddest thing is that because I'm the president of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department.
— 2 November 2017
— 21 February 2018
I just read another of Marc Thiessen's hyperventilating defenses of the criminal Trump, "Democrats are crippling America’s response to Russian interference," and I am weary. It takes a lot of stamina to tolerate this former Bush speechwriter's Big Lies, in the mold of both his hero and Sean Hannity. In fact Thiessen is so taxing, I limit my reading of him to roughly once a month. I just don't have the strength — or ignorance — of a Trumpeteer.
Part of what wearies any conscientious reader is in deciding which of Thiessen's Big Lies, in any given column, is the Biggest Lie. After no little labored thought about today's column (which also includes the suggested silliness of Trump's innocence because Mueller hasn't yet indicted him, and the supposedly exonerating fact that Russia's assault on the U.S. began in 2014, before Trump's entrance into the race), I have chosen this:
"Perhaps evidence of collusion between Trump officials and Russia will still emerge. If it does, those officials should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But Trump’s response is not the behavior of someone who is worried that Mueller will find evidence he knowingly engaged in collusion."
The Big Lie often succeeds because it is … BIG. That is, it's so obviously mendacious and enormously fraudulent, people figure that no one would just make it up. There must be some truth to it. To write that Trump's "is not the behavior of someone who is worried that Mueller will find evidence he knowingly engaged in collusion" is such a lie.
What's especially amusing about Thiessen's column today is that right next to his cris de coeur of Trump's innocence act is David Von Drehle's column, titled "For an innocent man, Trump sure does act guilty."
"Surprising as this is in a veteran of showbiz," writes Von Drehle, "Trump seems not to understand how a close-up magnifies every gesture. His jumpiness around the subject of Russia; his hand-wringing over ways to end the investigation; his rhetorical flop-sweat at the mention of the letters F, B and I — all these and more have his audience thinking: Gee, for an innocent man he sure does act guilty."
He sure does. And surely, even Thiessen has noticed. But I guess he's rehearsing to guest-host for Sean Hannity.
I suppose today was among Billy Graham's happiest. "I’ll be glad when the moment comes when the Lord calls me to heaven," he once remarked. "I get tired down here sometimes." That, I can imagine, given the furious pace at which he moved.
Some of his success was as much due to luck as activity. Although he had gained a respectable reputation in evangelical circles by 1949, also in that year "newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst … had decided that America needed a spiritual awakening," notes the Washington Post's obituary. Graham happened to be preaching in Los Angeles and he "caught the eye" of Hearst, who next ordered his editors nationwide to "Puff Graham."
Graham inherited a fundamentalist community that, by the mid-20th century, had been ravaged by overindulgence. "The profession had become badly tarnished … for a variety of reasons," writes the Post, among which "were the rigid fundamentalist religious dogma held up to ridicule in the Scopes 'monkey' trial of the 1920s and the unscrupulous excesses of itinerant evangelists traveling the 'tent-and-sawdust circuit' as portrayed in the Sinclair Lewis novel 'Elmer Gantry.'" I recently read a biography of Clarence Darrow, whose letter from Eugene Debs — about the Scripture-thumping William Jennings Bryan — gives a flavor of the anti-fundamentalist sentiment building at the time. Debs charged that Bryan was a "shallow-minded mouther of empty phrases," a "pious, canting mountebank," a "prophet of the stone age" who was but one in the "age-old rule of crowning frauds, hypocrites, time-servers and scoundrels."
As for "Elmer Gantry" — one of my all-time favorite films, in part because as a wee lad I fell in love with its prostituting femme fatale, Shirley Jones — I wonder if it also affected Graham. From the pulpit, said Burt Lancaster as the fiery Gantry, "I know nothing of theosophy, philosophy, psychology, ideology or any other ology." Said Graham, once, "I’m not here to teach psychology or philosophy or theology."
The most delicious passage in the Post's obit is this: "In 1950, Mr. Graham made his first White House visit, calling on President Harry S. Truman, who was cool to the young evangelist. When Mr. Graham suggested that they 'have a word of prayer' together, the president answered, 'I don't suppose it could do any harm.'"
(Oh, and Graham "was not invited back during the Truman administration.")
A regular feature of Graham's evangelical spiel was, "Are you frustrated, bewildered, dejected, breaking under the strains of life? Then listen for a moment to me. Say yes to the savior tonight, and in a moment you will know such comfort as you have never known." It would have been pleasant had his audiences experienced those metamorphoses. In my experience with evangelical Christians, however, they are far from earthly bliss: calm, collected, uplifted, floating along in the river of life. They are instead petty, judgmental and seemingly miserable.
Still, Billy Graham was more honorable than most at what he did; he managed to steer clear of today's evangelical spitefulness, bigotry and hate. (It's a shame his son failed to catch some of that spirit.) With Graham's passing, who of any note is left in the evangelical community who sounds more like their Savior than Satan?
What is it with the right and conspiracy theories? Why do the latter flow from the former like indictments from Bob Mueller?
The last conspiracy theory — or the closest thing, anyway, to a conspiracy theory — confected on the left was from Bernie Sanders supporters who believed that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee had destroyed Bernie's presidential hopes by secret hook and devious crook. Turned out, Hillary and the DNC had only done what other presidential candidates have done in the past, and in fact Bernie had been offered the same internal arrangements by the DNC. As conspiracy theories go, this one — from nearly two years ago — was rather feeble; I'm not even sure it would qualify as the real thing, since in the beginning, there were at least some grounds to suspect Clintonian skulduggery.
On the right, however, conspiracy theories thrive with absolutely no grounds whatsoever. Mere imagination is required for the right to work itself into the most fantastic frenzies. Indeed its current leader would not be where he is today had it not been for his improvisational huckstering of birtherism — that crackpotted ideal of all conspiracy theories, the notion that Obama's mother had somehow known that her Kenyan son would someday run for the presidency, so he needed some fast and secretive identity-shuffling, as well as a Hawaiian hospital. Stunningly? a majority of Republicans still believe in the truthfulness of Trump's grotesque fraud.
I repeat — a majority. Conspiratorial thinking is no fringe phenomenon on the right. It's a way of life.
Thus how many Republicans today believe there's something to the conspiracy theory concocted by one Benjamin Kelly, a very former aide to a Florida state representative? I give you this passage from the Tampa Bay Times:
It bubbled up from the darkest online corners then began to take off: conspiracy theories about Parkland students who've spent the past week on TV demanding action on the gun violence that killed 17 and reawakened a national debate.
By late Tuesday afternoon, the conspiracy climbed to a new level when an aide [Kelly] to state Rep. Shawn Harrison, R-Tampa, was fired after emailing a Tampa Bay Times reporter with a stunning assertion: "Both kids in the picture are not students here but actors that travel to various crisis [sic] when they happen."
The story continues:
Kelly sent another email … that included a link to a conspiracy video on YouTube. The video showed [Parkland student David] Hogg in a news clip from California over a dispute with a lifeguard involving a boogie board. Hogg had posted a video of the confrontation with the lifeguard on YouTube and it "went viral," a news reporter said. Now, conspiracy theorists have questioned what Hogg was doing in another state, some branding him a "crisis actor."
Wrote Kelly to the Times: "There is a clip on you tube that shows Mr. Hogg out in California. (I guess he transferred?)"
If that scribbled filth wasn't enough to send grassroots Republicans into paroxysmal fits of handwringing, there was this alternative filth offered by the Trump-adoring website, Gateway Pundit: "EXPOSED: School Shooting Survivor Turned Activist David Hogg's Father in FBI, Appears To Have Been Coached On Anti-Trump Lines." The story, whose thesis was that the Hoggs were diabolically attempting to divert attention from the FBI's lapse in pursuing pre-massacre leads, was "liked" by Donald Trump Jr.
Vox's Matthew Yglesias keenly empathized with the right's understandable conspiracy-theorizing:
And of course there was that old right-wing standby, as reported by the Tampa Bay Times: "Students were also accused of being … dupes of a liberal news media." Somehow, merely "watching their classmates be murdered" wasn't enough to enrage the Florida teenagers; somehow, it took CNN and MSNBC's muckraking to rile them up.
Trump is now braying his support of more stringent background checks and bump-stock regulations, which is hardly courageous, since, as the NY Times reports, "the National Rifle Association supports the background check legislation and also backs bump stock regulation, although not an outright ban." Yet I'd be surprised if even that much is done in this Republican Congress. Because it knows, as well as the Gateway Pundit knows, that the Republican base is as much the party of Alex Jones as it is Donald Trump. For that matter there is no real party still standing; it's largely just a scattering of lunatic conspiracy theorists.
This, from the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, is rather shocking:
In the poll conducted after a gunman killed 17 people at a Florida high school last week, more than three-quarters, 77 percent, said they think more effective mental health screening and treatment
could have prevented the shooting.
The Post-ABC poll also finds that 58 percent of adults say stricter gun control laws could have prevented the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, but there is no rise in support for banning assault weapons compared with two years ago.
In simpler form, about 20 percent more Americans believe mental illness — not the easy availability of lethal weapons — is responsible for the repeated massacres of children in this country (as though other, gun-controlled countries experience no mental illness).
In a short, 1946 essay, George Orwell wrote that “To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." To see what's at the root of all the mass slaughters in this gun-saturated country wouldn't seem to require much of a struggle. Nonetheless, we are challenged. And we can thank the power of pseudoconservative propaganda.