PMC Commentary

Like a shot in the head, but that would be hasty

In these closing, Trumpism-plagued hours of 2020, I find myself having to guard against empathizing too acutely with the 5 April 1938 entry in the German scholar (and Jewish) Victor Klemperer's diaries, "Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten," in short, "I will bear witness":

"How deeply Hitler's attitudes are rooted in the German people, how good the preparations were for his Aryan doctrine, how unbelievably I have deceived myself my whole life long, when I imagined myself to belong to Germany, and how completely homeless I am."

While it's almost "unbelievably" true that tens of millions of Americans have enlisted themselves in Trump's authoritarian causes — almost reason enough to feel homeless — millions more have stood against his vast malignities, peacefully and democratically ousting the neofascistic monster before — I'm rather sure — he could do irreparable damage to the reputable republic in which I always imagined myself to be living.

Klemperer's notation chilled my mind last night while reading historian Robert Gellately's most recent, superb volume, Hitler's True Believers: How Ordinary People Became Nazis, wherein the passage is featured. The work is a comprehensive analysis of the grinding process by which millions of Germans allowed themselves to fall into the lunatic's evil, self-destructive maw — Gellately's main point being, most were preconditioned to do so less because of Hitler's charisma than out of lighter yet long-standing nationalist and racist beliefs. Trump's minions are of like ilk; all it took to ignite their over-the-top madness was a self-fashioned Führer.

Turned out, America's authoritarian crowd is but a now-impotent minority, and it will shrink smaller still — through death's attrition and especially given the nation's sweeping demographic changes. Except for the passing, four-year horror of their cherished Trumpism, they'll never see a thousand-year American Reich. And neither will we or the world, which one wishes could also have been bestowed on Victor Klemperer and the millions of other rational beings.

Trump has set a political fundraising trend

As most of us know by now, for some time Trump has been fleecing his most ardent supporters by asking for contributions so as to engage evermore litigious battle over his fraudulent election-fraud claims, while funneling most of the duped cash into his privately held slush fund.

Thus was established a broader, freshly enticing manner of scam. Reports the Daily Beast:

"Ted Cruz needs your help to keep the U.S. Senate in Republican hands. So blared a handful of Facebook’s ads" — entitled the Keep Georgia Red fund — "that Cruz’s campaign committee purchased this month. But none of them were actually raising money for the Republican candidates in Georgia. Instead, every penny donated went directly to ... Cruz."

"'Gun grabbing, tax hikes, open borders, and stacking the Supreme Court. That’s the radical Democrat agenda if they win the Georgia Senate elections,'" declared Cruz in his counterfeit claim to be fundraising for Sens. Perdue and Loeffler.

In Google advertising, Mitch McConnell is doing the same, and to a limited extent, so are Reps. Cathy McMorris Rogers (R-WA) and Ashley Hinson (R-IA). Al Franken-slayer and Democratic senator Kirsten Gillibrand, of course, has also gotten in on the scam, ostensibly on behalf of challengers Ossoff and Warnock.

Think on it: These people help to write the U.S. criminal code.

My gag reflex at Republican senators bravely declaring they oppose a coup

Nebraska's Ben Sasse, among other heroic-as-self-advertised Republican senators, has boldly announced, "I will not be participating in a project to overturn the election."

That's wonderful, Senator. On the other hand, as a member of Congress you have consistently supported the principal driver of the brand of damnable governance which led to this imminent event of the most damnable governance ever.

Among other legislative abominations in support of Trump, you voted against his powerfully deserved conviction for obstruction of justice and abuse of power; against overturning his obscene border-wall funding; against providing humanitarian aid for that border; against blocking the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia's murderous prince; against changes to federal sentencing and prison laws; for the reauthorization of warrantless spying; for the elimination of cloture for Supreme Court nominees, thus permitting the worst of reactionary robes; for the repeal of federal contractors' requirement to report labor violations; and for the Senate confirmations of the staggeringly unqualified or rightfully disqualified Rick Perry as Energy secretary, Ben Carson as Housing secretary, Betty DeVos as Education secretary, Andrew Wheeler — formerly a coal magnate's lawyer — as EPA administrator, former land-and-pipeline developer Ryan Zinke as secretary of the Interior and professional-wrestling executive Linda McMahon as SBA administrator. As I have written before, I believe presidents should have their choice of cabinet and high-ranking officials, but, come on — as with everything, there are limits.

Yes, you've been there all along, Senator Sasse, abetting Trump's most odious proclivities, of which there are many, unmentioned others. But now you declare, with ludicrous wisps of courage and political independence, that indeed you support sane governance, constitutional mandates and … American democracy? I am less than impressed.

More of Trump's disinformation, and Josh Hawley's magnificent contribution to killing his party

News from the wacky world of Trump's twittering. Note especially his penultimate sentence, in the extended tweet, about Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's brother.

...The consent decree signed by the “Secretary”, with the consent of Kemp, is perhaps even more poorly negotiated than the deal that John Kerry made with Iran. Now it turns out that Brad R’s brother works for China, and they definitely don’t want “Trump”. So disgusting! #MAGA

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 30, 2020

Although some in the press originally reported that Brad R. is brotherless, he does in fact have a brotherly sibling — just not the one Trump fingered.

Snopes: "While Brad Raffensperger does have a brother … and sisters, none of them is named Ron [the 'CTO for a subsidiary of the Huawei conglomerate,' whom Trump mistook, from a circulating conspiracy theory, to be Brad's brother]. Nor has [Ron] ever resided in the same state as the Georgia Raffensperger."

Such is the sort of goofy allegations ladled out by Trump like bathtub gin — causing a similar effect on his supporters. Commented one of them in a MAGA stupor: "We have your back, Mr. President!!! Keep fighting!!! We will hold the line like it’s 1776!!!!" (But which side?)

Meanwhile, the nation's second-greatest embarrassment, Josh Hawley — a senator from my once-swing state of birth and rearing, now gone nihilistically bananas — has announced he'll be joining Rep. Mo Brooks and 17 other House crackpots [edit: the estimated count is now up to around 140] in objecting to the "conclusive" Electoral Vote tally on 6 Jan.

Yet this profoundly anti-democratic swing by a Yale Law graduate otherwise schooled in America's constitutional foundations has a prodigious upside: Senate Republicans will soon be faced with either defying the despot in chief — he who is so adulated by millions of gin-soaked, wannabe stormtroopers — or announcing that they, too, are dead set against American democracy.

Thus I join in Trump's also-tweeted enthusiasm: "JANUARY SIXTH, SEE YOU IN DC!" Or anyplace with popcorn, Trail Mix and a TeeVee.

In Georgia, a bit more than just hope

Politico:

"Democrats are buoyed by the strong early vote numbers, which show Black voters making up a larger percentage of the electorate than in November and higher early turnout in Democratic congressional districts in the state....

"Meanwhile, early-vote turnout has lagged in Republican-held congressional districts, likely leaving GOP Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue with a larger deficit heading into Election Day than they had to make up on Nov. 3."

One polling operation today released findings of an 8-point Jon Ossoff lead and a 7-point advantage by Raphael Warnock, both of which I take with a boulder-sized grain of salt. 

Anyway, should Democrats find themselves with a two-chamber majority in January, they'll need to proceed — well, duh — judiciously; that is, to not blow it by going full-doctrinaire Monty. Legislative progress will indeed be possible by enlisting the aid of a few Senate Republicans now warier than ever of Trumpism's madness and especially of purple-state blowback by swing voters sick to death of chronic Republican obstructionism. 2022 and 2024 are right around the corner.

This is doable. It is, for sure, just slimly doable. (See my even gloomier take, below.) And again, it requires restraint among Dems. Regrettably, a quite vocal minority of the base regards prudence as a political vice, not a virtue.

I appreciate that such progress is less than ideal. To repeat an oft-heard truism, we live in the world as it is, not as we might like it to be. If for years I had shrieked the latter online, I'd have multiple times more readers than I have now, for the illusory is always attractive. But, other than my raking in the consequent cash, what would be the point of bamboozling those readers?  

Next year - compromise?

A YouGov survey commissioned by HuffPost finds that only 13 percent of registered voters believe that Democrats and Republicans will work together in Congress "on important issues facing the country." Sixty-eight percent say that's unrealistic, and 19 percent haven't a clue.

Along partisan lines, 43 percent of Democrats say President Biden should compromise with Republicans; 33 percent say he should stick to his guns.

Predictably, those sentiments shift when it comes to Republicans. Only 25 percent prefer compromise, while a majority — 54 percent — are all for obstruction; that is, adhering to GOP "positions," as though, aside from always vampish tax cuts, it possesses unswerving, principled ones.

What matters to most Republican lawmakers, of course, is not what's in the nation's best interests, but what the hardest, most fanatical core of their base believes, since they are the ones who dictate, come primary season, whether those lawmakers will keep their jobs.

The process of establishing Republican "principles" to be followed is a kind of waltzing duet: GOP pols fill their voters with all manner of crazy, and in turn the base bubbles up — at the urging of Fox News, Newsmax, Breitbart and talk radio — with additional crazy, which they then urge on the pols. And so positions are set, until the crazy shape-shifts, and the dance proceeds. 

Hence the professional wackos and their 54 percent — or whatever the precise number — could very well maroon most of the hopes among most of us voters. (See my own counter-view, above.)

Why do progressives attack liberals who agree with their policy aims?

Yesterday, the crotchety limitations of American legislative procedures once again came into relief, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell unveiled his tactical resolution of the current brouhaha, which is to say, no real resolution at all. He'll seek the killing of House Democrats' $2,000 checks by combining them in a bill authorizing a commission to investigate nonexistent 2020 election fraud and the removal of liability protection from social media outlets. The latter two measures would cleanly annihilate the former's passage, since Senate Democrats would never accede to them.

The underlying wisdom of cutting such checks is, however, questioned even by some libs and progs. For example the Washington Post's Catherine Rampell objects that "the biggest problem with the U.S. fiscal response so far is not the overall amount of aid nor the generosity of our nearly universal stimulus checks; it’s how inefficiently many of those dollars have been allocated. And expanding direct stimulus payments … would only make this problem worse…. These funds come at the expense of more targeted relief measures — such as expanded unemployment benefits," which "is not a terribly efficient use of resources."

Progressives William Barber II and Liz Theoharis, co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign, implicitly agree with the liberal Rampell. In their Christmas Day, NYT op-ed, which I commented on here, they specifically advocated "immediate relief targeted to the Black, Native, poor and low-income communities that have suffered most from Covid-19" — not two grand in cash going to six-figure earners.

And here's my larger point. Liberals and progressives rarely disagree on major policy objectives. Where they clash is on the almost instant legislative feasibility of enacting those policies.

Returning to Barber and Theoharis, they say that in addition to "immediate relief" for poor communities, once we somehow cancel Republicans' assorted voter suppressions we must also immediately guarantee "every American access to quality health care, a $15 minimum wage, the right to form and join a union, and access to affordable housing,… [plus] begin a federal jobs program, forgive student loans, honor the sovereignty claims of Indigenous tribes, secure quality public education for all and pass meaningful immigration reform."

Just like that.

Offhand, I can think of no liberal Democrats — that is, center-lefties — who oppose Barber and Theoharis' social advancements. Carry on, they say. What liberals do point out, however, is that vast leaps into a kind of progressive utopia are just not achievable — certainly not under the constitutional and congressional mechanisms of legislative pluralism and the many opportunities they allow for obstruction, such as what McConnell is doing to those relief checks, wisely conceived or not.

Thus I'm rather perplexed as to why progressives are forever belittling center-lefties who steadfastly agree with them on the aims of sociopolitical progress, but who merely, logically and sensibly add that we can't have it all tomorrow. Progressives further argue that liberals lack the will to power — an old bugaboo ominously tainted by far-right fulfillments — which casually dismisses its cement roadblocks entrenched in the U.S. Constitution.

My perplexity diminishes when I recall NYT columnist Tom Wicker's observation of Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential stumping. "The big trouble with the so-called liberal today," insisted the senator, "is that he doesn't understand simplicity," adding, "those who don't have … courage want complicated answers." Noted Wicker: Goldwater spake like a "child..., with a child's directness and lack of complexity."

What still befuddles, though, is why any adult would want to join Goldwater's childlike, anti-intellectual ranks.

In the Senate today, it's McConnell vs. Trump, or maybe not

Mitch McConnell's awful political predicament — essentially a Hobson's choice — has filled me with joy in these profoundly awful times.

As more Senate Republicans tremble at Trump's wrath and pile on House Democrats' passage of larger relief checks, yet more Senate Republicans loathe even the concept of assisting financially strapped Americans; in the GOP's dog-eared playbook, that sort of thing is reserved for those already wallowing in cash. Thus McConnell will make enemies among his ranks, whichever way he proceeds, and as the mathematics change.

But more to the point, he risks his Senate majority in Georgia next week or in 2022 since a whole lot of Republican voters will vilify the party if it approves additional assistance, and a whole lot of Republican voters will detest the party if it doesn't.

Larger still, there's always the encroaching Trump factor. Which is more pleasurable to these voters? Sieg-heiling the Donald or screwing the needy? — including themselves. Damn that is one tough choice.

And it's sitting in Mitch McConnell's lap, singeing the hell out of him. Make me smile.

We knew Trump's post-election intrusions would come, and they dangle a blessing

Politico:

"Trump has instructed his top political advisers to begin monitoring potential 2022 GOP primary targets, as he lashes out at fellow Republicans whom he deems disloyal….

"His team is now taking … formal steps — such as tracking their public comments — with an eye toward possibly marshaling the president’s political operation to replace them with more Trump-friendly figures."

Since, especially in midterms, primary battles are fought primarily by the most heatedly committed — not the broad range of differentiated, general election voters — and thus tend to elevate the more radical of pols, Trump's vindictive interventions in 2022 should guarantee that the Republican Party remains utterly bonkers.

And that could be the needed opening for Democrats doubling over in anguish at the prospect of their party's shattering in two years. The Washington Post:

[Democratic] strategists now speak privately with a sense of gloom and publicly with a tone of concern as the [2020] election results become clearer. They worry about the potential emergence of a mostly male and increasingly interracial working-class coalition for Republicans that will cut into the demographic advantages Democrats had long counted on. They speculate that the tremendous Democratic gains in the suburbs during the Trump years might fade when he leaves office. And they fret that their inability to make inroads in more rural areas could forestall anything but the most narrow Senate majority in the future.

Of course, axiomatic is that Democrats are forever doubling over in anguish. But the Trumpian, guerrilla resistance to political sanity is in fact substantial, and could hurl yet another electoral apocalypse on the nation.

Conversely, as Trump gets even crazier, while bringing the GOP along in his madness, we could also see substantial erosion of support by those mostly male, increasingly interracial working-class members, suburban areas and rural outposts.

In brief, we can often count on Republicans' propensity to shoot themselves in the head.

Trump's war with the Republican Party

​​​​​Trump is at last engaged in a full-scale war against his former congressional allies — they're cowardly, weak and submissive to special interests, he brays this morning with no hint of irony — just as he denounced and turned on America's traditional friends abroad.

....being removed and brought home from foreign lands who do NOTHING for us. A disgraceful act of cowardice and total submission by weak people to Big Tech. Negotiate a better Bill, or get better leaders, NOW! Senate should not approve NDAA until fixed!!!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 29, 2020

There's something about the sociopath — and this trait strikes me as peculiar among his pathological type — that unfailingly renders him hostile toward those who either are or who are potentially most beneficial to him. Why would a solipsist, by definition absorbed in self-interest, intentionally disown and betray the very people capable of doing him the most good?

Perhaps he just tired of playing his abysmal, slanderous games against Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and "The Squad." Or maybe he is, in fact, clinically nuts. In any case, what remains uncommonly true is that never has anyone done business with Donald Trump and then walked away without somehow being gutted.

Louie Gohmert's lawsuit against Veep Pence: a waged battle of witlessness

Bug-eyed buffoonery masquerading as state and federal lawsuits has characterized Team Trump & Allies' desperate efforts to overthrow a democratic election and re-enthrone the criminally implicated "Individual-1" as president of the United States. In case after case, unhinged frivolity has defined their cause — the Texas lawsuit being the most sorry-assed of all.

Until now.

Rep. Louie Gohmert's suit against U.S. Vice President and Senate President Mike Pence has outdone the others — and itself — in careening totally off the rails. "America's craziest and dumbest congressman," as Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt accurately pegged him
— he of "terror babies" and warm pipelines of oil contributing to the mating thrills of caribou — has seemingly discovered a constitutional loophole that anoints Mr. Pence as the sole decider in chief of who gets to crap on Air Force One. To wit:

"Under the Twelfth Amendment, Defendant Pence alone has the exclusive authority and sole discretion to open and permit the counting of the electoral votes for a given state, and where there are competing slates of electors, or where there is objection to any single slate of electors, to determine which electors’ votes, or whether none, shall be counted," asserts his lawsuit.

Pence's "executive authority" under the Twelfth Amendment's wording?

"The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted. The person having the greatest Number of votes for President, shall be the President."

The amendment says nothing about the Senate president's "sole discretion" to pick and choose votes, and of course the "certificates" before him will be, rather logically, those which state officials have certified. His job is only to count them.

Louie's real talent as a United States representative lies in his singular ability to foster, say, just the right romantic ambience for love-making caribou — and it's that sort of genius to which he should return.

The absurdity of the right's mythical Trump, man of the people

Good grief. Even the scandalous NY Post has had enough of his election-fraud burlesque.

Yet true to its more characteristic form, the Post, subsequent to reminding the president that he really, swear-to-God, genuinely lost the election; that hand recounts have confirmed that plain but screaming fact; that he is surrounding himself with conspiracy-theory, martial-law and Kraken nutjobs; and that he's engaging in a "dark charade" and "undemocratic coup" — after all that, the Post advises Trump to reflect on "securing [his] legacy":

"Consider this. You came out of nowhere to win the presidency…. You took on the elites and the media who had long lost touch with average working people."

While discounting the additional fact that the Post is an influential part of "the media" it suggests has been universally antagonistic to Trump, the paper repeats the right's unremitting claim that he and only he, at long last, has been a president in touch with average working people.

The list of Trump's anything-but-in-touch-with-working-people history is far too long and burdensome to itemize here; put simply, it spans from his plutocratic tax cuts to his complete lack of expressed compassion for victims of a deadly pandemic he did nothing to inhibit. His brazen elitism and coldness toward average Americans' pain are, alone, legion — and his legacy.

Nevertheless the right persists in the exorbitant lie about Trump's touching concern for the average, working American, which is as cynical as his election-fraud claims, which the Post condemns. Just say it, over and over, just say time and again that Trump has been one with the people, and they will come, they will believe.

That's about all the right has in defense of this monster.

It takes balls

Because he also voted No on the unfunded, "debilitating," "dangerous" 2017 tax cut for the wealthiest — right?

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) on the call to increase direct stimulus payments to $2,000: “Someone’s gotta show me how we’re going to pay for it.” pic.twitter.com/zv7FcWxLzW

— The Recount (@therecount) December 28, 2020

Darkness for Trump, and glimmers of light for us

Good news, from Gallup.

Trump's job approval rating has dropped 7 points — to 39 percent — since the pre-election period. (Americans' approval of Joe Biden's transition endeavors is 65 percent.) Another bright spot: The president's approval rating is also down 7 points among Republicans, to 87 percent; still an astounding segment of denial, but hey, it's progress.

And though it hit 45 percent in February, Americans' satisfaction with the country's direction has plummeted to just 16 percent — what with Trump's talk of a banana-republic coup, a federally unsupervised pandemic, and a collapsing economy.

Amidst the fog of the administration's malignity and incompetence, there is light.

Oh, to be Vladimir

​​​​​Putin is busy putting more touches on his Tsarist authoritarianism and letting President-elect Joe Biden know that the old Soviet proposition of "peaceful coexistence" is today questionable at best, now that Vladimir's U.S. handmaiden has been jerked from his kneepads. The Washington Post:

In recent weeks, Russia has launched a flurry of missile tests, while Putin boasted Monday of a "cosmic" rate of change in Russia’s advanced weaponry....

He laid flowers Sunday at a monument to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, calling its work "extremely important," days after the agency was accused of unprecedented hacking of U.S. agencies.

A blizzard of recent legislation in the State Duma has made it harder to protest, easier to target opposition figures and activists and has given authorities broad scope to brand individuals as "foreign agents," with five-year jail penalties for failure to meet reporting requirements. The government is also moving to curb foreign Internet sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Under new laws, Putin has immunity from prosecution for life, and information about the financial and personal affairs of millions of members of Russian intelligence bodies, security agencies, the judiciary, law enforcement, regulatory agencies and the military — and their relatives — is classified.

And Trump is intensely jealous.