Riling Up the Bigots

by on Nov.14, 2019, under Race

Back in the day, people said that my hometown of Milwaukee was known for two things: Obesity and serial killers.

That’s unfair, of course, because it also possesses the distinction of having brutally cold winters, and of being the most racially segregated city in America.

OK, maybe those traits aren’t so great.

But I still love the place. And that is why I will rush to its defense even if, for example, its sports teams collapse, or its economy struggles, or it’s the scene of a horrific acid attack.

Wait a minute, let me check my notes on that last one.

Hmm, unfortunately, this is true. Recently, Milwaukee police arrested a 61-year-old white man who called a Latino man an “illegal” and told him to “get out of this country” before throwing acid in his face. The Hispanic man, who happens to be U.S. citizen, suffered second-degree burns.

Now, you might wonder what kind of homicidal lunatic carries acid around with him, just looking for a reason to toss it into somebody’s face.

Well, keep in mind that Wisconsin is a swing state, with plenty of white male Baby Boomers who seethe with revulsion for Latinos and immigrants. 

Further note that studies have shown that hate crimes tend to increase during “times of tense political fights over issues such as immigration or national security.”

I’m pretty sure that we are living in such times.

But to get even more specific about it, “hate crimes targeting people in 2018 surged to their highest levels in 16 years,” and once the data for 2019 is crunched, we can expect to see more of the same.

As we all know, hate crimes have escalated ever since America elected a loud-mouthed xenophobe to the White House (which I’m sure the GOP insists is just a coincidence).

What’s most interesting, however, is that the targets of hate crimes have changed. Back during the Iraq War, thugs routinely went after Muslims. But recently, “the number of crimes targeting Muslims cratered,” which just goes to show that bigots need constant reminders of who they’re supposed to hate the most at any given time. 

And in further good news, anti-Semitic crimes dropped. But — and I’m sure you saw this coming — hate crimes “targeting Latinos increased for the third year.”

Yikes.

So Hispanics are back to being the most loathed group among nativists. As I’ve said before, it’s like we have fucking targets on our backs.

Experts say that none of this is random. For example, “you can look at the year 2016 and see a spike in hate crimes, or look at the increase in anti-immigrant rhetoric in recent years, and see an increase in anti-Latino crimes.”

Still, you don’t have to be a statistician to notice what’s going on. According to many polls, a majority of Americans say Trump is racist. And over half of the country believes “Trump has been bad for Hispanics, Muslims, African Americans, and women.”

Another way of saying this is that the president has been good only for white men and the occasional Asian American.

There is simply no doubt “that Trump’s rhetoric has legitimized expressions of prejudice.” But if you need proof, consider that one study found that racist statements “were considered more acceptable after the election. And a second study showed that reading Trump’s statements targeting ethnic or racial groups made people more likely to write prejudicial things themselves.”

So is there a sliver of positivity in this dire compendium of racism, hate crimes, anti-Latino bias, and acid attacks?

Well, there a theory that “Trump’s election did not make Americans more racist; instead, it may have emboldened those who were already prejudiced.” So what we are seeing is an intensification of racism rather than an upsurge of bigotry overall. 

And looking at this further, there is some evidence that the frequency of racist behavior is actually going down in America. And long-term trends “suggest a decline in both professed racist views and racist acts.”

This means, therefore, that eventually we will not have to worry about angry old men assaulting Hispanics, or be afraid that a fistfight will erupt when we speak Spanish, or witness Nazis happily marching in the streets, or suffer through any of the myriad bigoted, hate-filled actions that we have had to endure over the past few years.

No word, however, on when that day will come.

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The Unpatriot

by on Nov.06, 2019, under Politics

We have endured just over 1,000 days of a president whose mind-boggling ignorance, cartoonish incompetence, pandemic corruption, and glaring racism have damaged America for the foreseeable future. 

Really, I can’t enumerate all of the man’s personal disasters, catastrophic decisions and sucker punches to the republic. But here’s a partial list of his insanity, which reads more like “the symptoms of someone who was recently bitten by a rabid raccoon one night after getting lost between Marine One and the Oval Office.”

And yet, over 40% of Americans say, “Yup, I’m down with this.”

I’ve written before about Trump’s base, many of whom would gladly follow him into a bubbling sulfur pit, or slit the throats of their loved ones if he told them to do so. Their reasons for such blind obedience to this maddest of messiahs range from political expedience to human frailty to deeply disturbing psychological issues.

But what of Trump’s motivations? Why is he subjecting himself — and the entire country — to this ceaseless onslaught of nausea-inducing grotesqueries that have catapulted our nation way past laughingstock status and into the realm of the tragically pathetic?

Well, it might be “because he’s two parts crazy, one part stupid, but also because he’s been engaging in corruption his entire life, to the point that it’s second nature.”

Yes, that’s true. But there’s an additional complication.

Consider that even Nixon possessed some smoldering embers of self-respect that prevented him from accepting the humiliation of impeachment. Trump has embarrassed himself so many times on so many world stages that he has gotten used to public disgrace. And his supporters have made it clear that no matter what deranged babble spews from his mouth, they will twist it into a positive.

So appeals to the president’s sense of shame are useless. We might as well plead with a honey badger to be nicer, or for a bear to stop shitting in the woods.

Animal comparisons aside, there is even stronger reason for Trump’s antipathy than his abdication of basic decency.

And it is this:

The man hates America.

I know it is tacky to accuse your political opponents of despising our nation, but it is not hyperbole in the president’s case. Even many conservatives say that the guy clearly loathes the country and offers a vision that “is radically anti-American.”

The president’s GOP enablers are perfectly aware that the chief executive cares only about himself, with particular attention to his image and his bank account. Yes, Trump has some mild concern for his family, feels a slight affinity for his fellow billionaires, and admires crazed dictators who execute their opponents.

But that’s about it. The rest of the world— and the overwhelming majority of America — is dead to him.

He hates the West Coast, and would be thrilled if it burned to the ground. He hates the East Coast, and is only too happy to live somewhere, you know, less cosmopolitan. 

As for the Midwest and the South, well, the idea that he has any interest in the humdrum struggles of his base (i.e., the legendary white working class) is absurd. Even sadder is the one-sided nature of their relationship, in which millions of struggling white people insist that he is fighting for him, and show up at his rallies to hear him drone on about awesome he is. Meanwhile, he ignores the opioid crisis, cuts off their health care, and would no sooner mingle with the hoi polloi than he would gurgle raw sewage.

And it should be perfectly obvious by now that the president has no use for women, ethnic minorities, or immigrants. In fact, “we have never seen an American president make a U.S. representative, a refugee, an American citizen, a woman of color, and a religious minority an object of hate for the political masses, in a deliberate attempt to turn the country against his fellow Americans who share any of those traits.”

Yes, despite all that flag-hugging, there is little proof that Trump displayed even the vaguest sense of patriotism before he ran for president (just as he didn’t display a scintilla of interest in Christianity, but that is another story). And there is no indication that the president has any knowledge of the Constitution, any respect for American ideals of freedom of the press, or any interest in how the nation fares after he is out of office.

In fact, he “appears to care little for the American nation as a whole,” and is actually “more of a self-serving populist, preaching anti-elitism, anti-pluralism and exclusion.”

So let’s be honest.

If the Democrats made an offer that Trump could pocket a small fortune from the U.S. Treasury and fly away to a private island with his family, to live out his days in comfort and splendor, and never be brought up on any criminal charges or held accountable for anything he has done, the man would leap at it and say, “Fuck off, America,” faster than they could write the check. 

And he would never look back.

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Infield Fly Rule

by on Oct.30, 2019, under Culture

Baseball season is over, which is always a little sad for me.

It’s not just that I love baseball, and now have to endure six months without it. The bigger issue is that my hometown Milwaukee Brewers just concluded their 50th season in existence, which means a sold half-century without a single World Series championship.

Damn.

In any case, baseball may be on hiatus for now, but it is perpetually relevant as a metaphor. And I don’t mean in a Ken Burns kind of way, where the death of Joe DiMaggio is the end of the American Dream, or something strained like that.

I’m talking about more concrete analogies.

For example, I’m sure we all enjoyed the sight of Trump attending Game 5 of the World Series and receiving a thunderous, sustained booing that reached “almost 100 decibels, the type of disapproval typically reserved for undocumented immigrants and freshman congresswomen at his rallies.”

I mean, here was the president, taking in the national pastime, in the nation’s capital city, and hearing from the nation’s citizens that he sucks, in a spontaneous display of First Amendment zeal that has not been outlawed despite the country’s right-wing lurch. And in an irony-heavy addendum of the type that Americans are known for, he was also serenaded with chants of “Lock him up!”

I mean, if that doesn’t make you swell with patriotism, nothing will.

However, not every symbolic event from the world of baseball is so positive.

For example, major league umpire Rob Drake recently tweeted his displeasure with the impeachment process. He did so in the calm, respectful manner that we have come to expect from supporters of the president.

Ha, no — he shrieked a caps-heavy boast that he was buying an AR-15 assault rifle, “because if you impeach my president this way, you will have another civil war!!! #MAGA2020.”

Now, you might think that we have enough violence in this country without random umpires threatening to murder people who disagree with their politics, to say nothing of the recurring promise that a civil war is inevitable and, in fact, eagerly anticipated by GOP white men like Rob Drake who have easy access to firearms and no regard for the Constitution. 

Well, yes — but you’re missing the point.

Because once again, in this case, baseball is here to help.

You see, on one side of America’s political divide we have progressives, who want to move the country toward the democratic socialist model that has found great success in Scandinavian countries, but do it with more of a multiethnic focus. The other side — Trumpian conservatives — want to create a white nationalist state built upon pseudo-Christian values where the populace is enthralled with an autocratic oligarch who siphons off the nation’s resources to the super-rich. 

That’s a bit of a philosophical gap.

Fortunately, we have homicidal umpires who are happy to illustrate the difference for us. So again, baseball enlightens us.

Lastly, allow me to recount a recent email exchange that I had with a disgruntled reader. This individual informed me that I was wrong about everything, and at some point in the conversation, he stated that the Electoral College was, in his words, “brilliant” and “perfect.” He stated that a nationwide popular vote for the presidency was like insisting the winner of the World Series be the team that scores the most runs, not the team that wins the most games.

My rebuttal was that the Electoral College is like declaring the winner of a baseball game is the team that scores in the most innings, not the team that actually scores the most runs.

I thought it was a good point. But he wrote back a stream of obscenities and invectives, so I guess he didn’t agree, and that was the end of our little debate.

Yes, the guy may have been an illogical, thin-skinned reactionary. But hey, at least he liked baseball.

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The Absence of Perception

by on Oct.24, 2019, under Politics

If I speak

At one constant volume
At one constant pitch
At one constant rhythm

Right into your ear

You still won’t hear
You still won’t hear!

Faith No More

A Small Victory

Yes, it is a bit ambiguous.

On the one hand, you have William Taylor, the top American diplomat in Ukraine, stating clearly and without qualification that the Trump Administration engaged in an unconstitutional quid pro quo, testimony so shocking that it “reportedly elicited sighs and gasps” from stunned congressmen. 

And as anyone with a grasp of politics (or indeed, the English language) knows, this is about as definitive as it gets. So even though there is “no need for a smoking gun by now, because Trump has all but admitted to the crime… Taylor’s testimony delivered a still-warm pistol with Trump’s fingerprints all over it to congressional investigators.”

But on the other hand, you have Republicans saying, “I didn’t see it. I didn’t hear it.”

Really, that’s what they’re saying.

Now, you might expect some kind of complex refutation or logical argument from the GOP, which has tied its destiny to a sputtering man-child who is most likely spending his days plotting which Republican he can throw under the bus to save his own skin.

However, the GOP long ago ran out of logical arguments, or principled stances, or semi-coherent opinions. Having been reduced to the Party of Stupid, they are now in full-on toddler mode, denying Taylor said what we all heard. Or they are bum-rushing hearings that they have no right to interrupt in some sort of pathetic stalling action that accomplishes nothing but possibly appeases daddy a little bit.

Note to GOP: Looking like a band of angry lunatics, barging into rooms and shouting at people, is not convincing anyone that you have your shit together.

In any case, it is not really a surprise that Republicans can’t see or hear the perfectly obvious. And it’s not just because conservatives long ago surrendered their common sense and basic decency in a futile effort to charm a misogynistic sociopath.

No, this failure to acknowledge reality appears to be a long-time problem. Their denial of climate change, their belief that Iraq had WMDs, and their embrace of crackpot economic theories are all fine examples of the conservative blind spot and deaf zone.

But for the most impressive proof of this disturbing phenomenon, let’s look at racism.

You see, for many conservatives, acknowledging the existence of widespread bigotry undermines their whole philosophy that everyone just needs to pick himself up by his bootstraps, without whining about institutional barriers and societal hindrances. This idea is as antiquated and nonsensical as, well, bootstraps themselves (seriously, who the hell wears bootstraps anymore?).

Also, dismissing racism means ignoring unpleasant historical facts like the GOP’s Southern Strategy or Reagan’s “welfare queens” or just about any other Republican approach that has succeeded in conjuring up racial anxiety among white voters. It all never happened, don’t you see?

Finally, throwing a blanket over the prevalence of prejudice allows white conservatives to feel ok about themselves for, say, voting for an overt bigot. It also allows conservatives to mock political correctness or “own the libs” or whatever stale terminology they use to excuse backward thinking.

As such, conservatives “have convinced themselves that actual racism is basically a thing of the past, and so any accusation of racism must be nothing but liberal claptrap.”

What does this look like? Well, it means the following:

Nothing is racist against blacks (even slavery). 

Nothing is racist against Latinos (even putting kids in cages). 

Telling someone to go back to their own country is not racist (even though you can fired for saying that).

The FBI stating that white supremacy is on the rise doesn’t prove that bigotry is a problem.

Now, anti-Semitism is a tricky one, in that conservatives believe that in general, it doesn’t exist, even if we see guys with torches chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” The GOP caveat, however, is that any criticism of the Israeli government whatsoever is virulent anti-Semitism.

That sticky situation aside, conservatives cannot see racism anywhere — unless, of course, it is against white people. In that case, there is a shitload of racism. Like, wow, we can’t believe the oppression.

In fact, over half (i.e., a majority) of white Americans “think that discrimination against whites has become as big a problem in the United States as discrimination against blacks and other minority groups.”

Looking specifically at conservatives, we find that “a whopping 75 percent of registered Republican voters said that white Americans face discrimination.”

So what do we make of people who insist that only white people — and no one else — are the victims of bigotry?

For starters, we can be honest. 

This is beyond mere denial or simple delusion. It is a life choice. And it is a mindset that has the power to provoke horrifying consequences.

After all, we see it every day.

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Do the Syrian Twist

by on Oct.16, 2019, under War

In the same way that liberals somehow forced Republicans to vote for a septuagenarian grifter, the Democrats have somehow forced Trump to withdraw troops from Syria.

The theory behind this has to do with the impeachment process — currently supported by a majority of Americans — and how it provoked Turkey to bomb the Kurds, and Russia to step in, and something and something and something else. Honestly, you have to be slightly delusional to even comprehend the deranged argument, let alone buy it.

Clearly, the usual GOP nonsense is not sticking as well as it used to. Conservatives are going to increasingly absurd, even pathetic lengths to defend an obviously corrupt White House crawling with criminals, fools, and cowards. Hey, even Fox News hosts are mumbling that our bumbling, frothing president is looking shakier each day.

But there is good news for Republicans, and here it is: We have betrayed an ally, destabilized an entire region, and caused the deaths of countless civilians.

Hmm, that certainly doesn’t seem like good news.

But for the GOP, it’s a lifeline. Yes, a grisly, blood-soaked lifeline that’s caked in treachery, but that still counts in political circles.

You see, up until now, the Republican Party has defended Trump regardless of his vile behavior and reckless decisions, even if this meant selling its meager soul, ditching its supposed principles, and endorsing things like, for example, throwing kids into cages.

But Trump’s abrupt, ill-conceived, and arbitrary decision to withdraw U.S. troops from the region “has tested Republican support for Donald Trump more than any of the president’s scandals and allegations of wrongdoing.”

It’s good to know that even craven reactionaries have their limits. 

The latest Trump-sponsored fiasco has “infuriated lawmakers from both parties and Trump’s outside supporters, especially those with a military background who understand the strategic value of the Kurdish alliance, along with evangelicals who fear for Kurdish Christians.”

You know it’s bad when both militaristic right-wingers and evangelicals are balking. And the reason is simple. The withdrawal from Syria offends Republicans far more than, for example, coddling Nazis because it “cuts to the core of U.S. national security, undoing two decades’ worth of efforts to gain the trust of the Kurds and have them fight in the front lines of counter-terrorism efforts so more U.S. troops don’t have to.”

All this just goes to prove the axiom that whoever puts their faith in Trump eventually regrets it.

To be fair, many conservatives who are ditching Trump now are doing so for a very good reason. Abandoning Syria in such a rushed, catastrophic manner is no minor issue. People are getting killed, and America will be less safe for years to come.

However, let’s not kid ourselves. With support for impeachment rising, more shady characters appearing on the scene, and more administration insiders confirming everyone’s worst fears, many Republicans are thinking, “This just isn’t going to get any better.”

As such, the Syria debacle gives the GOP cover. They can now distance themselves from Trump without seeming like the gutless apologists that they have been. They can cloak themselves in principle. They can say they finally stood up to an authoritarian ignoramus, and did so for the good of the nation — indeed, for the good of the world.

I guess we can all thank them now.

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The Building Tidal Wave

by on Oct.11, 2019, under Economy

It’s at times like this that I crank up the music of Snap (excuse me, I meant Snap!)

You no doubt remember that band’s dance classic The Power, which contained the immortal line “I got the power!”

Yeah, go ahead and blare it.

And while you’re grooving, realize that the aforementioned power in that song could very well refer to the surging cultural influence of Latinos, who “will increasingly become a critical foundation of support for the new American Economy.” And on the political front — say, picking the next president — you should know that “Latinos might end up being the key to the contest.”

How can this be? After all, Hispanics are very much an ethnic minority in this country, have just a sliver of the accumulated wealth that white Americans have, and are not exactly the most popular group among Washington politicians.

Well, it’s all about momentum. You see, population growth among Latinos is around 2%, which doesn’t sound like much until you realize that for the rest of the American population, it’s below 0.5%. In fact, “U.S., population growth hit an 80-year low in 2018.”

Also, labor-force participation among Latinos is 68%, which is “about 6 percentage points higher than non-U.S. Latinos.” Crunching the numbers a little more shows us that Hispanics “accounted for 82% of the growth in U.S. labor-force participation between 2010 and 2017, despite accounting for less than 20% of the country’s overall population.”

So if you didn’t know it already, here’s statistical proof that Hispanics are more likely to be working their asses off.

Increased consumer spending is also a reason why Latinos have the third-highest growth rate among all global economies and have the eight-largest economy in the world. To put it into perspective, if American Latinos were their own country, they would “exceed the size of France’s gross domestic product within the next 10 years.”

So take that, Frenchies!

Sorry, got a little jingoistic there for a minute.

The point is that “the contribution of the U.S. Latino community will become increasingly important moving forward to the economy.”

And this influence is sweeping into every sector of the economy. Hey, there are even more Hispanic truckers than ever before — yes, Latinos in trucker caps behind the wheels of big rigs. Think about the possibilities of a Smokey and the Bandit reboot with Diego Luna as a truck-driving Latino good ole boy.

On second thought, skip that. It’s a dumb idea.

In any case, when Hispanics are not propping up the U.S. economy, they are exerting long-overdo influence on the world of politics.

Witness that “for the first time, Latino elected officials and voters… are getting a real full-court press from Democratic contenders during the early stages of the primary process.”

Political experts believe that Hispanics “could play a much more prominent role in picking the nominee,” which is why the 839 Democrats running for president are currently glad-handing, backslapping, and speech-ifying their way through the Latino community. You see, “candidates who want to win simply can’t afford to wait to build a following among Latino voters.”

For some strange reason, Republicans are not doing much to reach out to Hispanic voters. Maybe that’s because Latino “support for the GOP is eroding,” and over half of Latinos who voted for Republicans in the past say that “it is hard to support Republican candidates right now.”

That’s a real shame, isn’t it?

Because as we know, Latinos are only getting stronger.

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Loading Guns on Fifth Avenue

by on Oct.03, 2019, under Politics

Perhaps you remember when our totally innocent and not at all corrupt president boasted that he could murder people in the street and not lose any support?

Yeah, good times.

In any case, murdering the country has been a slightly tougher sell for the guy.

Recently, many Trump loyalists went on television to quixotically defend the president’s shenanigans with Ukraine, and as we all know, “their efforts did not go well and produced a number of cringe-worthy moments.”

Indeed, it’s difficult to spin an open-and-shut case of pressuring a foreign government to interfere in American elections, and our most esteemed Republicans appear to be “woefully unprepared to defend a president whose conduct is becoming increasingly hard to justify.”

In fact, one hot rumor holds that “if it was a secret vote, 30 Republican senators would vote to impeach Trump.”

By the way, that’s over half the GOP representation in the Senate and, assuming that every Democrat would vote for conviction, far more than is needed to remove the president from office.

But of course, any impeachment vote — if and when it happens — will not be in secret. It will be a very public, very messy spectacle.

And in those circumstances, those 30 anonymous senators will gulp and say, “not guilty,” for fear of offending their psychotic overlord.

Imagine such a scenario, and then realize that it is far worse than mere cowardice. It is treachery. After all, these senators are saying, “Yeah, I know that the president has committed grotesque crimes against the Constitution and has unleashed lasting devastation upon America, but I really, really don’t want to lose my cushy job.”

And that is clearly jamming personal ambitions ahead of the nation’s interest, which is a sickening dereliction of duty from people who constantly boast about how patriotic they are.

There has been much talk — justified talk — that Republicans regularly put party ahead of country. But the truth is that they put their individual needs ahead of even their party’s future viability, leaving the country a distant third priority, at best.

But they are not the only ones who live in fear of offending a man who flies into a rage if, for example, he’s asked to answer basic questions about his lunatic behavior.

No, the Log Cabin Republicans, the country’s best-known conservative LGBTQ organization, recently endorsed the president’s 2020 reelection bid. It’s interesting that the group “declined to endorse then-candidate Trump in 2016,” back when they thought they had a choice.

But now, the Log Cabin Republicans have fallen into line, displaying “a certain level of perverse chutzpah, or a certain level of confidence in your gaslighting abilities, to claim that President Trump is good for LGBTQ people.”

The Log Cabin Republicans suddenly got into groveling because Trump’s hardcore supporters are the real power in the GOP. And they will not be dissuaded, even if the administration’s disastrous policies nail them personally.

For example, my home state of Wisconsin continues to top the nation in family farm bankruptcies. No one seriously disputes that Trump’s idiotic trade war is “contributing to their economic hardships.”

So those Wisconsin farmers must be mad as hell at the president— right?

Well, these rural soon-to-be paupers are “appear to be sticking by Trump — not just the Republican they largely supported in the 2016 election, but the trade warrior who has put their industries in China’s sights.”

Many of these farmers don’t blame Trump for destroying their livelihoods. Instead, they aim their ire at unknown, nameless “Washington bureaucrats,” (always an easy target). And in an impressive feat of cognitive dissonance, some farmers will continue to vote for oligarchs because they are “not in favor of any kind of socialism,” even while lining up to receive their government-funded bailout packages.

But don’t worry, because most of the $8.4 billion of Trump’s farm bailouts has gone to the richest farmers, the top 10% of all recipients. Yes, even farmers have an elitist class that grabs most of the cash from everyone else, so I guess they really are like the rest of us.

As a final reminder of just how fervently, how obsessively Trump’s base clings to his aura, please keep in mind that about 40% of Republicans don’t even think the president mentioned Joe Biden’s name on that phone call with the Ukrainian president. Never mind arguing whether or not Trump pressured anyone or jeopardized American foreign policy or committed impeachable offenses. Four out of ten Republicans deny that the president even said Biden’s name, which is of course, an undisputed fact, and the most innocuous aspect of this whole sordid fiasco.

So how are you going to convince this crowd that their messiah did anything the slightest bit wrong?

Now, there is a sliver of optimism in this depressing compendium of right-wing fanaticism. Many political experts believe that “the good news for Democrats is that for every argument that pushing ahead on impeachment will hurt them, there is another that it won’t hurt much and may even help.”

And for the first time, “a plurality of Americans now support impeaching Trump and removing him from office.” Furthermore, support for impeachment is only growing with each passing day.

So maybe, possibly, in some distant future, one or two GOP senators will meekly stand up and say this administration is just the slightest bit shady.

But they probably won’t.

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Impeachmentpalooza!

by on Sep.26, 2019, under Politics

Here’s an interesting question:

If someone says the president should be executed, is he making an active threat against the chief executive that warrants some door knocking from the Secret Service? Well, what if that person is simply musing about the penalty for treason, and then goes on to accuse the president of that crime?

Yes, it’s a circuitous way to make a threat, and it makes for an interesting hypothetical that—

Oh, wait a minute. It’s not a rhetorical exercise. 

Recently, former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld said that “the president committed treason through his controversial phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — adding that the punishment for treason is death.”

Now, you might think that Weld is one of those hardcore leftists whose days consist of smuggling undocumented immigrants, officiating gay weddings, and having brunch with the Squad before heading out to throw punches with Antifa. 

But Weld is a Republican. 

Damn, even conservatives are getting tired of Trump.

At long last, the president’s rampant corruption and overt contempt for the Constitution have become hideous enough for Democrats to finally emerge from hiding under their desks to whisper the word “impeachment.”

Still, even with all that Trump has done, many Democrats are afraid of removing the most bellicose, unstable, and reckless president that America has ever had.

You see, they are petrified they might lose the votes of Q Anon supporters and these guys:

And if that is not a solid reason to shirk one’s constitutional duty and endanger the entire country, well, I don’t know what is.

In any case, this Ukrainian mess will likely not change anyone’s mind. If you are progressive, and tuned into the slightest particle on reality’s wave length, you will look at the transcript of the president’s phone call and see that it “reads like a classic mob shakedown.”

If you are a Republican, and exceedingly used to denying basic facts and common-sense conclusions, you will scream, “witch hunt” or “fake news” or “the deep state” or some other worn-out catchphrase that long ago morphed from stinging rebuke into pathetic plea.

It’s difficult to believe that anyone would still embrace the administration’s sad, sloppy attempts at distracting, deflecting blame, and eluding public disgrace. But you can’t blame Trump for sticking to a formula that works. 

After all, his GOP enablers will jump through flaming hoops to twist incriminating statements into exonerations. They argued that the Muller Report cleared Trump and believed that releasing the transcript of the Ukrainian phone call would never ever in a million years backfire. Hell, they view themselves as heroes.

And Trump’s fearful, logic-challenged base agrees. After all, these are the people who believe that virtually all writers, scientists, historians, economists, moderate politicians, and religious leaders (non-evangelicals) have devoted their lives to lying to the American populace for some unknown, nefarious reason.

Members of the base further believe that a delusional narcissist with a history of lying, bankruptcy, unethical behavior, and adultery is a beacon of truth — well, him and Fox News, which is little more than a slithering mass of irrational, hate-filled propaganda pushed by bigoted zealots who have a strong financial incentive to terrify their viewers.

So it’s going to work — at least with the 20% of Americans who will support the president no matter what.

For the rest of us, we remain mired in a political nightmare that careens between Lynchian and Kafkaesque, with swivels toward the Orwellian and stray Lewis Carroll fever dreams.

But is there reason to hope that we are nearing the end of this mad-scientist experiment on American democracy? Well, there is more cause for optimism than there has been since November 2016.

Of course, if Trump actually is removed from office, or hangs on only to lose the 2020 election, “the risks of bloodshed are real.”

So we’re back to acknowledging that there is no end in sight.

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Crazy Shit at the Border

by on Sep.19, 2019, under Immigration

The imagination of children is limitless. 

For example, recently the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History inquired about obtaining some charming drawings that kids had made showing their lives. 

And just what were the carefree doodles that these adorable scamps created? Oh, they were just drawings made by migrant children “recently released from immigration custody depicting themselves in cages.”

Wait… in cages?

Um, yeah — in motherfucking cages.

Clearly, the Smithsonian curators recognize history in the making. And they already see that Trump’s reign of xenophobic authoritarianism is something that future generations are going to have trouble believing. Hence, the need to preserve first-hand accounts of this nightmare.

That is, unless you somehow believe that the Americans of twenty or thirty years from now will read about our current era, look at the drawings of kids in cages, and think, “What a wise leader Trump was. Thank goodness he saved our nation from the invading horde.”

I’m more certain that they will speak only of Trump in hushed tones reserved for shameful stories of the past, or pull his name out when they need a scary story to tell their children around the campfire.

In any case, the situation at the border is still a humanitarian crisis. But this hasn’t stopped the U.S. Supreme Court from saying, “Hey, let’s allow chief executive lunatic to be even more out of control and psychopathic. Why not?”

You see, recently the court sided with the administration and issued a ruling that effectively locked nearly all Central American migrants out of the asylum process. 

The whole process was so shady that our friend Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented. She implied that the Supreme Court is doing “extraordinary” favors for Trump. 

What Justice Sotomayor doesn’t understand is that it’s simply inefficient to have three branches of government, when you can have just one.

In any case, the court’s decision follows another recent travesty in the ongoing shit show unfolding on the border. I’m talking, of course, about the administration’s decision to “divert $3.6 billion in military construction funding to buildthe president’s border wall.”

Yes, some Republicans were briefly upset that this will strip money from their home states, and in some cases, possibly weaken the military that they supposedly hold in such high esteem. But ultimately, this band of hollow cowards fell into line.

Still, I don’t know why conservatives are obsessing about our southern border. Don’t they know that hordes of people are crossing our northern border with Canada? Yes, there’s a self-described “caravan” zipping back and forth across the Canadian border to…

What’s that?

Oh, that “caravan” is actually U.S. citizens headed for Canada “in search of affordable medical care in a country where they can get the exact same life-saving drugs for a dramatically lower price.”

I can’t imagine why a caravan of ill Americans is headed to Canada when we have, in the words of many conservatives, the “best health care system in the world.”

Wow, just imagine how many sickly Americans would be headed abroad for help if we ranked, say, the worst in the industrialized world in health care? Yeah, that would be embarrassing.

But getting back to the southern border, it might interest you to know that there is indeed a “little-noticed surge across the U.S.-Mexico border,” but that it is “Americans, heading south.”

You see, “the U.S.-born population in Mexico “has reached 799,000 — a roughly fourfold increase since 1990.” And that is probably an undercount, with some experts estimating the real number at 1.5 million or more.

By some measures, “the flow of migrants from the United States to Mexico is probably larger than the flow of Mexicans to the United States.” Unfortunately, many of the Americans living there are, well, “illegal.”

That’s irony on a major level.

Maybe we can send the U.S. Border Patrol to round them up. But of course, those officers are too busy sharing “memes mocking dead migrant children, photoshopped images of elected officials performing sex acts, and discussions of throwing things at elected officials who visit Border Patrol detention facilities.”

Looking at the infamous U.S. Border Patrol Facebook group’s homepage reveals acres of “vile stuff, and confirms many of the worst suspicions regarding the agency accused of running torture facilities.”

Who would have thought that individuals who yank screaming children away from their parents could be bad people?

Regardless, we’ve now come full circle when it comes to the border crisis. It comes down to kids in cages.

So let’s allow the final word to come from those right-wingers who combine their love of the Second Amendment with their hatred of Latinos. Mixing together this toxic stew creates the fresh argument that “Americans need guns in order to potentially fight off unlimited immigrants coming into the United States.” I bet you were unaware that “citizens need the ability to defend ourselves because we don’t know who is coming into the country.”

Well, now you know.

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The Audacity of Giving Up Hope

by on Sep.12, 2019, under Culture

Hey, remember the movie Idiocracy?

A cult hit by the guy who created Beavis and Butthead, the film presented a future where morons had bred out of control, causing the world’s collective IQ to drop and civilization to de-evolve into stupidity.

Yeah, we all laughed. Of course, while watching the movie, we assumed that we were the smart ones, outnumbered by mouth-breathing dullards, which is why we had a good chuckle over the idea of blithering fools taking over the nation. 

And let me tell you, there is nothing egotistical or elitist about that — nope.

In any case, it might interest you to know that idiocracy will indeed be our future, but the movie got two things wrong. 

First, it will not be a comedy. 

And second, you are not the genius savior laughing at buffoons. No, you are part of the problem. You are one of the idiots.

You see, a recent academic paper has caused quite a commotion, because it argues that “democracy is devouring itself — and it won’t last.” The paper’s authors state that “in well-established democracies like the United States, democratic governance will continue its inexorable decline and will eventually fail.”

Ponder that thesis: democracy is doomed.

It’s a little grim, isn’t it?

Now, you might say this is all Trump’s fault. And indeed, the researchers agree that “Trump’s successful anti-immigrant populist campaignmay be a symptom of democracy’s decline.”

However, the bigger issue is that our brains — full of subconscious biases, fearful impulses and irrational narratives — just aren’t good at processing facts. Add to this the scourges of racism, tribalism, and selfishness, and one could argue that when it comes to democracy, “humans just aren’t built for it.”

Again, the paper’s authors don’t say it’s all the fault of those red-neck yokels who believe in Pizzagate (although, let’s be honest, they are the most obvious patient zeros for democracy’s illness).

No, the researchers believe that “democracy is hard work and requires a lot from those who participate in it,” such as “thoughtfulness, discipline and logic” as well as the ability “to respect those with different views from theirs and people who don’t look like them.”

The paper concludes that nobody — as in not one single person — can really perform these tasks that well. So be honest. Did you actually research all the candidates for your local school board election? Are you always respectful of reasonable people who disagree with you? Did you blow off the last Democratic presidential debate to catch up on back episodes of The Bachelorette?

Yeah, you’re not alone.

Some people are better at practicing democracy than others, but ultimately, “the majority of Americans are generally unable to understand or value democratic culture, institutions, practices or citizenship in the manner required.”

Again, that is not “a lot” or a “substantial minority” of your fellow patriots. No, it is “the majority of Americans.”

And if you’re asking why this is happening now, the researchers conclude that the “irony is that more democracy — ushered in by social media and the internet, where information flows more freely than ever before — is what has unmoored our politics, and is leading us toward authoritarianism.”

That’s where our favorite racist megalomaniac comes in. Trump’s role in the downfall of democracy is clear. You see, it is always easier to “pledge allegiance to an authoritarian leader than to do the hard work of thinking for yourself demanded by democracy.”

So this all very depressing — the end of democracy and collapse of America and all that.

But wait, because it gets even more horrible.

The novelist Jonathan Franzen recently achieved a literary going-viral moment when he wrote an article stating “climate apocalypse” is inevitable and that we should just “admit that we can’t prevent it.”

Franzen wrote that it is silly to go on “hoping that catastrophe is preventable.” Instead, he argues, we need to “accept that disaster is coming” and shift our attention to dealing with the resulting calamities.

This means preparing for droughts and floods and blizzards and climate refugees and political upheaval and lots of war. It means, according to Franzen, a future where “the systems of industrial agriculture and global trade break down and homeless people outnumber people with homes.”

And then he says something about how we can yet preserve a functioning world and still be optimistic in the face of chaos. But to be honest, everyone stopped reading the article at that point because we all felt like killing ourselves.

At this juncture, I will again bring up the minor issue that some experts believe that civilization itself will start to collapse as soon as 2050.

So there’s that.

With such a cavalcade of pessimism, is there any chance that we can, as Franzen states, “begin to rethink what it means to have hope”?


When it comes to climate change and democracy and the supposed greatness of America, is it time to just cut our losses? Is it time to stop fighting the good fight and instead prepare for the worst? 

What should we do now?

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