HOW AN OUT-DATED POWER STRUCTURE BEHAVES WHEN THREATENED? VIOLENCE

We white males and our progenitors have held most the money and controlled nearly all the wealth in this nation since our forefather began killing and displacing Native Americans 400 years ago.  Modern information systems, demographics, economics and reality all say that old patriarchal structure cannot continue unchanged.  Let us recall that the 1960s civil rights laws got passed so LBJ and his cohort could forget urban rioting and concentrate on violence against Vietnamese in their own land.  Since then the white power structure has done everything it can devise to thwart the possible changes under those laws.  The Republican Party right now is working hard to limit voting by anybody but their elderly white party members.

So the old white-man-rules system is threatened and it’s compelled to strike back to preserve its presumed and assumed god-given superiority.   No power structures changes without struggle.  We have seen this so many times.   Monarchies (or tsardoms) killing revolutionaries and suppressing feudal revolts.  The Catholic Church’s Inquisition killing non-Catholics AFTER the Reformation took hold in Europe.  France fighting against Algerians who wanted independence.  Decades of violence by the British against the residents in India and Pakistan.   The current fundamentalist jihadists in Muslim countries trying to stop westernization and rights for women to show their faces in public, or drive a car.

The men with guns are employed by and encouraged by the powerful to suppress change that might cost the rich some money or make employees think they have rights.   We should expect more violence–cops against dark-skinned protesters–as our police have now been trained to see everybody they don’t like or trust as possible terrorists–the legacy of the George Bush Presidency.

Today’s police behavior harkens back to what blacks and anti-war protesters felt in the late 1960s.  Now you hear “terrorist” where once you would have “communist”.

Click here for opinion piece looking at now as it compares to 1968 protests.

When racism from the White House encourages violence against the non-white it is a message gladly received by many who are scared or angry or bitter over the obvious change in America where now there are people on TV, on stages, in stadia, all over the Internet who are not white males.  The horrid under-current of those who wish for race war and those who simply suck up to that mania now have a maniacal twitter champion.  We should all be ashamed that we have spent our recent years shopping, watching videos and pretending that things will work out.

AN NFL quarterback went to his knee four years ago to warn us of police violence against blacks.  He was informally, cowardly banned from his sport.   The real cowards, in the White House and without, are those who didn’t want to hear his warning.  To make real change takes courage, to fight change takes greed and inertia.  A dose of racism certainly makes change into a threat.

Now a brilliant, famous NBA star has written an elegant warning–things must change.  Can those who profit by today’s system find a way to give some respect and perhaps some crumbs of money to those who aren’t owners?  Aren’t members of Mara Lago?

The mantras of “enemy of the people” to describe non-Trumpian media may not make sense to most Americans.  It rings true to police who want freedom to behave off camera, unseen, any time, any way…like in Atlanta last night where two students were pulled from their cars and brutalized. The mayor fired some of those cops. So the police in some cases have turned on the media.  Again, we saw this in the Sixties.

Through all this covid lurks, and kills.  One of the worst countries is one of the poorest in Latin America.  Peru.  Isolation without a refrigerator, plumbing, paycheck and a laptop can be rather impossible.  The US is about to start starving, more and more, as food banks cannot keep up.

Meanwhile, even before the urban violence, the economy is staggering with over forty  million admitted jobless…not counting children who are dependent on those who are no longer working, or business owners who are shut down or broke or both, or landlords who cannot collect rent on their duplex…on and on.  Now the violence has led Target to close over 100 stores.  Clerks checked out, for how long?

Many economists say any recovery will take years.  Not even a stable genius can dictate how the nation shops and hires and invests and profits…or not.

Meanwhile, one observer says the stable genius is actually politically self-isolating, essentially ending the current presidency and leaving it all to the states.  Just what the beloved old Confederacy always wanted, a do-nothing national government.

Yeah, it’s really ugly.  Yeah, it could get so much uglier.  Cities and counties bankrupt.  Police departments and fire departments shut down or run only by volunteers.  No public schools for those who can’t afford home computers.  Ugly.

But Flint, Michigan, gives us hope.  I kid you not.  Despite lead-toxic water, loss of population over decades until it is a mere ghost of its former self, destruction of hundreds of derelict homes to prevent what derelict homes invite.  Yes, Flint has long been the poster-child for the brutal de-industrialization of America, the globalization of work and wages and all the self-respect that comes with having a real job. It is a front row observer of what capitalism does when it decides to off-load a place or class of people. But this week FLINT! has given us one example of how we can actually behave like humane, wise critters, not post-cavern savages.  Click here to be encouraged, even if your fingers are, wisely, still crossed.

END OF AUGUST, THAT’S A WRAP…UP

Wrapping up this month that should be in summer doldrums, should be the dog days, is to realize how intense has been the action in the reality TV show that is the Trump Regime.

This month marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Chicago Police riots during the anti-war demonstrations around the 1968 Democratic Party Convention…it was there and then that the Dems nominated Hubert Humphrey, insuring the election of Richard Nixon.  Nixon, a veteran of the McCarthy Era red-baiting, was an excellent hater. His character enabled the Republican Party to attract all the angry white folks who hated the LBJ Civil Rights legislation and thus began the process of making the Republican Party ever-more white, anti-liberal, anti-progressive, anti-government, against any kind of protective legislation that might be good for ordinary citizens.  Nixon was the last Republican who could afford to sign into law any legislation to protect the environment.  By the Reagan Era racism and pentecostal religion and hatred of government were folded neatly into the Republican agenda…and half a century later we are still paying the price for the Democratic Party’s stubborn plunge into the dark hole of the Vietnam War in 1968.

THE FELONS LIST

The list of guilty parties grows.  This month alone we added Cohen, Manafort, W. Samuel Patten (guilty pleas today).  Rick Gates had admitted guilt back in February to several crimes, but this month jhe got to describe them in detail, in court testimony in the trial of his erstwhile boss, Paul Manafort.  Manafort, of course, faces one more trial in September.  Today’s plea came from Patten who admitted funnelling Ukrainian money into President Trump’s inauguration, click here for description.

We are now up to seven men guilty of crimes in this spreading scandal–Van Der Zwaan, Manafort, Cohen, Flynn, Papadopoulos, Patten. Rick Gates.  Now Carter Page is claiming he will be charged soon and he will NOT squeal on Trump.  
Do not expect this list to stop growing.  Remember forty guilty characters were finally harvested from the Nixon Administration.

And there are still numerous possible state charges against various and sundry members of the Trump Gang. Click for look at those possible charges and how they would evade all of Donald’s FEDERAL pardon power…dual sovereignty.  If this begins to happen you can bet the Republicans will suddenly want a constitutional amendment doing away with states rights…just as they love states rights when it comes to prayer in school, keeping some of “those” people from voting or negating civil rights… the same party truly hates states rights when those wild Californians decide to limit auto emissions.

One thing to watch: will New York state get rid of its law that protects any body with federal pardon from being prosecuted for the same crime in that state?

OTHER HAPPENINGS

Apparently Attorney General Jeff Sessions will survive until November 8 or 9. The same cannot be said for White House Counsel, Don McGahn, forgotten but not quite gone.  He leaves with his license to practice law intact.  Michael Cohen’s legal career is likely over.

Now, click here to read about what could happen if Sessions goes.  If Sessions resigns Trump can transfer any other Senate-approved official into the Attorney General’s position. Say Pompeo or DeVos or Perry.  If Trump fires Sessions it is an open question…and his ability to make a temporary appointment while Senate is adjourned…even a minority of Senate Democrats could prevent that with a filibuster.

WALLED NATION

Surely nobody rational believed that Mexico would pay for the wall.  But the Stephen Miller’s anti-immigration regime is erecting as many paper barriers as possible… and is now targeting some U.S. citizens who are Hispanic, challenging their birth certificates!  Stephen Miller means there will be no legislation approved on immigration that is not completely anti-immigrant…for now.  He is now being called “President of Immigration.”

LYING TO SELF-PROCLAIMED CHRISTIANS

The current President of the United States hates the nation he governs. He wants to recreate it to match an unrealistic image of a nation that never existed. Even under George III this nation was home to Quakers, Huguenots, Jews, Puritans, even secret deists like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. But this President ignores reality, is ignorant of history and fact, is bordering on an ignoramus. He may be ignorance personified.

Now he has blatantly lied to a bunch of church leaders, Christian one and all.  He told them he had done away with the law that prevents American religious organizations, with their tax exemptions, from openly endorsing or campaigning for political candidates.

In his mind he is the greatest President one could even imagine, and now he has the powers of a 15th Century monarch.  Of course, this is only in Trump’s fictional universe.  

The ignorance comes in because this President knows nothing of the separation of church and state and why and how and where it came into being.  Hint: in a bunch of British colonies that rebelled for independence and freedom. 

FAKE NEWS: TRUMP CANCELS BRENNAN SECURITY CLEARANCE 

This has not happened…will it?  Not even the President himself could tell us the truth.

WE ARE BECOMING GREAT AGAIN…SEXUAL DISEASES RISING

All the budget cuts, all the anti-sex education efforts, all the decrease in public health spending, have given us a renewed growth in sexually transmitted diseases.  Opioids, guns, cars, obesity, STDs–our health problems are self-inflicted.  We may not need climate change to make our lives unnecessarily difficult.

Any good American knows money is more important than public health, education or even treatment; good Repubs go for spending cuts every time…govt. over-reach is coming for your kids. Do you really want the govt. telling your college age offsprings to have safe sex, after all, isn’t it everybody’s right to get as sick as possible?  Besides Secty. DeVos wants sex education now to “Just say NO.”  We all know how well that works.  Look at our President’s maginificent self-control when it comes to matters sexual.

And for a good feeling of austerity, now that the wealthy and corporations got their tax cut, let’s not give federal civilian workers a pay raise.  Could this fuel the first hint of a general strike?

” Irrationality spreads through Washington…”

I recently read this from a prominent American political magazine…strong words for troubled times:

“[President XXX] should not seek re-election. The Administration is in a truly alarming state. Irrationality spreads through Washington like a contagion. The nerves of key officials are frayed. They are no longer thinking, only reacting, and their reactions are mechanical and predictable.

“Their troubles are bound to multiply, for they are prisoners of their own views… in which they have invested so improvidently and recklessly that they can no longer see a way out. The President is jeopardizing not only the country but his own party, even while he keeps insisting that only the [YYY] Party (with himself at its head) can save the country.

“The fact is–and now it must be obvious even to President XXX–that he himself is the divisive issue in the country, and matters have reached a pass where nothing he can say or do will change the situation. He is more keenly and universally disliked and distrusted than any President in modern times. Franklin D. Roosevelt was indeed hated, but there were millions who loved him, Who loves XXX?

“He can plead ill health or whatever will make the pill less bitter to swallow, but he should take the medicine that thoughtful and patriotic men prescribe.”

So where did I read this?  It is from The Nation. It was published on March 11th…fifty years ago, l968.  XXX was LBJ.  YYY was the Democratic Party.  The ellipses cut out a reference to the Vietnam War.  Once again, after half a century, we live in an Age of Rage.

From the time of this editorial it took another six years to get the rid of both the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon.  His presence on the political stage prompted this words from The Nation, again seemingly meant for today:
“The marks of a demagogue are many, but the principal ones are an appeal to the emotions, the lower the better; a contempt for consistency–which also implies a contempt for the voters–and reckless promises so worded that they will sound plausible to the inexperienced. Drawing on the last, the new Nixon promised to “end the war.” He gave no details. When asked just how he would end the war, Nixon came up with the most impudent of all his ploys–that since he may well be the next President of the United States, it would not behoove him to say what his plans were at this time. Voters are a smart lot on the whole, but the ones who swallow that excuse must be at the lower end of the intelligence curve.”
Lower end?  Today we might say “deplorables” and mean it.