Tag Archives: autocracy

Political Rants

Voting the bums in for the last time.

Leave a comment

Okay, so the “For the People” act did not overcome the filibuster this past week. That was no surprise, of course. Neither was the fact that Republican senators made no effort to specify exactly why they thought the provisions of the act would negatively affect Republicans. They speak in billboards, these people – short, snappy phrases like “power grab” and “stop the steal,” with no key as to what the hell they’re talking about.

But let’s be clear: in statehouses across the country, GOP legislatures and governors are putting the mechanisms in place to commandeer the next election, regardless of who gets the most votes. The “For the People” act would have rolled much of those back. Without some restraint from the Federal level, it’s going to be very difficult for poorer and disenfranchised people to access the ballot in coming elections.

Nothing new under the gun

Republicans have been working on this stuff for a long time. They’ve been pushing voter i.d. laws, rolling back early voting, and resisting policies like automatic voter registration for decades. During the Bush II administration, they even fired a bunch of U.S. Attorneys for not aggressively prosecuting voter fraud cases (which, frankly, were practically non-existent even then). The reason is simple: the more people vote, the more they tend to lose because their stated policies are so deeply unpopular.

Also, they have long tended to appeal to their constituents’ baser instincts – namely, fear of immigrants, fear and hatred of dark people more generally, fear of crime, etc. Democrats have resorted to this as well, but less so over time as white people have become a proportionately smaller part of the electorate. (Many of them do accommodate the views of their Republican colleagues, of course.)

GOP election strategy: one and done

There is, however, a difference in kind, not degree, about the current “conservative” movement. Now they truly seem determined not only to steal elections via legal and extralegal means, but to set themselves up so that they permanently remain in power. Trump is not what I would call a “thought leader” on the right, but he does have utter contempt for rules, restrictions, and institutions, and I think he deployed this to supercharge the autocratic tendencies in the Republican party, which now seems enamored with his erratic, dictatorial behavior.

Readers of this blog will know that I had my doubts last year over whether Trump would leave office if he lost the election. Based on what we know he and his cohorts attempted to do, I think that sentiment was justified. In all honesty, if Trump or some Trump clone runs for president in 2024, I think there’s a better than good chance that, with the support of these GOP legislators and governors, that candidate will be named the winner. And once they pull that off, staying permanently becomes that much easier.

Keith was kinda right

At the beginning of Trump’s term, Keith Olbermann put out a series of videos attacking him as a usurper, a criminal, and an autocrat. While I think the Russia, Russia, Russia stuff was way overblown, he was kind of right about Trump’s congeniality towards the idea of ruling like a freaking King Rat. I, for one, will not underestimate the danger of autocracy again, and I strongly suggest that you take the same precaution.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Lying in state.

Leave a comment

The body of Officer Sicknick lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda this week – the same Capitol he died defending about a month ago when bloodthirsty right-wing thugs invaded the building by the thousands, hoping to forcibly stop the Senate’s counting of the electoral votes which, somewhat remarkably, reflected the will of the majority of American voters in denying Trump a second term. For all of the failings of law enforcement that day, Sicknick and many of his fellow officers fought fiercely to keep the insurrectionist mob at bay long enough so that members of Congress and the Vice President could be moved to more secure locations. As I have said before, this was nothing less than an attempt at a self-coup, and though there are many in the political class who would prefer that we forget about it and move on, that is the absolute last thing we should do. We forget this at our own peril – they have provided the template for future attempts, and we must be prepared.

I’ve talked about this quite a bit on my podcast, Strange Sound, but I think it bears repeating, hopefully by people with larger audiences than mine. There’s a lot to criticize about our federal government. It has inequities built into its very constitutional foundations, such as slave economy measures like the electoral college, the Senate, and so on. Even the 13th Amendment, which abolished chattel slavery, explicitly allows that toxic institution to persist for incarcerated people. Bernie Sanders is right, in fact, when he says that we need a kind of revolution in governance, but I think he would agree that he’s not talking about an actual political revolution involving a forcible overthrow of the U.S. constitutional order. Actual revolutions are a bloody business, and you never know where they’re going to end up. They also require more effort, energy, and suffering than just hardscrabble organizing in all fifty states. So from a left perspective, in my humble opinion, overthrow of the national government is a bad idea and an unnecessary one for the promotion of positive change.

That’s the left. The right, on the other hand, are bomb throwers. The people who attacked the capitol last month were bent on autocracy. They had been fed the big lie for years, with a ramp up over the course of the 2020 campaign – the election is rigged, vote by mail is rife with fraud, the whole thing is fixed, etc. This was Trump’s plan A in 2016. It never got implemented because something unexpected happened – he won. This past year he resurrected Plan A, and it nearly led to the gutting of the federal legislature, the murder of our representatives, and the installation of someone who plainly lost the last election, hands down. Do these deluded right-wingers want a revolution? I don’t know, but they almost got one, and that is some pretty scary shit. For all the “defense” bluster our government puts out on a regular basis, all the posturing on terrorism, all the billions it spends on war materiel, it seemed somehow powerless to stop a bunch of white Americans from trashing the center of government. Plainly all that anti-terrorism prep, like that clause in the 13th Amendment, was not meant for whitey.

R.I.P., officer Sicknick, and condolences to your family. We’ll have to work harder to ensure that his loss was not in vain.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Week One.

Leave a comment

A lot might be said of any administration’s first week in office, Because we’re coming off of a presidency like no other, and not in a good way, there’s going to be a tendency among members of the press to be more deferential than might otherwise seem appropriate. On a human level, that’s understandable – White House correspondents are happy to see the daily briefing return, and to see it managed with a lot less tone. After four years of being subjected to withering attacks from Trump and his crew, reporters are breathing a sigh of relief and, I’m sure, hoping that this signals a return to the normal routines of previous presidencies, when there existed a more generally congenial symbiotic relationship between the press and the press office. (There was symbiosis between Trump’s administration and the press, but it was of a more corrosive variety.) They want their cheap-glamor White House Correspondents Dinner back, roast and all.

I’m not sure they’re going to get their wish this time, not entirely. The media universe is much more fragmented now then it was even five years ago, and the broad flaccid consensus that the mainstream media so worships may prove elusive. This is a divided country, with what looks like a larger number of people on the side of our standard mediated democratic governance, and a large minority seemingly (and in many cases openly) advocating for autocracy. It’s really more than advocacy, though – large numbers of them have been moved to violence, murder, and active disruption of the constitutional order, such as we saw on January 6. Now the vast majority of the insurrectionists have melted back into their home communities, unmolested, perhaps celebrating their success at delaying the electoral vote certification beyond the statutory deadline. Millions of people believe ridiculous lies about fraudulent votes in the last election – it’s hard to move on from that fact.

As we approach an impeachment trial in the Senate, Trump’s second, Republican senators are taking issue with the process, attempting to stop the trial by arguing that because Trump left office, the issue is moot. When the facts aren’t on their side, Republicans always go for process. They’re doing everything they can to obstruct the majority. I have to say, it is not surprising but still shocking that, after that Trump-fueled hate mob busted into the capitol looking for Pence’s head and those of the Congressional leadership, these senators can still casually tut tut over the effort to hold the former president accountable. They were almost impaled on the end of a pitchfork just three weeks ago, and yet they still go to bat for the outside strategy … and for every rube to remain duped. Un-effing-believable.

I started critical coverage of the Biden administration on this past week’s episode of Strange Sound, with a focus on foreign policy. I encourage you to do the same, even if just for your own edification.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Sick Mother.

Leave a comment

This week felt so much like insult upon injury. I sometimes think back four years and wonder if I would have believed then that times like these were even possible. This country is being ruled by a narcissistic proto-autocrat that doesn’t care how many people suffer as the result of his enormous selfishness. Because of his massive incompetence and carelessness, more than 210,000 people have died of COVID-19, including people within his own circle of acquaintance; he himself has caught the virus and spent several days in the hospital. And I’m sure the Fareed Zacharias of the world were expecting that he would emerge from that experience a newly sober and serious man, a president at last, ready to take this disaster seriously. They were, of course, grievously disappointed – Trump never changes, and like honey badger before him, he doesn’t give a fuck.

Not sure how Trump thinks people will react to him saying that COVID is nothing to be afraid of and that we shouldn’t let it “dominate us.” There are very few Americans who don’t know someone who’s been affected by this virus. It’s hard to imagine how I would feel if I had lost a family member to COVID and then had to listen to him bloviating in this way. Now he’s claiming that he is not only cured, but no longer infectious – that his therapies were, in fact, “cures” for COVID – this as he staggers around the White House, likely infecting everyone he comes into contact with … a super spreader POTUS. We’ve finally discovered his true super power (and you thought it was making cheeseburgers disappear).

A lot has been said about White House staffers and what a difficult spot this puts them in. Now, I have a great deal of sympathy for the domestic workers, the food service people, the support staff that keep that place running from day to day – they don’t deserve this. But the president’s senior staff; people who have chosen to work with this mad man, to develop and support his policies, to glom onto his celebrity in hopes of furthering their own careers – those people can cheerfully suck my ass. This is the dilemma that their president has bestowed upon all of us. Many of them, in their supreme arrogance, may have thought themselves immune or exempt from the dangers they exposed the rest of us to. Well, it turns out not to be the case. Trump’s irresponsibility and lack of concern for the health and safety of the American people apparently extends to his senior advisors as well. He’s like the gangster who keeps shooting his lieutenants in the middle of a heist. Hey folks … you fucked up. You trusted him.

The White House is literally a major node in the propagation of this disease locally as well as nationally. That’s all you need to know about this administration.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Turn right at Greenland.

Leave a comment

Trump may well think there’s something rotten in Denmark, but it’s hard to know for sure. This past week’s strange interlude about Greenland seems more like a textbook study in megalomania as it  gradually unfolds. Where did Trump get this idea about buying this inhabited, now-melting glacial island from the Danes? The first story that I heard was that it was some Danish diplomat, but god only knows where that came from.

The simple fact is, well, Trump is a simpleton; somebody told him that he could buy Greenland, and he believed whoever that was. In his tiny mind, everything is for sale – it’s just a question of price. I’m thinking that as he saw the public reaction and it began to dawn on him how idiotic he looked, he did what proto-dictators always do – they bend every effort to make the world conform with their delusions. Trump doubled down on the claim, and suddenly there emerged some weird proposal about a kind of extended lease, which is essentially what the U.S. already holds with regards to its military bases on the island. Then when the prime minister (herself an anti-immigration freak) called the idea absurd, Trump canceled his scheduled state visit to Denmark.

Big Island Mine!

I know people are tempted to laugh at this episode, but we have to remind ourselves that this is the president of the United States and, as such, someone capable of tremendous harm all around the world. And I know he and his administration are deliberately trying to trigger people like me by acting strangely and saying outrageous things, but I think he is seriously showing signs of dictatorial self-aggrandizement and the autocrat version of shut-in syndrome, where all you hear is the echo of your own voice. This week Trump said, in effect, that either 80 percent of Jewish Americans are disloyal to themselves and to Israel (once again associating them with another country, as he has done before) or they are just plain stupid. Then he repeated a crackpot claim that Israelis see him as “the chosen one.” Oh … and said that he might want to be president for 10 or maybe 13 years. Somebody needs to shut that shit down.

We are dealing with a deranged right-wing nutjob in the White House. Isn’t there a constitutional amendment designed for a situation like that?  The sad fact is, people in Washington could stop this crap show, but they will not. It’s down to us.

luv u,

jp