donald-trump – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

If There Are Better Angels, What Does That Make The Rest Of Us?

Dual or duelling realities?

Abraham Lincoln trying to find a middle ground and attempting to hold the Union together proclaimed in his 1861 inaugural address that the “better angels of our nature” would help the country persevere. James Madison, writing in Federalist 51 said “if men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

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We’ve always looked to angels, either to save ourselves from ourselves, or excuse ourselves from those parts of humanity we know exist within or alongside us. The countless cartoons of angels and devils sitting on opposite shoulders illustrate this duality quite well. Even so, those who see the world as the brutal place it can be and act accordingly can just as often be found in pulpits praying to those better angels for guidance and protection.

Which begs the question, if there are “better angels” what does that make the rest of us? Are they divided into good, better, best ratings? To say they are all demons and devils is a shortcut that typically has led those holier than thou turning their own plowshares into swords of retribution just as sharp as those they hope to defeat.

So, I’m not a fan of the metaphor. First, it implies some sort of fairy tale-like savior(s) from beyond, heavenly or no, to right wrongs and dole out punishment, or caring and consoling those less fortunate. Second, depending on which religious texts you cling to, angels haven’t all been the “angels” we fantasize about and commercialize. Biblical texts, some still sworn by (Genesis), and some not (The Book of Enoch), talk about Angels sexually cavorting with humans, although just like anything else you can pick your side of that theological debate.

I’m sure many of those finding their relationships with Jeffrey Epstein, who are now the subject of scrutiny they thought they’d avoided, didn’t think twice in the moment about brushing off the better angels on their shoulders.

So, it’s no wonder we dwell in our duality. Sticking to the biblical for the moment, theoretically and theologically there was only one rule in the beginning. “Don’t eat the damn apple.” We’ve been adding and breaking rules ever since. Insert something about them made to be broken here.

It doesn’t matter which sphere of life you wander through, that duality is going to exist. I happen to believe that the vast majority of people start out to do something they think is a good thing, and then perhaps find their morality or their principals challenged along the they way. At that fork in the road, some choose a path that doesn’t comprise their belief systems, others the opposite.

That’s the test. There may be many gray areas in life, but that test is only pass/fail. Some may try to erase the result from their permanent record, but I think they call it permanent for a reason. Even if they can be redacted, deleted, or discarded.

On a more earthly level than spirituality, in sports there are those who play by the rules and those who will do anything it takes to win. There are admirers and fans of both. The same is true in business. The language often used in either competitive arena certainly isn’t always what I would call better angel-ish.

And then there’s politics. As my grandmother used to say, “politics is a dirty business for dirty people.” She nailed that one.

Good friend and fellow gadfly, David Todd McCarty, recently wrote about our America’s Dual State, more specifically about the dual state theory of Ernst Frankel wherein we exist in two different realities, the Normative State and the Prerogative State. As David distills it,

He called the first reality, the Normative State, where everything felt normal, and people were protected by laws and courts, and life functioned as before. The other, he called the Prerogative State, which was governed entirely by the Party, outside of the rule of law, existing in an arbitrary state of violent oppression.

Frankel was speaking about Nazi Germany, and today’s parallels have been far too easy to see or avoid. Except for those living in the Normative State, or those relishing in the performance of those pushing us towards the Prerogative State.

While I’m not a fan of the dueling angels on opposite shoulders metaphor in and of itself, pair it up with Frankel’s theory and I think those cartoons lift the animated dilemma closer to our own reality than most want to admit, but find themselves increasingly coming to terms with as those two realities increasingly converge.

I freely admit there are days when I’m hearing more from my darker angels than I want to. I like to think those thoughts come from a place of good I can return to once this is all over. But then I’m reminded of Madison more than I am of Lincoln.

(image from Alexander_P on Shutterstock)

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

A Question for Senate Democrats: Which Side Are You On?

Showing up is half the battle

Each time I try to lower my blood pressure a bit and calm down about the abhorrent political situation we’re living through in this country, something else pops and causes it to spike again. This time it’s the Democrats in the Senate.

It’s bad enough that we have to deal with the shit that’s continually dumped on us from the Trump regime, but when the Democrats have a chance to at least show up and threaten a fight they seem to forget that showing up is more than half the battle.

Both branches of Congress decided to split out DHS funding from the recently passed appropriations bills, leading to what most presume is a ridiculous two week timeline to debate changes for that appropriation. Call me skeptical, but I see that as another Lucy and the football moment just waiting to play out.

But it gets worse. The Democrats, according to this report from Politico, decided to strip from their demands a requirement banning ICE agents from polling sites.

If it seems feckless, that’s because it is.

At the very least include the requirement as a demand and make the GOP work to negotiate it away. Given words coming out of the White House about nationalizing voting and the pot stirring of its allies, you’d think they’d at least pay lip service to the threat. From a pure political standpoint I don’t understand the rationalization for this move given what we’ve seen with our own eyes and the words we’re hearing.

If Pete Seeger was alive today I’m sure he’d still be singing.

A Dark Place

Damnable depravity

I’m in a dark place. We are in a dark place. Living with our eyes wide open in a darkness. No light needed to know what we plainly see. ICE thugs. Minneapolis. Journalists arrested. Public corruption. Wars. Corporate capitulation to evil. And “The Epstein Files.”

I have not written much about that entire depraved episode. I will today.

In what seems like a backhanded, boomeranging, and backfiring way to distract from all of the other despicable things this administration has been doing to distract us from the Epstein files, the Justice Department released about three million of those files today. Apparently there are millions more. But in some ways we’ve probably seen enough.

Or at least to my mind we probably have. At least enough to pass judgment. Some of the files, either mistakenly or on purpose, were leaked. They include descriptions of what horrible men did to young girls. I won’t post or describe the specifics, beyond saying how utterly depraved they are.

They’d get an XXX rating if those acts were included in a movie. If you want specifics you won’t find them in the government release of the files because the DOJ actually deleted the links to some of the worst, which do indeed finger the president of the United States as a participant. But I’m sure you can find them all over the Internet.

Let me say this. The fact that there are going to be people trying to brush past and brush over what we’ve long suspected but now seen makes those horrible acts of perversion almost pale in comparison. You have to be some sort of sick to try and rationalize it as anything other than evil. But I’m sure there will be too many willing to throw their souls under the bus they continue to ride on.

When and where I grew up, it was a small rural community, populated with many who had some of the same political and social leanings of those we call MAGA today. I don’t care how much of an exalted office anyone held, how much money they made, or what pulpit they preached from. If they were accused of the things mentioned in those files they would have been quietly disappeared from the earth, never to be heard from, and mostly not spoken of again.

If this crowd of criminals and pedophiles and their supporters keep talking about Making America Great Again, I assume they are referring to that period of time when I was growing up. There’s a large part of me that thinks in despicable cases like these that perhaps we should. If only to mete out punishment the way it was done then.

I Don’t Like This Day

Remembering January 6th Drives Me Into A Rage

I don’t like this day.

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Rather I don’t like the anniversary of this day, January 6th, what it reminds me of, and all that it has come to mean.

We still live in a country where we excuse those that pretend what happened didn’t actually happen and wasn’t caused by a delusional, sadistic, power hungry pedophile and his followers.

We live in a country where we’ve just blown past the fact that he was elected president again, pardoned all of those who attacked the U.S. capitol in his name, and continues, with far too much help from his guilty cohort of cowards, to fill the airwaves and digital world with enough obvious lies to choke a million mules.

I don’t like this day.

A few men could have stopped this madness from extending beyond this day. A few men who chose not to. It was in their grasp. If American history survives this madness their names should live in infamy. I’m not sure America or American history will, but I can’t wait to piss on their graves.

And now we now live in a world, not just a country, that he’s tearing apart piece by piece just because he can, so he and others can profit from it.

I don’t like this day.

It’s a despicable, unerasable orange stain on 250 years that already bear enough stains.

It’s a day that ripped open the secret underbelly filled with the hateful and hating beasts that have always lived among us and spilled those entrails all over the myths we clung to, falsely assuming they held us together.

I don’t like this day.

It’s a day that will haunt me the rest of those I have left and leaves me sick to my stomach and trembling with rage about the future.

It’s a day that makes me contemplate doing horrible things. It’s a day that makes me hate.

I don’t like this day. Rather, I hate this day.

Well That Happened

U.S Invades Venezuela and kidnaps president and his wife

Invading another country and kidnapping its president and his wife is certainly one way to distract from all of the many reasons the Trump regime needs to distract us from. Given that today, January 3rd is the statutory deadline to release the Epstein files, and we now have available the long transcript and video of Jack Smith’s deposition stating that the special prosecutor had irrefutable evidence that Trump was guilty it’s enough to spur suspicions in a stone. It’s also not a great way to bring the holidays to an easy end. But then nothing about beginnings and endings have been easy for far too long.

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If you haven’t heard the news about the U.S. invasion of Venezuela be grateful for summaries. I won’t regurgitate beyond the opening paragraph of this blog post. I will say that the one piece of news in what passed for a press conference, the President of the United States says we’re now going to be running Venezuela. Watching a team that can’t run its own country say it’s going to run another strikes me as ironic, but then irony rusts in revolt at the doings of this bunch of dolts.

We’ve been on a wild ride for almost a year with the Trump regime and this will undoubtedly make it even wilder in the days ahead. I don’t believe anyone, including those in the administration, knows what it all means going forward. But we’re about to find out. Like it or not. I’m guessing we won’t like it.

The only silver lining I can possibly see is that taking these actions might possibly lead to the beginning of the end of this corrupt regime run by a child molester and convicted rapist. America historically has never been good at foreign conquest and overthrowing other governments, even when taking down corrupt evil regimes. Those past attempts have at least been undertaken with reasonably intelligent adults doing the planning and the work. That’s certainly not the case with this cast of characters acting in this Made for TV tragi-comedy.

If you listened, take anything you heard from the press conference with a grain of salt. Just like most things with this group it’s all poorly supported improv. Already the vice president of Venezuela who the Trump regime says we’re going to be working with and was gracious in her conversations is already demanding the U.S return Maduro.

Good luck to us all.

Phillip Bump and Clumsy Nazi Comparisons

Not the time for historical nuance

Phillip Bump, a thinker and writer I greatly admire has an intriguing, yet troubling piece titled There Are Limits To The Hitler-Trump Comparison. Just Ask These Historians. I say troubling, not because I disagree with his points, but because I think it misses the larger one everyone is too afraid to acknowledge.

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It is intriguing on an intellectual level, and nuanced on several levels. But I hasten to say that we’re living in a moment without much room for nuance, and as for the intellectual part? I’m afraid we’re suffering losses there as well.

Looking to explore further whether or not the Trump administration’s use of anti-immigrant rhetoric could be compared to the Nazi movement, Bump reached out to several historians who “generally agree that while the comparison was imperfect, it was not completely unfair.” I urge you to read Bump’s column before continuing here.

I won’t argue with the callbacks to the history of America’s own xenophobia. Let’s remember where the Nazis claimed to get some of their ideas from. As a species we seem to be entirely incapable of finding news ways to diminish and dehumanize those we don’t like or want to scapegoat on the path to power. Nor will I argue that it depends on what part of the Nazi timeline you drop into when making comparisons.

I will say this.

While no one knows how any of this will turn out, the fact that we’re living through any resemblance, no matter how clumsy or incoherent it may be in comparison to past political movements here or abroad, should be more than enough to call us up short and put a stop to it.

Bump states:

So Trump’s allies have a point: Comparisons to Nazism, particularly the late-stage Nazism with which we are all familiar, are imperfect. The president’s administration mirrors that party’s ascent a century ago in other ways — its bullying, the collapse of opposition from the existing establishment — that sharpen the criticism. If it is on the same path forward, though, there is still a long way to go, and a lot of time to change direction.

The comparisons may indeed be imperfect. However, every time civilization has beaten back these ill winds it has had to do so imperfectly as well, having to stoop below many of the values we rallied to save in the name of those values.

There may indeed still be time for a change in direction. That said, I would argue that the longer the weak-kneed and cowardly capitulators let this go on, not only does that window of time close, but it makes it harder to pry back open even after all of the glass has been broken.

(Image from Claudio Divizia on Shutterstock)

Elections, Government Shutdowns and Other Quick Thoughts

Can dangerous actions continue to outstrip broken politics?

Just a few quick thoughts.

Without question I have to say I’m very pleased with the Democratic election victories across the country last night. Both the winners and the size of the margins in the headline races for governors, NYC mayor, and redistricting in California. I’m even more pleased to see some of the down ballot races yield Democratic victories as well.

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Especially in my home state of Virginia where the Democrats took enough seats to have quite a majority in the House of Delegates. Here’s hoping that yields very positive results for the newly elected Democratic governor.

Obviously everyone is going to parse all of these election results and find ways to celebrate, castigate, and even dismiss what’s obvious. People are pissed off. They need to remain so.

Today also sets a record for the longest government shutdown in American history. Real people are being affected by this and that will only continue and get worse as long as the shutdown does. Of course when you have one house of Congress refusing to gavel into session and also refusing to swear in an elected member, who knows how long things will last.

In so many ways, the GOP and Trump’s tactics have been the biggest act of self-mutilation and self-humiliation by a political party I think the world has ever seen.

They will never acknowledge that.

Voters sure did.

Meanwhile the evil continues in Chicago and other places as ICE keeps ramping up its horror campaign. That’s not going to abate soon. I heard this morning that yesterday they were checking people’s IDs at the entrance to my local grocery store’s parking lot.

Perhaps those digging these holes that they will someday bury themselves in will keep ratcheting up their insidious actions to a point where events continue to outstrip the usual to and fro of politics. That’s a weird and painful thing to hope for, but it might just be our best hope at the moment.

And on we go.

Hollywood Stars Relaunch The Committee For The First Amendment

History once again repeating itself

In the tumult that is the debate over freedom of speech and the First Amendment, a large group of Hollywood celebrities, led in this effort by Jane Fonda, have relaunched The Committee for the First Amendment. I’m glad to see it.

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First created during the McCarthy ‘Red Scare’ era after government repression of American citizens for their political beliefs, the original Committee for the First Amendment was also a group of Hollywood actors, producers, directors, writers and more attempting to fight the repression led by Joe McCarthy’s efforts to purge communists from all walks of life. That repression led to black lists, the end of careers, and a black stain on the freedoms American’s cherish. Sadly, we’re back there again.

Some in today’s world of complicit media like to call this current mess a debate over freedom of speech. That’s bullshit in my opinion. There’s no debate in the attempts to label what speech, what entertainment, what ideas are allowed or not, certainly to when you have many Hollywood and media executives willing to bend the knee to the fascist regime we now have in place.

Here’s an excerpt from the webpage:

The federal government is once again engaged in a coordinated campaign to silence critics in the government, the media, the judiciary, academia, and the entertainment industry.

We refuse to stand by and let that happen. Free speech and free expression are the inalienable rights of every American of all backgrounds and political beliefs – no matter how liberal or conservative you may be. The ability to criticize, question, protest, and even mock those in power is foundational to what America has always aspired to be.

We understand that this is a frightening and confusing moment for many people. We recognize that we represent just one group of many who are under threat right now. Across classrooms, libraries, factories, companies and workplaces of all kinds, Americans of every walk of life are facing intimidation and censorship too — and we stand with them.

We know there is power in solidarity and strength in numbers. We will stand together—fiercely united—to defend free speech and expression from this assault. This is not a partisan issue. That is why we urge every American who cares about the First Amendment—the cornerstone of our democracy—and every artist around the globe who looks to the United States as a beacon of freedom to join us.

The list of those signing on is long. Here’s hoping we see more join in for what appears at the moment to be a long fight. And not just from Hollywood. It’s going to take this kind of action in all sectors of our society.

A Constitution Day Like No Other

Not easy to celebrate this year.

Today, September 17 in the U.S. is Constitution and Citizenship Day in the U.S. It marks the observance of the day that delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the document, revered for almost two and half centuries, and now, in my opinion, seriously in danger of being stripped of its meaning by those only adhering to its principles when its convenient and shredding them when it’s not.

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Tumultuous times today, but there were also tumultuous in the run up to reaching the moment that saw the Constitution adopted. That’s well known and also conveniently forgotten. Until a piece of it needs cherry picking to beat a point home.

It was never a perfect document. It was never intended to be. That’s why there’s an amendment clause in Article V. But amendments to the document require enormous amounts of toil and compromise, are hard to come by, and frankly that process can’t work when you live in a world without principle.

I may not have agreed with some of the things left out of the original document or its later amendments, and perhaps I’m naive, but I do happen to believe that those who argued over what our governing document should be at the time at least had principles that they believed in as opposed to those today who only seem to believe in what’s best for themselves and not the entire body politic.

We talk all the time about the founders who built this thing. It’s a damn shame we’re consumed with talking about a real estate developer who is overseeing its destruction.

Governors Are Standing Up

The Chicago Way

For the moment at least it looks like Democratic governors are going to be leading the way rhetorically as we attempt to find our way out of the dictatorship we find ourselves in.

Yes, you read that correctly. We’re already in a dictatorship. That’s my view. Most, including the dictator himself do not want to openly acknowledge it, because as I said in this post, once he claims it all, he cuts off the spigot of easy money from campaign donations. A grifter never cuts bait while there’s still a pond to fish.

But that’s not what this post is about.

Governors are indeed standing up and making some noise. We’re getting different styles and approaches and that’s a good thing. Tossing different kinds of rhetorical punches from different directions makes it tougher to defend against, certainly when your opponent has a tough time completing thoughts and sentences.

If you’re paying attention at all, you already know that Gavin Newsom is playing hardball in his mimicking of Trump’s bombastic style, albeit more in the style of the Savannah Bananas. Juvenile as it may be, on that level it’s working, and has gotten under Trump’s skin more than whatever disease is causing all of that skin discoloration and makeup experimentation on those small hands.

Wes Moore of Maryland has invited Trump to take a walk with him on the streets of Baltimore. If you’re going to talk the talk, you need to walk the walk. Moore even offered a golf cart.

Taking a different approach, Minnesota Governor and former VP candidate, Tim Walz isn’t being shy about expressing his thoughts either. It feels very midwestern stern even as he did take a jocular swipe at Trump’s cankles.

Washington State Governor Bob Ferguson also issued some strong words about Attorney General Pam Bondi’s threats to prosecute government officials over immigration policies. Ferguson is strong willed, lawyerly, and reminded Trump of his legal defeats at his hands in Trump’s first turn at the wheel.

And rounding out the current pushback, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker addressed the Trump threat to send National Guard troops into Chicago by telling the Trump administration to stay out of Chicago. You have to admire this quote:

If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me, not time or political circumstance, from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law.

You can find the full text of Pritzker’s statement here and watch it below.

In discussing Pritzker’s remarks on social media today I responded to a friend who wondered what could be done to actually stop Trump from sending in troops. I answered that there was probably nothing. But once they get in, they’ll have the devil of a time getting out if it comes to that. That’s The Chicago Way.

It’s good to see these governors taking stands, at least on a strong rhetorical level. That’s the first step and is long overdue. Multiple approaches on multiple fronts addressing the multitude of threats is a positive.

Cynically you can argue that they each may be positioning themselves for higher office. I don’t think that matters, because this is when and where the fight is. More governors need to do the same because obviously the politicians in Washington (if they ever return from hiding) don’t have any knees left to bend.

But tough words are going to need to be matched with tough actions in the days ahead.

Buckle up.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.