The Political And Ethical Degeneration Of The U.S.- From Nixon To Trump

 Nixon had to resign or face certain conviction in the Senate after impeachment, just because the burglars he sent to tap the phones in the D.C headquarters of the Democratic National Committee got caught. Senator Barry Goldwater, a reactionary as close to a fascist as one can get without being one, personally delivered the news to Nixon in the White House that the jig was up, if he didn't resign, impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate (requiring 67 votes, which would include Republican Senators) was certain.

But Nixon's crimes look like mere peccadilloes compared to Trump's.

Trump sent a violent mob to invade the Capitol to prevent the certification of Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate, as winner of the 2020 presidential election. He refused for several hours to call off the mob, ignoring the entreaties of Congresspeople telephoning him and of his daughter Ivanka in the White House. When, hours later, he realized his coup attempt had failed, he finally messages the mob to depart, which they instantly did- proving he controlled them.

He was recorded on a phone call to the state of Georgia's Secretary of State telling him to "find" votes for him to change the result in Georgia. He initiated scheme to have fake Electoral College Electors cast votes for him.

Yet the Senate acquitted him after he was impeached in the House, and a combination of feckless and dilatory prosecution efforts by Trump's successor Biden and his wan Attorney General, Merrick Garland, who was denied a Supreme Court seat by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (who refused to allow nomination hearings to take place for the last 11 months of Obama's term in office, an unprecedented, outrageous political power move which the Democrats insipidly accepted) and interference with the prosecution by Republican judges, especially those on the Supreme Court, which effectively immunized Trump for his seditious coup.

So one guy is basically ousted by his own party for tapping some phones, while the other guy can openly foment a coup, and furthermore delegitimize U.S. "democracy" and undermine its elections by loudly braying, year after year, that he actually won an election he lost and that the election was "stolen" from him. Stolen in Republican-controlled states too! And no consequences for him.

This is an arc of political and ethical degeneration of a nation and its political system.

Rex Tillerson Is The Most Irrelevant Secretary of State Since William Rogers

 Rogers was Nixon's Secretary of State. Kept out of the loop, Nixon ran foreign policy himself with his henchman Henry Kissinger, a sycophantic brownnoser to power. Kissinger was Nixon's National Security Adviser until Rogers was tossed overboard and Kissinger became Sec. of State.

Nixon was a pathological creep who held his cabinet members in contempt.

I don't know if Trump holds Tillerson in contempt. He probably thinks he's better than Rex because he's richer (presumably). Tillerson has been nearly invisible. The top staff positions at State other than Tillerson are vacant. Trump is proposing to slash the State Department's budget by 28%- a huge downgrade.

Tillerson makes pronouncements that disappear almost immediately, like pebbles tossed into a pond.

For some reason, Tillerson refuses to allow the media to accompany him. Either he doesn't want to be observed, or Trump decreed this. On his current trip to Asia, he brought along on his plane just one pseudo-journalist, a propagandist who is designated to function as a shill. Two GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) operatives formed a fake "news" outfit a few weeks ago, and hired this young women with zero journalistic background or experience to pretend to be a reporter. She is the sum total of the "press pool" accompanying Tillerson in Asia.

Tillerson just made an empty threat to go to war with North Korea, employing the usual U.S. gangster lingo, the euphemism "all options are on the table." Except that war with the deranged, nuclear-armed North Korean regime would be an act of insanity. Aside from its nuclear weapons, the North Korean totalitarian cult has 10,000 artillery pieces aimed at Seoul, South Korea, the capital and commercial center of that nation. I don't think the South Koreans would appreciate having it obliterated.

But Tillerson has wasted no time in prnetsh int ip reset c:\resetlog.txt      oving himself truly loathsome. Since the bloodthirsty Rodrigo Duterte became president of the Philippines last June on a platform of murdering "drug dealers an users," over 6,000 mostly poor Filipinos have been murdered in their homes and on the streets by Duterte's hit squads and independent "vigilantes." When pressed on this in Congress, Tillerson refused to condemn or criticize it.

See "Rex Tillerson Sets Off Alarm Bells in the Human-Rights Community," The Nation, January 12, 2017.

"I am NOT irrelevant, DAMN it!"

 

Trump: The American Emperor Nero

The Roman Empire had some venal emperors infamous for cruelty and deranged malignity. Now the U.S. empire has one. (Arguably not the first. Think of the vulgar, genocidal Andrew Jackson, the fanatical racist and pioneer of radical purges and witch hunts Woodrow Wilson, the pathological paranoiac Richard Nixon, the fascist racist Ronald Reagan, to name some. And except for Nixon, all are lionized in the U.S. pantheon. Poor Nixon has merely been rehabilitated.)

Trump is different in the modern era in that he wears no mask. What you see is the real him. This is quite different from standard political practice going back well over a century.. He puts on no act, as virtually every other president has. Trump can't be bothered trying to project a false image of rectitude, of restraint, of sober and judicious judgment. He's an in-your-face demagogue. For some reason, Trump needn't restrain or censor himself to be "respectable." He floats in a zone above respectability. He considers fawning his due. And somehow that works. It is accepted as legitimate that he should have power.

Like Nero, he is self-obsessed and self-indulgent to an extreme degree. Like Nero, he is given to extreme acts, made on impulse. Like Nero, he is a highly destructive force who causes great damage to people's lives, and who weakens structurally the empire over which he reigns. (That second part is the upside.)

Typical of emperors, Trump brooks no dissent, and is indifferent to the cries of protest from the rabble below. Millions around the world have already marched in the streets against him, to no visible effect. (Just as millions marched before the regime of Bush II invaded Iraq in 2003, to no avail. That's "democracy," bourgeois class dictatorship-style.)

Only a week into his reign, Trump has turned the lives of students, families, scientists, academics, workers, upside down, if they were unlucky enough to hail from seven countries that Trump capriciously decreed none shall enter the U.S. from. Including dual citizens and green card holders- later amended, sort of. (You can review the piteous tales in the New York Times, or at NPR, or even the BBC, among other places.)

And Trump has already committed his first atrocity, putting the scalp of an 8-year-old girl on his belt, who was murdered by "heroic" U.S. Navy Seals on a terror raid in Yemen. BONUS POINTS: the child was the daughter of the reviled Al-Qaeda propaganda Anwar al-Awlaki, assassinated by Obama. [1]

That makes the second child of the enemy propaganda the U.S. has offed. Two weeks after finishing off Awlaki, Obama iced his 16-year-old son, a nephew, and others.

But the terror raid in Yemen that bagged an 8-year-old and other civilians was plotted under Obama, so by rights he should have to share the credit with Obama, although Trump is not one to share credit- or anything, really.

Trump probably won't murder his own mother, or castrate a young man and marry him, as Nero is reputed to have done. (The man unfortunately resembled Nero's dead wife, whom Nero missed.) So I guess Trump won't be "so bad." One can always relativize things in order to swallow them. Similarly, the Democrats "aren't as bad as" the Republicans, so might as well vote for them, right? No point actually trying to take power away from the criminal two-party political cartel that monopolizes it. Let humanity keep suffering instead.

Decades of voting for "the lesser evil" has only resulted in greater and greater evil. Time for a change, sheep.

HAIL, TRUMPIUS!

Nero from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.


1]  I only learned of the killing of the child from "alternative" broadcast media. The establishment's media called it a raid on terrorists, and wrung its hands over the single U.S. casualty. The U.S. government's domestic radio propaganda network, NPR, appended a single sentence to the end of its report, that neighbors reported "civilians" were killed. Given the prominent demonization of Awlaki during his lifetime, one must conclude that the omission of the death of his daughter at the hand of U.S. commandos must be no oversight, but deliberate.