The Sure Way To Get Rid of Donald J. Trump

The Democratic Party is currently in a tizzy trying to agree internally on the best way to be rid of U.S. president Donald J. Trump. A faction of the party's Congressional Representatives in the House want to impeach Trump, even though there is no hope of getting the Senate to vote to convict Trump and thus remove him from office, since this requires a vote by two-thirds of the members in that body, and virtually no Republican Senators can be expected to vote to convict their party leader, who is overwhelmingly popular with Republican voters. (Republicans currently are a majority in the 100 seat U.S. Senate.)

The other faction among the Democrats say the only way to remove Trump is by victory in the 2020 presidential election. But that too is problematic. There are 25 Democrats vying for the party's nomination, which surely will create confusion and result in a nominee lacking great stature. Plus, the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) consistently steals elections, for president, senators, state governors, by underhanded and illegal means. They have even resorted to assassination to grab control of the Senate, as occurred with the murders of Paul Wellstone and Mel Carnahan.

This subversion by the GOP of what little democracy there is in the U.S. has been going on for two decades, and the Democrats never make a peep about it or lift a finger to counter it. Instead they have spent the past three years promoting the gigantic hoax that Russia had a major influence on the 2016 election, that it massively interfered, and that it constitutes an ongoing "threat to our democracy."

Can a political party get any lamer than that?

So with impeachment not a viable method to remove Trump from power, and the Democrats' sorry record in electoral politics, one must consider other alternatives.

So herein, A Modest Proposal.

I was musing on the life of another headstrong and ambitious individual who ruthlessly grabbed the top rung of power in an empire: Julius Caesar, Emperor of Rome.

Caesar, a ruthless general who slaughtered an estimated million people in his conquest of Gaul, committing innumerable atrocities to facilitate the Roman Empire's seizure of the area and the subjugation of its people by such methods as chopping off all the hands of male inhabitants who dared resist being conquered, made himself Emperor by marching into Rome with his army, "crossing the Rubicon" river, as the phrase memorializing his power grab has it.

A group of Roman Senators decided to eliminate this dictator, and did so by luring him onto the Senate floor, where they dispatched him with daggers. The story goes that with his dying breath he rebuked one of the assassins whom he had considered loyal, with the words "Et tu, Brute?" ("And you, Brutus?" by which Caesar meant, even you?)

I thought: what a classy way to free the nation of Trump if Senators would emulate their Roman counterparts of two millenniums ago!

Just imagine the scene: Trump, lying on the floor of the Senate like a beached whale or mortally wounded buffalo, his blood oozing out in an expanding puddle on the marble floor, his killers standing over his body in their expensive suits, observing their handiwork.

If he has any sense of classical history- and he went to "good" schools, so he should- the words on Trump's dying lips could be, "Et tu, Mitch?"

But no way Republican Senators would turn on Trump, whom they fear. Their "base" would surely avenge such treachery against their idol. And they have guns, lots of guns.

So what would Trump gasp out as he lay dying? "Et tu, Chuck?" That makes no sense. He doesn't expect loyalty from Schumer. And Schumer, being a Democrat, is far too timid and compromised to take bold action, ever. So we wouldn't get the wonderful historical bookend, the reverberation from millenniums past, that would make this so satisfying. Besides, the Democrats are renowned for their cupidity, so surely that would stay their hands.

I suppose we'll just have to see if the Democrats let the Republicans steal another presidential election through chicanery, voter suppression, and the like, as they did in 2000, 2004, and 2016.

And if the Democrats "lose" again, they'll just pretend that RUSSIA did it! BLAME IT ON RUSSIA!! THEY'RE UNDERMINING OUR DEMOCRACY!! In fact, they are already preparing the ground to blame an upcoming loss on Russia, running around saying that the "threat" is "still there," and that Trump is "doing nothing to protect our democracy." Various media propagandists and secret police types peddle the same lurid threat-mongering.

It's contemptible and pathetic.

Trump better hope past is not prologue. Sometimes bullies end up badly.

The Wise Emperor Takes His Bodyguards With Him To The Senate

Beware the Ides of March, O Emperor! (Or of April, May, June, etc.)

Does Secret Police Chief + Vagina = Feminism?

It does if you are a secret policewoman named Gina Haspel.

At least that's one of the cynical propaganda themes that was used to push through her nomination as head of the CIA, the U.S. global Gestapo. (Official title: Director of Central Intelligence, or DCI.)

Haspel was up to her eyeballs in the CIA torture program unleashed after a cabal of the Bush-Cheney regime, Saudi Arabia, and elements of the U.S. secret police apparatus (CIA, FBI, and NSA) with co-conspirators NYC mayor Rudolph Giuliani and insatiably greedy billionaire Larry Silverstein blew up three buildings at the World Trade Center site on September 11, 2001. But that's another and rather long story.

Haspel was basically the number two CIA person in the torture program, under the fascist fanatic Jose Rodriguez. (If you've ever heard this rabid humanoid rant, you'd see why "fascist fanatic" is the correct description.) She oversaw the destruction of evidence, namely videos of the actual torturing of prisoners. And she ran the CIA torture center in Thailand. (All this is no doubt just the tip of the iceberg of her criminal career.)

In her confirmation hearings, she refused to condemn torture (which would have been hypocritical, absent a true rehabilitation), but promised not to "break the law." Which is completely disingenuous, since the CIA's position is that the torture was legal. So she actually promised NOTHING.

But that's good enough for the imperialist U.S. Senate, which duly confirmed her. The U.S. Congress has always been an accomplice in U.S. crimes. Some "liberal" fakers posture and pose and spout empty rhetoric, but are content to allow the crimes to go on. They could actually make real trouble if they chose to. Senator Ron Wyden is a good example of one of these fakers. He plays along with the "classification" game. A Congressman has immunity for anything he says on the floor of the House or Senate. He could read into the record various "secrets." But he doesn't want to lose his precious classification "clearance." So he's in on the "secret" crimes (no secret to the victims, who are barred by the U.S. media from informing us) but his lips are sealed.

The "feminist" argument for Haspel is particularly cynical, a bit of rhetorical/ideological jui jitsu. Of course a person who works for an organization that is dedicated to oppressing the world's poor, who are majority female, cannot be a feminist. Unless by "feminist" you mean "self-interested woman careerist promoting her own interests."

Oh Happy Day! At last the glass ceiling at the CIA is broken! 

Another milestone in the march to Women's Equality!

 

Democratic Party Apparatchiks Insist on Going With Weaker Presidential Candidate

The AP (Associated Press) and NBC on June 6 declared Hillary Clinton the winner of the Democratic Party nomination for president. Totaling up the delegates she won in state primaries and caucuses and adding the over 500 unelected "superdelegates" (party poohbahs and assorted elected officials) backing her, they figured she has hit the magic number of a majority of delegates. Thus seeming to obviate the June 7 California, New Jersey, and other primaries. California being by far the most populous U.S. state, with the most delegates, and once again consigned to political irrelevancy.  [1]
Clinton's "victory" is actually not great news for the Democrats.

Senator Bernard Sanders has consistently polled stronger against Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton has. Yet the Party apparatus, controlled by the Clintons and their minions, is going with the weaker candidate, Hillary Clinton. (Perhaps we should refer to the Democratic Party as the "Clinton Machine." Even since 1992, that seems to be about what it is.)

In a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted in mid-May among 1,109 registered voters, Clinton beat Trump 47% to 41%, a lead of 6%. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3%, which means the two candidates could actually be dead even. In any event, poll results are volatile, and public opinion is very fickle.  [2]

Sanders, on the other hand, leads Trump 51% to 38%, a pretty wide margin. (The New York Times calls that "a more hypothetical matchup," striving to be neutral, I suppose. Can't really fault that circumlocution.)

Sanders has consistently done better in polls against Trump than has Clinton for months now. So logically, the Democratic Party should at least be giving serious consideration to Sanders.
But the Democrats would probably rather LOSE the election than anoint Sanders as their standard-bearer.

It seems that their role as protectors of corporate hegemony trumps even their own partisan self-interest.

Sanders is hardly a radical. He calls himself a "democratic socialist," by which he apparently means New Deal Democrat or social democrat. That is, he's for a decent "safety net" for the population, rather than dog-eat-dog capitalism with most of the wealth going to a small class of plutocrats, as in late 19th century-early 20th century America (which the Republicans relentlessly push returning to, being an atavistic, revanchist party), or the system of crumbs doled out as pacifiers as favored by the current Democratic Party. The Republicans would eliminate the crumbs: the Democrats, under their last two presidents, Obama and Bill Clinton, have proved willing to "compromise" with the Republicans and reduce the amount of the crumbs. As in any compromise with fanatics, such compromises are only temporary, as the fanatics always come back and demand more until reaching their ultimate goal. Thus the "reasonable" sellouts eventually "compromise" their way to utter defeat. (THAT'S the "lesson of Munich"!)

Both of the hegemonic political parties are fronts for big capital interests. (The Libertarian Party are laissez-faire capitalists like the Republicans minus the crony capitalism of the Republicans, and lacking the taste for militarism and imperialism of the two ruling parties. The Republican Party in actual elections almost entirely sweeps up libertarian-minded voters.)

Both Clinton and Trump were viewed negatively by over 50% of the respondents to the poll. This too is consistent over time. If one were to included people not registered to vote in the tally, those negatives would probably be even higher. People who don't register are either thoroughly disgusted with the system, alienated from it, or indifferent. (Or just unmotivated.) So a high percentage of them have no use for "politicians" generally.

Now, it's true that Clinton got more votes in the Democratic primaries than Sanders. But in the general election in November, independents and Republicans will be voting too. The point is, Sanders does better than Clinton in that situation. Certainly among independents, and while only a relatively small percentage of Republicans would ordinarily vote for the Democratic presidential candidate, I suspect that more would go for Sanders than for Clinton. Because even though he calls himself a "democratic socialist," he acts like he wants to shake things up, something many Republicans want. Plus, he's a bit of a crotchety, ornery old coot, as are many Republicans. And they really hate Clinton. Then there's the fact that a significant number of Republicans can't abide Donald Trump. So I think it is clear that Sanders would actually be the better opponent against Trump.

Sanders is officially an "independent," while functioning as a "left wing" Democrat in the mold of a Dennis Kucinich. The Democrats usually have someone playing the role of "progressive" in order to continue to dupe progressives into voting for their corporate hegemonist and mass-murdering imperialist party. Sanders, like Kucinich, like indeed all of the handful of "progressive" Democrats in the Congress, is a lone wolf who refuses to even form a caucus of progressives in the Congress. That fact alone is enough to prove that these people aren't serious.  [3]

Sanders is functionally a Democrat in the Senate, as he votes their way almost always. In return, they reward Sanders with plum seats on various Senate committees. They also don't try to unseat him in Vermont elections.

But the Clintons are practitioners of cronyism on a vast scale, especially with their multi-billion dollar "foundation." They are a source of jobs and money. And they wired the Democratic Party power structure long ago. Hillary landed in New York State as a political carpetbagger and bumped aside other Democratic Party politicians who were "in line" to run for a Senate seat there. That's how she became a U.S. Senator. Then it was expected she would be the Party's presidential candidate in 2008, as if by some divine right of succession. The upstart hustler from Illinois, Barack Hussein Obama, yanked the rug out from under her with his slick moves, willingness to shamelessly lie about his future policies, and the technical brilliance of his campaign machinery. And oodles of money from Wall Street and other precincts of Big Capital (who obviously knew his "progressive" rhetoric was a sham to dupe the rubes- I mean, the citizens).

Ironically, Obama is very much like Hillary's husband, Bill Clinton. Both are very adept con artists, lacking any conscience, very good at lying (unlike Nixon) which they do convincingly. And both implemented very repressive policies domestically, and liberally killed people abroad.

Yeah, life is ironic sometimes.

1]  Here's one measure of how profoundly undemocratic the U.S. is- and this is never spoken of. The U.S. Senate, the upper chamber of the U.S. Congress, is immensely powerful. Because of its archaic and anti-democratic rules and procedures, a single Senator can block legislation.

Each of the 50 states elects 2 Senators to the Senate, for a total of 100. The state of California, as of July 2014, had a population as estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau of just shy of 39 million people. The 22 least populous states had a total population of about 39 and a half million. So Californians had two whole Senators to represent them in the U.S. Senate, while virtually the same number of people from elsewhere (mostly reactionary backwaters) had 44, close to half the entire Senate!

The least populous state, Wyoming, Dick Cheneyland, with a population barely over half a million, has the same number of Senators as California, which has 66 times Wyoming's population. A 66 to 1 ratio. 66 Californians equal 1 Wyoman in political weight.

Nice and democratic!

2]  "Republicans Want Their Party to Unify Behind Donald Trump, Poll Shows," New York Times, May 19, 2016.

3]  Ralph Nader has thoroughly exposed this sham. See for example this excerpt from Nader's appearance on Democracy Now!, May 18, 2015, when he was interviewed by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez. Sanders snubbed him for 15 years, and 9 Congressional "progressives" completely ignored his pleas to them to form a united front to advance an agenda.

Here's the transcript of the relevant portion of the interview:

RALPH NADER: Bernie Sanders does not answer my calls. Fifteen years, he’s never answered a telephone call, never replied to a letter, never replied to a meeting that I wanted to go down and see him. I even had to write an article on this, called "Bernie, We Thought We Knew Ye!" One of the problems he’s going to face, other than his good graces in Vermont, is that he doesn’t have good political antennae. He doesn’t have political social graces. And he’s going to have to change that. A lot of his friends have told me that that’s a problem. But most progressive senators don’t really respond to any progressive group that tries to push him to do more than they want to do. I wrote nine letters to nine progressive senators, like Sherrod Brown, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and saying, "Look, you’re all lone rangers doing good things, but you’re going nowhere. So why don’t you get together into a caucus of nine, 10, 12 senators in the Senate and push a unified agenda on poverty, on labor, on the environment, on trade, on military policy? You might really get somewhere. At the least, you’ll raise these issues more prominently." Not a single response. Called up, said, "Would they respond?" Not a single response. I did finally have to go down and meet with the general counsel for Senator Warren. But by and large, that’s the problem with the left. That’s the problem of progressives. They don’t link with one another. You never see Heritage Foundation or Cato or all these right-wing groups tolerate members of Congress treating them that way who are supposed to be on their side.- "Ralph Nader on Bernie Sanders' Presidential Bid & His Unanswered Letters to the White House," Democracy Now!, May 18, 2015.]

The Unbearable Phoniness of Congressional "Progressives."

              Sheesh! Looks like my time in the limelight is just about up.

John McCain, Political Weathervane, Blows With the Wind

John McCain unwittingly planted some seeds of irony last year that have now sprouted. At the time, summer 2015, McCain openly bemoaned the xenophobic demagoguery of Donald Trump. Trump came to Arizona, McCain's state, to do some rabble-rousing among white racists, towing behind him as a stage prop the father of a person murdered by an undocumented (aka “illegal”) immigrant. [1]

The political mobilization of white racist xenophobes in Arizona presented a threat to McCain, because of his vulnerability to an extremist far-rightwing challenger in the Republican primary for his U.S. Senate seat. (U.S. Senate terms last 6 years, and McCain is running for reelection for a 6th term this November.)

McCain fretted of Trump's agitprop rally that “This performance with our friend out in Phoenix is very hurtful to me. Because what he did was he fired up the crazies.” “We have a very extreme element within our Republican Party,” in Arizona. “Now he galvanized them. He’s really got them activated.”

These are the comments that irked the schoolyard bully Trump, prompting him to denigrate McCain for only being called a hero for being “captured,” making McCain a “loser” in Trump's eyes. (As Trump avoided the draft, and certainly didn't volunteer, he was never in any danger of capture and possible Loserhood himself. It was mostly the poor and other lower economic classes who were subjected to impressment into the U.S. military to attack Indochina. McCain was descended from a military family and entered the U.S. Naval Academy to pursue a career as a navy officer, later finding politics more to his taste.)

Now here are some excerpts from an article in a haute bourgeois U.S. publication that ran in July of last year. I have highlighted certain phrases:

McCain is an ardent backer of his good friend Senator Lindsey Graham, who is languishing in the G.O.P. Presidential primary polls. He noted that Graham has been one of the few Republicans to condemn Trump in strong terms. On Sunday, Graham said on CNN, “I think [Trump]’s a wrecking ball for the future of the Republican Party with the Hispanic community, and we need to push back.” He added that Republicans “need to reject this demagoguery. If we don’t, we will lose, and we will deserve to lose.”

McCain, who is eighteen years older than Graham, sounded like a proud father. “Lindsey said this is a moral test for our party. He put on a very strong performance,” McCain said. “Of course, Lindsey was one of the eight of us who negotiated immigration reform. Lindsey never backed away from it.”
McCain, who had a testy relationship with Senator Marco Rubio, another member of the Gang of Eight who is running for President, couldn’t resist adding, “Rubio backed away from it.”

I noted that Rubio, like many other Republican politicians, has been hard to follow on the issue and no longer supports the compromise approach that the Gang of Eight took in 2013: combining a pathway to citizenship and tough new border measures in a single bill. McCain licked his finger, held it up in the air, and laughed.

“You know that old song from before you were born?” McCain said, speaking of the Bob Dylan classic “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” [2]

Indeed.

So McCain, who hops on the Trump bandwagon, laughed at Rubio as someone who, like a weathervane, points in whatever direction the political winds are blowing. Note that McCain's political compadre Graham, and the Bushes, and Mitt Romney, and many other prominent Republicans, have publicly disavowed Trump. And McCain said Amen to Graham's call to resist the demagoguery of Trump. Not just as a political necessity, but as a “moral test.”

Read my previous essay, just below, about McCain, and see if you can spot more ironies. [“John McCain Has No Pride.”] 

As they say in those English-speaking isles across the Atlantic, Cheers!

1] Trump and his ilk have been raising a terrible stink about two murders committed by non-citizens present in the U.S. without permission. Given that there are an estimated 11 million such people here (out of an estimated population of 315 million), no one should be shocked if some of them commit murder. There were 16,121 homicides in the U.S. in 2013, according to the CDC. (Over two-thirds of the homicides were committed with firearms, by the way.) Doubtless the vast majority were the crimes of U.S. citizens. But of course racism and xenophobia are impervious to rational thought, so this is a case of, in the immortal words of Ronald Reagan, “facts are stupid things.”

Or in the satirical stylings of comedian Steve Colbert, “truthiness” trumps mere truth. Because emotions are stronger than reason, feelings are more vivid, thus “truer,” than facts, which are intellectual abstractions. You could say that much of the problems of humanity are rooted in this basic structural and existential fact of the mind/psyche. We have (some of us, anyway) rational capability, but it is very hard to be rational, to live guided by reason.

2] “John McCain Has a Few Things to Say About Donald Trump,” New Yorker, July 16, 2015.

The new logo for the Republican Party. (Replaces the elephant, an intelligent, brave, loyal creature unjustly besmirched by involuntary association with the Gang Of Plunderers.)

 

John McCain Has No Pride

U.S. Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona is endorsing the man who sneered that McCain wasn't really a war hero, he was only a hero "because he was captured" and then gratuitously added "I like people that weren't captured," callously brushing aside with contempt McCain's five and a half years of captivity in Vietnam. I refer, of course, to one Donald J. Trump, Billionaire Narcissist, Sociopath, and Dangerous Demagogue. [1]

McCain has already been a Senator for almost 3 decades, and is 79 years old, yet is so desperate to stay in the Senate that he is willing to demean himself this way because, it was reported, he fears the white bigots (my term) who dominate Arizona politics (especially Republican primaries) and who are infatuated with Trump. (These are people he previously referred to as "crazies" being riled up by Trump, which provoked Trump The Bully to then piss on McCain's war record.) Even a militarist and hard right-winger like McCain fears being unseated by someone even more extreme in a GOP Senate primary.

McCain's inseparable partner in the Senate, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, won't endorse Trump because, he says, Trump called McCain "a loser for being captured" and Trump said nice things about Vladimir Putin, The Bogeyman of Russia.

McCain is a man who actually has already had some practice in pride-swallowing concomitant to hailing someone who humiliated him. In 2000 he ran against George W. "Warrior" Bush for the GOP presidential nomination. In order to destroy McCain in white racist South Carolina, the Bush gang, under the direction of the Machiavellian Karl Rove, spread the rumor that McCain had a secret, "illegitimate" black child. The "dirty trick" worked. Loser McCain fell in line behind Bush, ultimately. [2]

This is the man the corporate propaganda system dressed up for public consumption as a "straight-shooter" and "maverick," a man who marched to his own drummer.

If what it takes to be a Republican Senator is this sort of self-abnegation, then the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) must be recognized as having cultlike properties, forcing its acolytes to surrender their self-respect in return for acceptance by the group and for power. (The classic existential situation of selling one's soul to the devil for temporal gain.) In place of self-respect is substituted ersatz self-respect, namely arrogant self-regard, and vanity. These are brittle, shallow psychic properties which render the individual psychologically vulnerable, and thus even more manipulable by the cult.

This sacrifice of the human self in return for a share of power is a key mechanism by which anti-human power systems like the U.S. perpetuate themselves.

 McCain was "heroic" enough to bomb the Vietnamese, which was immoral, but politically and ethically he's now proven himself to be a Profile in Cowardice.

John Sidney McCain III has been a U.S. Senator since January, 1987; 29 years. He will be 80 years old in August. Still, he apparently cannot abide the thought of leaving the Senate. McCain, it seems, is a man who will degrade himself in order to be a Senator for Life. [3] 


1] Trump's classic sociopathic traits include his cunning instinct for homing in on others' vulnerabilities, and his indifference to the interests and feelings of others in pursuit of his own advancement.

2] Yes, South Carolina is that racist. One would think that such a despicable ploy would boomerang on the perpetrators. Au contraire, mon amis! Nor do such tactics earn opprobrium from the Chatterocracy of the corporate propaganda system (aka "the media). Hell, if treasonous actions such as Nixon sabotaging the Paris peace talks between the U.S. and North Vietnam in 1968 (by advising South Vietnamese dictator Thieu to boycott them) and Reagan arranging for Iran to hold on to the "hostages" in 1980 until Carter's last day in office are kept "secret" with the connivance of the bourgeois blatherariat, what's a little sexual/racial smearing? It's not as if U.S. power elites have high ethical standards (their obnoxious pretentions to same notwithstanding). [The underhanded method Rove used to plant the idea of "McCain's illegitimate black daughter" in people's heads was a push poll. Lee Atwater was another GOP political thug who used the same technique in 1980.]

Bush is a war hero in his own right, having spent the Vietnam war in a safe stateside berth in the Texas Air National Guard, secured for him by his daddy, a posting from which he went AWOL (absent without leave-that's military jargon). He also flew in a jet which landed on an aircraft carrier in 2003 and proclaimed Victory in the invasion of Iraq. ("Mission Accomplished," proclaimed a boastful banner suspended from the carrier's superstructure, photogenically strung behind the rostrum placed on the carrier deck from which Bush addressed the assembled sailors and airmen.)

Yet Bush's self-serving evasion of "service" to the murderous U.S. imperialist project in Indochina is far preferable to what McCain did. McCain was a very avid bomber of Vietnam, as we know from his own and others' accounts. He asked for a combat assignment, and helped bomb North Vietnam from a navy aircraft carrier as part of Operation Rolling Thunder during the Johnson regime. After an accident on the carrier injured him and put the ship out of action, he got himself transferred to another carrier so he could keep bombing. Shot down over Hanoi on his 23rd bombing mission, he was captured, imprisoned, and tortured at first. (Although what was done to him wouldn't be considered "torture" if the U.S. were doing it to prisoners.)

3] McCain's father and grandfather both rose to the rank of 4-star admirals in the U.S. Navy. McCain, who graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at the bottom of his class, achieved the rank of captain, equivalent to a colonel in the other main three branches of the U.S. military (army, air force, and Marine Corps.).

"Sen. John McCain sticking with GOP nominee Trump," Arizona Republic, May 6, 2016.

"Now I'm endorsing HIM?? I'll do ANYTHING to stay a Senator until I die!" 

Hey, need a laugh? How about a cry? Get both at the same time! Subscribe to this blog! It's easy! Just use the  options on the sidebar to get emails or RSS feeds. And don't worry, you can unsubscribe whenever you like for the one-time fee of just $99!....That last part was a joke. You knew that, right? You can never unsubscribe. I MEAN, that was a joke too!