Laws of Political Gravity

From Michael Cohen's first appearance on the national stage, acting like a dopey mook with his infamous "says who?" remark, he has basically been an object of ridicule. He was public face of what kind of mobbed up losers who glom on to doughfacedonny's scabby wings looked like. A wannabe bully with no power of his own who folded under challenge, what often doesn't make it into the meme is when he meekly said "okay" when told all the polls said his hero was losing, Cohen has kind of been that guy we all love to hate.

It was so satisfying to hear of Cohen's arrest, and more so when he initially seemed defiant in the face of actual criminal charges. This is really hard to admit, but I'm kind of softening on Cohen now that he has faced the music. It's pathetic but strangely endearing to see a career wannabe fixer fall so far. Endearing because he's trying so hard to get a measure of revenge on the bigger bad guy. I don't want Cohen in a foxhole with me, but he let loose an awesome barrage on the enemy trenches. The enemy of my enemy is not automatically my friend, but he can draw fire. Even doughfacedonny's farcical trip to Vietnam to kowtow in front of another dictator couldn't completely divert attention from the shitshow in the House of Representatives.

What Cohen did there, and what his republican inquisitors did in questioning him, is quite remarkable. He used the word "regret" and "ashamed" in his opening statement, and bared his soul to the whole world that he was wrong to be loyal to such a monster. Yes, he knew what he was doing during his tenure as inept fixer to the king of sleaze. He is paying for it, he will keep paying for it, everyone now knows exactly what he did and it will follow him for the rest of his life. That was quite an act of contrition, one that to my knowledge has never been equaled by any of the criminals close to power in the last half century. Whether it was sincere and the apologies were honest I cannot say, but Michael Cohen has taken a step towards the light. He will never make it all the way, but if this testimony shortens the tenure of doughfacedonny and the republican crime syndicate by one day it will have made a difference.

I'm not here to praise Cohen, he's still a slimy little toady. From his own opening statement he admits being a borne follower, awed into submission by a conman. He allowed his loyalty to fall exclusively to doughfacedonny, away from the law he must have at least mouthed devotion to to be admitted to the bar. He chose loyalty to a con man in spite of common sense, and committed acts both criminal and unethical in that con man's name. While we liberals knew all along what batshit crazy bullies the republicans are, Cohen thought it was cool to transfer the wannabe gangster act to politics.

He could have just kept his mouth shut, accepted his sentence, and tried to rebuild his life after getting out of prison. Presumably no one would remember who he was or what he did, maybe he couldn't go back to lawyering or fixing doughfacedonny's many crimes, but Cohen could have probably lived a quiet life out of the limelight after doing his time. The republicans went out of their way to claim he was doing this for a book deal after prison. Logically, that doesn't hold a lot of water. Sure one book deal might be lucrative, but would it really be worth it to throw away everything else to maybe get one book published? Given our country's attention span (as an historian, I am as frustrated as anyone that things from last year just register blank stares from the general public) is one book about the last republican scandal really going to fly off the shelves or come with a lucrative speaking circuit? No, the relentless blasting about book deals made about as much sense as continuously drawing attention back to Cohen's lies. He lied and committed these crimes in service to their leader, their president. In any sane universe with laws of political gravity, this tactic would backfire. But we don't live in a place where those things matter.

So, still a bad guy but Cohen made moves to rehabilitate his soul. Sincere remorse and acceptance of punishment for crimes he confessed to. It's a step in the right direction. Maybe he had a conscience after all, it was just suppressed while in thrall to doughfacedonny. And if this two bit hoodlum can feel pangs of guilt after the spell broke, maybe other republican hoodlums can too. 

Is it easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission?

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. once wrote, as he was wont to do, about presidential history in times of crisis. In particular he cited Abraham Lincoln and the extraordinary measures he took during the opening months of the Civil War. That was a real state of emergency, the slave states organized with incredible speed and moved quickly to steal Federal buildings and property. Slave power propagandists in the border states printed wildly seditious stories about the North and the newly elected president. It was not a time for careful deliberation and the slow wheels of government to take action. Schlesinger wrote that it was easier for Lincoln to do what needed to be done and explain his actions later.

Other presidents have taken questionable actions in times of crisis as well, Andrew Jackson's bank war and Indian removal, John Adams' Alien and Sedition Acts, Wilson's roundups and deportations of revolutionary aliens, and so on. In each case, it appeared to much of the public to be a real crisis. Okay, maybe not with Jackson because he was just an asshole, but most of the time action was at least perceived to be necessary. The constitution was bypassed, the crisis resolved and officials took responsibility for their actions, most of the time anyway. It was easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission. This idea isn't limited to presidents, military commanders, police chiefs, businessmen, and even parents who need to take their children to the doctor all occasionally take action and answer for it later. This has also been a core tenet of all the torture porn films and television shows, "do we torture the shit out of the guy with the location of the bomb now and take our chances on punishment later?"

I'm no leader and I hate these kind of hypotheticals but we are rapidly approaching a turning point in American democracy. Another republican president is about to declare an emergency to get some awful thing they want, as has happened at least informally, for the last half century. Let's think about a few. Nixon's operatives went on their merry way bugging opponents, blackmailing and intimidating activists, planting provocateurs in anti-war groups and others, and generally acting above the law until they finally got caught. And even then,they would have walked away laughing had it not been for the courage of democracy's defenders holding their feet to the fire. Reagan's basement conspiracy in Iran-Contra likewise just ran their clandestine operation to sell arms to one enemy so they could supply an army of terrorists in Nicaragua. A few of them got caught and did their time as just the cost of doing business. Most just laughed all the way to the bank though, including the doddering old man himself. The list of authoritarian monstrosities of George W. Bush's administration is incredibly long and would make for many posts and book fodder. Sure, there was a real attack on America, although in hindsight it is fairly clear that it could have been foiled if that band of republican hacks had tried. But the cynical opportunism of denouncing opponents as traitors, and blasting out terror warnings that most likely were exaggerated in the extreme to fearmonger and drown out news of their myriad failures certainly fits this pattern.

Doughfacedonny is widely expected to declare a state of national emergency as outlined in an Act passed by Congress after Watergate that was and is supposed to stop the pattern of doing this very thing during his TV time tonight. Why the networks are still falling for his shit is a mystery we will never fully know the answer to. No one in their right mind would give this orange disgrace permission to do anything, or forgive him afterwards. Not that he would care. He already stole the presidency with the help of monsters at home and abroad. He stole two supreme court seats now and blew up the deficit with his corporate welfare tax giveaway. Has he asked for forgiveness for any of those things? No, of course not. He and Mitch McConnell have not asked permission to reopen the damn government that they run and aren't exactly trying very hard to be forgiven for the latest mess they caused.

It has made the rounds, in liberal commentary circles anyway, the idea of a Reichstag Fire moment coming from this crowd of traitors and imbeciles. And as the meme so often points out, "it's no longer whether trump has any decency, but whether we do." Are the networks, "the enemy of the people" as doughfacedonny so often calls them, really going to go along with this? Maybe he will just go out and feebly rant and lie about immigration and walls and other such nonsense. Nothing will come of it and we can all go back to our regularly scheduled resistance. There certainly is a national emergency but it's not on the border with Mexico. It isn't a legitimacy crisis, all the evidence of Russian meddling has rendered the occupant of the Oval Office illegitimate. It isn't an economic crisis either, the stock market is tanking because of the real crisis though. It is that one major political party in the United States is a death cult of human suffering and that about 40% of the electorate supports that cult.

There may come a time when the American people are finally pushed so hard that they must collectively ask whether it is easier to ask forgiveness for destroying the death cult after the fact, or whether we sit back and civilly wait for permission from the Democrats to defeat them. If doughfacedonny does indeed declare a national emergency and fumble around stealing enough money to build the stupid wall, it won't stop there. I suck at predicting the future, I really expected death squads on day one, but this time might prove more dangerous. Donny's back is against the wall, it is no longer a whisper that he should resign and bolt while he still can. The previous crises of Republican malice gave the criminal-in-chief a path out of danger, therefore they left when their time came but will donny? You can almost trace a line in the escalation of authoritarianism in republican governance since the late 1960s, pushing but never quite closing the door on democracy. Tonight the trap might spring shut. Stay tuned.

Professionalism and the triumph of surrender

American journalism is in crisis, under attack and literally shutting down across the vast news deserts of a country where citizens are no longer getting coverage that is sufficient to sustain democracy. So DC journalists have rallied after the #WHCD to condemn... a comedian.
— John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) April 29, 2018

So today the fallout from the mean comedy lady's stand up routine at the White House Correspondents Dinner finds unconditional surrender from spineless professionals masquerading as journalists. Brother Charlie Pierce laid it out: 

Faced with an administration* and a president* dedicated to poisoning both the spirit and the institutions of free government, and faced with an administration* and a president* dedicated only to looting those institutions that it cannot destroy, the representatives of the elite political media, through the woman at the head of their formal association, Margaret Talev, have determined that bowing to the fauxtrage aimed at a comedian on behalf of the administration*’s paid liar is the proper way to respond to the weekend’s festivities. The commitment to a free press is not common to this nation’s people any more, if it ever was, and it damn sure doesn’t have any fans in this administration*. Anyone who thinks that “a vigorous and free press” and “honoring civility” are equally desirable goals doesn’t love the former enough to deserve the latter.

One does not even have to look at alt-twitter and the troll feeds to know that thin-skinned MAGA hats were and are continuing to screech about how horrible, partisan, and completely one-sided Wolf's monologue was... without having watched more than a few seconds of it. Seriously, she went on for almost twenty minutes and Huckleberry Sandbag (h/t Stephanie Miller) was only the butt of a few jokes. Wolf went after Congress, Roy Moore, Pussy Hats, Reince Priebus, "liberal media" orgasms over Russia, the Clinton campaign for "not being in touch with Michigan", and many more before ever getting to SHB. I'll admit that the jokes about lies turned into something called a "smokey eye" fell with kind of a thud, and not simply because the crowd suddenly clutched their pearls for dear life. They weren't that good, but how do you knock one out of the park about a woman who is paid out of our tax dollars to lie... constantly? Wolf then immediately turned to CNN and kicked them square in the nuts. Ed from Gin and Tacos, whom I have yet to discover an adequate nickname for (God Professor perhaps?) did however knock it out of the park with this one:

"All these guns can't protect my feelings" pic.twitter.com/WFbolkaQlq

— Ed Burmila (@gin_and_tacos) April 30, 2018

And this one:

24 hours in pic.twitter.com/wEN1DZMxOX

— Ed Burmila (@gin_and_tacos) April 30, 2018

 Let's keep in mind who the offended people are:

At what point will the professional journalist class realize they are in danger? The re-programmable meat-bags that have been conditioned all these years by Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, and the entire wingnut propaganda complex aren't kidding. Charlie Pierce alluded to an earlier time when journalists were not afraid to take a stand against evil by quoting the radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison in defense of the First Amendment. In another time of repression and conspiracy Edward R. Murrow had the courage to stand up to the bully Joe McCarthy. Walter Cronkite was unafraid to speak out on the quagmire of Vietnam. Woodward and Bernstein followed the money to unravel Nixon's corruption and abuse of power.

But in this time of darkness... we have professional detachment decrying anything that "divides" Americans. America stands as a one party state in 2018, and that party hates anything that does not serve or flatter it. Now is the time to speak truth to that kakistocracy, now cower behind some ephemeral concept of "civility". Look at those pictures above again. Now add 62 million more. Do you honestly think they give a damn about your principles? Has the MAGA hat mob ever shown anything approaching "civility"?

I have been wrong all these years on two counts. This is not a war. A war is when two sides fight. Unilateral disarmament doesn't cut it either. Brother Charlie calls the statement by WHCA president Margaret Talev to be articles of surrender. I am not one to quibble with Brother Charlie's judgment but this event leads me to a conclusion that I dread. This is the second count.

Thomas Frank was right. It is not easy to swallow what tiny amount of pride I possess and go back on what I once stated, but there it is. The most obvious supporting evidence of Dr. Frank's thesis in Listen Liberal. Professionalism has hijacked liberalism. The values he laid out that are shared by professionals and establishment liberals, the examples he gave, the repercussions it has led to, and especially his tale of how the DC press corps finger-wagged the Democratic Party into abandoning the New Deal. I was in denial, well maybe not but I wasn't exactly open to the thesis. My tone did not appreciably change about the book from before to after the election (was stolen). But this was my hero talking and I was far beyond the young radical I once was. The guy who couldn't stand Al Gore in 2000 couldn't wait to get Hillary Clinton in office and get back to the real work.

The real work involves deprogramming enough of the meatbag republicans to defuse the overwhelming authoritarianism driving the republican party. The "professionals" in the WHCA have set that back considerably. First with the supine obeisance to corrupt liars. Now with throwing the entertainer that they invited to their own event under the bus for... words. "Fuck your feelings" has really come of age hasn't it?

Donald Doughface

This year has seen the return of open racism and misogyny to American politics. It has come about because of one man, a vulgar talking yam who rode the vicious populist wave, voter suppression, and Russian intervention all the way to the highest office in the republic. While this has huge contemporary repercussions, it has also opened a clear view of the fact that for many people the Civil War never ended. Prior to that conflict there was a term for a Northern man with Southern sympathies, doughface, and it is time to reintroduce that name to a man who fits the definition so well, Donald J. Trump. The true battle line of the Civil War that preceded and succeeded the military campaigns of 1861-65 was between the democratic vision of America and the aristocratic one. Doughface donny lied his way into the presidency by appealing to the worst aspects of aristocratic America, not by promising the republican working class voters a better life but by promising to stomp on nonwhite and liberal America and all that it stands for without any restraint.

Two days before election day a little article was posted on the History News Network by the Presidential Distinguished Professor and Chair of the History Department at Weber State University, Susan J. Matt that flew under the radar during that chaotic time. Titled This is What Liberals are missing about Trump's appeal Professor Matt presents a very detailed and in depth look at the pre-industrial concept of personal honor and shame that dominated Southern life even after the Civil War. Now that the industrial way of life has receded in so much of the United States this primitive lifestyle has experienced a revival unnoticed by all of us "elitists" in the city. What this looks like is described as:

Southern white men worried incessantly about how others perceived them. Any insult to their reputations needed to be quickly parried lest they lose face. Historian Keith Thomas noted that among English elites, the concern with honor “generated extreme touchiness, and hypersensitivity to any form of slight. As a result, honour was invoked as justification for almost any kind of self-aggrandizement.”

Some of that aggrandizement could be based on sexual prowess. Men could boast of their sexual exploits, for lust signaled virility and strength. Reputation also depended on outward carriage, for Brown writes, “honor was a state of grace linking mind, body, blood, hand, voice, head, eyes, and even genitalia.” Consequently, southerners were concerned with their own bodies as well as their ancestors’, for bloodlines and racial purity affected the ability to embody honor.

Those who believed in honor engaged in physical, sometimes violent displays of power to defend it. Historian Elliott Gorn found that to display honor, poor men had vicious brawls, gouging out each others’ eyes, as well as biting off ears and windpipes, while elites relied on duels as a more genteel way to defend reputation. To be honorable required men to take risks, display bravery.

Men were also supposed to risk their pocketbooks, for gambling too was a display of nerve. If men ran up debts, they must repay them, for those they gambled with were presumably honorable gentlemen; however, they need not pay back people below them on the social scale. William Grayson of South Carolina noted, “A gambling debt is a debt of honour, but a debt due a tradesman is not.”

Southern whites who subscribed to this cult of honor lived publicly, and when possible grandly, boasted about their sexual prowess and bravery, focused on outward appearances and reputation, and took forceful, even violent action when that reputation was assailed.

- See more at: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/164299#sthash.t9Y7fcRD.dpuf

This barbaric way of life persists in nearly any American community that is unencumbered by Enlightenment principles or even the industrial installation of bureaucracy or professionalism. The brutes may not be "biting off ears and windpipes" anymore but scratch the surface in any military base or impoverished small town and you will discover hypersensitive man-children endlessly bragging about their sexual conquests, the many slights suffered and punishments or humiliations dealt out, and the intricate web of hierarchy and domination forever being challenged and enforced. This system of honor has jumped the regional boundaries of the old Confederacy in much the same way that the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan after WWI found strength in states such as Indiana and Oklahoma. It has even jumped color lines as African-American gang members on the South Side of Chicago worry endlessly about their "rep" and answer slights from others posted online with physical confrontation and often bullets. The link between this system of honor and white supremacy, however, is the focus of discussing Donald Doughface.

Thus far I have only found one other blog linking trump with the term "doughface" and although poignant it does not go deep enough to understand the causal factors, the driving force that gives so much energy to the republicans who voted against every democratic impulse to make this doughface president. The right wing in America is driven by a primitive honor system, while it may have started in the South before the republic was even founded, today this plague has spread to all points on the American map. Anywhere ruin has been visited on the American proletariat, anywhere average people have been stripped of a decent living by plutocrats in corporate America and Wall Street, the vengeful honor system has flooded in to encourage vulgarity, racism, misogyny, and hypersensitive aggression.

Donald Trump, who will never be normalized on this page nor accorded with the title he and his confederates have stolen for him, is the epitome of of this (dis)honor system. A Northern man with Southern principles, ever ready to strike down anyone who opposes or slights him, ever ready to take anything he wants and react with self-righteous fury anyone or anything that resists, Trump is the violation of everything we Americans are taught in school about what we supposedly value. And yet, his awful values are long-standing, everything that is wrong with America from racism and white supremacy, to misogyny and sexual conquest of women, this is the Civil War that eternally haunts our nation. It is a war that can only end in the complete destruction of those primitive honor-related values. Democratic America has had several chances to deal a death blow to aristocratic America, the military Civil War and the Civil Rights era to name two opportunities, but we can never bring ourselves to strike fully to excise the cancer.

And now that cancer has consumed us. The third strike has finally dealt us a permanent ascendancy of aristocracy. We, the democratic nation of America, are an occupied people. To be continued...

Manifesto For the Feeble-minded

Yes, who are these ignorant bigots that support the vulgar talking yam? And why shouldn't we be surprised that their identity can fit in a meme? Who actually made this thing? I don't want to say where I found this but let's say it is not your typical rally goer. I don't know if that makes him a simpleton but is Quisling out really the best way to protect your masculinity and guns? When the Trumptergreifung  occurs do you really think "I'm on your side" is going to protect you from the Klan members or keep you out of a concentration camp? The lack of spelling errors or glaring grammatical mistakes makes me think this was a professional job but despite many different queries to the Google I could not trace this meme's progression.

Makes one think that there is some order to the flag encrusted bullet points if it was actually designed and not slap-assed together. Let's see: "hate", "repealed", "sick of", "fed-up with", "tired of", and a lot of "wants"; this is the whiniest document I've seen in some time. First off, you fascist pricks don't "hate liberal ideology" you hate liberals, your fellow Americans, and you want them disappeared. You couldn't define liberalism if you wanted to, beyond what Fox News and Rush Limbaugh have programmed you to recite on command, which bears no resemblance to real world liberalism. No, you hate liberals, which you define as anyone who disagrees with you. I'm surprised that hating Black Lives Matter didn't make this list, or would that have been too obvious?

Second, Obamacare repeal. Why? So you can go back to being at the mercy of insurance companies? The Affordable Care Act was based on a Republican proposal from the Heritage Foundation. Which part do you want back so badly, the one where your kids are kicked off at 18 or where the insurance company drops you or refuses to cover you because you might get sick? Or are you mad because poor people got some help paying their premiums? Just a good ole' punch down. But then you want "our vets taken care of", yes I do too, but who created all those vets who need care and then turned around and cut their benefits and funding VA hospitals? Yes that was George W. Bush, but he never existed in 'wingerdom so never mind that.

Hillary for prison? Yeah, I've seen that T-Shirt. Someone sure is raking in the dough from that one. Couldn't impeach President Obama for anything so it's time to up the ante some more. Please, by all means, hold your breath and stomp up and down, I'm sure eventually you can wish her to jail. From the looks of the Trump U case I'd say the vulgar talking yam ending up in prison is the more likely scenario. Corruption? Sure, I'm with you there but it takes a special kind of stupid to believe sending one of the most corrupt businessmen in America to the White House will do anything but ramp up corruption to Jupiter and back. Same with bringing jobs back, I'd love that too but again, Trump has outsourced so much of his own schemes is he really the one you trust to "renegotiate" trade deals?

Self-funded, now there is the ultimate exercise in self-delusion. First of all Trump loaned money to his campaign and expects to make it back with interest from all of you gullible idiots. Second, the first thing he did after securing the presumptive nomination was to declare that he was going to raise a billion dollars from all those special interests. The same ultra-wealthy owners of corporations that outsource jobs and hire illegal immigrants to push down your wages and standard of living. But hang on to that dream kiddies.

Donald Trump and The Ku Klux Klan

Ever since Donald Trump declared his candidacy for the president of these United States, I have been researching the obvious question of why in the hell anyone would support him. And then this happened:

David Duke: Voting against Trump is 'treason to your heritage'

Regardless of the timeline of events, first he didn't then he did disavow the KKK and white supremacists. And the minor dust-up about credentialing a white nationalist radio show host for one of his mass rallies. And the fawning, gushing love for the Donald over at new-nazi website the daily stormer (I'm not linking to it but if you're brave, go have a look). We have the this blast from the past. As JAMES PONIEWOZIK put it in the New York Times, "until this week, the K.K.K.’s loathsomeness had seemed to be a settled issue." 

Hopefully it will be nothing else, but Trump's campaign has certainly proved that this supposed tyranny of political correctness is a toothless tiger. If, on election day Trump secures a paltry minority of votes and his Republican Party is utterly crushed in down-ticket races all over the country, the short-fingered vulgarian and his hate-filled mouth-breathing followers will have shown us all that racism is alive and well, and that the tyranny of political correctness has no idea how to adequately deal with it. And that we are really just one rigged election away from reinstating segregation, white supremacy, and possibly even a return to slavery. Political correctness, at least in the way social conservatives yap endlessly about it, really seems more and more to be a meaningless buzzword that signifies nothing more than "why can't we dominate those non-white people the way we used to?"

Just as the plutocracy and unregulated capitalism were marginalized for a time by the Great Depression, open racism and white supremacy were marginalized by herculean efforts of the Civil Rights Movement and the intervention of the Federal Government. But the will to power and domination represented by these forces are an idea, and just as many commentators pointed out during the "war on terror," you cannot destroy an idea. Thomas Frank discussed this concept in The Wrecking Crew, in regards to the methods and tactics that "conservatives" use to try and destroy liberalism once and for all. Just as plutocracy and "free market" (basically unregulated) capitalism clawed their way back into power by displacing the labor movement and New Deal institutions inch by inch, capitalizing on every crisis to expand and legitimize corporate power, racism and white supremacy has clawed its way back into the discussion by using every shock of modernity to discredit and delegitimize multiculturalism, diversity, equal rights, and tolerance of difference.

By playing footsie with very dangerous people, Trump legitimizes for his followers a belief structure that should have died out a long time ago. The only saving grace is that the majority of authoritarian followers still do not like the label of "racist" and do not want to be associated with words like "KKK" or "Neo-Nazi" however much they hold racial resentments. The next post will describe the KKK of the 1920s and explore similarities with Trump supporters.