Journal of the Plague Years

December 7, 2018

All this week, the news media has been consumed with the pomp and ceremony of the state funeral for George H.W. Bush, justly mocking Trump for standing silent and stone-faced, while every other living President stood and recited the Apostle’s Creed; or mawkishly celebrating W’s candy hand-off to Michelle Obama, as if his adorable crush could erase eight years of his disastrous presidency.  Meanwhile, in a series of “below the fold” stories, Republicans around the country have been taking shocking, unprecedented steps to override the will of the voters and arrogate power for themselves.  North Carolina Republicans, who pioneered the tactics currently on display in Wisconsin and Michigan, have taken the coup one step further with the apparent outright theft of the 9th Congressional District through brazen election fraud.

Each instance is truly astonishing in its own right.  Wisconsin has been a laboratory in how to hijack a progressive state through a toxic, anti-democratic cocktail of voter suppression and extreme gerrymandering.  The partisan gerrymandering was so extreme that it was invalidated by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in 2017, who ordered the state to redraw the districts.  The Supreme Court vacated the decision on procedural grounds earlier this year, leaving the gerrymandered districts in place for the 2018 midterms (Source:  Gill v. Whitford, 585 U.S. ____ (2018).  As a result, Wisconsin Republicans won 64% of the legislative seats, despite winning only 45% of the vote (Source:  “Republicans’ power grab in Wisconsin is more evidence the party doesn’t care about the will of the voters,” by Emily Mills, Think, nbcnews.com, 12/4/18). Continue reading “Coup d’etat”

December 4, 2018

 

In the days since George H.W. Bush’s death on Saturday at the age of 94, a food fight has erupted on social media between those valorizing him and those excoriating him.  Should the 41st President be lauded for his World War II heroism as a 17 year old fighter pilot, his lifetime of public service, personal graciousness and devotion to his family?  Has he earned our opprobrium because of the naked cynicism he he repeatedly displayed in his quest to win elections?  He used racism to win –  criticizing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and unleashing the viciously racist Willie Horton ads to defeat Michael Dukakis in 1988.  He abandoned his criticism of supply side theory as “voodoo economics” and flip flopped on abortion to secure his berth as ultra conservative Ronald Reagan’s Vice Presidential pick, (Source:  “Is History Being Too Kind to George H.W. Bush?” by David Greenberg, Politico.com, 12/1/18). Continue reading “No hagiography”

December 1, 2018

    Although every week of Trump’s presidency has brought new revelations in the Russia investigation, whether it was the indictment of 19 Russian operators of a troll farm who seeded our social media with divisive disinformation, or a 2016 meeting between a Putin backed Russian lawyer and Don, Jr., this week has been qualitatively different.  For the first time, Trump himself is squarely in the crosshairs as “Individual 1,” as evidence mounts that allows us to connect the dots between his decades’ long pursuit of a major real estate development in Moscow and the concerted efforts of Russia, acting through WikiLeaks and the Internet Research Agency to interfere in our elections and win Trump the presidency.

    This has been a week of unrelenting bad news for the mobbed up autocrat squatting in The White House.  Every day has marked a seismic development in the hydra-headed Special Counsel investigation, revealing anew the nest of vipers that populate Trump’s world.  Earlier this week, Mueller accused Paul Manafort of breaching his plea agreement by “lying repeatedly to prosecutors,” (Source: “Individual 1* is now a Central Subject of Mueller Probe *a.k.a Trump” by Carol D. Leonnig and Josh Dawsey, The Washington Post, 11/29/18).

     We learned that Manafort had never withdrawn from his joint defense agreement with Trump, as is customary once a defendant has entered a plea agreement.  That revelation led to feverish speculation that Manafort and his lawyer were playing the Special Counsel by serving as moles ferrying information to Trump and his attorneys about Mueller’s lines of inquiry.

     At the same time that we were learning of Manafort’s ongoing duplicity, right wing gadfly and conspiracy theorist, Jerome Corsi, was elbowing his way into the spotlight with his claim that he had rejected a plea deal with the Special Counsel’s office.  Corsi provided the charging documents to several news outlets, which outlined how Corsi and Roger Stone concocted outlandish lies to conceal their communications with WikiLeaks, (Source: “A leaked Mueller draft document provides a glimpse into the investigation’s future,” by Andrew Prokop, Vox.com, 11/27/18). The charging document traces a clear path from the GRU (Russian intelligence) to WikiLeaks to Roger Stone to Trump (pere et fils).

     This backdrop made Thursday’s news of the  Michael Cohen plea deal that much more momentous.  Cohen’s admission that he lied to Congress and that his efforts to secure a deal for Trump World Tower extended far past January 2016, up to the eve of the Republican convention in July, raises the possibility that Trump’s business interests in Moscow included the illegal use of financing from sanctioned Russian banks and that Trump had direct knowledge of his campaign operatives’ collusion with Russian interference in our elections.

    As BuzzfeedNews.com  exhaustively detailed, Cohen’s confederate in trying to bring Trump World Moscow to fruition was Russian born Felix Sater, a shady character with ties to the Russian Mob who frequently served as an undercover source for U.S. intelligence agencies.  Together they worked Russian officials, oligarchs and bankers (Source: “The Crazy True Story of Trump Moscow,” by Anthony Cormier and Jason Leopold, BuzzfeedNews.com, 5/17/18).  The plan apparently included a promise to give the $50 million dollar penthouse to Vladimir Putin.

     Trump knows he’s in real jeopardy.  It is obvious from his rage tweeting and his sulking at the G-20, staring enviously at Mohammad bin Salman yukking it up with Vladimir Putin.  

     Yet while we were distracted by schadenfreude, Republicans in Washington were industriously continuing their quest to destroy our democracy.  Only the combination of Jeff Flake’s determination to protect Mueller and a last minute attack of conscience from Tim Scott prevented the confirmation of voter suppression mastermind Thomas Farr to a lifetime appointment to the federal bench in North Carolina.  The Trump administration announced plans to allow energy companies to “conduct seismic tests in the Atlantic Ocean…that could harm…marine life,” (Source: “Trump’s move towards Atlantic drilling could hurt marine mammals,” by Ben Geman and Andrew Freedman, Axios.com, 11/30/18).  Lastly, thanks to an investigation by ProPublica we have learned that the Department of Education has dramatically scaled back the investigation of “systemic civil rights violations by schools and colleges”, dismissing complaints without investigating them.

       The point is that we should contain our glee at the prospect of Trump’s impending fall. He is merely fruit of the poisonous tree in a government filled with malevolent people motivated solely by racism and greed. We would do well to remember the words of Winston Churchill:  “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

     

      

November 27, 2018

      By now we have all seen the gut wrenching photographs of women in Disney t-shirts and children in diapers crying and choking as they run to escape the tear gas that U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officers fired at refugees.  The migrants were protesting the slow pace of processing of refugees, after the U.S. closed the San Ysidro border crossing, the busiest port of entry in the United States (Source: “U.S. closes major crossing as caravan migrants mass at border in Mexico,” by Sarah Kinosian and Joshua Partlow, The Washington Post, 11/26/18).

      Think for a moment about what has happened here.  The U.S. CBP responded to a scuffle with about two dozen protestors, out of a caravan of several thousand, by firing tear gas at the entire group of protestors, across the border into another country!  Tear gas is a chemical weapon that has been banned in international conflict since 1997 (Source:  “Tear gas was banned for warfare in 1993 but police still use it, viral meme says,” by Louis Jacobson, Politifact.com, 8/6/14, (correcting the effective date of the ban)).  This is a war crime, although we are not at war.

       We must renounce any effort to justify this violent, lawless escalation.  We know the truth— that Trump, aided by the media’s amplification, manufactured a ‘crisis,’ appealing to naked racism to demonize women and children fleeing violent conditions in their own countries that have their roots in more than a century of American foreign policy.  The crisis in the Central American countries of Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua began in the late 19th Century, when we first began privileging U.S. business interests over human rights or democracy (Source: “Big Fruit,” Book review by Daniel Kurtz Phelan, The New York Times, 3/2/08).  From the plunder and exploitation of Honduras and Guatemala beginning in the 1870’s by the likes of the United Fruit Company (now Chicquita) and the Standard Fruit Company (now Dole), to the C.I.A. backed coup d’etats of democratically elected governments in the 1950’s, the repressive Central American regimes propped up by the U.S. government led directly to the proliferation of violent gangs and corrupt police officials that make life untenable there today (Source:  “How U.S. foreign policy in Central America created the child border crisis,” by Kay Hubbard, The Seattle Times, 8/12/14).

      The Trump administration is violating international law by gassing women and children AND violating U.S. law in its effort to prevent the refugees from seeking asylum.  Just last week, federal judge, Jon S. Tigar, blocked Trump’s ham handed attempt at an asylum ban, ruling “Whatever the scope of the President’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden,” (Source: “Order granting temporary restraining order against Trump administration asylum policy” in East Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Donald J. Trump, (U.S. Dist. Ct, N.D. Cal), 11/19/18).

    Every single day, Trump ratchets up the racist rhetoric and cruelty, betting that America’s boundless capacity for nativist paranoia outweighs our so-called love of democracy or even our sense of common decency.  There is no question as to exactly who Trump is. The question is, Who are we?

November 24, 2018

      Yesterday, the Trump administration ushered in the holiday season by asking the United States Supreme Court to take up its ban on transgender people serving in the military, even as three lower courts were still considering it (Source:  “Trump asks Supreme Court to hear challenge on transgender military ban,” by Chris Mills Rodrigo, TheHill.com, 11/23/18).  Although Adam Serwer observes that cruelty is the point, this move is clear evidence of this administration’s determination (shared by far too many Americans)  to uphold patriarchy at any cost.

     This effort to persecute transgender service members is of a piece with all who zealously uphold rigid, narrow definitions of gender and police those boundaries through violence, if necessary.  We need to recognize that the mechanisms used by adherents of patriarchy may differ, but their goal is still the same. Continue reading “Death to the patriarchy”

November 22, 2018

     Before the blandly commercial, yet oddly reassuring sound of “Today” show hosts narrating the steady stream of balloons, Broadway chorus lines and heartland marching bands of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade blares from the tv; before the more personal cacophony of rushing to get the turkey stuffed and  in the oven in time for it to emerge at 3:00, hopefully perfectly crisp on the outside and juicy within, there is time to reflect on what we’re thankful for.

      Personally, I am thankful that my children, Marcus and Noelle, are growing into young adults who balance their love of friends and family with a healthy sense of adventure and curiosity.  I’m thankful for a husband who is a partner, a lover and a friend and mother who calls to alert me to the latest State Department warnings before I travel or that I’m overdue for a colonoscopy(!). I am thankful for good friends from Mexico to Michigan, from Boston to L.A. who always have my back.  I’m thankful for my suburban village that welcomes the diversity of humanity and grapples honestly with the messiness that sometimes entails.

      Most of all, though, I am thankful for each of us who reacted to the horror unleashed by Trump’s election, not with paralysis born of despair, but by marching, organizing, mobilizing and voting, loudly standing up for democracy and pledging to overcome hatred and fear with love.  I believe that we will overcome these awful ”plague years” to remake this country as a more perfect union, with a seat at the table for all of us. Happy Thanksgiving!

November 20, 2018

 

As the midterms recede in the rearview mirror, the news cycle has been consumed with chronicling the challenge to Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House in the incoming Congress.  Between this and the 24/7 coverage of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s every utterance and wardrobe choice, in an effort to paint her as a fraudulent arriviste who is in over her head, the Beltway pundit class has clearly pivoted to its preferred narrative of “Dems in disarray,” rather than acknowledging the seismic change this election represents and who has powered that change.

First, we need to look at what the job of the Speaker actually is.  The Speaker presides over the House, controls what legislation gets to the floor and is responsible for keeping the Caucus unified in order to pass important legislation. The Speaker is also third in the line of succession for the President.  This is not a job for poseurs or neophytes.  Nancy Pelosi is widely acknowledged as having been an extremely effective Speaker and is credited with passage of the Affordable Care Act, (Source:  “How Obamacare Will Return Nancy Pelosi to House Speakership,” by Bruce Japsen, Forbes.com, 11/18/18). Continue reading “No country for old women?”

November 17, 2018

    Yesterday, Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Stacey Abrams, acknowledged that she would not prevail in her race to become the nation’s first Black woman governor.  As she forcefully detailed, her speech was not a “concession,” because conceding would necessitate acknowledging defeat in a fair contest and Georgia’s election was the antithesis of that.  In a stunning act of corruption, Brian Kemp refused to relinquish control of the state’s electoral apparatus, deeming it proper that he be both a competitor in, and arbiter of, the election for the state’s highest office.  Kemp capped an eight year campaign of massive suppression of Black votes by closing polling places and withholding such basic supplies as sufficient numbers of paper ballots or power cords for electronic voting machines!

     As Ari Berman details, between 2012 and 2016, Kemp “purged 1.5 million voters, twice as many as in the preceding four years.”  He removed another 735,000 in the next two years. Nearly half of those purged were voters of color, in a state that is 60% white.  70% of the 53,000 registrations Kemp placed on a “pending” list were African American and 80% were voters of color, (Source: “Brian Kemp’s Winnin Georgia is Tainted by Voter Suppression,” by Ari Berman, MotherJones.com, 11/16/18).  Kemp was not subtle.  He was on record warning that if newly registered voters of color exercise their rights, Republicans would lose. Thanks to the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder, in the absence of preclearance requirements, outcomes like this are sadly predictable. Continue reading “Georgia on my mind”

November 14, 2018

   Over the past week, as the huge number of Democratic gains has come into focus, Trump has retreated into a “cocoon of bitterness and resentment,” refusing to even venture out to Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans’ Day and rage-tweeting insults at French President Emmanuel Macron like a petulant toddler.  Rumors of the imminent firing of alleged “adult in the room,” lying racist, John Kelly, and distaff Goebbels, Kirstjen Nielsen, are rampant, (Source: “Trump, stung by the midterms and nervous about Mueller, retreats from traditional presidential duties,” by Eli Stokols, The Los Angeles Times, 11/ 13/18). Continue reading “What we’re fighting”

November 12, 2018

 

Since Democrats’ decisive victories on Tuesday, Trump has responded by waging a non-stop assault on decency and the Rule of Law.  He began with a frontal attack on the First Amendment, revoking the credentials of a Latino journalist and hurling racist invective at three esteemed Black women journalists.  As the Democrats racked up more Congressional victories, Trump ratcheted up the vitriol— proving that he is nothing more than a rotting mass of ignorance and acrimony, displaying  both bottomless cruelty and a basic lack of knowledge in a tweet about the devastating California wildfires. Trump then proceeded to embarrass us on the world stage by being a no-show at the commemorative ceremony at Aisne-Marne American Cemetery on 100th Anniversary of the Armistice because of rain, (Source:  “Critics pile on after Trump cancels visit to U.S. military cemetery outside Paris, citing weather,” by David Nakamura, Seung Min Kim and James McAuley, The Washington Post, 11/10/18). Continue reading “Jim Crow 2.0?”