Journal of the Plague Years

July 22, 2018

The dizzying chaos of the past week’s news cycle has been breathtaking. We have watched aghast as Trump doubled down on his pathetic performance in Helsinki by inviting Putin to come to Washington in September. Simultaneously, we learned that the NRA, and those Republicans it supports, were willing pawns in Russia’s plot to subvert American sovereignty, easily seduced by piles of cash and a nubile grad student with a fake gun fetish.

The revelation Friday that Michael Cohen had at least one (and probably several) incriminating tapes of conversations with Trump was a welcome distraction from the depressing realization that one of our two major parties is chock full of traitors. The truth is, though, that we have no control over when or if the content of Michael Cohen’s tapes will be revealed and the effect it will have on Trump’s fate, if any. Continue reading “Read every page”

July 19, 2018

 

The rot is obvious now.  After the events of the last week, anyone with a pulse knows that from Trump down to the lowliest precinct captain, the Republican Party is nothing more than a collection of corrupt, sleazy racists happy to sell our sovereignty out to Russia.  We have known for more than a year that the Russians actively interfered in our electoral process in 2016 and we know that, in the estimation of Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats,  they are continuing to do so.  As spelled out in the Special Counsel’s 11 count indictment last Friday, Russian interference went beyond misleading social media ads and theft of DNC e-mails, and extended to theft of voter files and attempts to breach state level voting infrastructure.

Republicans in Congress have refused to lift a finger to safeguard our election systems because they too, were beneficiaries of Russian cyberattacks.  Although Trump was shown definitive evidence that Putin and the Russian government were behind the attacks two weeks before the Inauguration, he has consistently lied and said that Russia was not behind them (Source:  “From the Start, Trump Has Muddied a Clear Message:  Putin Interfered,” by David E. Sanger and Matthew Rosenberg, The New York Times, 7/18/18). Continue reading “What is at stake”

July 17, 2018

 

Prior to assuming office, every President takes the following oath:  “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”  Every single day, for the last 18 months, Trump has violated that oath. He has had a slapdash, self-aggrandizing approach to the job — a far cry from the faithful execution of it; privileging self-enrichment above all else.  Trump has aggressively undermined laws such as the Affordable Care Act and tolerated criminal negligence in FEMA’s hurricane relief efforts in Puerto Rico.  On the foreign policy front, Trump has been the essence of faithless, repeatedly destroying longstanding alliances like NATO and attacking close allies like the United Kingdom and Canada. Continue reading “High crimes and misdemeanors”

July 14, 2018

After the events of the past week, it is clear that our government has disintegrated into a three ring circus peopled by malevolent, demented clowns hellbent on destroying our vaunted system of three co-equal branches of government designed to prevent abuses of power by any one branch.Trump’s behavior comes as no surprise, given a personality that is a toxic cocktail of impulsivity, bellicosity and Lilliputian intellect. He spent the week incinerating our 73 year old NATO alliances with one outrageous statement after another. First, he made the claim that Germany was in thrall to Russia based on its reliance on it for their natural gas supply. He went on to berate our allies for falling short of defense spending targets. Trump’s behavior was so over the top that even Chief of Staff Kelly couldn’t hide his dyspeptic reaction. Continue reading “It is only a matter of time”

July 10, 2018

One can smile and smile and be a villain. Bear that in mind as you consider the nomination of D.C. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U. S. Supreme Court. As soon as his nomination was announced, pundits could be heard praising his “performance,” devoting airtime to how relaxed and at ease Kavanaugh appeared during his remarks. Much is being made of Kavanaugh’s two degrees from Yale and his dozen years on the D.C. Circuit, arguably the most influential appellate court in the country. It is proof of how conditioned we have become to Trump’s practice of appointing incompetent ideologues, that we are relieved when a nominee is conventionally qualified. Continue reading “Do not go gentle into that good night”

July 7, 2018

On Thursday, the steady drumbeat of stories of Scott Pruitt’s epic corruption finally forced the EPA head to resign. Over the last several months, there have been news stories on an almost daily basis, which detailed Pruitt’s narcissism, vindictiveness, avarice and dishonesty. Our glee over Pruitt’s downfall, however, must be tempered by the knowledge that his replacement, former coal lobbyist, Andrew Wheeler, will pursue the same environment-destroying policies, but with a veneer of professionalism. Continue reading “How to stop ethnic cleansing”

July 4, 2018

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among those are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the People to alter or abolish it….” (Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776). Continue reading “Declaration of Independence”

July 2, 2018

It is a challenge to feel hopeful after what feels like the worst week of the ongoing clusterf__k that is the Trump administration.  Five journalists were gunned down in Annapolis, Maryland by a violent misogynist.  2000 immigrant kids remain separated from their parents and  Trump’s Executive Order  traded family separation for family detention, substituting one viciously inhumane practice for another.  Justice Kennedy announced his retirement, paving the way for Trump to assemble a hard right majority on the court that will strip women of their bodily autonomy and myriad other hard won rights from people of color and working people.   Continue reading “Our last, best hope”

June 28, 2018

Yesterday we received the devastating news that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy will retire on July 31, 2018, handing Trump an opportunity to lock in a hard right majority on the highest court in the land for another 40 years.  Although Kennedy was a conservative justice, he was critical in establishing LGBT civil rights as the law of the land.  Kennedy authored the opinions in Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (S.Ct. 2003) (holding that laws criminalizing consensual sex between LGBT adults were an unconstitutional deprivation of their rights under the 14th Amendment); U.S. v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 744 (S.Ct. 2013) (striking down the Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional); and finally, Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. ___ (S.Ct. 2015), (holding that same sex couples had a fundamental right to marry under the 14th Amendment).  In addition, Kennedy was a key swing vote who delivered majorities on important decisions upholding abortion rights and affirmative action.

Despite this track record as a moderating force protecting “discrete and insular minorities ” from the worst excesses of the majority, Kennedy’s parting gift to America was to cast the deciding vote in a dispiriting trifecta of cases.  First, in Trump v. Hawaii on Monday, Kennedy voted to  uphold the travel ban as an appropriate exercise of presidential power that did not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment (Source: “The Supreme Court Travel Ban Ruling:  A Summary,” by Hilary Hurd, Yishai Schwartz,  Lawfare.com, 6/26/18).  In NIFLA v. Becerra, 585 U.S. ____ (2018), the Supreme Court gave crisis pregnancy centers the right to dupe desperate women by holding that a law requiring them to tell the truth about the availability of free and low cost health services, including abortion, violated their First Amendment rights. Lastly, in Janus v. AFSCME, the conservative majority dealt a blow to public sector unions by eliminating required fair share payments from non-members.

These decisions, combined with their decisions allowing Ohio’s voter purges, and their willingness to leave Wisconsin’s and North Carolina’s gerrymandered districts undisturbed, expose the Supreme Court as nothing more than the judicial branch of the extremist cult that is the current Republican Party.  By providing the legal justification for the denial of voting rights to people of color; bodily autonomy for women; civil rights for LGBT people and organizing tools for working people, they are paving the way for the Republican Party’s plan to transform our country from a flawed representative democracy to a white supremacist patriarchy.

Although we focus much of our anger on Trump, we should never forget for a moment that the true architect of this disaster is Mitch McConnell.  Through his theft of Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court seat and his traitorous insistence that Russia’s interference in our election not be revealed prior to the election, McConnell laid the foundation for our headlong rush into authoritarianism.  Make no mistake, McConnell and his spineless House counterpart, Paul Ryan, are committed to establishing a corrupt oligarchy and have found in Trump a useful idiot who absorbs all of our ire, draining and distracting us.

This is a war over the very idea of America and nothing less than the freedom of every American who isn’t a straight, white, Christian man is at stake.  So, turn your despair into determination and your rage into resolve. Volunteer every week in swing districts (go to swingleft.org to find the closest one).  Fight voter suppression (sign up with www.letamericavote.org to work in your state).  Contribute to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.  Lawyers, volunteer with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (https://lawyerscommittee.org/).  Be ready to fight like hell.  I know I am.

#Fightvotersuppression

#Protectdemocracy

#VOTE

June 25, 2018

For those of us wondering who will have the resolve to resist fascism as it steamrolls over our democracy, we need look no further than the lopsided reactions to two events that occurred over the weekend.  On Friday night, the owner of Lexington, Virginia restaurant, The Red Hen, asked White House spokeswoman and professional liar, Sarah Sanders, to leave the restaurant.  The owner explained that she made the decision out of respect for her staff, many of whom are gay and bristled at the idea of serving an agent of a cruelly homophobic and racist administration.  Never one to be constrained by the facts, Sanders tweeted from her government account, “I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so,” (@PressSec; 10:53 a.m. 6/23/18, Twitter).  It’s not clear how Sanders squares that statement with her support for the right of businesses to refuse service to LGBT patrons on religious grounds, but no matter.  This was all it took for concern trolling admonishment to erupt from pundits and consultants across the political spectrum.  Everyone from Ari Fleischer to Jonathan Alter to David Axelrod condemned the Red Hen and those of us supporting their decision, although some, like Jessica Valenti, pointed out what should have been obvious — that shunning people for moral transgressions is NOT equivalent to discrimination against classes of people based on their immutable characteristics. Continue reading “Civility or morality: the choice is yours”