Putin vs. Schwarzenegger

Putin addressed his people yesterday in harsh, threatening terms:

Arnold Schwarzenegger released a very different message to the Russian people today:

   

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Baby-Killer Putin Bombs Maternity Hospital

The Russian butcher strikes again.  At women in labor.  At newborn infants.  In beseiged Mariupol, in the middle of a cease-fire.  Too horrible for words.

 

 

The Guardian reports (emphasis mine):

As Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmitryo Kuleba, accused Russia of “holding 400,000 people hostage” in Mariupol, much of whose population has been without power, heat, water or phone signal for over a week, the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, denounced an atrocity.

“A children’s hospital, a maternity ward. How did they threaten the Russian Federation? What is this country, the Russian Federation, that is afraid of hospitals, maternity wards and is destroying them?” said Zelendskiy on Telegram.

“Hospitals and schools are destroyed. Churches and ordinary buildings are destroyed. People are killed. Children are killed. The aerial bombing of a children’s hospital is the ultimate evidence that genocide of Ukrainians is happening.”

Amid western warnings that Moscow’s invasion was about to become even more brutal as the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, seeks to regain stalled momentum, local authorities described the damage to the hospital – a combined 600-bed complex with children’s and maternity wards – as “colossal” and said at least 17 people had been wounded, including women in labour.

The deputy mayor, Sergei Orlov, said the city was being shelled continuously and 1,170 residents had died, 47 of whom were buried in a mass grave on Wednesday. “It’s medieval,” he said. “It’s pure genocide. The attack isn’t simply treacherous. It’s a war crime. They are attacking us with aviation, shells, multiple rocket launchers.” . . .

Zelenskiy said on Wednesday the threat level against the country was “at the maximum” and again called on the west to impose a no-fly zone, saying it risked a “humanitarian catastrophe” if it did not.

He called the Russians “Nazis” in an interview with Sky News, saying: “If you are united against the Nazis and this terror, you have to close. Don’t wait for me ask you several times, a million times. Close the sky.” He warned that otherwise “millions” of people could die.

I know the hearts of my truckbuddies, and of all decent people around the world, go out to these innocent victims of cold-blooded murder. 

In the face of such atrocities, President Zelensky says the West has a moral duty to help Ukraine, to stop the wholesale slaughter of innocents. 

We do. But how? Without incinerating billions more people in a nuclear holocaust? 

How, O Lord, how? Show us the way. Amen. 

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Update, 3/9/22, 9:30 p.m.:  PUTIN THREATENED TO NUKE US LAST DECEMBER

Searching through news reports, I just happened to come across this chilling article from the Daily Beast, December 21, 2021:

Russian Citizens Are Now Being Prepped for Nuclear War

One day after Moscow submitted a draft of its Russia-U.S. security treaty, containing demands that NATO roll back its military deployments in Europe and deny membership to Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov threatened that Moscow would raise the stakes if the West didn’t treat its demands seriously. On Monday, he told Interfax that Russia needs answers “urgently, because the situation is very difficult.” , . .

Pro-Kremlin propagandists and state-media experts filled in the blanks with what kind of escalation should be expected. On Sunday’s edition of News of the Week, state-TV host Dmitry Kiselyov explained: “Russia… prepared and handed over to the Americans its written proposals on strategic stability, or, more simply, on the prevention of nuclear war, since we are already at a critical point, to be honest…

"It’s simple. The U.S. and NATO must roll back from our borders, otherwise we will, figuratively speaking, ‘roll up’ to their borders and create symmetrical, unacceptable risks… If you put a gun to our head, we will respond in kind… The whole point is that the development of the Ukrainian territory by the [Western] bloc is not only Ukraine’s business. This is a complete breakdown of the global balance, which poses an existential threat to Russia. In other words, for Russia it is a matter of life and death… We simply will not allow it, regardless of the cost to us, and regardless of the cost to those responsible for it.”

Kiselyov, notorious for his previous assertion that Russia is the only country that can reduce the U.S. to a pile of radioactive ash, revisited his beloved “argument” to explain why the United States will be willing to entertain Putin’s unreasonable proposition. He asserted that Russia is willing to suffer any consequences and go to any lengths to get what it wants: “Never before has anyone published the texts of the proposed treaties. But never before in the 21st century has the situation been so acute, and the risks so great. Non-standard situations require non-standard approaches. Secondly, we’re holding very strong cards in our hands. Our hypersonic weapons are guaranteed to produce a response that is so unpleasant for America to hear: being reduced to radioactive ash.”

This horrifies me.  I don't remember hearing about this blood-curdling threat, given in plain English - but then, back in December I wasn't listening for it.  Why wasn't this front-page news?

Did anybody in Washington hear this warning?  Did anyone take it seriously?  What did they do?  How did they respond? 

Washington was warned about Russia's intentions with Ukraine, but was anybody minding the store?  Is anyone?  

God have mercy.

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Sunday Drive: Bless the Beasts and Children

For all the people of Ukraine, young and old.

What I Say:  I don't suppose in all my life before the past week that I ever spent a total of 15 minutes thinking about Ukraine.  But since Putin sicced his troops on Ukraine, I've watched at least 50 hours of war coverage, maybe more.  And I've spent many hours reading various op-eds and commentaries on the war, principally from U. S. and U. K. news sites.  It's getting to be a bit much, a psychic overload, but one can hardly look away from this wrenching, history-making drama playing on all our screens in real time.

I know my truckbuddies don't need me to narrate a daily account of the war news, and perhaps my opinions about it are not really necessary in the grand scheme of things, either.  I suppose mainly I'm just talking to myself, "thinking out loud," as it were, on this blog.  It helps my mind to get things off my chest this way.  M.P. from day one imposed a strict ban on talking about the war because it makes him too upset for words.  (We have spoken briefly about a few headlines, but not for long.)  So the Blue Truck is my outlet for things I just need to say to someone.

One thing I do want to say right now is that among the many commentaries I've read is a continuing strain of shifting the blame - this is all Biden's fault, or Johnson's fault, or the West's fault.  One European columnist went on at length about how it's all Angela Merkel's fault for trying to keep open a "dialogue" with Putin for many years, instead of somehow "confronting" him.

In other words, it's everybody's' fault except Putin's.

Make no mistake, my friends:  Putin is the sole and efficient cause of this war.  He and no one else gave the orders for his armies to invade Ukraine, an independent state he had already taken bites out of before.  He did not have to do it; nobody made him do it.  He wanted to do it, and did do it entirely of his own evil will.  This fact is so obvious as to need no explanation.  Do not let anyone tell you different.

Putin is Hitler's evil son, a bloody murderer whose name will be accursed for all time to come as one of the greatest enemies of the human race.  And don't call him crazy or mad - that's excusing him.  A crazy person does not know the difference between right and wrong, and hence cannot be found guilty of any crime, including murder.  Putin is not crazy; he is evil.  This war was his free choice.  He may well have numerous lackeys and lickspittles to use as tools to accomplish his schemes, but he is the autocrat ordering his troops into a peaceful nation's territory, he is the one responsible for around-the-clock shelling of homes and schools and hospitals and apartment buildings; he is the fiend-in-chief at the top, ultimately directing his soldiers to shoot women, children, and babies in cold blood, and then walk away, leaving the still-living wounded to die in agony.

Putin is a mass murderer, a remorseless bully on a colossal scale.  Only force will stop him.  But the West cannot use force against him without throwing all of Europe and North America into another world war.  Must we destroy the free world in order to save it?  Our hearts break for the brave, defiant Ukrainian people and their undaunted Zelensky, a champion of freedom for the ages - but we simply must not let our emotions run away with us.  To expand Putin's war to a wider battleground would kill many more people, and perhaps not even save Ukraine.  Cool heads and clear minds are needed now, no matter how our hearts ache.

I do not know how it will all end; but we must never forget who willed this horror into being.  It's no good for armchair generals to say now, "Oh so-and-so should have done this or that or the other thing."  No, nobody knew that Putin would do this horrible, unthinkable thing; not one of these pious, oh-so-smart pundits forecast the storm before it broke.   Remember that.

The record will show that the democracies before this war, as before Hitler's war, did all that they could to keep the peace by reasonable means, by dialogue, by compromise, by friendly engagement and encouragement in the direction of peaceful relations.  That was a good thing, the right thing to do.  As one of my college professors said, talking about international relations, "As long as people are talking to each other, they aren't shooting at each other."  

But there is no reasoning with the Devil.

Fake cover of Time magazine, by artist Patrick Mulder.
Click to enlarge.

Update, 3/6/22, 8 p.m.: President Zelensky in his nightly address to his people vehemently condemned the callous murders committed by the Russian invaders. Excerpt:

Today is Forgiveness Sunday. A day when we always apologized. To each other. To all people. To God. But today, it seems, many have not mentioned this day at all. Have not mentioned the obligatory words: "Forgive me." And the obligatory answer: "God forgives, and I forgive." These words seem to have lost their meaning today. At least in part.

But we will not forgive hundreds and hundreds of victims. Thousands and thousands of sufferings. And God will not forgive. Not today. Not tomorrow. Never. And instead of Forgiveness, there will be a Day of Judgment.

We will not forgive the destroyed houses. We will not forgive the missile that our air defence shot down over Okhmatdyt today. And more than five hundred other such missiles that hit our land. All over Ukraine, hit our people and children.

We will not forgive the shooting of unarmed people. Destruction of our infrastructure. We will not forgive. Hundreds and hundreds of victims. Thousands and thousands of sufferings. And God will not forgive. Not today. Not tomorrow. Never. And instead of Forgiveness, there will be a Day of Judgment. I’m sure of it.

We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will punish everyone who committed atrocities in this war on our land. We will find every bastard who shot at our cities, our people, who bombed our land, who launched rockets. There will be no quiet place on this earth for you. Except for the grave.

Here is the speech, with English subtitles. His righteous anger is a powerful thing to hear.

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God Save Ukraine

President Zelensky made a moving address to the European Parliament by video link today:

 

Just a few thoughts at bedtime, after a day of listening to many fine speeches praising the courage of the Ukrainian people and their government:

A Russian convoy of heavily armed troops and tanks, 40 miles long, is just twenty miles from Kiev.  The brave Ukrainian people and their dauntless President Zelensky are fighting tooth and nail to defend their country, and begging the West for help - and plenty of aid is already on the way, meaning military equipment and humanitarian supplies - but not boots on the ground or or planes in the sky, without which, it seems to me, they can only delay, not prevent, their defeat.

I know and fully agree, mentally, with all the very good reasons why the West simply cannot send their troops or planes into Ukraine.  But it makes my blood boil to think of these beleaguered people, fighting against the odds for their freedom, their homes, and their families in a mortal struggle with the most evil man to darken the earth since Hitler.  And no one dares lift one finger to help them.

Where have we seen this scenario before in history?  

The odds against Ukraine are very great, indeed:  just look at this comparison chart, a screen capture tonight from DW television (Germany):

Click to enlarge.

Despite their bravery and bravado, the Ukrainians are clearly outmanned and outgunned.  Beyond that, supplies of food, fuel, and medicine are already running short.  What real hope does Ukraine have of defeating a ruthless invader all alone?  What comfort will it be to have the admiration of all the Western democracies when the last defender lies dead in a pool of blood?  Of what use will be our praise of the fighting Ukrainians then?

I wrote Sunday of this terrible moral dilemma - nothing can be done; but by all that is holy, something ought to be done to help them, and deliver them from the maw of the ravening Bear.

I have no answers.  I am just praying God to save Ukraine - someway, somehow.  And give peace to all the world.  Amen.

Update, 3/2/22, 6 p.m.:  Yesterday, neither Prime Minister Johnson nor President Biden made any reference at all to Putin's nuclear threat when they had opportunities to do so.  But for a military man's perspective, DW (a German TV network) presents this chilling interview with General Sir Richard Shirreff, retired Deputy Allied Supreme Commander of NATO, who tells plainly just how dangerous Putin is, and what could happen in Ukraine.  Very informative.

God save us all.

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Sunday Drive: There but for Fortune

 Cher, 1967.  The lyrics are particularly poignant just now.

What I Say:  The Ukrainian situation poses a terrible moral dilemma.  It tugs at the heartstrings to see the defiant Ukranian people erecting barricades of used tires and empty crates, making Molotov cocktails out of empty liquor bottles, or manning their defenses with handguns, knives, and hammers, whatever they can lay hands on.  And this in the face of overwhelming odds against a wicked and implacable foe.  

The miracle of modern communications, showing us the happenings in real time, makes it all quite vivid and deeply moving.  One wishes of course to send them every help - including what they most need, friendly troops with the firepower to vanquish the enemy decisively and send him scurrying from Ukrainian soil.  That would be an immensely good deed in the checkered annals of humanity.

But wisdom requires us to look beyond the current moment, and to recollect that there is more to the world than just Ukraine.  It is necessary to balance the fate of 40 million Ukranians against that of the other 7 billion people on this planet.  It might well be that a concerted strike by NATO forces could rid Ukraine of the invader in a week's time or less - but then what?  We now know for certain that Putin will stop at nothing to get what he wants.  

Is saving Ukraine worth turning New York, or London, or Paris, or Berlin into a parking lot?  And much more besides just those cities?  We might save a million lives in Ukraine - but what about the 100 million lives, or more, that would be lost in a nuclear war?  Which way does the moral compass point?

It is a long established rule in the common law that one is not under obligation to go to another's aid if it requires endangering one's own life.  If someone is drowning, you do not have to jump in the lake with him.  We have no treaty obligations to Ukraine that compel us to act in her defense; and to do so on the scale needed would almost certainly open the nuclear door and unleash who knows what horrors upon the rest of mankind all around the globe,  If it came to that, the heartbreaking scenes in Ukraine we see today would be repeated endlessly and with even greater anguish in many other countries.

And yet, one feels greatly ashamed of not jumping into the lake to save that drowning man.  Must we sacrifice the many to save the few?  A horrible dilemma of the heart and the conscience - glib phrases and quick answers are not helpful when such weighty questions must be weighed in the balances.  Students of history will remember that this is not the first time humanity has confronted such a dreadful choice.  

And all because of one bitter, frustrated old man, without conscience or remorse.  Would that he had never been born!  The news at noon reports that he has now put Russia's nuclear forces on alert.  Does anyone in Russia have the courage to say No for once?  Must one evil man's hunger for domination consume the whole world?  Will no one rid us of this ruthless monster, this loathsome blot upon the earth?  

Must all mankind suffer to make the world safe for Putin?

Suddenly, the world has turned a corner and entered a frightening new era.  This is the most dangerous hour in our lifetime; it is a good time to put one's affairs in order.  If Putin were to lob just one nuke against any NATO country, there would be hell to pay.  It may be that there is some happy way forward not apparent to me at the present time.  If so, I pray that the leaders of the world will find it, and soon.  

May God bless the brave, beleaguered Ukrainian people, and deliver them and us from every evil.

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Russia Invades Ukraine

From Wikipedia:  Map of the first day's attacks on Ukraine - click for larger map.

What Biden has prophesied for weeks - and Putin has steadily denied - came to pass last night when Putin launched the Russian military on a multi-pronged attack against Ukraine.  This blow came while the United Nations Security Council was formulating an urgent plea for Putin not to make war on his neighbor - which goes to show Putin's contempt for the United Nations and all democracies.

There is no longer any doubt about it:  Putin is the new Hitler.  And sadly, Ukraine is shaping up to be the new Czechoslovakia, though its people and president have shown plenty of balls, defiantly insisting that they are not afraid and will defeat the overwhelming Russian forces bearing down upon them.

I hope they will - but I believe they hope in vain if they think any Western nations are going to put boots on the ground in Ukraine.  For one thing, Ukraine is not a member of NATO, and thus not entitled to that kind of aid.  For another, to put American troops on the front line against Russians would probably mean the start of World War III.  Putin threatened as much, in a veiled way, in his broadcast overnight.

God forbid.

And I very much doubt that economic sanctions will have any effect on Putin's plans, any more than they had on Hitler's.  The Bear is hungry, and will gobble up all he wants, regardless of consequences.  His recent statements suggest he will not be satisfied with devouring Ukraine only.  And he is sitting on some nasty weapons of his own - at least Hitler didn't have nukes or ICBM's.  But President Biden has said we will defend "every inch" of NATO territory, no matter what.  The what might come at any time.

So if careful steps are not taken, we could soon be facing the nightmare that has haunted the world for seventy years.  Nobody has said this out loud yet on TV, but I'm saying it.  As many commentators have noted.

I see no easy way out of this crisis.  As a truckbuddy said to me, after many subtle moves here and there, the scheming grandmaster Putin has put us in check, if not checkmate.  He has been playing to win, while we have been playing with ourselves, it seems like.  We should all be praying for our president and for all those working for the common good, that they may see clearly and act wisely.

I won't rehash here all the details of the Ukrainian struggle, but for whatever help it may be to my truckbuddies, here are some useful links to related information that you might want to bookmark.

News sources:

American TV network news websites are clogged with stupid advertisements that make it hard to get to the videos of what you want to see.   Here are three European broadcasters with 24/7 live coverage in English always available on YouTube - sometimes they provide a perspective on issues different from what is provided on American news shows.

Sky News (United Kingdom)

France24 (France)

DW News (Germany)

And the Guardian, which favors the views of the Labour Party, is one of the few British newspapers not hidden behind a paywall; in times of crisis, the website usually carries a live blog of events and commentary.

Wikipedia:

Wikipedia is to a large extent a leisure site for lonely, nerdy guys to write on, and get into bitch fights over political correctness, so what you read there should always be taken with a grain of salt unless supported by other, more reliable sources.  Nevertheless, it is usually a good source for quick facts about countries and notable people.  Here are a few topics you might want to refresh your memory of.

NATO and the European Union - they are not the same thing.

Ukraine - did you know it's nearly as big as Texas?

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine - yes, there's already a wikiarticle on it.

Russia - nearly twice as big as the United States, but less than half the population.

Other reading:

Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration - "Eight Sobering Realities about Putin's Invasion of Ukraine," 2/24/22

Editorial in The Guardian (U.K.) - "Putin's War in Ukraine:  A Bleak New Beginning." 2/24/22

The past is never dead - it's not even past.

--William Faulkner

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Rumors of War

Map of Ukraine.
Click to enlarge.

Yesterday, Putin sent troops into the breakaway territories of eastern Ukraine and proclaimed them independent states.   The Secretary-General of the United Nations says Putin has violated international law.  President Biden and other Western leaders have announced stiff financial sanctions against Russian money and elites.  And suddenly, this faraway pot on the back burner of the world seems to be boiling over, and may set the whole place on fire.

The parallels with the Nazi threat to the peace of Europe in 1938-39 are striking, though not exact.  If you care to read up on the period, I recommend Churchill's The Gathering Storm, the first volume of his World War II memoirs, as an excellent, incisive introduction.

Your Head Trucker is not a pacifist per se, but neither is he a warmonger.  To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose . . . .  But what time is it now?  And whose turn is it to die?  The obvious answer is not always the best answer.  I offer these few newsbites as food for thought, and leave you to draw your own conclusions.

1.  A voice from the grave:  the late Senator John McCain interviewed in 2014, after Russia annexed parts of Ukraine.

 

2. Ukrainian foreign minister Kuleba, quoted on the BBC News website today: 

Click to enlarge.

 3. Political analyst Fareed Zakaria on the Russian-Chinese bruderbund:

 

4. Guess who thinks Putin is the greatest?

 

 5. President Biden announces sanctions against Russia:

 

Give us peace in our time, O Lord.

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The Firehose of Falsehood

Trump isn't nuts, he's trying to make you nuts, writes Mark Follman at Mother Jones.  Excerpt:

Trump may well be a dangerous psychopath, but he isn’t crazy. He doesn’t spread lunatic conspiracy theories because he believes them. Not for a moment does he actually think that Joe Biden secretly arranged the murder of Navy SEALs in a scheme to stage the takedown of Osama bin Laden. When Trump shared those claims recently on Twitter, his motivation was, as always, to provoke, entertain, confuse, “trigger the libs,” and change the subject from his own failures. . . .

It’s worth looking again at the big picture here, one Mother Jones began documenting shortly after the 2016 election: Trump is using the autocrat’s playbook. Vladimir Putin’s, to be specific. As contributor Denise Clifton wrote more than three years ago, Trump’s deluge of demagoguery and lies “echoes a contemporary form of Russian propaganda known as the ‘Firehose of Falsehood.’” With Election Day nearing, the comparison has never been more apt.

In 2016, the nonpartisan think tank RAND published a study of the tactics and techniques used in Kremlin-controlled media. The end goal of what the researchers called “a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions” was to entertain, confuse, and overwhelm the public. (The entertainment component can serve as inspiration for loyal followers—for example, a string of broadcast traveling stage performances showcasing a greatest-hits of outrage and outrageousness.)

Look back at just about any point in Trump’s presidency and it’s evident how he has fulfilled four defining features of the Kremlin playbook, as identified in the RAND study:

• “High numbers of channels and messages”: Trump by no means controls the American media, but he has access to an unprecedented version of state-controlled television in Fox News, along with enormous unfettered reach through Facebook and Twitter (which further feeds all manner of news outlets).
• “Rapid, continuous and repetitive”: There are countless instances of Trump repeating a lie or line of attack multiple times during interviews, press conferences, and campaign rallies.
• “Lacks commitment to consistency”: In one recent example, Trump pushed for more coronavirus aid from Congress before railing against it and then calling for it again, in a span of less than 24 hours. In another, he turned his back on aid for wildfire-stricken California only to quickly reverse his position.
• “Lacks commitment to objective reality.” This one is pretty self-explanatory, but just in case… here are 20,000 examples.

Follman's well-written essay is worth reading in full.  Bottom line:  don't give up, don't look away, keep hope alive and VOTE HIM OUT!

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Our Rendezvous with Destiny

Treason is afoot in the land.  The New York Times sounds the alarm this morning:

Click to enlarge.

And Politico reports:  "Former national security adviser H.R. McMaster said Thursday that President Donald Trump is 'aiding and abetting' Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to sow doubt about the American electoral system."

McMaster expressed himself at length in this interview with MSNBC today:

But of course all this is old news - here's a front page of the New York Daily News two years ago:

You know, 55 percent of non-voters in the 2016 election were Democrats, according to the Pew Research Center.  I'm praying that Democrats will turn out this year in overwhelming numbers so that the election results cannot possibly be challenged.  It's all up to us, fellas - now is the time to overthrow the dictatorship that has already begun.  This is the last chance to stop it - our generation's rendezvous with destiny.  

I was never asked to shed my blood for this country that I love - but I will certainly give my vote.  We are fortunate here in Texas that the state allows walk-in early voting during most of October, 7 days a week in our county.  M.P. and I have already made our plan for when and where to vote.  Have you?

An excerpt from Franklin D. Roosevelt's speech before the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on June 27, 1936 - a masterpiece of Democratic and democratic ideals, well worth reading in full:

There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

In this world of ours, in other lands there are some people, who, in times past, have lived and fought for freedom, and seem to have grown too weary to carry on the fight. They have sold their heritage of freedom for the illusion of a living. They have yielded their democracy.

I believe in my heart that only our success can stir their ancient hope. They begin to know that here in America we are waging a great and successful war. It is not alone a war against want and destitution and economic demoralization. It is more than that; it is a war for the survival of democracy. We are fighting to save a great and precious form of government for ourselves and for the world.

I accept the commission you have tendered me. I join with you. I am enlisted for the duration of the war.

Bonus, 10/2/20, 6 a.m.:

Trump and Melania have come down with Covid-19.

What a coincidence.  A perfect excused absence from all other debates.  Which his team surely realizes would only turn off more voters.

Don't be too quick to feel sorry for him.  He has LIED about everything else in the last four years, why not his own health?  Such a convenient excuse to hole up in his bunker and avoid the press and public till Election Day.

Very clever.  But not, I think, clever enough to fool the American people - the sane majority, that is.

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Hello, Vlad - Donnie Calling

I'm tapering off on current events now - but I feel I have to post this for the record.



The long summary from CNN, horrifying but predictable, is here - well worth your time to read it. Excerpt:

In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, President Donald Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America's principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior US officials -- including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff -- that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States, according to White House and intelligence officials intimately familiar with the contents of the conversations.

The calls caused former top Trump deputies -- including national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White House chief of staff John Kelly, as well as intelligence officials -- to conclude that the President was often "delusional," as two sources put it, in his dealings with foreign leaders. The sources said there was little evidence that the President became more skillful or competent in his telephone conversations with most heads of state over time. Rather, he continued to believe that he could either charm, jawbone or bully almost any foreign leader into capitulating to his will, and often pursued goals more attuned to his own agenda than what many of his senior advisers considered the national interest. . . .

One person familiar with almost all the conversations with the leaders of Russia, Turkey, Canada, Australia and western Europe described the calls cumulatively as 'abominations' so grievous to US national security interests that if members of Congress heard from witnesses to the actual conversations or read the texts and contemporaneous notes, even many senior Republican members would no longer be able to retain confidence in the President.

In other words, the alleged leader of the free world is that big, dumb, conceited, hateful, fifth-grade braggart, the brown-noser, the school-yard bully, the creep that nobody liked except a couple of his partners in crime.

Is anyone surprised? The tapes and transcripts of those calls, if ever released, will be a bigger scandal than the Watergate tapes ever were.

I wonder when the public will get to hear or see them.


Bonus, 7/1/20: This just out from the Lincoln Project:

George Will: "This Sad, Embarrassing Wreck of a Man"

Embed from Getty Images

"Want to play with my ball, Donny?"

Your Head Trucker finds it odd that people keep trying to pin the label of mental illness on Trump, when instead it is patently obvious that he is no more than a big, dumb buffoon - a consummately vain, overgrown rich kid who learned little from his expensive education, and remembers less - a reality-show actor who keeps flubbing his lines and missing his marks - a mental infant in the paunchy body of a 70-year-old blowhard.  Had he remained in private life, the only ones really hurt by his incorrigible self-worship would be his many creditors, probably.

But as president, with the active connivance and abetting of the entire sycophantic Republican Party - and perhaps with the encouragement and blackmail of Trump's Machiavellian father-figure, Putin - Trump, like a rogue elephant in a bazaar, is doing incalculable damage day by day not only to the foundations of this Republic, but also to the finely balanced bulwarks and linkages of the Western world that have, in broad terms, kept the peace and enabled the general prosperity of the whole world these seventy years.  (I do not say it is or ever has been a perfect world - but just try to imagine how much worse a world it would be without America in the lead, morally, financially, and militarily.)

He also has made himself, not really the leader, but rather the tool of those hateful, benighted forces in this country that are inimical to liberty, equality, decency, and democracy, with baleful results we have already seen; even worse may be to come. If his childish, lurching rampage is not soon stopped, or at least neutralized, he stands a good chance of going down in history as an enemy of the human race and a betrayer, whether by sheer stupidity or malicious design, of all that America is and has been and should be.

When I was younger and more idealistic, not to say naive, I thought it a very strange and rather silly thing, that custom of the ancient Egyptians and Romans, among others, to pronounce damnatio memoriae - oblivion - upon a despised ruler, once he was removed from office.  I must say that I have in recent years come to understand much better just why they did that.

George Will, one of the leading conservative pundits for the past four decades, a man of high intelligence and fine writing, who left the Republican Party in 2016 with the advent of Trump, began a column in the Washington Post this week with the same metaphor of an infantile leader:

America’s child president had a play date with a KGB alumnus, who surely enjoyed providing day care. It was a useful, because illuminating, event: Now we shall see how many Republicans retain a capacity for embarrassment. . . .

I recommend the whole essay for the perusal of my truckbuddies. But if you haven't the time to read it, Will summarized his views in the first five minutes of this clip from Wednesday's Morning Joe program:




I believe Trump will not last very long on the spotlit stage he occupies now - as them ol' Greek boys put it, after hubris comes nemesis, and a miserable end. But Trump is merely the image of the beast - a fake president, to use his favorite adjective - the willing, gullible pawn of evil men who are only too glad to feed his gluttonous self-love while using him to further their hellacious schemes - and beyond them, the credulous millions who eagerly follow and support, an army of willing tools and fools, worshipers of a god made in their own image.

If Trump for some reason were to fall silent tomorrow and depart the White House for some quieter spot, do you not think there would be plenty of others ready to fill the space he vacated?  Be sure that the fakery show would continue as planned, regardless of who sits in the Oval Office.  The dire problem we face is not simply that of one churlish buffoon alone.

If you want to see a preview of the next episode in this filthy saga, look no further than Steve Bannon, Trump's erstwhile campaign manager and political incubus, who has stated his own evil intentions quite plainly, for all the world to hear: "I'd rather reign in hell, than serve in heaven."  What he is now organizing is a world alliance of far-right nationalist parties, united in one revolutionary goal: the exaltation of dictatorship, tribal hatreds, and willful ignorance, along with the utter destruction of liberal democracy, the rule of law, and fundamental human rights; that is to say, the triumph of lust over love, of greed over goodwill, of darkness over light in the human soul.

Do not be deceived, my friends:  the long, pleasant Indian summer of the postwar era, so dearly bought with blood, toil, tears, and sweat, may be drawing to its close sooner than you think, if the present danger is not swiftly and firmly averted.

And somewhere, the cunning jackal Putin is licking his chops hungrily, while the foolish Europeans and Americans split and re-split themselves into warring camps:  divide et impera. I do not know the remedy to all this - I only point to the rising flames.

So quit fretting about Trump's mindless tweets, a child's babbling, a mere sideshow, and focus instead on the real peril, the mortal danger that lies straight ahead. Bannon's declared intentions are unmistakable, undiluted evil, straight from the mouth of the Devil.

And now you can't say you weren't warned.

Rachel Maddow: Worst-Case Scenario

First, today's headline from the New York Daily News:

Cf. Trump's statement, January 23, 2016:
I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody 
and I wouldn’t lose voters.

Last night, Rachel Maddow, in typical melodramatic style, explored the damning implications of Saturday's indictment of Russian agent Maria Butina, in a segment worth watching:

Randy Rainbow: A Very Stable Genius

"A brilliantly vulgar tour de force!" -- Blue Truck, Red State

For comparison, here's a review of an even more vulgar performance in Helsinki:

"Disgraceful . . . pathetic . . . a tragic mistake . . . 

No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant." -- Sen. John McCain

Bonus: The New York Times today released a hilarious animation of Trump's sickly-sweet infatuation with Putin:



I understand that some toxic little queens are up in arms about "homophobia" here. Well, I am as gay as they come, and I say it is brilliant satire. Gay romance is merely the vehicle, not the object of the humor here. It is not directed at gay people, it's directed at a monumental buffoon and possible traitor.

Besides, on every gay website, gays themselves have been making this very same comparison, with drawings and cartoons, ever since Trump first declared himself a candidate. So chill out, girls, and go take a powder: you are just waaaaaaaaaaaaay over-sensitive.

Every satire contains a grain of truth - and who among us hasn't, sometime or other, fallen for a seductive, sexy bad boy who later turned out to be a sonofabitch?  You never will be mature human beings until you learn to laugh at yourselves - and that goes for all the other chip-on-the-shoulder groups as well, at all points on the spectrum.  Grow up, people.

This Week in Trumpocracy, 3/11/17

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A word to my readers:   I have waited, and I have seen. Merely seven weeks or fifty days into the nightmare, the pieces of the puzzle are falling together in plain view.  It has become evident to your Head Trucker that the goal of the Trump regime is nothing less than to destroy the democratic, constitutional system of government of the United States and make this country a mere satellite of Russian tyrant Putin.   And I believe a great many Republicans in Congress are traitors who are in on the secret, and very happy to cooperate in the ruination of the country.  And who knows how many invisible, unelected associates of the Trump cabal are also busily working his wicked will, which is Putin's too, both here and abroad?

(It also occurred to me overnight - you know, we baby boomers have lived our whole lives in apprehension of the next world war - which we imagined would begin and end with a hail of nukes - but suppose it's not like that, in this virtual-reality age?  Suppose World War III is happening right now, and its goal is not to leave our country a glowing, empty desert, but merely a crippled, divided, subservient tributary of a ghastly New Order run by the Russian dictator?  Suppose nobody noticed that that was the Big Plan all along, both here and in Europe, until it was too late?  I'm certainly not a conspiracy theorist normally - but this thought came to me with a chilling sense of perhaps so.)

Well, time will tell.  I do not say these things lightly. I can't prove any of it, of course - that will be up to patriots in the government and in the media, and God only knows how all this can be stopped, and when, or whether blood must be spilt or not - but I tell you what, boys:  even in the dark, you don't have to see a cow patty to know it's there.

Please note, therefore, that in future this blog will refer to Donald Trump as the Liar-in-Chief, or alternatively as the Puppet-in-Chief, and will not denigrate the office of President with his name.

The Trump regime seemed to kick into high gear this week with the rolling-out of Trumpcare and travel ban 2.0, firing of the senior state department staff, firing of 46 U. S. attorneys, and on and on and on.  I can't review all of that, but here's some highlights, for the record:


1.  I was very glad to see that the media did not let up all week on Trump's outrageous "wiretapp" slander against President Obama.  Early in the week, senators called for investigation into the Liar-in-Chief's lies about former President Obama.  And on Thursday, FBI Director James Comey - he who notoriously swayed the election results last October - met with senior Congressional leaders behind closed doors on Thursday, presumably to discuss the matter. House and Senate leaders were tight-lipped after the meeting, but according to Politico, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi hinted at what she could not say:

“Theoretically, do I think that a director of the FBI who knows for a fact that something is mythology but misleading to the American people and he should set the record straight?” Pelosi said, responding to a question at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast forum. “Yes, I do think he should say that publicly.” Pelosi treaded gingerly around the topic of Russia's alleged connections to Trump’s associates, emphasizing that she couldn’t disclose information she’d learned in classified briefings. “Maybe in a short period of time much more will be in the public domain,” she said.

2.  The Puppet-in-Chief's full plan came into clearer view this week:  build a useless border wall as a sop to the ignorant masses who voted for him, not to mention an equally pointless travel ban against a few Muslim countries, while at the same time crippling the Department of State, the Coast Guard, and the Transportation Security Administration: in other words, leaving us with no effective diplomacy, and our sea and air borders undefended.  Putin must be jizzing all over himself at the thought.







3.  Trump's clueless lackeys are kept in the dark too, and have had a hell of a time trying to defend the Liar-in-Chief's big mouth this week, but press secretary Sean Spicer was able to laugh about it:




4.  Ominously, it seems that the CIA has unaccountably lost its arsenal of of cyber weapons - again, leaving the country more or less defenseless:




5.  Representative Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) has created a page on his official website dedicated to "connecting the Trump-Russia dots," which is highly informative and a must-read.  Here are two of the helpful charts you can find there:

Click to enlarge.

 Rep. Swalwell says:

I've laid out here why Russia is not our friend, how, despite these facts, President Trump and his associates have cozied up to Russia, and how Russia is attacking the core of our democracy—our elections. It's clear that for the future of our country and the integrity of our democracy, we cannot let these attacks go un-answered.

That is why today I call for every American to stand up for our American ideals, and let your voice be heard that America, and President Trump’s Administration, must be free of Russian influence. We need to start by understanding exactly how deep the relationships go, how far the attacks have penetrated, and how we let this go un-noticed for so long. The potential personal, political, and financial ties between Russia and Trump officials, both on the campaign and in the administration, could be immense and threaten our independence, and thus, they must be investigated and brought to light.

6. The press have frequently told us in the last few months that "the Russians hacked the election," but just what exactly does that mean? Could you explain it to your Aunt Lizzy? Just for the record and for your information, here are the two much-discussed reports on that subject issued by the Director of National Intelligence, who at the time was Lt. General James R. Clapper (USAF, ret.):

Joint Statement from the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security, October 7, 2016

“Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections," January 6, 2017

If you want to consider yourself well-informed on our national crisis, these are two must-read documents.

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7.  Former President Dubya has been making the rounds of the chatty-news shows recently, plugging his new book of paintings of wounded vets and basking in a generally warm reception all around.  But as Gary Younge notes in The Nation, a lesser evil is still an evil:

Bush’s moment of redemption came when he was asked how he felt about Donald Trump’s attacks on the media. “I consider the media to be indispensable to democracy,” he replied. “That we need an independent media to hold people like me to account. I mean, power can be very addictive, and it can be corrosive, and it’s important for the media to call to account people who abuse their power, whether it be here or elsewhere.”

Bush’s comments, and the rush by some liberals to embrace him, illustrate two key trends. The first is the degree to which, in the desperation to mount the broadest possible coalition against Trump, some are prepared to neglect the principles guiding that opposition and, given their form, may yet prove to be unreliable allies.

Bush was never held to account for his own abuses of power. The mainstream media may have found their voice against Trump, but they were virtually mute or, even worse, implicated in peddling lies for the run-up to the Iraq War. This was fake news of some consequence: Hundreds of thousands died, a country was devastated, a region destabilized, innocents tortured, a generation of terrorists spawned. Meanwhile, The New York Times held a story about Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping until after the 2004 election, in part because the editors thought it would be unfair to run it too close to the vote. . . .

Put bluntly, the distinction between Bush and Trump is partly one of etiquette. Bush paid lip service to rights and norms before crushing them underfoot. Trump is more brazen in his language and more candid in his intent. Bush in no small part is how we got where we are today; to line up behind him against Trump is to pit the cause against the symptom without any suggestion of a cure.

This is not to claim that they are equivalent. The absence on Bush’s part of 
open race-baiting and Islamophobia makes a difference. Trump has emboldened bigots to speak out and act out on their hatred in a way that the more coded dog whistles of the Republican Party establishment did not. The Bush administration actively misled and bullied the media (remember how it hounded CBS’s Dan Rather and Mary Mapes for telling the truth about Bush’s draft-dodging?), but at least it didn’t boast about it.

Which brings us to the second trend. The same day that Bush came out to talk about his art and defend a free press, former Conservative prime minister John Major called Brexit a “historic mistake” and bemoaned the “unreal and over-optimistic” hopes that Prime Minister Theresa May had raised for Britain after exiting the European Union. That same week, François Fillon, the scandal-plagued center-right candidate in France, struggled to stay in the presidential race, while Marine Le Pen of the hard-right National Front is almost assured of a place in the runoff election. Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, the governing center-right party is in a tight race with the bombastic populist Geert Wilders, who has referred to Muslims as “goat-fuckers.” And in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel finds herself squeezed between an insurgent anti-immigration party, Alternative for Germany, and a revived Social Democratic Party.

In short, Bush’s intervention is illustrative of a moment in which mainstream conservatism is struggling to establish its credentials in the face of a hard-right onslaught. Some, like Merkel, are battling to distinguish themselves from their demagogic rivals, while others, like May or the Republicans in Congress, have preferred to join the stampede for fear that they will otherwise be crushed by it.

From Afghanistant, here's one sad reminder of the wickedness, stupidity, and futility of W's swashbuckling nation-building that destroyed much more than it saved:

"We are losing our youths every day in this war," said Mohammad Gul, a retired police officer whose son Jalal died with Qadir. "Our government leaders have their families abroad and they are safe in expensive villas. America is doing nothing to stop this war. How long do we have to die? Why are they killing us? Who is there to answer our question?"

Who indeed?

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And just for the record, the views expressed in this blog are those of your Head Trucker only, and nobody else's, except where quoted.  I am not a paid "librul" activist, and nobody tells me what to write.  This old cuss represents no one but his ornery self - like the sainted E. B. White, I am a member of a party of one, in the good old American fashion, and I don't care who knows it.

If you like what I write, feel free to click one of the four response boxes below.  If you don't like it, you can go to hell or Halifax as you please, it makes me no difference.

This Week in Trumpocracy, 3/4/17

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1.  Rachel Maddow shows the chilling reality of Putin's autocracy in this segment of last night's show - most enlightening for those of us who until now haven't really known what Putin was all about - and its as blood-curdling as any Cold War thriller, if not more so:




2.  In a must-read article, Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine spells out the lies and the treason at the heart of the Trump regime in no uncertain terms - excerpt:

[The unfolding Russia scandal] is spinning off in multiple directions, but at bottom it suggests a betrayal of American sovereignty by Trump that is unprecedented in the history of the republic. For a still-unclear combination of reasons — greed for power, greed for money, vulnerability to blackmail, or motivations unknown — the incoming administration cooperated with the undermining of American democracy by a hostile foreign power.

This is already known. On July 4, Franklin Foer wrote in Slate the first major story in the American media identifying a Russian plan to influence the presidential election. He pieced together such evidence as Trump’s extensive financial ties to Russia; Vladimir Putin’s pattern of intervening in elections in the West in order to support his preferred candidates; Russia’s hacking of Democrats’ emails; and the fact that a number of Trump advisers had been paid by sources loyal to the Kremlin, including Trump’s then-campaign manager Paul Manafort, who had carried out a similar strategy on behalf of a pro-Russian candidate in Ukraine that he seemed to be doing in the United States.

In the months that have followed, more reporting on this strange and sinister axis has emerged, mostly in the form of reports that have burst onto the scene as bombshells, only to be quickly displaced by other stories in the disorienting, surreal news environment that is Trump’s Washington. The New York Times has found that “phone records and intercepted calls” reveal that Trump associates had “repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials” and that U.S. allies had uncovered meetings in European cities between Russian officials and Trump associates.

It is not illegal to meet with Russian agents or spies. However, Trump and his advisers have repeatedly lied or contradicted themselves about these meetings. Former national-security adviser Michael Flynn lied to the FBI about his discussions with Russia following the election. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who told a Senate committee during his confirmation hearings “I did not have communications with the Russians,” in fact met twice during the campaign with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Only after the Washington Post reported on the meetings did Sessions agree to recuse himself from his own department’s investigation into the matter.

Trump’s statements on his relations with Russia have oscillated wildly. Asked in 2013 if he had a relationship with Putin, Trump said, “I do have a relationship, and I can tell you he’s very interested in what we’re doing here today.” In 2014, he recounted, “Putin even sent me a present, beautiful present with a beautiful note, I spoke to all of his people,” and that he “spoke indirectly and directly” with Putin. In 2015, he boasted, “I got to know [Putin] very well.” Last year, he insisted, “I have no relationship with Putin” and that “I don’t know Putin … I never met Putin.” . . .

On March 2, House Speaker Paul Ryan asserted that he had seen “no evidence that anybody on the Trump campaign or an American was involved in colluding with the Russians.” What evidence would he like? A Trump adviser coyly revealing his advance knowledge of stolen email dumps, then admitting he has a “back-channel communication with Assange”? Because that exists. Maybe video of Trump asking Putin to hack his opponents’ email? Because that exists, too. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump announced at a press conference last summer. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” (Trump later claimed he was joking.) Even if Trump had nothing to do with encouraging the Russian hacking, aggressively exploiting it was a ­conscious choice. Other Republicans, like Marco Rubio — in one of his periodic outbreaks of conscience — asserted that the GOP should renounce the use of information from WikiLeaks rather than reward foreign interference in American elections. Trump made the opposite decision.

And Trump’s party has mostly decided likewise. All of it is fine — the nondisclosure of tax returns, the unprecedented self-enrichment, the fantastic lies and authoritarian lingo. Republicans in Washington see Trump as a useful vehicle for their policy objectives. Indeed, at least for the time being, Trump’s nationalist ravings have utility for special interests from the Kremlin to Wall Street, all of whom look upon the American president with smugness and satisfaction at a deal well struck. In Trump’s short tenure as president, his demagogic claim that elites have betrayed the American people out of solicitousness to foreign powers has finally become true.​

3. "Donald Trump just can't quit Barack Obama." - Politico reports on Trump's obsession with the former President, which culminated today in a bizarre Twitter attack at dawn. Excerpt:

From entering politics as the chief promoter of the birtherism conspiracy—complete with claims of mysterious calls coming in to him with new information to detectives he claimed he sent to Hawaii but were never heard from again—to waking up Saturday morning tweeting, “How low has President Obama gone to tapp [sic] my phones,” Obama’s always there.

There’s a political advantage to it—Obama is just as infuriating a figure as he was six weeks ago to the Republican base and the pro-Trump media that powered the president’s campaign.

And there’s a diversionary advantage to churning up a new controversy that this time takes away airtime and mindshare from the questions of just how many top administration officials had just how many undisclosed meetings with Russian officials. But there also seems to be a true sense in Trump’s mind that Obama is practically sitting beneath the floorboards of the West Wing, chipping away at his presidency. . . .

White House press secretary Sean Spicer did not respond Saturday morning to questions about whether he knows of a reason why Obama is on the president’s mind so much, or whether Trump still thinks he has a good relationship with Obama. Obama’s current spokespeople also declined to respond about the current status of the relationship, or whether they’ve continued to talk on the phone as they were doing with some frequency during the transition.

Kevin Lewis, a spokesman for Obama, aggressively pushed back against Trump's accusations. "A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice," Lewis said in a statement. "As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false."

The Obama circle continues to be frustrated that Trump’s comments are taken seriously, in the same way they were when Trump was taking potshots from the sidelines while Obama was in the White House.

“No President can order a wiretap. Those restrictions were put in place to protect citizens from people like you,” tweeted Ben Rhodes, the former deputy national security adviser who’s working for Obama in his new office.

Responding to Trump’s tweet that “I'd bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!” Rhodes tweeted, “No. They couldn't. Only a liar could do that.”

Exasperated and annoyed, Obama aides try to cast their problem with Trump continually pulling their old boss into the conversation as about more than politics.

“My concern about Trump isn’t his day-to-day nonsense, it’s the notion that he could be governed by conspiracy theories and paranoia in a time of actual crisis,” said Bill Burton, former deputy White House press secretary for Obama. “All the rest of this is just the mutterings of a man deeply in over his head.”

4. For the record, and lest we forget - here is Trump last July, openly and deliberately inviting Russia to interfere with the election:




5. In recent weeks, so-called town hall meetings held by Republican congresspeeps have been full of angry, shouting constituents giving their elected representatives hell, and plenty of it. Today, pro-Trump demonstrators marched and fought with anti-Trump counter-demonstrators all across the country. Ah me, plus ca change, plus c'est le meme chose.  Brings back memories of the firey days of 1816, as Joshua Zeitz recalls in Politico Magazine - excerpt:

In the summer of 1816, Americans turned on Congress. Citizens from Massachusetts to South Carolina staged raucous public meetings where “several hundred persons of both political parties,” according to one contemporary, gathered to draft denunciatory resolutions, deliver angry speeches and, in some cases, stage mock court proceedings against their local House members. With a stridency heretofore unmatched in American politics, they condemned “high-handed and arbitrary” lawmakers—politicians who forced a “wanton sacrifice of our interest to their own private emolument,” perpetrators of “wrong,” “unjustifiable” and “reprehensible” actions.

The event that precipitated this resounding censure—the “daring and profligate trespass against … the morals of the Republic”—was Congress’ passage of the Compensation Act earlier that spring. With bipartisan support from Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans, Congress had increased its pay from $6 per diem to a flat annual salary of $1,500 (approximately $25,000 in current dollars). Some members derided the action as an exercise in extravagance, but a majority argued that since congressional stipends had remained flat since 1789, and the cost of living approximately doubled, it was time for a raise.

From his retirement, former President Thomas Jefferson observed, “there has never been an instant before of so much unanimous an opinion of the people, and that through every State in the Union.” Jefferson predicted that “almost the entire” Congress “will go out, not only those who supported the law or voted for it, or skulked from the vote, but those who voted against the law or opposed it, if they took the money.”

He was more or less right. Roughly 70 percent of Congress was defeated in the fall election, including a full three-quarters of the New York delegation. As Jefferson foretold, it really didn’t matter how members voted. “I have been dismissed for voting for the bill,” one ex-congressman marveled, “one of my colleagues for voting against it, and another one for not voting at all on either side.”

Over the past several weeks, commentators have drawn comparisons between recent town hall meetings—some staged by GOP congressmen; others organized by angry constituents whose Republican congressmen have dodged the voters—and similar events, driven by the rise of the Tea Party, that bedeviled Democratic lawmakers in 2010. Inspired by increasingly strong support for the Affordable Care Act, the meetings have “flipped the script” on Republicans who just seven years ago profited mightily from such popular indignation. Marco Rubio spoke for other members of his party when he explained his refusal to meet with constituents: He doesn’t want to be put in a position where people will “heckle and scream” at him.

Time will tell whether today’s town hall confrontations augur poorly for Republican members of Congress in 2018. But the example of 1816 is instructive. On its surface, the Compensation Act was the spark that lit the fire. But the real drivers of the political uprising were changes in how the public viewed politics, politicians and elite actors—changes that took the nation’s governing leaders by surprise. In 1816, many Jeffersonian Republicans who had for years encouraged a democratization of politics and expertise suddenly found themselves the focus of populist rage. Similarly, today, GOP congressmen who recently benefited from public indignation now find themselves its target.

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