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.

The Destruction of Honesty

Photo from the Slate article on today's press conference, which it called "a stunning display of Trump’s ability to lie, exaggerate, obfuscate, and mislead the public while insisting that it was actually the media who were doing all of those things."

An excerpt from "The National Nightmare Has Just Begun" by Gabriel Schoenfeld, a Republican political advisor, writing for USA Today:

It is not too soon to tally the damage wreaked so far by our 45th president.

Donald Trump's rampage through key institutions is an obvious place to begin. The executive branch of our federal government has never run like clockwork, but in peace or wartime it has rarely been this chaotic. In effect if not by title, the White House now has three competing chiefs of staff, each with walk-in privileges to the Oval Office and each playing our ignorant and impressionable president as if he were a piano. The disarray has radiated outward to the agencies to the nation and even to the world. The botched formulation and execution of Trump’s travel ban, and the ouster of national security adviser Michael Flynn via surprise trapdoor, are of course Exhibits A and B.

The judicial branch has suffered a blow of a different sort, with the president blasting Judge James Robart, appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate unopposed, as a “so-called judge.” Dismissal by the president of the judiciary’s role as a check and balance on his own power could derail our democracy. In a tweet, he has already, and pre-emptively, assigned blame for the next terror attack to Robart and our entire court system. We have been duly warned: Should such an attack come, it will be a moment of maximum danger not only for our safety but also foor our freedom.

Then we have the Republican Party, which, following Trump’s siren song, is committing moral-intellectual suicide. Defenders of religious liberty have turned into proponents of a backdoor Muslim ban. The banner of free trade has been dropped for protectionism. Budgetary thrift has given way to profligacy. So many things the GOP stood for a mere two years ago — good character and ethical conduct, a clear-eyed view of Russia — have been replaced by their opposite. To the party’s leaders, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, political principles are nothing. Political power is all. In their apologetics for the billionaire blockhead at America’s helm, never has hypocrisy been more perfectly distilled.

Our free press remains intact; indeed, it has been rising to the occasion as it has come under assault from a president who, even as he relentlessly castigates it, stays glued to its coverage, obsessing over every criticism and slight. But though the news media are performing their critical function, they are losing — along with our entire society — a more fundamental battle.

Here we come to damage of a different sort: The destruction of honesty, one of democracy’s most fundamental norms.

Trump and his team lie as naturally as leaves grow on trees. America is being polarized along a new axis of division. On one side are dupes, possibly numbering in the millions, who accept the president’s preposterous fabrications as gospel. On the other side are those appalled by the dawn of post-modern America in which truth is supplanted by “alternative facts,” the euphemism employed by Kellyanne Conway, the president’s most brazen flack, for the projectile falsehoods that spurt from her mouth. As every aspiring authoritarian leader grasps — and Trump is no exception — a world without truth is a world without rules, without justice and without the possibility of democratic deliberation.

And in today's press conference at the White House, Trump was caught red-handed dispensing "fake news" himself - kudos to NBC's Peter Alexander for calling him out:




Just for your information fellas, here are the electoral college results for all elections since 1932. The three number columns show, respectively, the total electoral votes, the winner's share, and the runner-up's share.

From Wikipedia.  Click to enlarge.

Update, 7:55 pm: Shep Smith of Fox News, which for many years has been the propaganda mill of the Republican Party, incensed at the way Trump tried deflect attention from his staff's undercover dealings with Russian intelligence by branding all reporters as purveyors of fake news, lashed out at Trump on camera after today's press conference: “No sir. We are not fools for asking the question and we demand to know the answer to this question. You owe this to the American people.”

George Takei: Gaman

Famed Japanese-American actor and activist George Takei in the Daily Beast:

Permit me to share some personal experience. When Japanese Americans were sent away to internment camps during World War II, simply because we looked like the enemy, we had legitimate fear of angry mobs, as well as a deep and utter despair over a country that had turned its back, not only upon a whole group of its own people, but upon its very values. But amidst all the unfounded hate and suspicion of us, there were also many good Americans who came to our aid: neighbors who offered to look after farms, homes and pets; Quakers who visited us in camp to bring vital services and monitor our treatment; lawyers who filed suits on our behalf and saved tens of thousands of us, including my own mother, from being deported. Even in the darkest of times, there were so many ordinary heroes who gave us hope and succor. It is they whom I remember most today. It was they who helped change things for the better.

There are many who rightly feel afraid for what will happen next. But hard as it is to face, we must remind ourselves that fear is the favored weapon of bullies and thugs. Fear can make us turn away from our hopes and give in to mistrust and cynicism. Let us instead take each moment of fear as a challenge to stand up ever taller. When my community was faced with some of the harshest of treatment during the internment, there was a word we often repeated: gaman. It means to endure, with dignity and fortitude. We did not permit them to strip away our basic humanity. We rallied, gave comfort to each other, and got through it. Gaman has been a steadying and comforting bedrock principle for me through these many decades. . . .

Some sixty million Americans voted for Donald Trump, and I refuse to accept that most did so because of what he stands for, but rather despite it. And while some argue that enabling or ignoring his rhetoric when casting a vote makes his supporters complicit, I choose to find hope in the despite—in the fact that most Americans still agree that racism, sexism, and discrimination of any kind is wrong. For these voters in this election, these things sadly did not outweigh their bitterness and mistrust of the political establishment. Our answer must not be to shut them out as uncaring or bigoted, but to address their concerns, to win back their trust by restoring their hopes, to not turn our backs but to open our hearts. And to do so when all of our instincts cry out simply to cut them out—that is the measure of true commitment. . . .

With the bulk of Trump’s supporters, we must find common ground, as tough as that presently sounds. But let me be clear on this other point: It is one thing to reach out, as we must and should, to white working-class voters who rejected our message in this election. But it is another thing entirely to oppose, as we must, the real threat to our values, progress, and rights presented by the incoming administration. While we recommit ourselves to being the champions to all middle class and working Americans, we can and will do so by holding Trump and his cohorts accountable at each step for their regressive economic agenda, by safeguarding our cherished liberties of a free press and the right to worship and assemble, and by opposing any policies or actions that might do damage to our communities, our economy, and our environment. . . .

No one is under any illusions that the next four years will be easy. But the Japanese have a saying: “Fall seven times, stand up eight.” It is time for us to stand up again, and to press on with renewed determination. So hold your heads up high and carry on, turning your fear and anger into clearest resolve. As my mother would say to me in the camps, “Gaman, Georgie. Gaman.”

Liberal Redneck: Trump and Turkey

Well guys, I posted a lot of things last week, and I could post a lot more - but frankly, I'm quickly reaching my load limit of outraged, despairing, OMG-what-a-nightmare, the-fascists-are-coming news posts. In times of tragedy, there's only so much grief and pain your heart can stand; and then you have to back off a bit, get quiet, and try to consider the bigger picture and the way forward.

At this point, all the news and all the jabber boils down to: yes, the future looks pretty damn scary, but we have to live it one day at a time and just do the best we can to get through it unscathed. All else is unknown at this point, and it won't help you or anyone else to spin out and crash now when your help and talents may be needed later. So just chill for a while, guys, and meanwhile focus on what's really important in your lives, and how you can make that better, here and now.  We don't know what tomorrow will bring, so take care of today.

My darling Mama used to chide me when I'd get into a fret about something or other, saying, "Don't worry so much! Ninety percent of what you worry about never happens." As I've grown from youth to old man, I've come to realize that she was, of course, right.

I'm not going to stop posting but I think I will throttle back a bit on the Blue Truck here. You guys can check out Google News as easily as I can, and there are specific gay-news links in the sidebar at the right that cover stories pertinent to People Like Us. I never have tried to cover all the news, all the time in this blog. I'll go on posting, as usual, a highly personal selection of tidbits and newsbites that arouse my interest or strike my fancy.

And for the record, I may not agree with every single thought or phrase in the things I post, and there might be more to the story than is reported; but in what I post there's usually some point that I think is worth pondering or adding to the store of one's knowledge. The more you know, the more you grow; and as Socrates famously pointed out, the wise man is the one who knows that he does not know everything.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

--Max Ehrmann, "Desiderata"

That said, here's comedian Trae Crowder in his typically vulgar character, giving his take on the meaning of the election results:

The Two Americas, Mapped

The New York Times has generated a couple of fairly large geographic maps showing the difference between the America that voted for Clinton and the one that voted for Trump.  The small snip below is just to whet your appetite, so go look at the real thing..

And in case you are wondering -- I have been surprised to discover that there is no single nationwide authority for the popular vote, which is still being counted in some states by election officials. However, it seems that two private websites that keep running totals of the vote are regarded by the general media as being more or less dependable; here they are:

The Cook Political Report

Dave Leip's Atlas of U. S. Presidential Elections

Not that the vote count really matters at this point; but the stats are there if you want to see them.

Today's Chuckle

If you don't get the joke, see the story of Pence's visit to Broadway last night, and the aftermath.

Paul Krugman: Take a Stand

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Economist Paul Krugman wrote this short, pithy piece on his New York Times page yesterday:

A lot of people in politics and the media are scrambling to normalize what just happened to us, saying that it will all be OK and we can work with Trump. No, it won’t, and no, we can’t. The next occupant of the White House will be a pathological liar with a loose grip on reality; he is already surrounding himself with racists, anti-Semites, and conspiracy theorists; his administration will be the most corrupt in America history.

How did this happen? There were multiple causes, but you just can’t ignore the reality that key institutions and their leaders utterly failed. Every news organization that decided, for the sake of ratings, to ignore policy and barely cover Trump scandals while obsessing over Clinton emails, every reporter who, for whatever reason — often sheer pettiness — played up Wikileaks nonsense and talked about how various Clinton stuff “raised questions” and “cast shadows” is complicit in this disaster. And then there’s the FBI: it’s quite reasonable to argue that James Comey, whether it was careerism, cowardice, or something worse, tipped the scales and may have doomed the world.

No, I’m not giving up hope. Maybe, just maybe, the sheer awfulness of what’s happening will sink in. Maybe the backlash will be big enough to constrain Trump from destroying democracy in the next few months, and/or sweep his gang from power in the next few years. But if that’s going to happen, enough people will have to be true patriots, which means taking a stand.

And anyone who doesn’t — who plays along and plays it safe — is betraying America, and mankind.

Mencken on the White House Moron

The canny, acerbic H. L. Mencken wrote many a cutting observation still relevant to our politics and society.  This quotation is making the rounds of the Internet now, but in mangled form; even the usually reliable Snopes.com doesn't get it quite right.  So as a public service, your Head Trucker presents it now in its original form, which you may quote as you please:

First published in an article entitled "Bayard vs Lionheart" in the Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920, and reprinted in On Politics:  A Carnival of Buncombe, edited by Malcolm Moos, the Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956, on page 21.

I tell you these bibliographic details because, children, truth is more important than ever now in this grave new world where so many facts are quite literally at everyone's fingertips -- but so few can be bothered to lift one little finger to find them.

And if you casually, carelessly spread lies around, by whatever means, you have no reason to complain when one day they boomerang back and break your little necks, now do you?

Obama: Your Job

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From an interview with David Remmick in the New Yorker - emphasis mine:

How did he speak with his two daughters about the election results, about the post-election reports of racial incidents? “What I say to them is that people are complicated,” Obama told me. “Societies and cultures are really complicated. . . . This is not mathematics; this is biology and chemistry. These are living organisms, and it’s messy. And your job as a citizen and as a decent human being is to constantly affirm and lift up and fight for treating people with kindness and respect and understanding. And you should anticipate that at any given moment there’s going to be flare-ups of bigotry that you may have to confront, or may be inside you and you have to vanquish. And it doesn’t stop. . . . You don’t get into a fetal position about it. You don’t start worrying about apocalypse. You say, O.K., where are the places where I can push to keep it moving forward.”

Bannon Praises the Power of Darkness

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Steve Bannon, chairman of Breitbart News and now the new chief strategist for Trump, praised the Devil out loud this week in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter:

The liberal firewall against Trump was, most of all, the belief that the Republican contender was too disorganized, outlandish, outré and lacking in nuance to run a proper political campaign. That view was only confirmed when Bannon, editor of the outlandish and outré Breitbart News Network, took over the campaign in August. Now Bannon is arguably the most powerful person on the new White House team, embodying more than anyone the liberals' awful existential pain and fury: How did someone so wrong — not just wrong, but inappropriate, unfit and "loathsome," according to The New York Times — get it so spot-on right?

In these dark days for Democrats, Bannon has become the blackest hole.

"Darkness is good," says Bannon, who amid the suits surrounding him at Trump Tower, looks like a graduate student in his T-shirt, open button-down and tatty blue blazer — albeit a 62-year-old graduate student. "Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That's power. It only helps us when they" — I believe by "they" he means liberals and the media, already promoting calls for his ouster — "get it wrong. When they're blind to who we are and what we're doing."

It seems to your Head Trucker that "they" could just as well refer to all those happy-clappy, Bible-thumping, oh-so-holy Christianists who pulled the lever for Trump and his greasy gang.

For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.

--I Corinthians 11:13-15, NIV

From National Election Pool polling data via Wikipedia.  Click to enlarge.

Senator Warren: We Will Fight Back

I haven't paid much attention to Elizabeth Warren heretofore, but I like her speech on the floor of the Senate yesterday, which she closed by saying, "I am ready to fight on behalf of the millions of Americans you have lied to:  that includes the millions who voted for you and the millions who didn't."  Huzzah!  You go, girl.

Jon Stewart on the Election

The former Daily Show host spoke with Charlie Rose on CBS This Morning today. An excerpt from the transcript:

“I thought Donald Trump disqualified himself at numerous points. But there is now this idea that anyone who voted for him is -- has to be defined by the worst of his rhetoric,” Stewart said. “Like, there are guys in my neighborhood that I love, that I respect, that I think have incredible qualities who are not afraid of Mexicans, and not afraid of Muslims, and not afraid of blacks. They’re afraid of their insurance premiums. In the liberal community, you hate this idea of creating people as a monolith. Don’t look as Muslims as a monolith. They are the individuals and it would be ignorance. But everybody who voted for Trump is a monolith, is a racist. That hypocrisy is also real in our country.”

Stewart said America wages a fight “against ourselves” because it is not “natural.”

“Natural is tribal. We’re fighting against thousands of years of human behavior and history to create something that no one’s ever-- that’s what’s exceptional about America and that’s what’s, like, this ain’t easy,” Stewart said. “It’s an incredible thing.”

Whisper with Me: Yes We Can

Well, here we are a week into the unthinkable, and the response on the part of everyone left of center, high and low, north and south, young and old, has been one of chilled, paralyzed horror and nightmarish imaginings of the totalitarian future about to begin.  Your Head Trucker, situated a good ways out of the mainstream of modern life, has taken a cold satisfaction in realizing that his own insights and fears are shared by many millions of others. 

Indeed, the breadth of this essentially supine reaction across all sections and levels of enlightened society is a telling and perversely reassuring sign:  we all see through the con man's bluster and brag, we all see the same things tucked up his sleeve or behind his back, we are not fooled.  We could not, cannot all be simultaneously deluded this way, so it must be true:  a fearsome great sinkhole has opened at our feet, and we all stand upon the very brink of a dark, putrid, bottomless abyss.

If you didn't sleep through World Lit, you fellas know that over the entrance to Dante's Hell was inscribed "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here." And indeed, the temptation to despair, and to despair utterly, is great. What we all fear is not a temporary interruption in the nation's perennial progress towards a more just society, "a more perfect union" -- as we would if any other Republican had won the election -- no, what we fear is a savage, unmitigated assault on every civil liberty and human right, and indeed on the Constitutional order itself, by a howling, bloodthirsty horde of deplorables bent on cruel vengeance against the imagined crimes of "libruls," encouraged and empowered by a narcissistic tyrant at their head whose only law is whim.

Put another way, we now fear not the ordinary classroom bullies at the back of the room with their spitwads and rubber bands, but the greasy older kids in ripped shirts and tattoos who lurk just beyond the schoolyard gate with bike chains and switchblades, blocking the way home.

With the victory of marriage equality last year, I felt, among other things, a great sense of relief, the relief that comes when a long, hard task is finally done.  I thought then that my work here with this blog -- I know it was only preaching to the choir, just one more background extra in a great crowd scene, of no more consequence in the world than an ant toting a grain of sand, but it often felt like carrying a great boulder uphill those seven weary years -- that my work was pretty much done, and that perhaps I should just let the Blue Truck dwindle down and fade away, its primary raison d'etre accomplished, imagining that a broad, smooth highway of equal rights and dignity for folks like us, and all the other despised, beaten-down people, stretched away to infinity under the sunshine.

But now we are stopped at the edge of the gaping, unbridgeable hole in the ground, with nowhere to go but backwards, the place we just escaped from.  And night is falling.  In the near distance, a coyote howls, and another, and another.  In the sky, no moon, and strange lights.  Where can we go?  What can we do?  We stare at each other wonderingly, characters trapped in a horror movie.  What will happen next, we can hardly bear to think, alone here on the ruined road, defenseless and dismayed, and no help in sight.

At this point in the script, invariably one character with just a little more moxie than the others exclaims, "Here's something we can do!" and picks up a tire iron, a rock, a broken bottle, a piece of rope -- and out of suchlike meager resources proceeds to organize a defense.  And somehow, against all odds, the terrified little band manages to escape to safety thereby.

I wish I were that character.  I wish I had a lucky hunch.  I wish I were as resourceful as Jimmy Stewart, or William Holden, or Steve McQueen.  I wish I knew what to do.  But I don't.  I have no clever plan or brave words for you all, and even my halting prayers falter on my tongue.  For I have read the history books and the tragedies, and I know what comes in the next act, barring some unlikely deus ex machina. 

And I fully understand now what terrified people felt in other times, other countries, facing other disasters, praying that they might be averted, but then -- "that which they greatly feared came upon them."  The ways of God are strange, and His purposes beyond knowing, we are taught; but for the faithful, no defeat is final, they say.  Cold comfort now, in the gathering mists.  Despair is a great sin, perhaps the greatest of all -- but how to resist it?

I am old now, and tired, effectively disabled and impoverished.  I cannot march in the streets or carry signs or block traffic.  My body and my faith are weak.  And I have no sure answers.  But I offer these thoughts, for whatever worth they have.

In some other movie, there is no one wielding a tire iron, but someone says quietly, "Pull yourselves together.  Let's think this through."  And that is what I say to my truckbuddies and readers now.  For as yet, despite many ugly words and even threats, there is no irreversible action against us.  There is yet time to figure out a plan, a means of resistance, an escape route:  something other than silent, spineless submission, which would betray our proud heritage as Americans, the champions of liberty and justice for all.  We are not entirely overthrown yet -- and perhaps, please God, we never shall be.  For we are also taught that God helps those who help themselves.

For one thing, while the institutions of the Republic still exist and function as they should - that is to say, the courts, the legislatures, the police, and essential services -- we have recourse to them, and we must make quick and effective use of them in every instance of tyranny or terror. We have not come so far and fought so hard, these fifty years, to run from battle now at the first trumpet blast.

We can also organize and strategize at the grassroots all over the country, and discover who among us are those Jimmy Stewarts and other sensible, courageous leaders to point the way ahead.

We can speak the truth and call out every lie.  We can cherish facts and ignore rumors.  We can succor those who struggle, and comfort those who weep.

And even if it be that the first blows do not fall on our heads, we can speak up in defense of those groups and individuals who are attacked, and defend them as best we can -- for it is not a question of "our group" or "their group" but "Americans all."  Remember that tyrants like to pick off their victims one at a time, and meanwhile pit one group against another.  But we must not be lulled into a false sense of security - solidarity is the watchword.

And last, we can keep calm and carry on, living our lives with unbowed heads and remembering that no tyranny lasts forever; indeed, tyrants are somewhat more likely to die sooner than later, as we recall from our history books.  And no blackhearted, jackbooted regime could flourish indefinitely on American soil, watered long since by the blood of patriots. Less than a quarter of the adult population voted for this new order, and some of them may soon repent their choice; we may feel friendless and alone, but we are not.  Our friends and allies are legion, and will perhaps be found even in the most unlikely places.

It may be that this generation of Americans, red and yellow, black and white, male and female, straight and gay, once again has a mysterious rendezvous with destiny.  Nor shall we turn from the challenge, in whatever form it takes, I believe.  We are Americans, born to freedom and not slavery.  We will not go quietly to the slaughter.

We are not as strong, as canny, as resourceful as our forefathers, perhaps, for the abundant comforts and distractions of modern life have softened us all -- but what our forebears were, we can learn to be once again, as necessity requires.  The other side may have the guns - but we have our wits, and the right on our side, and the will to endure, and to prevail. 

Tell me, brothers, we are not so soft that even at this late hour we can't cowboy up to defend ourselves and our liberties and our rights with wit and grit, by one means or another. Tell me again that love wins out and conquers all. Tell me, friends, that no matter how dark the night, we can find a path to safety and freedom together.

It's okay to be afraid.  I am too.  So give me your hands and say it, whisper it with me, guys, as we huddle here in the headlights that pierce the night air:  Yes we can.  Yes we can.  Yes we can.

Can't we? 

Today's Chuckle

"Just one booby trap." LMAO.

Apparently these prankster-Biden quips are a thing now - see more at The Guardian.

Today's Quotes

Embed from Getty Images

David Chappelle on Saturday Night Live, November 12, 2016:

We’ve elected an internet troll as our president.

Joyce Carol Oates in The Guardian, November 12, 2016:

Yes, it is likely that misogyny played a negative role, to a degree – but if Clinton had been strongly in favour of guns and closed borders, these voters would have voted for her regardless of gender, as many of them would probably have voted for Sarah Palin, a rightwing favourite whose gender has never disadvantaged her.

From The Atlantic, November 11, 2016, a white, well-educated veteran on why he voted for Trump:

Maybe Trump won’t do a thing to change or fix any of it. Hillary definitely would not have changed any of it. So I voted for the monkey wrench—the middle finger—the wrecking ball.

I do not have the time, energy, or opportunity to march through downtown and chant vulgarities or spray paint buildings or set cop cars on fire. So I protest—and use my voice—with a ballot.

Go ahead: Label me a racist, a bigot, a hate-filled misogynistic, an uneducated redneck. But I turned down Yale, motherfuckers; I ain’t who you think I am. And while I love grits and pulled pork barbecue and collard greens and cold beer in a bottle, I also love my neighbors of all colors, especially if they can cook. I want a synagogue, a church, and a mosque on Main St. all in a row, getting along and following the golden rule. And we mostly do.

But I have grown tired. I admit, I am tired of arguing with crazy. . . .

Crazy is treating the same symptoms and never the disease.

Here’s the recipe for success and comfort in modern America: Stay in school, do your best, stay away from drugs, don’t have kids until you are no longer a kid, don’t break the law. You might be a pipe-fitter or a welder, a truck driver or a rapper. You might sell insurance, teach school, sell homes, or pave roads. You might become a chef or a mechanic, work with computers or take care of people in a nursing home. You will be able to afford Netflix, have food on the table, pay the rent or own a home, buy a car that runs, not get shot by the police, and probably find some happiness. Nobody will hate you because you’re a girl, or a person of color, or gay or straight, or speak with an accent. We just won’t.

Masha Gessen, “Autocracy: Rules for Survival,” in the New York Review of Books, November 10, 2016:

But Trump is anything but a regular politician and this has been anything but a regular election. Trump will be only the fourth candidate in history and the second in more than a century to win the presidency after losing the popular vote. He is also probably the first candidate in history to win the presidency despite having been shown repeatedly by the national media to be a chronic liar, sexual predator, serial tax-avoider, and race-baiter who has attracted the likes of the Ku Klux Klan. Most important, Trump is the first candidate in memory who ran not for president but for autocrat—and won.

I have lived in autocracies most of my life, and have spent much of my career writing about Vladimir Putin’s Russia. I have learned a few rules for surviving in an autocracy and salvaging your sanity and self-respect. It might be worth considering them now: . . .

Andrew Sullivan, “America Has Never Been So Ripe for Tyranny,” New York Magazine, May 1, 2016:

For the white working class, having had their morals roundly mocked, their religion deemed primitive, and their economic prospects decimated, now find their very gender and race, indeed the very way they talk about reality, described as a kind of problem for the nation to overcome. This is just one aspect of what Trump has masterfully signaled as “political correctness” run amok, or what might be better described as the newly rigid progressive passion for racial and sexual equality of outcome, rather than the liberal aspiration to mere equality of opportunity.

Much of the newly energized left has come to see the white working class not as allies but primarily as bigots, misogynists, racists, and homophobes, thereby condemning those often at the near-bottom rung of the economy to the bottom rung of the culture as well. A struggling white man in the heartland is now told to “check his privilege” by students at Ivy League colleges. Even if you agree that the privilege exists, it’s hard not to empathize with the object of this disdain. These working-class communities, already alienated, hear — how can they not? — the glib and easy dismissals of “white straight men” as the ultimate source of all our woes. They smell the condescension and the broad generalizations about them — all of which would be repellent if directed at racial minorities — and see themselves, in Hoffer’s words, “disinherited and injured by an unjust order of things.”

And so they wait, and they steam, and they lash out. This was part of the emotional force of the tea party: not just the advancement of racial minorities, gays, and women but the simultaneous demonization of the white working-class world, its culture and way of life. Obama never intended this, but he became a symbol to many of this cultural marginalization. The Black Lives Matter left stoked the fires still further; so did the gay left, for whom the word magnanimity seems unknown, even in the wake of stunning successes. . . .

And what’s notable about Trump’s supporters is precisely what one would expect from members of a mass movement: their intense loyalty. Trump is their man, however inarticulate they are when explaining why. He’s tough, he’s real, and they’ve got his back, especially when he is attacked by all the people they have come to despise: liberal Democrats and traditional Republicans. At rallies, whenever a protester is hauled out, you can almost sense the rising rage of the collective identity venting itself against a lone dissenter and finding a catharsis of sorts in the brute force a mob can inflict on an individual. Trump tells the crowd he’d like to punch a protester in the face or have him carried out on a stretcher. No modern politician who has come this close to the presidency has championed violence in this way. It would be disqualifying if our hyper¬democracy hadn’t already abolished disqualifications.

And while a critical element of 20th-century fascism — its organized street violence — is missing, you can begin to see it in embryonic form. The phalanx of bodyguards around Trump grows daily; plainclothes bouncers in the crowds have emerged as pseudo-cops to contain the incipient unrest his candidacy will only continue to provoke; supporters have attacked hecklers with sometimes stunning ferocity. Every time Trump legitimizes potential violence by his supporters by saying it comes from a love of country, he sows the seeds for serious civil unrest.

Trump celebrates torture — the one true love of tyrants everywhere — not because it allegedly produces intelligence but because it has a demonstration effect. At his rallies he has recounted the mythical acts of one General John J. Pershing when confronted with an alleged outbreak of Islamist terrorism in the Philippines. Pershing, in Trump’s telling, lines up 50 Muslim prisoners, swishes a series of bullets in the corpses of freshly slaughtered pigs, and orders his men to put those bullets in their rifles and kill 49 of the captured Muslim men. He spares one captive solely so he can go back and tell his friends. End of the terrorism problem. 

In some ways, this story contains all the elements of Trump’s core appeal. The vexing problem of tackling jihadist terror? Torture and murder enough terrorists and they will simply go away. The complicated issue of undocumented workers, drawn by jobs many Americans won’t take? Deport every single one of them and build a wall to stop the rest. Fuck political correctness. As one of his supporters told an obtuse reporter at a rally when asked if he supported Trump: “Hell yeah! He’s no-bullshit. All balls. Fuck you all balls. That’s what I’m about.” And therein lies the appeal of tyrants from the beginning of time. Fuck you all balls. Irrationality with muscle.

The racial aspect of this is also unmissable. When the enemy within is Mexican or Muslim, and your ranks are extremely white, you set up a rubric for a racial conflict. And what’s truly terrifying about Trump is that he does not seem to shrink from such a prospect; he relishes it.

For, like all tyrants, he is utterly lacking in self-control. Sleeping a handful of hours a night, impulsively tweeting in the early hours, improvising madly on subjects he knows nothing about, Trump rants and raves as he surfs an entirely reactive media landscape. Once again, Plato had his temperament down: A tyrant is a man “not having control of himself [who] attempts to rule others”; a man flooded with fear and love and passion, while having little or no ability to restrain or moderate them; a “real slave to the greatest fawning,” a man who “throughout his entire life ... is full of fear, overflowing with convulsions and pains.” Sound familiar? Trump is as mercurial and as unpredictable and as emotional as the daily Twitter stream. And we are contemplating giving him access to the nuclear codes.

House Speaker Paul Ryan on CNN, Sunday morning, November 13, 2016:

We are not planning on erecting a deportation force. Donald Trump's not planning on that.

Donald J. Trump, 60 Minutes interview with Leslie Stahl, Sunday evening, November 13, 2016:

What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, we have a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate. But we’re getting them out of our country, they’re here illegally. After the border is secured and after everything gets normalized, we’re going to make a determination on the people that you’re talking about who are terrific people, they’re terrific people but we are gonna make a determination at that . . . .

Don’t be afraid. We are going to bring our country back. But certainly, don’t be afraid.

The End of the World (As We Know It)

From this week's issue of Germany's Der Spiegel, an excerpt:

But what kind of a president will Donald Trump really be? In the past, he has also voiced approval of more liberal abortion laws and he once demanded health insurance for all Americans himself. Over the years, he has held all manner of contradictory opinions on many different political issues, sometimes at the same time.

Those who think they know what Donald Trump will do as president are likely overestimating their own intelligence. Trump will be the most unpredictable president that America has ever had. That holds true of his thin-skinned personality just as it does for his political positions. Anything, really anything, is possible. And that is the most disturbing thing.

It is possible that Trump will turn out to be the US version of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez -- that he will appease and divert Americans while at the same time dramatically eroding the country's institutions and politicizing the judiciary, the CIA and the FBI. And that he, as he indicated he would, will allow for the return of torture. And that he will build the promised wall on the border to Mexico, impede people from Muslim countries from coming to the US, turn up the volume on bigotry and use the presidency to personally enrich himself. It could mean the end of NATO -- but it could also be that his bromance with Putin will cool and turn hostile.

It is equally possible, though, that Trump will turn over the governing of the country to experienced Republican politicians and will preside over proceedings as a kind of CEO. It is possible that he will build his wall as a sop to his supporters but will quickly realize that his announced intention to deport 11 million illegal immigrants makes no economic sense. It is possible that he will service the yearnings for a resurgent white identity primarily with rhetoric, that he will seek to stimulate the economy with billions in investments and that his foreign policy will simply be a continuation of the American withdrawal that began under Obama.

We simply don't know. The only thing we know -- from his statements, his campaign and his personality -- is that he will be a president unlike any that has come before.

The Loser One! We Should Have a Revolution!

This election is a total sham and a travesty.  We are not a democracy!

Such haunting words: Donald Trump's tweets on Election Night, 2012, when it seemed that Obama had lost the popular vote to Romney (in fact, as it turned out Obama won 5 million more votes than his opponent).

Click to enlarge.

My trucklady friend June at The Wounded Bird beat me to this already-planned post today; must be telepathy between kindred spirits.

Today's Quote

From a "subway therapy" DIY art installation in New York City;
see a gallery of other Post-it notes at The Guardian.

100 Million Americans Did Not Vote - Why?

The brown-nosing and sucking-up begins:
People magazine glorifies Trump on the cover of its next issue.
(Do I really have to point out the divine-halo effect for you guys?)

A summary of the popular and electoral votes from Wikipedia.

Some quick stats for you all to chew on: Nationwide turnout was, as of yesterday's estimates, only 56.9 percent of eligible voters (U.S. citizens over age 18), or by my calculation, 65.8 percent of registered voters. So about a third of the registered electorate just sat out the election, which is pretty much what has happened in every presidential election for the last fifty years.

Let me make the point one more time, for clarity:  out of the 220 million-plus Americans who are old enough to vote, 60 million and a smidgeon voted for Clinton, and 60 million and a speck voted for Trump, and about 100 million did not vote at all.  That is the staggering fact.

If 80 or 90 percent had voted, would we still be living in the nightmare of a Trump victory today? I can't answer that, but you all can meditate on the figures and links below if you can stand to.

Voting-age population characteristics from the United States Census Bureau,
posted on their website Oct. 28, 2016.  Click to enlarge.

Vox:  Trump was elected by a little more than a quarter of eligible voters

Heavy: Over 90 Million Eligible Voters Didn’t Vote in the 2016 Presidential Election


Politico: America hits new landmark: 200 million registered voters

United States Elections Project: 2016 November General Election Turnout Rates, by states

The American Presidency Project: Voter Turnout in Presidential Elections, 1828 - 2012

Pew Research Center: Behind Trump’s victory: Divisions by race, gender, education

Pew Research Center: How the faithful voted: A preliminary 2016 analysis

(This last link has some very interesting items:  60 percent of white Catholic voters checked the box for Trump, as did 24 percent of Jewish voters.  Why, why, why?)

Teach Your Children Well

Vinson Cunningham in the New Yorker:

In the hours since voters chose Trump to serve as our country’s forty-fifth President, I’ve thought about those students often — perhaps because this torturous election season was, among other things, a sharp, sudden reminder of just how briefly a political “era” lasts in America. We have often, over the past eight years, congratulated ourselves for the fact that an entire generation of American children will take for granted that a figure like President Obama — black, brilliant, wholesome, dignified, cool — can ascend to the loftiest peaks of our national life. Trump’s admission into a club that includes Washington and Lincoln, both Roosevelts, and, yes, Obama promises to teach the same generation a different lesson altogether. Certainly, we seem to have ratified the darkest of their suspicions: that our politics are a joke; that American democracy is a game fit for reality-TV contestants; that their elders, however well-intentioned, are feckless, or fools.

Obama had the younger generation in mind yesterday afternoon, when he stood in the Rose Garden and delivered a short speech on the election results. “To the young people who got into politics for the first time and may be disappointed by the results, I just want you to know, you have to stay encouraged,” he said, toward the end of his remarks. “Don’t get cynical, don’t ever think you can’t make a difference.” This was of a piece with much of Obama’s rhetoric this year; his general-election exertions on Hillary Clinton’s behalf often doubled as civics lessons in miniature. There were tactical reasons for this, of course: the Democrats’ strategy depended, in large part, on describing the distance that lay between Trump’s trashy ethos and the norms of the democracy that he hoped to lead. . . .

Frustrations notwithstanding, Obama was characteristically graceful and mature in the Rose Garden. He had called the President-elect, he said. He’d meet with him to insure a smooth transition. He even made a joke or two. After a year spent pointing out Trump’s unbelievable unfitness for the Presidency, he tried to make the election result seem continuous with the patterns of American progress. “You know, the path that this country has taken has never been a straight line,” he said. “We zig and zag and sometimes we move in ways that some people think is forward and others think is moving back, and that’s O.K.”

This was all appropriate. It was time, after all, for the President to model the ideals for which he’d so strenuously — and, in the end, it must be said, ineffectually — argued. It’s up to the rest of us, however, never to allow Trump’s rise to seem O.K. A morning that arrives with the huckster strolling into the Oval Office should always strike us — and the kids who already expect so little of us — as an instance of the absurd. This was the most powerful impression of Obama’s speech: one tried, stupefied, to imagine Trump behind that lectern, following the class act that was Obama.

Also worth a glance:

Two Americas in One Photograph