All That Was Missing Was The Gilded Royal Carriage

 

No one needed to have any special powers to know what a Trump presidency was going to do to America. Putin, after all, is too savvy a player to have bet on a pig in a poke. Now me... since inauguration day I've hoped against hope that there were a pair of Secret Service agents like Satwant Singh and Beant Singh waiting to do their duty to protect our country. All day Sunday and when I woke this morning there were dozens of stories about Trump's condition. I only want to read one: that he's dead (well... or dying).

I know it's politically incorrect, but I really don't want Trump to survive COVID. I mean it's up to God, not me, but if it were up me... He's an evil and dangerous cancer and he will keep poisoning the world until he's dead and rotting in the ground. The sooner the better-- and his inner circle along with him. A few hours ago, I asked my Twitter followers what they think. Most disagree; they'd rather see him in prison. I'm fine with that too-- as long as he never gets out.

First hour's results

But I was heartened yesterday to read about the anger Secret Service agents feel about his little stunt to entertain his Proud Boys and MAGA-monkey followers Sunday-- the SUV drive around Walter Reed so he could wave. Reporting for the Washington Post, Josh Dawsey, Carol Leonnig and Hannah Knowles wrote that current and former Secret Service agents and medical professionals were aghast Sunday night at Señor Trumpanzee's trip outside the hospital, saying the disgusting orange lummox endangered those inside his SUV for a publicity stunt. "As the backlash grew, multiple aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations also called Trump’s evening outing an unnecessary risk-- but said it was not surprising. Trump had said he was bored in the hospital, advisers said. He wanted to show strength after his chief of staff offered a grimmer assessment of his health than doctors, according to campaign and White House officials."

A growing number of Secret Service agents have been concerned about the president’s seeming indifference to the health risks they face when traveling with him in public, and a few reacted with outrage to the trip, asking how Trump’s desire to be seen outside his hospital suite justified the jeopardy to agents protecting him. Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis has already brought new scrutiny to his lax approach to social distancing, as public health officials scramble to trace those he may have exposed at large in-person events.

“He’s not even pretending to care now,” one agent said after the president’s jaunt outside Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to wave at supportive crowds.

“Where are the adults?” said a former Secret Service member.

...Trump wore a mask as he waved from the back of his vehicle, after announcing he would “pay a little surprise to some of the great patriots that we have out on the street.” But the face covering was little comfort to doctors, who took to Twitter to criticize the trip as irresponsible. Masks “help, but they are not an impenetrable force field,” tweeted Saad B. Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health.

Among critics was a doctor affiliated with Walter Reed.

“Every single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary Presidential ‘drive-by’ just now has to be quarantined for 14 days,” tweeted James P. Phillips, who is also a professor at George Washington University. “They might get sick. They may die. For political theater. Commanded by Trump to put their lives at risk for theater. This is insanity.”

Phillips said the risk of viral transmission inside the car is “as high as it gets outside of medical procedures.” Jonathan Reiner, a professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University, noted people inside a hospital wear extensive protective gear-- gowns, gloves, N95 masks and more-- when they will be in close contact with a coronavirus patient such as Trump.

“By taking a joy ride outside Walter Reed the president is placing his Secret Service detail at grave risk,” he tweeted.

Frank Schaeffer suggested that "It is time to liberate the Secret Service detail. Let Trump hire suicidal Proud Boys to guard him and catch COVID as he indulges in reckless ego-driven stunts." I like that idea too.

Also writing for The Post, Dr. Leana Wen asked "If the president was brought into the hospital for closer monitoring, what sense does it make to discharge him just before the time period that’s potentially the most fraught?" Her tweet Sundat afternoon was more enlightening:

Mary McNamara is a culture columnist for the L.A. Times. She may have reached the same conclusions about Trump's joy ride-- even if she never even considered the Satwant and Beant solution-- but her perspective... well, it comes from a different space: Trump’s dangerous Sunday drive-by recalls the madness of a monarch. But he’s not one. As Trump's mendacious doctors had the press scrambling with timelines, oxygen levels and the significance of certain drugs prescribed during his treatment for COVID-19, all she could think of was the scrutiny of the royal stool and urine in The Madness of King George: "I cannot inquire after His Majesty’s symptoms until he chooses to inform me of them." The Trumpian spectacle Sunday drove McNamara to re-watch the 1994 film, adapted by Alan Bennett from his award-winning 1991 play, The Madness of George III. "And you know what? The parallels are highly disturbing," she wrote.

Much of The Madness of King George deals with the difficulty of attempting to treat a ruler who is incapable of recognizing reality and his own relationship to same, a ruler known to punish ruthlessly those who dare presume even to look at him, much less attempt to advise or to heal him.

Which sounds a tiny bit familiar; Mark Meadows reportedly faced the president’s wrath after he informed reporters that Trump was not sailing along as blithely as Conley had indicated.

But the most disturbing parallel came just as I finished watching the film’s climactic scene. The king-- realizing that his son is about to have himself named regent-- pulls it together enough to get in a carriage and appear before the cheering throngs, and I glanced at social media to find that President Trump was in the process of doing the very same thing.

For reasons known only to themselves and whatever gods they worship, doctors at Walter Reed allowed a man with full-blown COVID-19 to get into an SUV filled with the requisite sacrificial victims-- er, Secret Service agents-- so he could wave to his supporters (many of them maskless, few of them social-distancing) as they clamored to wish him well in fighting this highly infectious and deadly disease.

Honestly, all that was missing was the gilded royal carriage.

This prophetic juxtaposition between art and life left me freaked out in a way I hadn’t been since, well, Friday. Which is when we learned that the Rose Garden ceremony to announce Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, held a mere week after the passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, had been a COVID-19 super-spreader event.

I may be a recovering Roman Catholic, but the “And then God said: ‘Nope’” overtones of that situation seem pretty darn clear.

To see a president rewarding supporters, in his own special way, for doing the same sort of things that put him in the hospital in the first place?

Who’s the mad king now?

Actually, the comparison isn’t fair. George III, now perhaps best known for providing the comic relief in Hamilton, had apparently returned to a state of wellness by the time he presented himself to his loyalists. Also-- and this is important-- he was at no point encouraging his subjects to make themselves vulnerable to the highly infectious disease from which he himself was suffering.

(And before you hit me with “But what about the risks involved in the Black Lives Matter protests?” Please. People take to the streets to protest only when other means of achieving justice have failed; that millions did so in the middle of a pandemic is simply a gauge of how complete and devastating those failures have been.)

I understand the desire of Trump supporters to show up for the ailing president, just as I understand the president wanting to thank them, as he said in a video he tweeted to tease his little journey. (Had he been feeling better, he could have just sung the Hamilton King George bit about “for your love, for your praise and I’ll love you ‘til my dying days...” which honestly would have been super fun).


 


But God Almighty, you would think he might have urged the people he claims to love so much to take steps to ensure their own safety. None of those folks are going to get airlifted to Walter Reed if they test positive and turn feverish. None of them are going to get all the COVID-19 drugs and treatments available in a 48-hour (or however long it has actually been) span.

If Trump suddenly felt that Twitter was no longer the best way to engage with his supporters, couldn’t he have just waved from the window like Ronald Reagan did? As far as I know, Vice President Mike Pence was not scheming to have the 25th Amendment invoked (although given the insanity of this particular Sunday drive, maybe he should).

No matter what Trump may think, this is not a monarchy. The president is not anointed by God to rule. He is elected to serve the American people with the understanding that if, for whatever reason, he is incapable of serving, the vice president will step in. That is why we have a vice president!

The demand for an accurate account of the state of Trump’s health is not about the man; it’s about the presidency. If nothing else, he should respect the office enough to put all his effort into getting well, not taking a smile ‘n wave lap.

One hopes that the president is indeed on the mend-- because there are still a hell of a lot of questions he needs to answer. Questions about his taxes and outstanding loans, about continued Russian interference with the election and about accusations against Kimberly Guilfoyle.

Not to mention the timeline of his diagnosis and his lack of basic social precautions.

Like whatever afflicted King George III, who continued to suffer from bouts of “madness,” COVID-19 is a tenacious disease; even on the way to health, there is a pretty good chance that Trump will continue to be affected by symptoms. Suffering from this disease can be debilitating and terrifying, which is why the Biden campaign suspended its negative ads and the press has put aside the many issues facing the Trump campaign in favor of a minute-by-minute focus on the president’s condition.

Still, it’s hard to see his heedless Sunday drive as anything but permission for the many questions and criticisms raised about his financial situation, his handling of the pandemic and the scandals affecting so many of his inner circle to resume.

As my mother used to say, if you’re well enough to go out and play, you’re well enough to go back to school. Though in this case, please do it remotely.

 

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

I have a thought. I have lots of thoughts. That's why I do these memes for you every day. But, here's my thought for today:

Since our NRA graft-taking politicians so strongly feel that "Thoughts and Prayers" are enough for our children, not to mention the rest of us, I propose that we immediately disband the Secret Service and the United States Capitol Police, the two main agencies who are responsible for protecting politicians in Washington and elsewhere. My reasoning is simple. If our Congress full of NRA graft-taking scumbags in Washington thinks that "Thoughts and Prayers" are all the action "we the people" need in a country full of AR-15 toting maniacs, then that should be good enough for them as well. After all, it's a concept that's worked so well to date!

I know the politicians will disagree, though, just like they think they're entitled to taxpayer funded healthcare but we and our children are not. They also think they are entitled to all sorts of things they think we are not. For example: Secretary of State Rexxon Tillerson thinks there should be no fracking anywhere near any property he owns, but it's fine for our neighborhoods and our favorite beaches, fishing streams, parks, and schoolyards.

In light of other recent Washington actions, shouldn't my idea be acceptable to Congress? Our current politicians do seem to be undermining and cutting out a lot of departments in Washington, things like the E.P.A., Education, The Interior Department, and others that make our lives better, so why not the Secret Service and the Capitol Police as well? Do we really need both of them and prayer, too? Seems awfully wasteful and redundant to me! The politicians we send to Washington constantly go out of their way to extoll the power and value of prayer. Hey, they must know something, or else why would we have elected them? Since they claim to genuinely believe this, they could even legislate or decree a monthly National Day of Prayer for themselves. That costs nothing! Zero taxpayer dollars! It's, in fact, cheap in very way imaginable. Talk about common sense solutions! Any American who wants to participate can, although, no doubt Señor Trumpanzee will take note of those caught not praying and label them godless, unpatriotic, and un-American.

Let's try it. What's the worst that could happen?

We Have An Expensive President!

Did Trump's campaign pay for his election rally in Melbourne, FL Saturday?

-by Tracy B Ann

I was reading last night that it cost $98 million to guard President Obama during his 8 years as President. This weekend they we, are guarding Trump in Florida, his wife and youngest son in Manhattan and I think his older sons are in Dubai with tax payer security. Plus there are staffers at the White House in DC who get security, as does the White House itself.

According to a report from David Choi at Business Insider:

• Three trips to Mar-a-Lago since Trump's inauguration may have cost about $10 million, based on a government report from October that analyzed White House travel, according to The Post. The expenses include the cost of US Coast Guard patrol boats on the shoreline.

• Palm Beach County officials say they will request reimbursement of tens of thousands of dollars per day from the White House for their deputies who provided security and logistical support around the city.

• Police officials estimate that it would cost New York $500,000 a day, or $183 million a year, to guard Trump Tower, where first lady Melania Trump and son Barron Trump live.

• Secret Service and US embassy employees paid about $100,000 in hotel room bills during Eric Trump's trip to Uruguay, where he promoted a Trump-branded building.

• If the Pentagon secures rental space in Trump Tower-- needed for when the president returns to New York-- it could cost $1.5 million per year, according to the building's website.

• Secret Service paid $12,000 for tents, portable toilets, light towers, and golf carts during Trump's Super Bowl weekend trip to Mar-a-Lago.

From his 3 marriages, Trump has 5 kids, ages; 38, 34, 32, 22 and 10. They all get security. Do we pay to guard his grandkids too? It could end up costing a billion to protect Trump and his family.

The parents and siblings of the President are entitled to Secret Service protection but can decline it. Jimmy Carter's mother Lillian and his brother Billy declined it, so did Roger Clinton. Nixon paid for his own private guards though he was entitled to Secret Service. Barbara Bush declined protection when she left the White House.

"Four days before leaving office, President Bush signed a directive authorizing the Secret Service to provide a period of extended protection for his daughters Jenna and Barbara." They were 28 years old at the time.

The Secret Service also investigates fraud, counterfeiting, cyber investigations and other financial crimes. Beats me, why they do that. The history of the Secret Service is here.

The Secret Service, according to their website, protects:

• The President of the United States
• The Vice President of the United States
• The President’s and Vice President’s immediate families
• Former Presidents, their spouses and their minor children under the age of 16
• Foreign heads of state and their spouses visiting the United States
• Major presidential and vice presidential candidates and their spouses
• Events designated as National Special Security Events by the Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

I don’t begrudge protecting the office of the President. We actually don’t pay them much, and I think (I’m not certain) that unlike Congress, they have to pay for their health care when they leave office, though they keep their plan.

They also give up their lives and normalcy (most of them) for the time that they serve the country in the office of the President. Their families do as well. So, I want them protected. I want them to have the best protection available.

But I want them to be respectful of their position, and not take advantage of taxpayers. Perhaps they could keep travel to a minimum? Use places like Camp David for meetings, which are easier to secure and cheaper to travel to. And perhaps they could not go to four places at once? Or maybe the Russians could kick in and pay for part of Trumps security.

All of this expense is why elections matter, in case anyone thought they didn’t. A lot of Trump voters may be dismayed to learn that the jobs he is creating right now are 1,000 new Secret Security jobs. To cover his family while they gad about on business adventures. Including Trump at #Mosk-Ow-Lago.

This is why the framers of our Constitution wrote in elections for Congress every 2 years. To give voters a voice. Well, start practicing your scales and warming up your voices so that they can be heard in the 2018 elections.

You don’t even have to wait that long. Several states have elections this year, 2017, for state and local offices. This is where we can make a great start in having our voices heard. Check 90for90 for candidates coming to an area near you.

Don’t forget that we are the UNITED States of America, so what happens in Virginia, New Jersey, Mississippi, and Louisiana matter in Michigan, Tennessee, Oregon and every other state. Let’s make our voices heard, not with a whisper, but with a scream.

It's not hard to find cracks in the system in need of fixing -- like this Secret Service security gap

by Ken

Sure, I'm still processing, even though I think I was reasonably well prepared intellectually for an election outcome similar to what actually happened. My first thought: Now we know who will appoint -- subject to confirmation by a still-Republican-controlled Senate -- at least two new Supreme Court justices: replacements not just for Antonin Scalia but for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and possibly for Anthony Kennedy and/or Stephen Breyer as well. (Yes, I'm steamed that "Miss Mitch" McConnell and Company won their extra-constitutional gamble in refusing to consider the Garland nomination. Now, alas, there's nothing for it but to hope that this gambit can be made to come back and bite their smelly butts.)

But for now, I don't want to go there. I'm going to try to think, well, not optimistically, but (let's say) within the realm of possibility. Let's say that President Trump really means to begin repairing our broken system. The Washington Post's Joe Davidson, whose "Federal Insider" beat is the seamy underbelly of the federal government, sensibly had one such instance ready to roll today regardless of the election outcome, under the headline "Secret Service IT management slammed following Chaffetz breach" (links onsite):

Now that the votes are in and the presidential campaign is done, the Secret Service can close an incredibly busy election season.

Perhaps it can turn some of that energy to protecting its computer systems, which suffer from neglect, ignorance and bad management, according to a watchdog’s report.

The report by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) at the Department of Homeland Security is related to the agency’s breach and leak of personal information belonging to Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) last year. That was another in a string of embarrassments for a law enforcement agency that has had such a proud tradition.

A 2015 OIG investigation found that 45 employees got into Chaffetz’s 2003 Secret Service job application. Only four had a legitimate need, leaving the rest in violation of the Privacy Act and agency policies. The file snooping began minutes after Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, opened a hearing into allegations of agents’ misconduct.

Chaffetz said the current report, issued last month, shows that “despite past warnings, USSS [U.S. Secret Service] is still unable to assure us their IT systems are safe.” In a letter to Inspector General John Roth, Chaffetz also said the discipline for some agents in his case “is not adequate to deter similar behavior in the future” and asked Roth to continue his investigation.

The October report goes well beyond the Chaffetz case and dissects the agency’s information technology operation in scathing particulars.

Summing up the report, the inspector general’s office offered this mouthful: The “audit uncovers a myriad of problems with Secret Service’s IT management including inadequate system security plans, systems with expired authorities to operate, inadequate access and audit controls, noncompliance with logical access requirements, inadequate privacy protections, and over-retention of records. The OIG concluded that Secret Service’s IT management was ineffective because Secret Service has historically not given it priority. The Secret Service CIO’s [Chief Information Officer] Office lacked authority, inadequate attention was given to updating IT policies, and Secret Service personnel were not given adequate training regarding IT security and privacy.”

The Secret Service agreed with the report’s 11 recommendations, even though officials believe it does not reflect the agency’s recent IT progress. In a memorandum responding to the report, Secret Service Director Joseph P. Clancy noted last year’s hiring of retired Marine Brig. Gen. Kevin Nally as CIO and “the sweeping and unprecedented improvements” under his leadership.

THERE'S ONE OBVIOUS CAVEAT TO THE ABOVE

Of course the "Chaffetz breach" became an issue, to the extent that it became an issue, almost entirely because in this instance the victim of governmental abuse was not just a right-winger but a far-far-right-winger and the loudest of loudmouths (maybe somebody out there can help? I'm racking my brain for a kinder and gentler term than "crackpot") as well. I think it's safe to say that such instances have been overwhelmingly the exception even in a Democratic administration. Projecting ahead to a federal government staffed with Trump appointees . . . well, you can finish that sentence for yourself. And with a Republican Congress still in charge -- and overseen by people we know only too well -- it's hard to imagine much impulse to reforms that would clamp down on all governmental abuses.

Then again, maybe the president-elect is serious about fixing our broken system. (Did I hear somebody laugh? Or was that crying?)


COMING UP FRIDAY --

For my next post, I promise one with (almost) no reference at all to the election or the present political mess. It's something I had in mind for today, but I thought we needed to do a smidge of transitioning.

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Breaking news from "In the Loop": "No, Secret Service agents don’t think jokes at their expense are funny"

by Ken

Why, who'd-a thunk it? As the Washington Post's Colby Itkowitz sums up her "In the Loop" report (which ran under the head I've put in the title of this post): "Seems even the toughest guys have a sensitive side."

"The Secret Service has received a lot of bad press lately," Colby begins that report. "And they apparently have a pretty thin skin about it."

At the annual Gridiron Club dinner earlier this month, an elite affair bringing together Washington journalists and the politicians they cover, no one was spared from ridicule — including Secret Service agents, recently exposed by our colleague Carol Leonnig for possibly driving drunk onto the White House complex, the latest in a string of embarrassing incidents.

The agents in attendance were not amused.

In a letter obtained by the Loop to Gridiron President Clarence Page, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, the trade association that represents the Secret Service let known its displeasure.

The Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association “understands a good joke,” wrote Jon Adler, the group’s president. “But the jokes concerning the Secret Service’s recent issues came off lowbrow and unappreciated by our Members working at the dinner.”

He took specific umbrage to Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe asking if there were any Secret Service officers “sober enough to drive me home.” Adler said McAuliffe should think about that comment the next time he visits the White House and sees agents putting “their lives on the line to protect and serve the President and the American people.”

In addition to politician standup routines, reporters perform skits complete with parody songs. The letter did not reference the Secret Service number “We’re Not Watching You,” to the tune of the Police’s “Every Breath You Take.” There was a mock White House fence with a big ‘Welcome’ sign, male reporters dressed as Colombian prostitutes and a drone flying above.

Adler chided reporters in attendance — who “make a living off of news stories about the Secret Service and other federal agencies” — for lacking good sense.

“But apparently, good sense didn’t exist at the dinner that night making the entire event, as advertised, a complete joke,” he wrote.

Page responded, also in a letter obtained by the Loop, apologizing for “any hard feelings it caused,” but that the jokes about the Secret Service were all in good fun.

“We poke fun at newsmakers and newsgatherers, but always, as our motto says, in a manner that will ‘singe, not burn’,” Page wrote. He closed the letter by thanking  the agents for their service.

Good answer, Gridiron President Clarence P! "Singe, not burn" -- okay! From Colby's account, the Gridiron comedy material did seem designed to singe.

You don't suppose, though, that Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association President Jon Adler hasn't heard about the pile-up of incidents of Secret Service agents doing something other than putting "their lives on the line to protect and serve the President and the American people"? Some of those incidents admittedly have a certain crudely comical side, but on the whole the news being made by the Secret Service in recent years is, really and truly, not all that humorous either.

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At least the Secret Service is aiming to become more media-savvy

"The Media Relations course prepares executives for television and radio interviews, and encounters with the media on routine matters as well as during crisis situations. . . ."

-- from the Secret Service's posted brief for media consultants

by Ken

As we all know, the U.S. Secret Service has of late had more than its share, or at least way more than it would like, of media attention to its boys-will-be-boys agents. Now we don't know for sure that no effort has been made to explore and remediate the behavior of its boys, but we do know that another apparently crucial aspect of the agency's media-relations problem is being addressed. And not a moment too soon.

Earlier today washingtonpost.com reported (links onsite):

Secret Service seeking media relations trainers

By Carol D. Leonnig, Tuesday, May 13, 11:29 AM

The U.S. Secret Service is looking for a few good people — to train them in how to handle the press.

The elite law enforcement agency has been beset by bad news over the past two years, including several incidents of agent misconduct, questions about whether the service is suffering a leadership failure and a heap of congressional investigations.

The agency has been trying to recover from a series of unflattering reports since 2012, when a dozen agents were implicated in bringing prostitutes to their hotel while on a presidential trip to Cartagena, Colombia. This week, The Washington Post revealed that agents protecting the White House perimeter were ordered to abandon their posts for at least two months in 2011 to help provide security for the Secret Service director’s friend, an assignment they called “Operation Moonlight.”

But also this week, the agency finalized its request for media consultants to help the agency’s top leaders get more comfortable with answering reporters’ questions, appearing on television and generally handling media attention.

The Secret Service issued its request for price quotes and proposals from media advisers May 2, and explained its request in more detail Monday. That was the same day the Secret Service was answering questions concerning revelations about Operation Moonlight, and the media reported that Director Julia Pierson was calling for the agency’s inspector general to fully investigate the allegations to ensure public trust in the service.

The agency’s search for media consultants emphasizes its wish for a media relations training course that would be provided to up to 30 top agency leaders each year, in a contract that could last five years. It was first reported by Time magazine early Tuesday.

The posting describes what the agency wants for its media classes: “The Media Relations course prepares executives for television and radio interviews, and encounters with the media on routine matters as well as during crisis situations. The executive becomes more comfortable as they learn how to conduct themselves during interviews and press conferences and giving speeches, and deal with both positive and negative subjects as they learn the fundamentals of media and techniques. The course exposes the executive to the media environment – microphones, lights, cameras, tape recorders, news media personalities and their questions, so that they become more accustomed to that scene. In turn, they become more confident and less apprehensive in addition to becoming better prepared for an event with what they can say, and how they should say it.”

No, please don't send your résumés here. Just follow the appropriate links to the actual posting. Meanwhile, it's comforting to know that we can look foward to Secret Service personnel eing "more confident and less apprehensive in addition to becoming better prepared for an event with what they can say, and how they should say."

(I would say "how they should say it" (emphasis added), but maybe that's just me.


I'm not the media guy, but while it's probably OK media-wise that the Secret Service guys aren't smiling for the camera (that might send out the wrong signal), do we really want all those bald agents? Is that really media-savvy? And should we be having pictures where the Secret Service guy looks like twice the size of the president? Is this good for morale?

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E. J. Dionne Jr. nails the issue of the "right" to carry weapons in the vicinity of the president (PLUS: Harold Meyerson on the shrunken GOP)

Mark Streeter in the Savannah Morning News

"The simple fact is that an armed citizenry is not the basis for our freedoms. Our freedoms rest on a moral consensus, enshrined in law, that in a democratic republic we work out our differences through reasoned, and sometimes raucous, argument. Free elections and open debate are not rooted in violence or the threat of violence. They are precisely the alternative to violence, and guns have no place in them. . . .

"Will some group of responsible conservatives, preferably life members of the NRA, have the decency to urge their followers to leave their guns at home when they go out to protest the president? Is that too much to ask?"

-- E. J. Dionne Jr., in his Washington Post column
today, "Leave The Guns At Home"

by Ken

During the eight unrelentingly lawless years of the Bush regime, at almost every turn developments cried out for a round of "If the shoe were on the other foot." And now that the soldiers of the Bush crime machine are mostly purged from the government bunkers they befouled those eight years (there are still holdovers reporting for work daily, aren't there?), though not yet in the prison cells where most of them belong, the craziness they fostered has only gotten crazier.

I've been on online listservs where people are in shock over the absence of a deafening uproar at the right-wing scumbaggers -- oops, I meant teabaggers -- who have taken to making a show of carrying weapons to the sites of presidential appearances, living up to their calling as totalitarian thugs and anti-democratic intimidators. And I have to say, my shocked colleagues have a point. Where is the outrage? Can you imagine the Bush-Cheney security apparatus allowing anyone with a weapon in the same county as one of their officials?

As I argued recently, the chances that this is what the original intenders of the Constitution had in mind with the Second Amendment seem to me nonexistent. The current extremist majority on the Supreme Court -- a majority, that is, when poor Justice Anthony Kennedy blows their way -- may have had its reasons for wishing to unleash a wave of political-gang violence in the country, but those reasons have nothing to do with the U.S. Constitution, whether read literally or seen through the prism of "original intent."

At the president's appearance in Phoenix Monday

One day a Supreme Court majority made up of sane people who know how to read will undo the mischief of the radical anti-constitutionalists of the Roberts Court and correct their fundamental misreading of the Second Amendment, which addresses the need for "a well-regulated militia," a need that is now met by our rather sizable standing armed forces as well as the states' National Guards. Those future justices will probably be too polite to inquire how five of their predecessors managed to get their heads wedged so far up their butts, but they may well point to the incitement to civilian violence laid by their Far Right activism, and wonder how the provocations and intimidation of the scumbaggers related to the need for a well-regulated militia.

People are pointing a finger at the Secret Service, which is unfair. I can't imagine they're happy about the presence of guns where they're on the job, but I'm guessing they're voicing their displeasure as forcefully as they can. A comparison with Bush-Cheney security is unfair, because the Bush regime clearly had the security apparatus of any totalitarian regime, which proceeds from the generally well-founded assumption that it has enemies everywhere.

Of course there was never much reporting on the Bush-Cheney security operation. I expect that any reporter enterprising enough to try to report on the subject would have had it made clear that doing so would have been regarded as a breach of national security and would have been dealt with accordingly. Nevertheless, we got occasional glimpses of the scope and thoroughness of the operation, like when people were thrown out of gatherings -- and even roughed up and arrested -- for wearing unsupportive T-shirts, or when Chimpy the Prez traveled, and it seemed as if entire countries had to be displaced to provide a large enough security perimeter for the Tiny One.

All of which is a prelude to calling the Washington Post's E. J. Dionne Jr. to the witness stand. Boy, did he nail this in his column today:

Leave The Guns At Home

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Try a thought experiment: What would conservatives have said if a group of loud, scruffy leftists had brought guns to the public events of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush?

How would our friends on the right have reacted to someone at a Reagan or a Bush speech carrying a sign that read: "It is time to water the tree of liberty"? That would be a reference to Thomas Jefferson's declaration that the tree "must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Pardon me, but I don't think conservatives would have spoken out in defense of the right of every American Marxist to bear arms or to shed the blood of tyrants.

In fact, the Bush folks didn't like any dissent at all. Recall the 2004 incident in which a distraught mother whose son was killed in Iraq was arrested for protesting at a rally in New Jersey for first lady Laura Bush. The detained woman wasn't even armed. Maybe if she had been carrying, the gun lobby would have defended her.

The Obama White House purports to be open to the idea of guns outside the president's appearances. "There are laws that govern firearms that are done state or locally," Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, said on Tuesday. "Those laws don't change when the president comes to your state or locality."

Gibbs made you think of the old line about the liberal who is so open-minded he can't even take his own side in an argument.

What needs to be addressed is not the legal question but the message that the gun-toters are sending.

This is not about the politics of populism. It's about the politics of the jackboot. It's not about an opposition that has every right to free expression. It's about an angry minority engaging in intimidation backed by the threat of violence.

There is a philosophical issue here that gets buried under the fear that so many politicians and media-types have of seeming to be out of touch with the so-called American heartland.

The simple fact is that an armed citizenry is not the basis for our freedoms. Our freedoms rest on a moral consensus, enshrined in law, that in a democratic republic we work out our differences through reasoned, and sometimes raucous, argument. Free elections and open debate are not rooted in violence or the threat of violence. They are precisely the alternative to violence, and guns have no place in them.

On the contrary, violence and the threat of violence have always been used by those who wanted to bypass democratic procedures and the rule of law. Lynching was the act of those who refused to let the legal system do its work. Guns were used on election days in the Deep South during and after Reconstruction to intimidate black voters and take control of state governments.

Yes, I have raised the racial issue, and it is profoundly troubling that firearms should begin to appear with some frequency at a president's public events only now, when the president is black. Race is not the only thing at stake here, and I have no knowledge of the personal motivations of those carrying the weapons. But our country has a tortured history on these questions, and we need to be honest about it. Those with the guns should know what memories they are stirring.

And will someone please tell the armed demonstrators how foolish and lawless they make our country look in the eyes of so much of the world? Are we not the country that urges other nations to see the merits of the ballot over the bullet?

All this is taking place as the country debates the president's health-care proposal. There is much that is disturbing in that discussion. Shouting down speakers is never a good thing, and many lies are being told about the contents of the health-care bills. The lies should be confronted, but freedom involves a lot of commotion and an open contest of ideas, even when some of the parties say things that aren't true and act in less than civil ways.

Yet if we can't draw the line at the threat of violence, democracy begins to disintegrate. Power, not reason, becomes the stuff of political life. Will some group of responsible conservatives, preferably life members of the NRA, have the decency to urge their followers to leave their guns at home when they go out to protest the president? Is that too much to ask?

Dionne is a fine and sensible writer whose regular columnizing efforts become all the more important as the Post's editorial pages become more and more overwhelmingly right-wing. Some days, though, he rises above and beyond. Here he has tackled a Big Subject head-on, and done it about as well as I can imagine it being done.

POSTSCRIPT: HAROLD MEYERSON IN TOP FORM SAYS
YOU CAN'T MAKE A DEAL WITH THE SHRUNKEN GOP

"In its ideological uniformity, today's GOP looks -- O, the irony -- more like a classic European party than an American one."

-- Harold Meyerson, in his WaPo column today,

"Lincoln's Prophecy for the GOP"

Is Thursday "Let's Let Loose the Lefties" Day at WaPo OpEd? My guy Harold Meyerson has a really terrific column on the geographically and ideologically shrunken GOP. He starts by noting Senate Finance Committee ranking Republican Chuck Grassley's unexpectedly frank admission that he won't support any health care proposal that doesn't "find a broad base of support within the Republican Party," and wonders:

Why, then, does Max Baucus, the committee's Democratic chairman, persist in the charade of bipartisan negotiations with Grassley? Does he -- does anybody -- really believe that a Republican Party so deeply invested in defeating President Obama's campaign for health-care reform is open to a scaled-down version that Obama can still claim as a victory?

Meyerson takes a hard look at the consequences for American governance:

Republican ideology has shrunk alongside its geography and demographics. Where once its view of the role of government ran the gamut from Rockefeller activism to Goldwater libertarianism, today the party largely adheres to the religiosity and the anti-statism of the white South. (In its ideological uniformity, today's GOP looks -- O, the irony -- more like a classic European party than an American one.)

In short, the Republican Party with which Democrats could make deals no longer exists. The GOP is too narrow; the gap between the parties, too wide. Our politics are not those of the mid-20th century, when bipartisanship was fairly common. If anything, they're more like those of the mid-19th century, before the Civil War, when North and South combined only to make a house divided against itself -- a conflict resolved not by compromise, but, as Lincoln predicted, by a nation then half-slave and half-free becoming "all one thing or all the other."

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