Figuring Out Trump (But Not Really) Plus-- All The President's Taxes

 

While I was working on this post, the NY Times dropped the bombshell opus on Trump's taxes. Who better than Dorothy Reik, President of the Progressive Democrats of the Santa Monica Mountains, to deal with the fact that Donald pays less in taxes than the millions of people who are unemployed due to his criminal mishandling of the pandemic? So... ladies first:

All The President's Taxes
-by Dorothy Reik

Just as I was trying to wrap my head around the two latest books exposing the criminal in the White House, White House, Inc. by Dan Alexander and Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World by Tom Burgis, an alert popped up on my phone from the NY Times. They had the goods-- the tax records Donald Trump has been hiding for the last two decades.

He is right about one thing-- he is under audit and has been for years-- over a tax deduction he took-- $72.9 million-- for abandoning his losing casinos but the deduction is illegal of he received anything in return and he did. The payback to the American taxpayers is over $100M. But the big headline is that Trump paid only $750 in taxes in the year he was elected and the year after. Everyone understands that! And for ten years he paid NO taxes due to a $900 million loss which he was able to "carry forward" for ten years.

Digging further we learn-- as I posited years ago-- that he is cozying up to tyrannical murderers because he has investments in their countries to protect-- the Philippines, Turkey and India are cited in this first installment. I wrote then that he also covets beach front properties in North Korea-- which he admitted. This is the most chilling yet least surprising revelation. The NY Times promises to dribble out more during the weeks to come a la the Hillary emails project.

Another fun fact is that he deducted "consulting fees" for projects that required no such services. The exact amounts of the deductions showed up in Ivanka's financial statements even though she was employed by the entity taking the deduction. My friend just called to suggest Ivanka and Jared head to temple early to start atoning but I think their sins call for a walk to the sea.

They should start now. It's a long walk from their mansion. Whether the Atlantic is big enough to wash away their sins is a question for Jewish scholars. How they allowed Ivanka to convert is another one.

More fun-- entities looking to do business with the government are renting space in Donald's office buildings in Manhattan and San Francisco. They are getting contracts worth many multiples of the rent they are paying.

Donald also has about $400 million in personally guaranteed loans coming due in the next four years and the gravy train of payouts from The Apprentice has stopped.  When asked about the report at his press conference the Donald labeled it "fake news" and walked off.

Maybe Chris Wallace needs to reconsider his questions for Tuesday.

Cousins? Distant

Louisiana is number 1. Louisiana has the most cases per million residents (35,262) in the U.S.-- which is also more than any country in the world, other than make-believe countries like Qatar and Arbua. In 2016 Trump won big in Louisiana-- 1,178,638 (58.1%) to 780,154 (38.4%). Of Louisiana's 64 parishes, Trump won 54. And in those 54 parishes, the folks heard Trump call the pandemic a hoax and they heard him belting people who wear masks or who practice social distancing. The worst hit county in the parish in the state is Jefferson-- Trump territory. It's mostly white and Trump beat Hillary there 55.3% to 40.5%. Jefferson Parish has 17,459 cases... but every single parish in the state has cases. Some are spiking very badly now. On Friday Caddo, Lincoln, Lafayette and West Feliciana led the way in new cases. Hillary won 50% of the votes in Caddo but those are parishes... Trump country.

Though the state elected a Democratic governor-- his election and reelection were outliers. The state Senate consists of 27 Republicans and 12 Democrats. The state House consists of 68 Republicans, 35 Democrats and 2 independents. The Louisiana Democratic Party is a hot mess. Yesterday PBS broadcast a focus on how the party is struggling to stay relevant.

Natasha Williams from Louisiana Public Broadcasting explains that rural voters are Trump's base in the state. "The Democrats," she said, "basically have lost a lot of the rural voters because in their estimation, rural voters feel like the Democratic Party has gone too big. They've gone to big city politics and they basically deal with issues that don't pertain to rural voters."

The Trumpist Secretary of State attempted to promulgate rules that would make it harder-- and in some cases impossible-- for voters to vote by mail. He was shot down by a federal judge who, said Williams, "stopped just short of saying that this was a political move and we are going to not put people in danger while politics kind of rears its ugly head in mail-in voting as well."

Louisiana is very concerned about healthcare and jobs. Education is also a big deal here. A lot of folks are really kind of struggling with the pandemic. You know, how do I pay my bills? How do my kids get a good education? How will I maintain and get what I need for my family?

...[I]n New Orleans in fact, even though we're in phase three, a lot of New Orleans is still closed down. The governor has been very sensitive to the fact that people want to go back to work. We need to open our economy. But also gauging those numbers, watching those numbers. And anywhere you go, you see evidence that the state is trying to indicate to you, we're not out of the woods yet. We need to do what we can to kind of, you know, keep that curve going in the right direction.

The only current polling I've seen in Louisiana was about oil ad gas drilling but they did ask some election questions. Trump's approval has fallen by 10 points, although it's still 51% approve/45 disapprove. And when they asked who people will vote for-- 48% Trump, 42% Biden, a serious erosion for Trump since 2016.

How could that be happening? Andrew Sullivan had an idea about how, generally speaking, on his blog last night. He compared Trump-- a would-be tyrant-- to Shakespeare’s fictional Richard III. "Denial. Avoidance. Distraction. Willful ignorance. These are all essential to enabling a tyrant’s rise," wrote Sullivan. "And keeping this pattern going is Richard’s profound grasp of the power of shock. He does and says the unexpected and unthinkable in order to stun his opponents into a kind of dazed passivity. It’s this capacity to keep you on your heels, to keep disorienting you with the unacceptable (which is then somehow accepted), that marks a tyrant’s relentless drive. He does this by instinct. He craves chaos, lies, suspense, surprises-- not because he’s a genius, but because stability threatens his psyche. He cannot rest. He is not in control of himself. And whenever the dust settles, as it were, he has to disturb it again.

This is what we’ve been dealing with in the figure of Donald Trump now for five years, and it is absurd to believe that a duly conducted election is going to end it. I know, I know. I’m hysterical and over-the-top and a victim of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Trump is simply too incompetent and too lazy to be an actual tyrant, I’m constantly scolded. He’s just baiting me again. And so on. But what I think this otherwise salient critique misses is that tyranny is not, in its essence, about the authoritarian and administrative skills required to run a country effectively for a long time. Tyrants, after all, are often terrible at this. It is rather about a mindset, as the ancient philosophers understood, with obvious political consequences. It’s a pathology. It requires no expertise in anything other than itself.

You need competence if you want to run an effective government, or plan a regular campaign, or master policy with a view to persuading people, or hold power for the sake of something else. You need competence to create and sustain something. But you do not need much competence to destroy things. You just need the will. And this is what tyrants do: they destroy things. Richard III ruled for two short years, ending in his own death in battle, and a ruined country.

This is Trump’s threat. Not the construction of a viable one-party state, but the destruction of practices, norms, civility, laws, customs and procedures that constitute liberal democracy’s non-zero-sum genius. He doesn’t need to be competent to destroy our system of government. He merely needs to be himself: an out-of-control, trust-free, malignant narcissist, with inexhaustible resources of psychic compulsion, in a pluralist system designed for the opposite. All you need is an insatiable pathological drive to avoid any constraint on your own behavior, and the demagogic genius to carry a critical mass of people with you, and our system, designed as the antidote to tyranny, is soon unspooling into incoherence, deadlock, and collapse.

I’m told he’s been ineffective even as a tyrant, so no worries. To which I can only say: really? Once you realize he doesn’t give a shit about any actual policies, apart from doing all he can to wipe the legacy of Barack Obama from planet earth, he’s been pretty competent. Note how he turned Congressional subpoenas into toilet paper; how he crippled and muzzled the Mueller inquiry; how he installed a crony at the Department of Justice to pursue his political enemies and shield him from the law; how effectively he stymied impeachment; how he cucked every previous Republican opponent; how he helped destroy the credibility of news sources that oppose him; how he filled his cabinet with acting secretaries and flunkies; how he declared fake emergencies to claim the power of the purse assigned to the Congress; and how he has reshaped the Supreme Court with potentially three new Justices, whom he sees solely as his loyal stooges if he comes up against the rule of law.

And gotten away with all of it!

In protecting his own power over others, he has been as competent as hell. Imagine where we’d be in four more years. Despite a mountain of criticism, he has not conceded a single error, withdrawn a single statement, or acknowledged a single lie. His party lost the mid-terms, but seriously, what difference did that make? His control of the Republican party, and his cult-like grip on the base, has never been greater than now. Yes, he has said and done racially polarizing things-- but the joke is he may yet have more support from blacks and Latinos in 2020 than he did in 2016. Think of his greatest policy failures: the appalling loss of life in the Covid epidemic and the collapse of law and order in the cities. Now recall that on February 1 of this year, Trump was at 43.4 percent approval; 200,000 deaths later, and the wreckage from Seattle to Portland to Minneapolis, and his approval today is at 43.1 percent.

This is, of course, not enough to win re-election. And Trump has no interest in broadening his appeal, because it would dilute the tribalism he feeds off. So he has made it abundantly clear that if the results of the election show him the loser, he will not accept them. Simple, really. He said this in 2016, of course, refusing to honor the result in advance. But this year, he has stumbled upon something quite marvelous for his purposes. Because of Covid19, it is likely that mail-in ballots will be far higher in number than before, and, as Barton Gellman has shown in this essential new piece, this gives Trump an opportunity he has instinctively seized. He has been saying for months now that: “MAIL-IN VOTING WILL LEAD TO MASSIVE FRAUD AND ABUSE... WE CAN NEVER LET THIS TRAGEDY BEFALL OUR GREAT NATION.” In late summer, Gellman noted, Trump was making this argument four times a day: “Very dangerous for our country.” “A catastrophe.” “The greatest rigged election in history.” He is telling us loud and clear that, if he has anything to do with it, this election will not be decided at the ballot box, but at the Supreme Court, which he expects to control.

...All he wants is chaos, because in chaos, the strong leader wins. Would he incite violence on his behalf if the votes seem to be drifting away from him? You bet he would. Would he urge his supporters to physically prevent ballot-counting? He already has. Would he try to corral Republican state legislators to back him in electing electors? Gellman has sources. Would he take this country to the brink of civil conflict? Way past it. Will anyone in the GOP do anything to stop him? We know the answer to that already. If they cannot condemn him this week, when would they? And he will do all this not out of some strategic calculation or tactical skill but because he cannot do anything else. He is psychologically incapable of conceding anything. And he has no understanding of collateral damage because his narcissism precludes it.

Last Chance To Beat Tyranny-- And About A Third Of The Country Is On Tyranny's Side-- Just Like In The Revolutionary War

On Sunday, Robert Reich’s column in The Guardian emphasized that we— the U.S, the world— need urgent action to defeat the would-be tyrant, but wonders of the Democrats are up to the task. He asks his readers to imagine an opposition political party in a land being taken over by an oligarchy, headed by a would-be tyrant. The tyrant and the oligarchy have convinced many voters the reason they feel powerless and economically insecure isn’t because the oligarchy has taken most of the economic gains and overwhelmed the government with its money. It’s because the country has been taken over by undocumented migrants, Latinos, African Americans and a ‘deep state’ of coastal liberals, intelligence agencies and mainstream media.”

He doesn’t refer to these voters as morons but does call the propaganda they’re buying into as “rubbish” and makes the excuse that the tyrant “is masterful at telling big lies and he is backed by the oligarchy’s money.”

Imagine further that the opposition party will soon face another election in which it could possibly depose the tyrant and overcome the oligarchy. But at the rate they are consolidating power— over the courts, politics and the media— this could be the opposition’s last chance.

What would it do?

Would it allow virtually anyone to seek to be the party’s candidate for president (and gain valuable brand recognition along the way), including spiritual gurus, one-issue entrepreneurs and minor elected officials who have never even run for state office?

I doubt it. The party would establish criteria to filter out those who had no real chance.

Would it let almost every one of them go on television to debate one other, thereby placing a premium on one-line zingers, fast talk and rapid-fire putdowns? Would it assign them randomly to one of two nights, so several candidates with the most support would not even get to debate one other?

Of course not. Instead, it would take the half-dozen who had the best chance and structure the debates so they could demonstrate their understanding of the issues and the forcefulness of their ideas in lengthy back-and-forth exchanges.

Would it encourage them to split the party over policy issues that almost no one understands, such as the meaning of “Medicare for all,” thereby causing some voters to become alarmed about a government takeover of the healthcare system and others to worry the government won’t go far enough?

No. It would encourage the candidates to emphasize the larger goal, in this case to provide health insurance to everyone, and have them explain that a so-called “public option” to buy into Medicare would eventually displace for-profit private insurers anyway, because it would be so much cheaper.

Would it let any of this deflect attention from the tyrant keeping children in cages at the border, coddling foreign dictators and inviting them to help him in the next election, shattering alliances with other democracies, using his office to make money for himself and his family, lying non-stop, subsidizing fossil fuels and downplaying climate change, claiming the media is guilty of treason, and undermining other democratic institutions and norms?

Of course not. Although it would want its candidates to float some ambitious and sensible proposals that would get people hopeful about the future, it would also want them to keep attention on what the tyrant was doing and the dangers he posed.

Finally, given the extraordinarily high stakes in the upcoming election, would it decide on its candidate in much the same way it has done in the recent past— solely on the basis of who can attract the most primary voters and caucus attenders?

No. It would have its eye on the general election. It would be thinking strategically about how to attract voters in places the tyrant won in the last election but could swing back. In America, that would be Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and North Carolina.

This doesn’t mean it would support a “moderate” or “centrist” candidate. These terms mean little in a land succumbing to tyranny and oligarchy.

It would do best with a candidate able to create a multiracial coalition to fight the tyrant and his oligarchy— a coalition combining poor, working class and middle class whites, blacks and Latinos.

It would need a candidate who could explain how the tyrant uses racism and xenophobia to divide and conquer, turning the majority against each other. A candidate who could help people understand that a necessary part of fighting tyranny is fighting racism, and a requisite for fighting inequality is reversing climate change. A candidate who could unite the country around an agenda of robust democracy and shared prosperity.

This may sound fanciful but the challenge is real and the Democratic party must meet it over the next 17 months.

What may be fanciful is that today’s Democratic party has the power to select its candidate in the ways I’ve suggested.

Yet the stakes in the 2020 election are larger than any election in living memory. The Democrats’ selection of a candidate therefore is no ordinary thing. In a very real sense, the fates of America and the world depend on it.

The question is whether the Democratic party is up to the task.

And we won the Revolutionary War... probably a harder, move dangerous and more arduous task. Right? (I'm not sure.)

Do You Wish Philip K. Dick Was Still Around To Write About Señor Trumpanzee? So Does Alan Grayson

Robert Reich's video about the 7 signs of tyranny appears to be tailor-made to explain the first six months of Trumpism. Newsweek ran an OpEd by Reich putting it into some kind of context this week:

It seems an eternity ago but it was only last Tuesday night when Donald Trump addressed a joint session of Congress and stuck to the teleprompter without going off the deep end-- eliciting rapturous praise from the media.

“Donald Trump at his most presidential,“gushed NBC; “a recitation of hopes and dreams for the nation,” oozed NPR; “the most presidential speech Mr. Trump has ever given-- delivered at precisely the moment he needed to project sobriety, seriousness of purpose and self-discipline,” raved the New York Times; “he did something tonight that you cannot take away from him. He became president of the United States,” rhapsodized CNN’s Van Jones.

The bar was so low that all Trump needed to do was not sound nuts and he was “presidential.”

But that all ended Saturday morning when the old Trump-- the “birther,” the hatemonger, the thin-skinned paranoid, the liar, the reckless ranter, the vindictive narcissist, the whack-o conman-- reemerged in a series of unprecedented and unverified accusations about his predecessor.

In truth, the old Trump was there all along, and he will always be there. He’s unhinged and dangerous. The sooner congressional Republicans accept this, and take action to remove him-- whether through impeachment or the 25th Amendment-- the better for all of us.

Reich used the word "conman" to describe Trump. Alan Grayson likened him to "a crap artist," namely a Philip K. Dick character, in an e-mail to his supporters yesterday.

Does Donald Trump actually believe all the stupid things he says?

My favorite author is Philip K. Dick, and I think that Dick can shed some light on this. Lots of Dick’s work has been made into science fiction blockbuster movies:

Blade Runner, Total Recall, Screamers, Impostor, Minority Report, Paycheck, A Scanner Darkly, Next, and Radio Free Albemuth.

Philip Dick’s Man in the High Castle is Amazon’s most popular original show, and Hollywood is putting the finishing touches on Blade Runner 2049, the Blade Runner sequel.

Philip Dick also wrote lots of “straight” fiction, not science fiction. It was not well-received. Every single one of Dick’s “straight” novels was rejected for publication during his lifetime, except one. The only one that saw the light of day while Dick himself saw the light of day was called Confessions of a Crap Artist.

Jack Isidore, the soi-disant crap artist in Confessions of a Crap Artist, actually isn’t such a bad person. He simply is incapable of distinguishing between fact and fiction. His BS meter is permanently broken. He doesn’t know what passes the smell test; he has no nose for it. He wasn’t born yesterday, he was born like an hour ago. Think of him as Captain Credulity.

Because he is the way he is, there is a very good chance that whatever Jack Isidore tells you is wrong. And everyone in his life knows it.

The saddest thing is that Jack himself has no idea that he’s such a fool. He believes whatever is coming out of his mouth, true or false. Even though no one else does. Everyone else in his life has to wrestle with the truth, but Jack is blissfully excused from that burden.

Is he a liar? Not exactly. The French have a term for someone like this: barjo. In fact, the one Dick novel deemed worthy of being made into a French film was this one, entitled Confessions d’un Barjo.

Philip Dick foresaw that we might one day have a simulacrum as President (The Mold of Yancy, The Penultimate Truth), but he failed to predict that we would have a crap artist as President.

With Jack Isidore in mind, I don’t think that you can depict “President” Trump as the proverbial turd-in-the-punchbowl like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, who force-fed nonsense to Trump (and millions of other marks) for decades, like geese soon to be pate de fois gras. Look at O’Reilly when he’s conveying some huge whopper. He has a “tell.” A little smile plays over his lips. He knows when he’s flinging cow pies at you.

And Trump? Maybe not. This is a man whose first political act was to take out a full-page ad in the New York Daily News demanding the execution of the “Central Park Five,” five men charged with the assault and rape of a Central Park jogger, all of whom were completely exonerated when the real attacker confessed and his DNA matched what was found at the crime scene. (Note to Donald: the Constitution prohibits the death penalty for all crimes other than first-degree murder and treason, but that’s beside the point. The point is that you fell for it.)

Remember that Trump first came to national political attention by arguing incessantly (and hiring investigators to try to prove) that President Obama was born in Kenya, and therefore ineligible to be President. As if those two different birth announcements in Honolulu newspapers as well as Daddy Obama’s contemporaneous immigration file (not to mention the Obama birth certificate), meant nothing. [Footnote: One of my relatives, a Fox News addict, recently tried to convince me that Obama was born in Kenya. I mentioned the birth announcements. With not even a hint of irony, she warned me, “don’t believe everything you hear.”]

So, does it come as any surprise that since the election, Trump claimed to have won the biggest Presidential landslide in recent history? (As Trump would say, “WRONG!”) That the turnout for his inauguration was the largest ever? WRONG! That the US murder rate is the highest that it’s been in 47 years? WRONG! That there was a recent fatal terrorist attack in Sweden? WRONG! That President Obama tapped Trump’s phones? WRONG!

Yet these are all things that Philip Dick’s Jack Isidore would have said-- and would have believed.

It’s remarkable that someone so dupable (is that a word?) could function successfully in business. On the other hand, Trump’s companies did go bankrupt four times, so Trump’s lenders must have been pretty dupable, too.

It’s a question that comes up again and again when you try to judge some malignant political figure: Is he evil, or just stupid?

Maybe it just doesn’t matter that much. Maybe it’s just as bad to have a fool in a position of power as it is to have a liar. Time will tell.

Either way, unless we can figure out a way to send the Prevaricator-in-Chief back to Mar-a-Lago more quickly, there will be lots of mistakes to be made in the next four years. Think of the Trump Administration as the “Reign of Error."

New Jersey's Arrogant, Tyrannical Slob

If you''ve been following the narrative over the last couple of weeks here at DWT you may have figured out that my new favorite book-- after Elizabeth Warren's A Fighting Chance-- has been The Invisible Bridge by historian Rick Perlstein. Maybe I'm so fascinated by it because I was living overseas for so much of the time he was writing about-- having felt living in a Nixon-led America not compatible with my personal sense of dignity or honor. I remember reading about some of the events he describes in the International Herald Tribune at the cafe in front of the Ministry of Finance in Kabul, in my van parked at a beach in Hambantota Ceylon, and in my apartment above a Chinese restaurant on the Overtoom in Amsterdam. Perlstein tells the story a lot better than the Herald Tribune ever did. Or maybe I'm paying more attention now that I'm living in the States again.

Today I was reading about a incredible display of ignorance from right-wing populists in the early '70s, one in Boston-- courtesy of racist dog Louise Day Hicks ("Joe McCarthy dressed up as Polyanna")-- and the other in Kanawha (Charleston, West Virginia)-- courtesy of a far more psychotic and deranged bigot and transient from Mississippi, North Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee, Alice Moore, who didn't join Satan in Hell until November 26, 2012, age 73. Both lived on the fumes of racial hatred, paranoia and ignorance-- and both captured the imagination of every primitive, bigoted malcontent in America. Their props: school children as they fulminated against, essentially, a world that spins and leaves morons behind. In these two cases, morons that managed to band together and cause incredible damage, death and destruction.

Education is feared by religionist fanatics, like Hicks and Moore, who are convinced that everything anyone needs to know is in the BuyBull. They panic at the idea of children learning anything more.

Forty years have passed and New Jersey has one like Hicks and Moore-- but he's not some rabble-rouser inciting violence in the street, it's the criminal governor, the pig-man in the short video up top. As you probably know, Newark schools have been under state control for almost 2 decades. Since Christie took office, his handpicked operatives have pushed every avenue to wreck traditional public schools, replace them with for-profit charters, and generally destroy any possibility of positive progress. The community isn't happy and in May, Ras Baraka, an outspoken public education advocate, won the race against a "reform" candidate, Shavar Jeffries, despite a huge influx of Wall St money right at the end.

Despite over a year of intensifying battles with Cami Anderson over her stewardship and attempts to force her "One Newark" plan in which we've seen students, parents, educators and community activists rise up to say "enough," Christie just extended her contact. The mayoral election centered on education, and the candidate who shared Cami's views, Jeffries, lost decisively to an outspoken supporter of public education. Christie is outright ignoring the will of Newark's citizens and the democratic process, and laughing about the idea that Newark might be able to best manage its own schools. Years of corporate interventions have purposefully starved out neighborhood schools and made it harder to get educational equity in Newark. It's past time for the state to listen to voters and return Newark schools to local control.

Right now there are 4 governors on the verge of being indicted-- aside from Christie, the current crop of crooks includes Nathan Deal (R-GA), Scott Walker (R-WI), and Andrew Cuomo (D-NY). And each one of them is working for Wall Street to gut public education. You think that's a coincidence? I'm becoming more and more convinced that character is an even more crucial attribute to understand about a candidate than what he or she says about policies. Character-- like in the Christie video up top.

WHATEVER THE BUSHES AND CHENEYS AND OTHERS WE PUT OVER OURSELVES DO, WE ALLOW

We, that is, with the help of the utterly unfree corporate mass media, handmaiden of the ownership class. I watch a lot of the BBC every day, and a little of a CNN joint venture with an India broadcaster. Every time they mention Guantanamo-- and it's in the news quite a bit lately because of the torture cover-up-- they never forget to mention that the Bush Regime is trying to close it down. Who knew? And I always thought the reason it wasn't closed down is because the congressional Democrats are such pitiful and craven cowards, unwilling to ever act courageously and take on the tyranny. But what do I know?

Well, glad you asked. I found out that the worst national leaders in terms of corruption are all from Third World countries-- Suharto of Indonesia (left, $35 billion stolen), Marcos of the Philippines ($10 billion stolen), and a couple of pikers from The Congo and Nigeria at a mere $5 billion apiece. I wasn't certain that anyone was keeping track and counting but the BBC ran a big story on it this week. Corruption is devastating Africa. There were loads of stories on it. And one of them talked about corruption outside of Africa-- in Asia.

There were pictures-- lurid and exciting-- of a minor official in Kenya accepting $140 in cash to give someone a license to apply for an AIDS fighting grant. But there was not a whisper nor a hint about any no-bid contracts, about Halliburton, Enron, the Carlyle Group, about an electoral system so corrupted by big money donations that only by the most... generous of definitions could someone call the U.S. a democracy. Where would the Bush Family be on that list? More than the Nigerian? Less than Suharto? Will we ever know?

Only if we want to badly enough to tell our representatives to find out. We should start by telling Nancy Pelosi we want to know what Bush and Cheney have stolen-- or why she and her congressional Democrats are covering up for them.

IT'S 2007-- TIME TO GET OUT FROM UNDER THE BOOT OF THE MASTER CLASS YET?

Blue America often thanks contributors to our Saturday progressive fundraisers with little gifts, especially CDs, DVDs and autographed books. Last weekend we offered people who contributed to Angie Paccione's campaign in Colorado, a copy of the phenomenal and breathtaking new book by Kenneth Ackerman, Young J Edgar: Hoover, The Red Scare, And the Assault on Civil Liberties. Ken was kind enough to send an extra copy signed to me which bowled me over and which I explained to myself when I read an anarchist document he quoted-- one I was cheering as I read it-- that ended "Long live the social revolution! Down with tyranny! THE ANARCHIST FIGHTERS." [Bold is mine; caps are the Anarchists'.]

This morning, sitting safely in my apartment in cosmopolitan, friendly, multicultural Montreal I forced myself to put down YOUNG J. EDGAR long enough to take a look at Glenn Greenwald's latest article at Salon, a look at what motivates Bush based on Greenwald's about to be released (June 26) next book, A TRAGIC LEGACY, which I'm very much looking forward to. Salon has published an excerpt today.

Today Greenwald writes about the Republican obsession with justifying their greed, avarice and plentiful human failings in terms of Good v Evil.

One of the core premises enabling such practices -- I'd say the principal one -- is the moralistic proposition that the U.S. is engaged in an epic battle of Good against Evil, that we are on the side of Good, and therefore any means and instruments we employ in service of our battle are, by definition, justifiable. Review any defense from Bush apologists on these issues -- or examine the arguments of GOP presidential candidates in defense of the extremist Bush policies -- and what you will find is the "justification" that America has the right to take any actions to defend itself against the forces of Evil which seek to destroy it. Actions taken by the Force of Good (the U.S.) against the Forces of Evil (the Enemy du jour) are themselves inherently Good.

The use of the Orwelian "Enemy du jour" construct coupled with the Machiavellian concept of the ends justifying the means, at least if the struggle can be painted to be a big enough deal and a horrible enough threat-- sounds, in many ways, like terrorism-- took me right back to Ackerman's book.


In a footnote he takes up the case of the case of Eugene Debs, a socialist who ran for president and was later thrown in prison. "Debs, for instance, was convicted for violating the Espionage Act solely for giving a speech in Canton, Ohio, in June, 1918, in which he criticized the war, and the imprisonment of fellow socialists, and said, among other things: 'The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose-- especially their lives.'" The speech was deemed an obstruction of the war effort and Debs' conviction and imprisonment was upheld by United States Supreme Court in March, 1919.

Some things next change-- although I will never lose hope that they can. Down With Tyranny!

NO ONE IN SPARTA EVER HEARD OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. UNFORTUNATELY NOT MANY AMERICANS KNOW WHO HE IS... BEYOND THE DUDE ON THE C-NOTE

But at least the Spartans had anticipated one of his greatest thoughts long before he was born. Americans, to whom he aimed it, are utterly clueless:

Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.

In the 60s I started living with a young lady more evolved than myself. She made vegetarian meals and they were delicious and she helped me understand why wars of aggression are wrong. Healthy eating and anti-violence have been part of my life ever since. But I just returned home from seeing 300 and I want to tear someone's beating heart out of his chest and eat it.

I cry in movies. I cried during 300. I cried for my country, for my people, for a people who allowed a pissant tyrant to take over our nation while we offered little more than a whimper. What's wrong with us? Do we deserve security? Do we deserve liberty? I'm going to the shooting range. I'll be back in the morning.