Trump's "Law & Order" is the Enemy of Truth, Morality and Justice

Subconsciously, we human beings, as creatures of cognitive psychology, often associate the concept of law with the concept of ethics.  However, as someone who has taught ethics courses at three state universities, let me share one of the basic points of Ethics 101, namely, that law and ethics are very different entities.

Laws are not necessarily, or even likely to be, ethical.  Conversely, ethical ways of behaving can be outright illegal. 

When "law" backs the ascent of a fascist like Donald Trump, when "order" means thuggish, racist, and even murderous police enforcement, then law & order become the opposite of morality, justice and their deep association with the founding ethical principles of this country. 

These principles include "self-evident" truths.  They include equality, equal justice under law, the right to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.

Again, law and order are not automatically good.  Look at North Korea.  Look at China.  Plenty of law & order.  And yet also evil.  Atrocity.  Brutality.  Mind-control.  Surveillance.  Oppression of all basic freedoms.    

Democrats would be wise to counter Trump's framing with a simple, clear point:  "law & order," as used in his rants, is the opposite of Truth, Morality and Justice.  In association with the latter, our Founders insisted on a Bill of Rights and a Declaration of Independence. 

Trump's "I am the LAW & ORDER President" is a dictator's proclamation.  He perverts law and order, makes it dirty, as he does with so much else.

 Jacob Blake's sister speaks out, Trevor Noah Commentary

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Yes, Trump is Plausibly a Fascist, John McNeill is Wrong.

 

An article by John McNeill was recently featured in the Washington Post titled, "How Fascist Is Donald Trump?  There's actually a formula for that." 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/10/21/how-fascist-is-donald-trump-theres-actually-a-formula-for-that/

Although this article is two years old, it still earned a front-page position on the website.  McNeill includes the brief assertion that, yes, Donald Trump is a major threat to our democracy; and yet his overall message is that Trump is not a fascist.  

This conclusion is based on "the 11 attributes of fascism," all of which can be numerically quantified by assigning a certain number of points called "Benitos."  After doing the calculations, McNeill states:

"Add all this up, and you get 26 out of a possible 44 Benitos. In the fascist derby, Trump is a loser."

I have three general comments on this article. 

First, it relies heavily on late-stage Hitler and Mussolini to provide its paragon of fascism.  For instance, one attribute is "Fetishization of Youth."  Trump is given zero Benitos on this scale, reducing his level of fascism.

What?  Why is this attribute important?  And why is it as relevant as "Leader Cult," another one of the attributes? (on which Trump gets four Benitos).

This kind of problem troubles the whole list of attributes.  Why are they so essential?  Why do they have equal weight?  Furthermore, how are you measuring them?  Not only the choice of attributes but the quantification scheme is highly problematic.

Compare McNeill's trait-based definition of fascism to Madeline Albright's key insight, in her recent book, that fascism is not a governmental system but a means to gain and maintain power. 

Aha!  Far better, at least as a starting place.  It takes context into account.  Trump is a fascist by this standard when you add his racism, sexism, white nationalism, xenophobia, golden-age nostalgia, and so on.  

Second comment.  The author's tone is bizarrely playful.  The "fascist derby."  "Benitos."  C'mon, really?  We're talking about evil, and threats to world stability, not Netflix movie ratings.

This bizarre playful tone, along with the conclusion that Trump isn't even close to a real fascist, creates an underlying theme that is still trotted out way too much by the media--foolishly, I would add: 'Trump isn't all that bad so stop worrying about it so much.'

Third comment.  This relates to Albright's insight that fascism is a means to gain and maintain power.  Maybe there's another important question we should be asking:  Would Trump do the things that Mussolini and Hitler have done, if the current power structure allowed it? 

Based on his professional diagnosis as a malignant narcissist, a person who has no conscience at all, and who possesses an all-consuming urge to be worshipped,  and who is inherently sadistic, there is certainly a case to be made that the answer to the above question is yes.  White nationalist Trump would indeed violently impose whiteness as a pure, superior race--if he could get away with it.

Didn't he just recently--Lafayette Square--try to send 10,000 troops into the streets?  Wasn't he stopped only by Defense Secretary Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Milley?   

In any case, we should be distinguishing between early stage and late stage takeovers (scary, yes I know.  I live in sorrow--but there's still hope from this next election).  

Also, we should be looking at the psychology of Trump, not ignoring it.  Psychology is far too often ignored as a science, often due to each academic discipline setting up its own little intellectual fiefdom.

In conclusion, McNeill's article is highly flawed, inappropriately playful, and in effect dangerous, because it tends to make readers think, "Oh, it's not so bad."  When in fact, it truly is that bad--and more.  The entire geopolitical balance is at stake.

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A Briefer Future Format

I'm going to try and bring back this blog in a shorter format, something more conducive to my new situation.  It has been a difficult stretch for me, as for many of us.

On April 2, I started to show symptoms of COVID-19.  I proceeded through the stages:  weakness, fever, then later lung and some kidney issues.  It never became very serious, but it lasted a while.  I took myself out of quarantine on May 13.  In the rural area where I live, there was no testing at the time, and I relied on CDC web pages for general guidance. 

Around the same time, as with many of us, I was hit with new financial and professional challenges.  (I work as an adjunct professor, never more than a contract worker for the state university system, which gives me no benefits and a poverty-level income).  While before I could save a hundred dollars a month, if I lived like a stoic, I now struggle not to sink too fast into the red.

Then on June 3, I went to bed wondering if I would wake up in a dictatorship, due to Donald Trump's wish to send ten thousand troops to Lafayette Square to break up a peaceful rally of citizens exercising their rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.  Fortunately, two individuals stopped that from happening (according to WaPo):  the Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, and the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley.  On that night, these two men saved the Constitution as a viable document.

We here in the USA continue to live in a vortex of pandemic, economic crisis, social protests, and Trump's continuous and major threat to our democratic system.  The period from now until 2021 may be the last time in my life that I live beyond the grip of an authoritarian regime.  Conversely, if Trump is thrown out of office, it may signal a reformation, a bright epoch for equality, rights, decency, and democracy.  The USA is the wealthiest country and has the strongest military.  It isn't far-fetched to argue that as the US tilts, so tilts the globe.  The fate of humanity-- --autocracy or democracy--hangs in the balance during these precarious, tumultuous months. 

To be clear, autocracy as present in the USA includes:  White nationalism, fascism, racism, sexism, islamophobia, homophobia, xenophobia, kleptocracy, plutocracy, and the monarchic worship of hate-mongering demagogue who, by clinical standards, is both a narcissist and a sociopath.

Indeed, part of what has crippled me mentally is the fact that so many people could bow down to such a repulsive figure, when by resisting him they could live such better lives and more noble lives, and also found a quality future for their children.  For instance, we could have good government healthcare--but instead, more than half of our White population fixates on imaginary problems related to supposed dangers posed by immigrants and Black people.

Democracy, in contrast to Trumpian autocracy, is indeed, as Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate for President, put it, on the side of Light.  For instance, Biden's Vice-Presidential pick is a Black woman (who also has Indian heritage).  Yes, this alone is a magnificent thing, all by itself.  If that comes as a surprise, you aren't engaging the full virulence of racism and sexism in this country.  

Aside from all that, Kamala Harris, the VP candidate, is inspiringly and outstandingly competent.

Although for years I've been warning about the rise of fascism, this blog being one of my standard soapboxes, I find it very different to face what's going on directly, rather than just writing about it with foresight.  Intellectually,  sure, I saw this coming.  Psychologically, I can't come to grips with how quickly the Republican leadership sold out our values, whether in abject cowardice, or simply lust for their rung in the hierarchy.  Either is awful.  Either is despicable, dreadful, pitiable and infinitely sad.

As for me, my writing time is more precious than ever.  Most of what time I have, I put into my novel.  I'll be finishing the current draft soon, the fourth draft, and then I'll read it through out loud, one last time.  I work on it every day, even during the teaching semesters, except when a migraine headache looms.  I have to stop then.  The migraines are absolutely debilitating.  I'm talking paralytic pain.  No light, sound, or movement allowed.

I do think it will be a great novel.  It deserves to reach the world and to change it.  Desert, of course, doesn't translate into success.  I did write it to be stimulating and engaging and I'll market it aggressively.  In any case, it is something I've always wanted to do--the extreme exercise of my mental potential for the greatest challenge I could possibly face.  The content has been as soul-draining as validating.   It has plundered my passionate, social, and spiritual riches.  There is a higher statement buried in the dual plot.  This statement is sotto voce and it is not pure or innocent.  It gets heavily challenged, diluted, and suffers within the drama, love, war, beauty, monstrosity and apocalypse.

As I see it, my purpose is to finish this novel, whatever the financial or other expense.  It's not merely selfish.  I am no better than anyone else, but no worse either.  And to the extent that we can throw ourselves into the ordeals of prophets, channeling something greater than our carnal needs--aspects of art, good, and collective conscious--I consider myself a prophet. 

I am also, still, a poet, writer, thinker and ethicist.  My head is full of thoughts.  They bustle through, quite impatient.  My hope for this blog, at this juncture, is merely to share some of those thoughts in a brief format.  Maybe they will be useful to someone 'out there'.   Even if not, at least I'll relieve some of the pressure on my bulging, scattered, inefficient brain (A brain I love by the way, though I'm no Albert Einstein or Mary Shelley).

Owl

 =======

 

 

Why Sanders?

Many Democratic pundits seem flummoxed by Bernie Sander’s ascent.  It’s a source of existential apprehension.  The blue sky is falling, dissolving into a far-left madness that signals a rosy red election.  Part outraged, part querulous, the anti-Sanders faction insists that a unifying, moderate candidate is necessary, someone ‘safe’, like the Obama-associated Biden, to beat Donald Trump.

Whoa.  Hype overlord.  Sanders isn’t toting serious socialist bona fides.  NY Times columnist Paul Krugman points out that Bernie’s “democratic socialism” is basically the ideology of Norway’s social democrats.  Sanders isn’t nearly as far left as Trump leans right. 

Trump is an imminent threat.  He advances white nationalism while pushing for dictatorship.  But it would be a gross mischaracterization to even tacitly suggest, let alone normalize, a Trump vs. Sanders polarity.  

Sanders is not some horrible antipode, as if he and Trump were two endpoints of a line, one on which the only sane point is somewhere in the middle, between the two insanities.  The metaphor of a line with terminal ends is easy to adopt, especially given all the talk about a ‘middle’ or a ‘moderate’; and yet it is false framing at its deceptive finest.

If Sanders is after an “I am the State” takeover, he’s done a perfect job hiding it behind progressive, egalitarian, private-ownership-affirming policies.  Irrational fears notwithstanding, all industrial countries except the US have universal paid healthcare.  


The paranoia and hype are real.  And yet despite the fuel they supply for jet-engine takedowns, Sanders is still doing exceeding well in the delegate count and the popular vote. 

Why?

The answer is that the American people are infuriated.  Atrocious corruption has parasitized them for decades.

The best, most honest logo for a 2020 candidate would be the national wealth distribution curve.  The graph looks like a very thin boomerang, with one side much longer than the other, indicating the outrageous pinnacle of the richest sliver. 

It only takes a glance at this mutant boomerang to reveal the egregious graft, a monster of avarice that took a half century to bring into its current state of grotesquery.  Indeed, compare it to the wealth curve of 1960’s, when one blue collar income could buy a house, two cars, and a good, lifelong trajectory for an entire family.

Also obvious, to those not under their spell, are the longstanding tricks of the trade, the catchy ideas, used to advance and maintain the parasitism of the public.  These are sources of vast frustration. 

Four of these catchy ideas are as follows:  giving tax breaks to the rich is good; big government is bad; consumers should spend instead of save; and, lastly but most importantly, ‘our’ traditional society (read straight and white, with male leadership) is under attack.  


The last is the worst, enhancing the effectiveness of the rest.  It embodies many forms of oppression and xenophobia.  But let’s go through all four of these GOP tricks.

‘Giving money to the rich is good’ is just trickle down economics.  The idea is that tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy will, in fair proportion, benefit everyone in society.  

After five decades of this kleptocratic chestnut, we can easily and safely say, Nope.  Yes, profits are up. Yes, productivity is up.  And yet wages are stagnant.  Not only that, essentials like education and doctors are much more costly.  #TrickleFail


 ‘Government is bad' is a Ronald Reagan mantra.  The unstated implication is that if the needy get less help, there’s more room to cut taxes for the rich.  

Depression era virtues of thrift, humility, and charity were still fairly strong in the 1980’s, as were worries about unbridled greed.  Reagan successfully fought against this ethos.  He replaced it with conspicuous consumption.  The effective slogan became 'spending is good'.  

Americans were given credit cards and told to live it up.  Welcome to MasterCard.  Bank accounts were drained.  We went from a creditor nation to a debtor nation.  The fictional Gordon Gekko proclaimed “Greed is good,” and that became the actual practice of Wall Street.  


A friend to Wall Street, Reagan de-regulated the markets, allowing Gekko-esque gambling to run rampant.  One quick result was the destruction of the savings & loans industry.  It was the biggest bank collapse since the Depression, and a colossal scandal.  Tax payers had to pay for most of it, over $100 billion, as the fat cat culprits at the top, who ramped up the banks’ debt to play the stocks, were never caught.

Corporate raiding became the thing:  Hostile takeover, gut and destroy for short-term stock profits.

However, the Republican’s most powerful mind control idea, the trickiest of all tricks is ‘the loathing of the Other’:  traditional white communities are under attack.  This is the psychological cement that turns followers into sheep.

People allow themselves to be further duped if you've convinced them you are saving their 'purity' from ethnic annihilation.  Fear and loathing tend to turn off one's faculties of higher thinking, preventing such questions as, "Why are we giving our money to the rich, again?"


Amp up ignorance with faux nostalgia.  It's simple and effective hate-monger propaganda.  The wonderful world described in the fiery speeches by the racist politician never truly existed, but hey, so what.  

The classic example comes from 'he who should not be named', and yet, in our times, he must be named:

https://www.thoughtco.com/what-was-volksgemeinschaft-1221370

Even without the full development of a fascist Volk. racism works for the dark side.  Nixon’s Southern Strategy.  Reagan’s welfare queen, a black woman, in her golden Cadillac.  H.W. Bush and W. Bush both dived into racist demagoguery to win elections and appease the base. 

The content of the infamous Willie Horton add used by H.W. was grossly unfair and misleading.  But that came out too late for his opponent, Michael Dukakis.  Racism helped Bush win the election in a landslide:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io9KMSSEZ0Y

All these hate-filled sops thrown to a constituency-Cerberus.  Wag the dog of prejudice.  And win.  

Trump of course has now taken it in the only direction it could go:  much closer to outright white supremacy; much closer to a fascist white state. 

Fifty years of economic parasitism, prejudice, and spin.  Republicans led the sordid way, down into darkness.  But they were abetted by Democrats, whether corrupt, compromising, or apathetic.

Sanders has been a lone voice in the wilderness, speaking out on the wealth curve.  His jeremiads have been steady and forceful, in effect isolating him from both major parties.

He makes simple points, using honest math. He speaks to the lopsided boomerang.  He backs it all up with damning details, say, the per capita cost of healthcare in America compared to anywhere else.  He encapsulates powerful arguments with accessible sentences like, “All other countries have been able to do it, why can’t we?”

Fifty years of being cheated and swindled.  Many Americans, more than the mainstream media want to admit, view ‘moderate’ candidates as shifty, to say the least.  These candidates want to work within the current system.  For instance, they want to keep third-party insurance companies.  But that entails, in effect, a compromise with kleptocracy.  But what could that mean, except a way to continue the corruption?


When you look at the long history of economic parasitism and political casuistry in this country, a half century’s worth--a time frame that has seen a once-prosperous middle class brought to its knees--Bernie Sanders doesn’t seem like the one who is out of touch.

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Does Truth Matter?

Every American should be staggered by Adam Schiff's closing argument in Donald Trump's impeachment trial.  In his momentous and immortal speech, he states with brimming emotion, "If the truth doesn't matter, we're lost."  This is an almost unreckonable sentence.  Here is the chief House Impeachment Manager, standing before the Senate to make a cataclysmic claim.  The podium is physically small and yet the stance invites global judgement. 

Schiff is certain that his side's case is beyond reasonable doubt.  The president withheld crucial aid to pressure Ukraine.  Why?  Because he wanted our NATO ally to announce an investigation of Joe Biden, a political rival.  To smear him.  Trump, in other words, employed his vast executive power to monkey wrench the cogs of our sacrosanct electoral process.

Sadly, Schiff is correct.  Not only in rhetoric, but in substance.   The implication is beyond dire.  If Trump eludes congressional oversight, he escapes our failsafe of checks and balances.  He achieves the mantle of dictator, one who also happens to be the most powerful man in the world.

It's easy to balk at such an enormous conclusion.  Politicians will be politicians.  And yet this impeachment trial, only the third in the history of the United States, is extraordinary even among its peers.  Bill Clinton, the last president impeached, committed a sex act.  Andrew Johnson, right after the Civil War, fought to re-establish slavery despite the law.  But Trump is the first to seek out foreign aid to subvert the Constitution, something he swore an oath to protect.   

Even a casual look at Trump's behavior shows something frightening:  a rejection of the obvious for the fruits of the devious.  If Trump had wanted a serious investigation of Biden, why not ask the CIA, instead of Ukraine?  One might further inquire why the Republicans, who controlled Congress for the first two years of Trump's presidency, showed nary a spark of interest in Biden during that time.

When confronted with the above point, both the president and the GOP sidestep without agility. Indeed, clumsy is inevitable when you ignore every known fact to firebreathe conspiratorial claims--claims that mesh with Russian propaganda--and that lack even a scintilla of merit. 

For instance, US intelligence services have repeated stated that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections.  But both Trump and the GOP continue to weave webs around Ukraine.

Even more damning is what could be called "The Coincidence Con."  According to Trump's defenders, it is mere coincidence that Biden was the person singled out by our president for investigation.  The timing, they adamantly protest, is just a fluke of chance.  Trump's goal was merely to investigate corruption.  It had nothing to do with getting votes.  Nothing at all.

Adding another layer of absurdity to this response, Trump does not express any interest in corruption in the transcript where he talks to the Ukrainian president.  The word doesn't appear at all.  Trump does, however, ask for a "favor" and then goes on to push for an investigation of Biden.

The above are just specks of frost on the tip of a deep iceberg.  Throughout the procedures of the hearing and the trial, Trump's defenders have flouted logic and eschewed dignity to ballyhoo the specious and the fallacious   Some Senate Republicans have outrightly revealed that they have no inclination to be impartial. 

We know that, under established dictatorships, minions knuckle under at the threat of jail or worse.  Whatever the king or queen decrees.  Off with their heads.  But what to say about the Republican party in this cancerous moment for our country?  Why do they follow Trump when all reasonable roads lead to condemnation? 

However mysterious the failure of the GOP, while we flounder as a bastion of freedom, it shall go down in world history as a singular failure.  It presents us with a most awful scourge, a tragedy that tips a telecommunicated planet toward darkness, an indelible  exemplar of the most despicable in human beings.  

==

Essay: Political Abuse

Political abuse involves a tyrannous leader.  It has a lot in common with domestic abuse.  In both contexts, those disengaged from the cruel dynamic have trouble understanding the deeper level of what's really going on. 

The first reaction is to express outrage and exasperation for the abuse, which can crystallize into ignorant questions like, "Why isn't the abuser in jail?" or "Why doesn't the victim just leave?" 

Ending abuse isn't like showing someone how to solve a math problem.  Abusive relationships solidify over time.  They involve an insidious mind control both strategic and tactical.  It is a common misconception that the inflictor is  'just someone who has an anger problem' or otherwise not intending to inflict harm.  

Indeed, this appearance can be part of the manipulation.

Mental disorders may well present in an abuser.  But what's going on is something else entirely:  an observant, calculative, continuous process that moves in stages and cycles (like the honeymoon stage).  A house of abuse is built with a devious and sturdy carpentry.  It is malign, premeditated, and unrepentant.  

If you ask counselors at any domestic violence agency, they will tell you eye-opening stories.   An abuser can turn in seconds from ranting and raving at the victim to looking calm and polite to police.  The abuser is relentless.  He relentlessly blames others, especially the victim, spinning deceptive yet persuasive stories.  If mandated for anger management, he often employs that opportunity to share and improve his techniques with other perpetrators.

(I am using male pronouns here because in the very large majority of cases, a man is the abuser).

Make no mistake, then.  You're dealing with a cultivated dynamic, a pattern coordinated to achieve dictatorial control.

There are many layers and techniques involved.  Here's the iconic power and control 'wheel' used by shelters for education and outreach:

https://www.thehotline.org/identify-abuse/power-and-control/

What about the government equivalent of domestic abuse?

The analogy is a would-be tyrant or fascist dictator who lusts for total power without conscience, or who is willing to crush their conscience for the malevolent goal. The person won't succeed without a certain aptitude and skill set.  The trust and faith of their followers is cultivated in stages; and that trust is then exploited to isolate them further from the facts.  This is similar to how a domestic abuser isolates the victim from her friends (she also is mind-gamed to blame herself and not the abuser).

This conspiratorial wooing in the would-be tyrant creates a tigher and tigher bond, until a kind of singularity event occurs:  the constituency becomes cultish, willing to sacrifice their dignity, freedom, health and money for the 'great leader' rather than question.  

At this point, they've bought into the loyalty-test framework, one that requires them to accept a false view of reality to retain their leader's approval.   As part of the loyalty test, the false reality includes obvious untruths or 'big lies.'  

Donald Trump's Big Lie is that the last election was stolen from him.

Abusers/tyrants are always looking to identify and latch onto insecurity and weakness.  If a victim has a certain fear, the abuser strives to become the sole source of comfort and understanding--while at the same time stoking that fear. 

In a political context, the abuse is similar to the domestic context:  intimidation and threats that involve bluster, blame, swagger and vicious insults attacks to get followers in line, or cow opposition.  Physical threats are marshalled, too, by identifying someone as 'bad'.  This can result in death threats through social media from across the country.  

The tyrant, engaging in plausible deniability, never has to threaten harm specifically, only slap a target with a 'bad' label.  Typical labels are things like "traitor" and "RINO" (Republican in name only); but also 'oppoganda' words like "feminist," "elite," and "liberal."

Acting in this way, the tyrant sends the same message as the abuser:   "I alone control the power.   I can destroy you completely." 

Here are some typical strategies.

The abusive leader (or abuser) always blames others, when they are the one clearly at fault.  Others are the hateful and prejudice ones, not the leader, even though this very act of lying spreads prejudice and hate. 

To demonstrate the sophistication of this kind of trick, consider this:  an abuser will take blame for something they didn't do.  This can cause confusion, baffle investigations, or simply make the abuser look noble in the eyes of followers or outsiders.

Flipping is common.  Flipping is a technique that focuses on making the victims blame themselves.  As in domestic abuse, the idea is to lower the self-esteem of the followers until it is so low they adopt a 'save me' mentality.

Another tool is 'Strategic instability.'   The leader/abuser's behavior can look erratic, spontaneous, or outright crazy.  One thing this does is keep the victims on edge and focused on the abuser (who likes the attention and playing puppeteer).  

Maybe the leader's behavior is, in fact, crazy.  Donald Trump is a diagnosed malignant narcissist.  But it also meshes with a larger strategy, creating useful crises, mudding the calm waters of objectivity, and in effect reminding followers of the need for continuous servitude and loyalty, no matter how uncomfortable it might make them; and the only way to escape that discomfort is blind faith in the abuser.

==========

Almost Shut Down

I seem drawn to painful truths, and have been so throughout my life.  The repetition, to an extent, inoculates me from matters that others habitually flee.  I often claim, maybe with some hidden pride, that I am tired or even exhausted.  Perhaps it is ironic to take pride in the analysis of tragedy.  But it is a necessary pursuit.  Otherwise injustice reigns unchallenged.  Yes, there can be joy in facing injustice--in wielding a sword of reason and light.  But of course, as everyone knows, the study of human darkness can be depressing and lonely.

This year my tiredness, my exhaustion, almost shut me down.  Donald Trump threatens to become a dictator.  If he does, America falls.  And if America falls, the world falls.  It would be the defeat of the epoch of democracy.  In its place, we would install a type of governance that already has a strong grip:  the rulership of populist fascists.  Putin in Russian.  Erdogan in Tukey.  Modi in India.  Xi in China.  Kim in North Korea.  Duterte in the Philippines, Trump in the United States.  And so on.

Here are some of the implications if fascism becomes world dominant. 

First, efforts to combat global warming will become even weaker than they are now, almost insuring a maximized environmental catastrophe.  Extinction.  Resource depletion.  Climate and geological havoc, leading to mass human migration, fear and panic.  Given the dissipation of human rights, the result will be massacre and genocide.  The wealth gap, already obscene, will stretch into a full-blown neo-feudalism.  Nobles behind walls, a servant professional and artisan class, and teaming masses of the poor.

Racism and sexism, along with other forms of traditional, cultural oppression, will become far worse.  In the USA, what we are looking at is this:  a white nationalist heteronormative patriarchy, with an emphasis on evangelical jingoism.  

Police functions employing advanced AI and robots will allow (a) quick enforcement, (b)  instantaneous identification, (c) ubiquitous surveillance, and (d) privacy-erasing 'citizen scores'.  Standardized 're-education' practices will insure not only conformity but also loyalty.  With police and army functions robotized, the chance of a successful revolution by a 're-educated' people will be minimal.

Furthermore, given a geopolitics of totalitarian dynasties, centered on charismatic tyrants, the genesis of World War Three seems inevitable.   Narcissists with god-complexes cannot back down.  Sooner or later they violently clash.

It might seem far too much to attach all the above to the success of Donald Trump.  But if you look at the high-tech facial recognition platform in China, and also the capacity for complete subservience evinced in North Korea, it becomes more plausible.  Take into account humanity's current willingness to continue to rape the planet Earth (a recent WaPo article says the Amazon rainforest is at a tipping point (1)), and also our eagerness to fall into line behind dictators, adopting their views with fanatic glory, and it becomes more plausible still.

The USA has the mightiest military in world, and the largest economy.  Once it goes dark, there will be enough tenebrosity to snuff out the rest of the light.  No one will be left to check tyranny.

As an ethicist, I've argued that people can be good, that we can eliminate war, that we can defeat oppression.  There are plenty of examples of people changing, culture shifting, and human rights rising up.  Women getting the vote was a big deal.  So was, before that, the idea that people should get to vote.

Looking at the world now, however, I see that human psychology is even more labyrinthian than I feared.  How could so many Americans embrace Trump and his hate, worship him, in fact, Christian people even, at the expense of their country, their dignity, the environment, and world stability?

It's much easier to understand why third-world minions, under mortal duress, obey a dictator than it is to fathom why the Republicans in the Senate of the United States are throwing away our country's two-hundred year old project of rationalism and freedom.   

As for me, I've had a good life.  I was born in a lucky place and time where the middle class was able to enjoy freedom of speech to a large degree, and where the women's movement and the civil rights movement were making progress.  I lived on a planet that was not yet showing obvious massive strain from vast climate change, a change taking place far faster than any other before it in the 4 billion year history of life on Earth (2).

Whatever happens to me next, I at least had these things, and others, that were very special.  I had tragedies and terrible hurdles to overcome, and I'll have more, no doubt.  I've been desperate and on the edge many times.  Maybe I'll go down pathetically.  But on the whole, I've had the chance to get an education, to improve my psychological health, and spend time on creative, philosophical and artistic projects that relied on freedom of thought.  I've enjoyed much time hiking and meditating out in 'nature'. 

For some reason, though, like billions of other people, I am not entirely selfish (Imagine that!).  I am still tremendously saddened by the possibility that democracy is going to die, that our planet is going to be wrecked, and that nuclear war will probably come.  And yes, that Donald Trump is ascendant. 

The problem, in the end, is that, while billions of people feel saddened and worry for the future, billions of others, those who praise and prop tyrants, do not seem to care, not in their public actions or beliefs.  Perhaps they have no choice, either because they were born with no choice, as in North Korea, or they gave up their ability to choose, somewhere along the way, as the people of the United States are in the process of doing now.

(1)  https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/top-scientists-warn-of-an-amazon-tipping-point/2019/12/20/9c9be954-233e-11ea-bed5-880264cc91a9_story.html

(2) https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/12/06/ghosts-future/      



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Poem: Drifts

Dust swept off the surface.  A poem's flirt with obscurity stalled.  For a while.


==


Drifts

clouds drift in leonine fever,
laced with ennui and tinsel,
doomed to stalk the hauteur 

of a perfect plane.

their scavenge strays hopeless,
dismantled as the motives of pterodactyls,

or chatoyant toadfish
whose gills swirl fluid with ribs.

the drifts, they are a road sign

scattered from a halycon aftermath,

bonemeal from lucullan beasts

bloated and bliss-shredded.

and yet 

the fire grips them just before night,
the swells and vales of their lust,
magenta-fierce citrus-cherry reds,

burning down the horizon.


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12/16/25

Poem: Written

I have poems lying around, buried and crumpled under books, squashed in miscellanea, etc.  Here's one

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Written

it was done.  written.
the holes in the letters formed small eyes.
looked up.

so many words coursing the Earth.
parades of happysad tomorrows,
giddy, giving, mad, mindless, cursed,
thankful, brutal, cruel, indignant or shamed,
prayerful and infernal,
all of it mostly ignored
and yet always read.

the phrases themselves
tended to make revisions,
rescript the plot,
fruit the novel's weight.
the intent
had never been to finish
or to specify a start. 

it had been wished 
that the twine of the characters
would rewrite the writer,
yank that very first plot
into their own expanding personas. 

it had been considered
that the offshoots, once fiction,
would launch on unprecedented trips in which
no one
could really take credit
or maybe even suffer the blame.

the garden
had existed before the growth.
unborn thorns pricked the pace.

those first flowers,
they had wanted to capitalize Love;
and in that critical, crucial moment
had tried to seize the pen
stroking dutiful and quick--

just before the nuances in the ink
settled into a glisten of skins
to breathe.

 

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11/26/25 ... problematic as can be... 

8/2/25 eds... took out some rare words, like "afflatus" for words people know

We Can't Just Let The Next Election Decide

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The evidence is clear that Donald Trump extorted a foreign government, not for any old sort of personal gain, such as vulgar lucre, but instead with a turpitude that cracks a cornerstone of our essential way of life:  the electoral system.

Alarmingly, GOP leaders have produced an absurd and grotesque defense, remonstrating with crude tactics that struggle to even qualify as guile.  From behind a slapdash barricade of featherweight theories and evasive accusations, they toss out a dismissive claim:  that whatever Trump did, or didn't do, it wasn't so bad.  Let the voters decide.

Given the temptations of power and the frailties of the human psyche, some might tend to forgive such flip-the-script mendacity from the GOP, disheartening and benighted though it is. 

And yet we should not accept such a facile excuse for their behavior, nor does it dilute their timeless condemnation.

Humor me.  Assume, even if you balk, that the president did the deed.  Granted, this could be difficult, even though it is evident.  The implications are beyond tremendous.  Let's see why it would be utterly nation-changing.

If you dare the assumption of extortion--that is, if you go with the body of evidence--then the fig leaf for the Republicans, their 'shady politics as normal' claim, gives way to a bottomless trench. 

First of all, if Trump can seek dirt on a rival candidate using foreign muscle--and get away with calling it "perfect," which he did--what 's to stop him from doing it again and again, until multiple countries or international agencies pour their efforts into a psy ops crusade on his behalf?

Realize that the kind of shock smear roused by such grift has already been dreadfully effective.  Birtherism, Pizzagate, West Coast voter fraud, these and others have found much serious traction to energize blinkered outrage. 

Right now, the Republicans are peddling what could be called Crowdstrike mania, which pins 2016 election interference on Ukraine.  US intelligence agencies have assiduously established the culprit as Russia. 

A terrible revelation emerges:  If the US intelligence community is powerless to blunt Trump's big lies, who can?  If the failsafes in the Constitution cannot prevent the president from turning other countries into his personal Monopoly cards, what will?

The next link in the above chain of reasoning merits a full precautious seriousness.  Namely, if left unchecked, Trump will likely win the 2020 election.  Not through democratic struggle, not through legitimate debate, but rather because he has already succeeded in becoming the tyrannous king that our Founders feared.

The proposition, then, that we should 'let the election decide' cannot be accepted.  We should not hang the fateful choice between two inimical types of governance--crown jewels versus common vote--on a process overlorded by an impervious president, who with invisible conscience suborns foreign meddling. 

Meddling, actually, is a euphemism.  Psy ops, originating in foreign lands and hence beyond the reach of our laws, will seed the populace with slanderous fear, hate, and disgust.  It is a design intended to prejudice the vote, yes, and yet also to cripple and rupture whatever remains of our national comity.

Our very country, in other words, totters on the brink.  That's why Republicans cannot be forgiven for their shameless anti-truthism.  There are cliffs, even in the twisted odysseys of politics, that, once crossed, plunge a people into a depths from which their 'city on a hill' can never be regained.

Understandably our sensibilities shy from such painful matters.  And yet when you accept the obvious, the extortion, and draw reasonable conclusions, the abstract picture, ominous enough at a distance, takes form and flesh.

It's certainly true that Trump might not win.  Even copious underhanded support, which Senate Republicans are poised to allow, might not be determinative. 

But the magnitude of the gamble urges us--urges us-- not to stake our democracy on the roll of such weighted dice.  The words "Let the Election Decide" are happy morsels for a hungry narcissist, one ready to sully the mightiest office in the world to win at all costs, and thereby ensure his mass and continuous praise.





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