Category: Politics

Afghanistan “Win”: Surely You Jest, Mr. President

Is the Joke on Us, or on Our Glorious Leader?

Some days ago, the brat who poses as our nation’s president declared we would commence a winning strategy in Afghanistan.  I believe he said “win” at least five times, eliciting a lighthearted “ha ha ha” among the more jaded listeners.

That this flies in the face of logic—given the seventeen-year history of our military adventure in Afghanistan—is no impediment to Mr. Trump, whose logical faculties (such as they are) are overwhelmed by his egotism, vainglory, and desperate cravings for winning at any cost.

Containment of the Taliban, not defeating them, is the name of the game in Afghanistan, which the generals whom Trump maintains he consulted at length know very well.  (He also said he had looked at the Afghanistan situation “from every angle.” That was not the only time that I laughed out loud at this speech, but it was probably the loudest.) My guess is that the only way they could sell their strategy to him was to tell him it was a “winning” strategy, because the language of zero-sum games is the only language he understands. I’d wager they had a good laugh among themselves once the ruse succeeded.

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What’s in a Name? from Romeo and Juliet to the NIH

The Power of Names, Like It or Not

In the August 24 Washington Post, we hear that ESPN yanked an unfortunate Asian-American from broadcasting a University of Virginia football game, the sportscaster’s trespass being that he bore the name: Robert Lee.  Elsewhere in the same issue, Dana Milbank skewered ESPN (and ludicrously overdone Political Correctness in general), with a satire that suggested we should ban from the public eye Bruce Lee, Tommy Lee, Harper Lee, Spike Lee, Bobby Lee, Lee Majors, Lee Jeans, etc.

We are all familiar with the epigram, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” spoken by Juliet in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

Really?  What if the flower were named Kerblunkanoo? Ratstikittel? Skrutabucket? Wine critic: “This chardonnay has a complex aroma, a fusion of pears and peaches with a delicate hint of skrutabucket.”  OK—it could become catchy. But that doesn’t change the fact that names shade perceptions. People named Hitler can attest to that. Racial, ethnic, gender, and religious slurs attest to the demeaning power of names. Actors and actresses acquire stage names to spin their personae, perhaps the most famous being the name Marilyn Monroe to replace the decidedly unglamorous Norma Jeanne Mortenson.

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Robert E. Lee Cooling the Fires – All for Naught

Robert E. Lee Echoing Lincoln

In the August 25 Washington Post op-ed page, Eugene Robinson revealed a side of Robert E. Lee that runs against the grain of many who wish to celebrate his memory with public statues: after the Civil War, the general warned against erecting Civil War monuments in Gettysburg (one may infer that he referred to both Union and Confederate monuments): “I think it wiser,” said Lee, “not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the example of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered.”

Echoes of Lincoln, right down to the metaphor of wounds to the body politic, ring uncannily.  In his second inaugural address—made less than a month before Lee’s surrender at Appomattox—Lincoln urged, “let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds. . . .”

This softens the picture of Lee, who was, by any definition of treason, a traitor to his country. A traitor, moreover, who chose to defend a government founded on the monstrosity of slavery.

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Ungovernable? The Curse of a Ruling Faction

Factional Fury

In the July 29 Guardian, Michael Goldfarb laments the debacle of the Trump presidency to date: Goldfarb on Ungovernability

However, the recitation of one Trumpian travesty after another is not the core of Goldfarb’s message.  It’s just to get your attention and whip up a little outrage.  What he’s really getting at is deeper and more troubling. It’s the danger of factionalism, in particular that “the Republicans are no longer a political party but a faction, a much more dangerous thing.”

He goes on to quote James Madison’s definition of “faction” and summarizes Madison’s concerns as expressed in the Federalist Number 10

Madison’s paper itself makes for fascinating if laborious reading—the man had a knack for prolixity in the service of exhausting every possible angle of a subject (research topic: how did the other Constitutional Conventioneers restrain Madison from making the Constitution as long as the Sunday edition of The New York Times?). Nonetheless, if you read the whole thing you get the sense Madison was more concerned about a ruling majority faction rather than the minority faction (in terms of numbers of voters) that the current Republican Party has turned out to be. Nevertheless, Goldfarb’s argument applies, since the Continue reading “Ungovernable? The Curse of a Ruling Faction”

How Cheating Starts, and the Path to Oligarchy

Breathing an Atmosphere of Lies

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last two years, you can probably guess why lying and other forms of spreading untruths fester with new virulence in the minds of the public (that is, that portion of the public who is paying attention to public life).

Communicating untruths, whether deliberate lies or “alternative facts” mistaken for truths through ignorance, is a very broad topic.  There are polite lies, “white lies,” or lying to protect a loved one, all of which are in a different moral universe from evil lies. The latter are the kind that constitute Fake News as well as other kinds of dishonest villainy.

If a lie inflicts harm on somebody’s Bad Guys, then justifying it may depend on whose side you’re on.

Subverting the system with lies is OK if you win.  That’s where we stand in the days of rank partisanship.

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War on Women Grinds On

Trump Gang Pulls Plug on Women’s Empowerment

In addition to slashing the U.S. contribution to the United Nations, the Trump administration plans to take the axe to a State Department program promoting women’s rights around the world: The Latest Blow to Women Worldwide

It’s another measure to find funds to increase the Defense Department’s budget by $54 billion.

It’s also another slab dumped on the mounting pile of wrongs meant to overwhelm the opposition.  The Trump administration is waging war on many fronts: Women, the Poor, the Sick, Immigrants fleeing war and rule by street gangs, Science, Climate Change Resistance, Habitat Protection, Oceans, Lakes, and Waterways Protections, Renewable Energy, Voting Rights, the National Parks and Monuments, Native American Rights, Black Lives Matter. . . the list goes on.

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Just When You Thought It Couldn’t Get Worse. . .

Science Takes Another Hit from Trump Administration

In case you didn’t catch this, Trump has appointed, for assistant secretary for public affairs at HHS  a woman who believes that abortion can cause breast cancer.  When challenged by the New York Times, instead of citing studies, Charmaine Yoest argued that scientists are “under the control of the abortion lobby.”

There may be more than one reason for opposing abortion, but making claims about a connection unknown to scientists at the CDC is a long leap into the Alternative Facts Universe (AFU).  Forgive me for playing another of my hunches as to the AFU mindset, but I imagine that Yoest’s claim is based on the fact that some women who have had abortions later get breast cancer.  Undoubtedly. I’m sure Charmaine Yoest has heard of more than one. The question then to ask is, how many women who never had an abortion also get breast cancer? That is, does the rate of women getting breast cancer after an abortion exceed the background breast cancer rate?

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The Denialist Penitentiary

Republicans Who Know Climate Truth Are in Lockdown.

A convert to climate activism describes the dilemma of ambivalent Republicans as being in a “denialist penitentiary”—whose unforgiving  jailers are the Tea Party.

An interview of onetime denier Jerry Taylor by Sharon Lerner in The Intercept explains the path by which he became converted. As a conservative, he frames his case to “conservative elites” in terms of gambling.  In the face of dangerous uncertainty, the smart money hedges its bets. “We don’t know exactly what will happen. Given that fact, shouldn’t we hedge?” He emphasizes speaking in a “dispassionate” way to get his points across, and eschews talk about needing fundamental economic change—”to most conservatives, that’s just nails on a chalkboard.”

For interview of Taylor see How Jerry Taylor reversed course on climate

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“Very powerful”. . . a Trumpian Epiphany

The Errant Armada

Sorry, it’s almost impossible to get through a day without some shard of Trump-inspired government wreckage getting lodged in your throat, to be expelled by laughter over folly so ridiculous that future generations will have to conclude that someone made it up.  They would be viewing it through the cracked lens of Fake-News-Making that has become the paradigm for information dissemination in the Age of Social Media.

The ridiculous part was Donald Trump’s announcement of an “Armada” en route to the shores of North Korea, when it was at the moment actually headed in the other direction for a training exercise in the Indian Ocean. (Hapless White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was once again thrust into Alternative Facts Limbo, suspended between his clueless boss on one side, and on the other side a Press Corp hungry for the truth.)

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Civility on the Chopping Block: Why Democrats Lose

What Mitch McConnell’s Total War Tells Us

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had no qualms about squashing the Democrat Party’s attempt to filibuster the Gorsuch nomination to the Supreme Court, any more than he had qualms about refusing to allow Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland even to be heard in committee a year ago.  The Garland episode was abundantly unfair. Certainly Mitch McConnell in his heart of hearts knew that to be so.

But Mitch McConnell doesn’t care about fairness. Just as with his categorically obstructionist policy regarding all things Obamain, fairness was the farthest thing from his mind.  All’s fair in love and war is the axiom by which he and his fellow Republicans operate. Whatever we may think about McConnell’s ugly enough racial and personal biases against the former President, the key deciding factor that animated his obstructionism was the challenge to Business as Usual represented by the upstart senator Obama. . . and it had to be crushed at all costs.

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