The Lobster Boil

Here I sit a little more than a year after my first attempt to write.  It's not that I haven't been writing.  I've written responses to other people's comments onlne on everything from Facebook to Twitter.  Hell, with Trump in the White House it seems as if the whole of America has lost its memory, it not its mind.  Maybe it's because I'm old and remember Watergate.

American democracy is in a like a lobster boil.  Like the lobster in the bottom of the pot with the water slowly rising in temperature, our democracy is slowly and effectively be eroded by the increasing acceptance of the unacceptable. Absurdity, followed by lies, followed by contradiction, and more absurdity.  Lies become "alternate facts". Long established procedures, policies, and values of our institutions are undermind or corrupted.  The EPA can't mention climate change.  Immigration policy focuses on separating childern from families. We renege on agreements with friends and foes alike.  We cause economic turmoil with allies. We back out of agreements (NAFTA, Paris Environmental and the Iranian Nuclear deal), leaving our allies unsupported while simultaneously negotiating a nuclear agreement with North Korea. What make anyone think the North Koreans would have any faith in any agreement with this president based on his record with agreements so far? 

"When facism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and waving a cross."  I've learned that contrary to what I was told earlier in life this was not a quote from Sinclair Lewis or Huey Long. However it is a very accurrate description of 2018 America under Donald Trump.  Make America Great Again, to do that we have to assume that it somehow lost its greatness.  Sounds like a bunch of flag waving to me.

I get almost daily calls from Janie {Owens} about Trump and his insanity.  We've been friends for over 35 years, and she is my link to Detroit and its politics.With Trump as president, I think her calls are a cathartic way for both of us to shake the irrationality of a nation that has lost its way.  It isn't so much his politics that distrubs me as much as it is his simple lack of base decency.  The image of Trump mocking the reporter with a disability, his statements about Mexicans and people from "shit hole countries, his dismissal of Puerto Rico and its people during Hurricane Maria, his speaking of women in an objectifying manner, the name calling during the campaign.  I could go on, but what's the point.

It seems that the fact that Trump is a dispicable, loathsome character with the personal carriage of middle school bully, and the veracity of the Charles Ponzi, had a counter-intuitive effect.  Like the "carnival barker" President Obama described, Trump sold a large enough minority of the American people on the idea that he was worthy of being the face of America.  This man who during the election was engage in a civil fraud trial involving one of his many dubious "business" deals, Trump University, convinced millions of Americans that he was an honest businessman and that it was his opponent that should be locked up.

This is the man who claimed the press was his enemy, the nation's intelligence agencies were incompetent, and that only he could save the nation.  All this while demanding loyalty from his FBI director, and then firing him when he refused to submit to his demands, and continued to investigate the possible collusion between his campaign and the Russians.  Trump openly stated that he fired Comey because of the Russian investigation in a television interview.  Then the next day has a closed door meeting with the Russian ambassador with Russian press, but  no American press allowed.  This seems to me like an example of self-confessed obstruction of justice, followed by a betrayal of the 1st amendment with a disregard of free press.

Now into the second year of investigation of a growing mass of evidence of corruption (four guilty pleas, and as of today (June 5, 2018), 22 indictments and 5 guilty pleas have resulted from the investigation into the Trump campaign. This in a little over a year.  While at the same time Trump and his supporters are pushing to end what he calls a "witch hunt" that has gone on too long.  I would like to make these comparisons the investigations into Hillary Clinton's emails and the Benghazi each lasted over four years and resulted in 0 indictments and 0 guilty pleas, with Clinton coming and directly answering questions from two separate congressional panels.  This should be considered by anyone who wants to deal in the false equivalencies that Trump and Clinton were somehow equally bad!

I think the thing that bothers me most is that in the early stages of his campaign Trump made a statement that;  "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters." [https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2016/01/23/donald-trump-iowa-rally-shooting-sot.cnn] I am shocked most by the fact that as more and more facts about corruption and other possible wrong doings of this administration, the more his supporters seem to defend him.  What are Americans thinking?  He tells his followers it's a plot by the Democrats.  Yet Mueller, the current FBI Director, as well as Comey are all Republicans!  Wake up Americans!

The news over the last few days has Donald Trump stating that he does not have to answer a subpeona, and that he has the power to stop any investigation, and grant himself amnesty.  Don't the American people know that amnesty is an admission of guilt as well as shield from prosecution?  I heard some pundits on radio saying that Trump isn't being serious, and that this is a form of desparation.  While that may be the case, I'm more concerned that this might be the first step in an atempted coup. All the while the Democrats seem to be running away from attacking the fact that we may have a traitorous president. While the Republicans are placing party and power ahead of the law and the country.  Where is the backbone of patriots?


 

So It Begins

This is something that is long promised and the subject of more than a few false starts.  I have reached the stage of life where I need to receive relief by taking some of what's going on in my head and putting it on paper. So what I will do is write whatever is on my mind hear on this blog.