I am still out of action, but not so much that I can't denounce Tucker Carlson as an enemy of the Constitution and of the American people, and "Patriot Purge," his predictable, inane, and masturbatory Fox Nation mini-me series, as an egregious waste of bandwidth.
Carlson is a liar, a con artist, a fool, and a Trump dupe, and "Patriot Purge" is yellow journalism at its worst.
Tucker Carlson, you are anathema.
--- Diogenes, 6 November 2021
Diogenes is on the injured reserve list again. I suppose when you're as old as he is things are bound to fall off here and there.
He'll be back.
--- RLB, 1 November 2021
What do George Washington, George Orwell and a fictional sex slave have in common?
They all speak eloquently about the evils of tyranny.
In September 1796, toward the end of his presidency, George Washington made a farewell address to the American people. Among many other thoughts he shared with them the importance of loyalty to the government:
"The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government."
He goes on to warn of the dangers of extreme partisanship:
"However combinations or associations of the above description [divisive and partisan policies] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."¹
Sound familiar? Today's Republicans are that "cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled" rabble who are openly "subvert[ing] the power of the people and . . . usurp[ing] for themselves the reins of government." Whether they will destroy it remains to be seen, but their actions so far suggest that to be their goal.
I'm not suggesting Washington or any of the Founders was prescient. It's simply that they and their families had lived under tyrants for generations, and they were well aware of the processes by which autocrats rise. The greed and lust for power that are hallmarks of the contemporary Republican Party looked the same in the 18th century as they do in the 21st.
In his dystopian novel 1984 ² George Orwell introduced most of us in the free world to the fearsome reality of totalitarianism.
Published in 1949, 1984 explores the nature of a dictatorship as seen through the eyes of Winston Smith, whose job is rewriting history for the Ministry of Truth. The government is founded on a Big Lie focused on three self-contradictory statements:
Those statements are the core of doublethink, a tool used by The Party to indoctrinate citizens, who are expected simultaneously to accept two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, often in contravention to their own memories or sense of reality.
That idea is at the heart of Trumpism. Infected Republicans claim to be protecting the Constitution and looking out for their constituents when they are in fact doing the exact opposite. Some of them probably believe it. Others are simply lying, trying to gain Trump's favor, which means absolutely nothing. He has neither loyalty nor fidelity toward his followers; they are nothing to him.
The goal of the Party, the governing authority in 1984, is to attain power--not to reach a goal, but for the sake of power itself. That is the same lust that drives Republican politicians to do anything, no matter how immoral, corrupt or nefarious, to win elections and to stay in office.
The year 1984 did not bring constitutional Armageddon, but if Trump and his followers are not stopped and stripped of power we may well see it forty years on, in 2024.
The Hulu series "The Handmaid's Tale"³ takes place in another dystopian society in which most women have become sterile. Fertile women are captured, called "handmaids," and held as sex slaves for child bearing by the ruling class men. Any children they bear are taken away to be raised by their masters' wives.
Gilead, as the society is called, has come about after a religious civil war in the United States won by ultra-conservative religious forces. It is a totalitarian theocratic state based on a twisted notion of Old Testament society in which men are men and women are chattel.
In Gilead women have no rights, female children are rounded up to be used as needed, and LGBT citizens are hanged as "gender traitors."
This plot may seem farfetched, but keep in mind the struggle American women had in gaining reproductive freedom and how bitterly that right is still contested. At this moment the cornerstone of that right, Roe v. Wade, is at risk of being struck down by a conservative Supreme Court.
This nation is nowhere close to gender equality. As long as women are paid less than men, as long as any police officer anywhere turns a blind eye to spousal abuse, as long as there are areas where men with names like Billy Bob refer to women as "little gals" we are not equal.
Throughout our lives we have enjoyed freedom, and we tend to believe it will last forever. But study just a bit of history, listen to the warnings. and consider the outrages of 2020. Freedom is not free; it takes work and sacrifice.
If we don't cherish our freedom and our rights and work hard to protect them we will wake up one morning and find them gone.
--- Diogenes, 24 October 2021
¹ https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=15&page=transcript
² Everyone should read this book and be familiar with it. If you haven't thought about it since high school, find it online or in your local library, read it and pay attention.
³ Based on the novel of the same title by Margaret Atwood.
U. S. Senate Republicans have once again voted against the Constitution, the right to vote, and the freedom of the American people.
Trapped in Trump's Big Lie and too cowardly to admit they have chosen the wrong path, Republican senators today blocked passage of the Freedom to Vote Act.
The act is Senate Democrats' latest attempt to address the flood of voter suppression laws rolling out of state legislatures like sewage.
I am of the opinion that the Republican Party should be condemned as a domestic terror organization and its leaders, both in the Congress and the RNC, branded as terrorists for their consistent and unrelenting attack on our constitutional rights.
Senate Republicans are hiding, as they have for as long as I can remember, behind the curtain of states' rights. They claim the states have the power to shape their own electoral laws and that passing a national voting rights law would be a federal intrusion on those rights.
The problem is that the state laws that have recently been passed blatantly violate a number of constitutional rights, violating at the very least Amendments 14, 15, 19, 24, and 26, and should be peremptorily struck down by the courts.
We see this Republican racism every election cycle: attempts to threaten or repress voters, disinformation about voting, false allegations of voter fraud.
After Trump these attempts have become more vicious and virulent.
Major news outlets are beginning to say what many of us bloggers have been saying for a long time. The entire Republican Party is corrupt and has only one agenda item: to get into power or to stay there. Republican intransigence and bigotry are the strongest arguments for term limits that we have.
The administration and congressional Democrats need to be far more aggressive, and to get the party in line.
Their battle cry should be: Stop The Goddamned Republicans From Destroying America!
--- Diogenes, 20 October 2021
I am reposting this piece on the weakness of the American system of jurisprudence in light of the Kyle Rittenhouse acquittal.
In my opinion, in the case of Donald Trump the president should suspend habeas corpus, have the Orange Golem blackbagged and dumped into a federal oubliette.
It would take years for the courts or Congress to act.
Original post:
On 23 May 1498 Girolamo Savonarola was publicly executed in Florence, Italy.
A popular preacher with a large following, Savonarola ran afoul of Pope Alexander VI. He was excommunicated and condemned as a heretic. He was hanged, his body burned, and his ashes thrown into the Arno River so his followers could not find any part of him to memorialize.¹
Now there's an effective disappearing act.
In my very darkest moments I admit I would not be sorry to see such a fate visited on Donald Trump. But it can't happen for three reasons:
1: It's inhuman;
2: It would violate the Eighth Amendment;² and
3: It's not the point. He needs to be gone, not necessarily dead. The goal is to neutralize him and make him forever ineligible to hold office.
How?
Unprecedented problems need unprecedented solutions. A few suggestions:
The Supreme Court: I believe, as I wrote on 11 October. that the American system of jurisprudence could not effectively try DJTrump. However, it is a foregone conclusion that any trial decision will wind up in front of the Supreme Court, so why not start there? Precedent should be set at the highest level.
The Constitution gives the Supreme Court original jurisdiction in specific kinds of cases, including those "affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;" that is, people who have taken the oath to uphold the Constitution. That oath, once taken, has no expiration date.
That puts former presidents among those who could be tried for criminal acts directly by the Supreme Court. There is general precedent for such trials, although none involve a former president.
Special Counsel: The attorney general can appoint a special counsel in cases where "it would be in the public interest to appoint an outside Special Counsel to assume responsibility for the matter."³ A nonpartisan, independent special counsel can investigate a specific issue, e.g. election interference or incitement to insurrection. The special counsel has prosecutorial power, but being unattached to government would avoid any appearance of partisanship or conflict of interest.
The Psychiatric Option: Trump is mentally ill. The whole world has seen symptoms of his malignant narcissism. His niece Mary Trump, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist, has written and said in public that her uncle has a number of obvious mental problems.
Like most states, New York, where OranguTrump resides, has a law obligating emergency and medical personnel to report encounters with anyone who might be a danger to themselves or to others. Trump is unquestionably a danger to others--to the population of this entire nation if not of the world.
This law can allow involuntary institutionalization for an unspecified period of time if necessary.
There are any number of qualified people who could make that initial report, including mental health professionals who have already warned of the danger.
The Very Long Shot: The International Criminal Court is waging an ongoing war on tyrants and on those who believe they are immune to the rule of law. The United States is unfortunately not a member of the court for political reasons. It may nonetheless be possible to advance an extraordinary case against Trump if brought by a credible officer of the court or via the United Nations.
Those are my thoughts. If you have others, please leave a comment.
Trump must be nullified and forgotten.
--- Diogenes, 18 October 2021; reposted 22 November 2021
¹ It didn't work. There is a plaque in the pavement where the execution took place and people still leave flowers there.
² I know I've said Trump doesn't deserve the protections of the Constitution, but the "unusual punishments" clause should never be violated.
³ United States, Department of Justice, "General Powers of Special Counsel."
64 Fed. Reg. 37,042 (July 9, 1999).
I take it back. He does not.
"Say what, Diogenes? Have you lost your faith in the Framers' wisdom?"
Not at all. I've had to admit that the wisdom of the Framers has limitations. They were products of a society that had clearly drawn normative behaviors and social mores, which are reflected in the Constitution.
They were, however, wise enough to know that society evolves, and they wrote the means of amending the Constitution into the document itself.
But neither the Framers nor anyone between their time and ours could have conceived of a creature like Trump, and would have dismissed out of hand the idea that such a one could become president.
I have felt a change coming incrementally for a few weeks. The tipping point came as a triple whammy: the release of the Senate Judiciary Committee's detailed report on Trump's attacks on the electoral process; publication of Bob Woodward's most recent book Peril; and hearing Carl Bernstein and Anderson Cooper on CNN matter of factly discussing Trump as a sociopath and/or psychopath.
I have changed my mind about how Trump should be treated because his character, personality, and behavior are so far removed from and foreign to the norms on which our system of law is based that any attempt to deal with him in a traditional way would be fruitless.
For example, the very notion of a trial by jury presupposes that everyone involved will be truthful. Donald Trump is incapable of telling the truth, and he has no scruples about committing perjury. He does not believe the law applies to him.
He perjured himself on the first day of his term when he said the words of the presidential oath without meaning one of them. He never intended to protect the Constitution; he always meant to tear it down. So not only is he likely to lie under oath, he has already lied by falsely taking an oath. Swearing him to truthfulness would be a waste of words.
Empaneling a jury capable of reaching an impartial verdict is likely to be impossible, given the number of people who follow the Trump cult, who themselves would be likely to lie about their intentions so they could vote him not guilty. At the very least, prospective jurors should be given a polygraph test to uncover any undisclosed connection to or sympathy for Trump.
And of course the site of any trial would have to be heavily secured against Trump's zombie army.
Trump's criminality is obvious to anyone with eyes to see and yet he remains not only free, but unindicted. That terrifies and outrages me, as it should any loyal American.
Bringing Trump to justice will be a challenge for America, but we must rise to it. Can it be done within the constraints of the Constitution? Probably not. So what, then? He absolutely must not be made a martyr.
Donald Trump needs to be dropped into this nation's collective oubliette. There is no other option.
--- Diogenes, 10/11/2021
Donald Trump's head on a plate!
When your opponent won't play fair you don't cave in and say, "OK. have it your way." The question is, do you continue to try to keep the rules intact or do you say "To hell with it!" and pull out some dirty tricks of your own?
I wrestle with that question almost daily, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. There is no precedent in our history for the current situation:
An ex-president who for four years openly flouted the laws of the United States, attempted a coup, sought to disrupt the country's rightful and legal electoral process, brainwashed his followers into believing he is right and everyone else is wrong, attempted, on recorded telephone calls, to suborn elected officials, sent unidentified troops against Americans, courted and encouraged vigilante militias, called cowardly killers heroes and decorated military heroes losers, falsely declared a national emergency in order to get funds to keep a campaign promise, routinely misused federal monies and campaign funds and used federal employees illegally, frequently tried to override the courts of justice, unilaterally renounced international treaties and obligations, improperly employed family members, sought personal political aid from leaders of inimical nations, committed perjury, incited insurrection, endangered the entire nation by ignoring a pandemic, received laundered money for his 2016 campaign, obstructed justice, and lied under oath--while taking the presidential oath.
That's just a partial list of Trump's misdeeds. I know that some items are just bad acts, but there are prosecutable crimes there. Trump remains a danger to us, to the Constitution, and possibly to the world.
He must be stopped: arrested, charged, tried, and put out of sight. There has to be a legal way.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
--- Diogenes, 8 October 2021
No, I am not complaining that this blog is being disregarded, but that the actual Vox Populi, the Voice of the People, is.
The 2020 presidential election was clearly and widely understood to be a plebiscite on the 45th president. Every election is to some degree a vote for one person and against another, but in this case the vote was not just on the presidency of Donald Trump, such as it was, but on the man himself. Numbers are neutral, but in the run up to, during, and following the election it was clear that Americans wanted DJTrump gone.
Not just out of office. Gone.
It's not happening.
The 2020 election, in which 51.3% of voting Americans chose Biden, gave the new president one unambiguous mandate: Undo as many of Trump's policies as feasible and deny him any possibility of running for office again.
I appreciate the many challenges that face President Biden. Among many other things he had to start fixing the insane mess that Trump had made of the Executive Branch. There were treaties to repair, feathers to unruffle, hangers-on who thought Trump had appointed them for life to move out the door--the list may be endless.
Somewhere in there Biden or his advisors lost sight of the primary goal: Make Trump persona non grata in the government.
Along with many other Americans I voted for equal justice, freedom from willful governance, respect for civil rights and for the Constitution, and a nation free of Trump and his tyrannical madness.
I did not cast my ballot for multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure overhaul or more Congressional constipation. I voted for action and we're not seeing it: not in creating a Trump-free nation, not in protecting civil rights, not in bringing the nation together.
Presently the only significant criminal litigation against DJTrump is at county and state levels. If the FBI has something cooking they're keeping a cover on it.
When I say I want Trump gone I'm not talking about whisking him off to some rendition facility. Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution gives the president the responsibility to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, . . ." Sometimes vague statements can be useful. Laws are executed only when they are applied, and they are applied only when a person who has clearly broken them is charged and tried.
As a department within the Executive Branch the Department of Justice answers to the president. At his request they could and should open a number of investigations into Trump's activities.
With the evidence all over television news, social media, and podcasts, there has to be a crumb or two visible to the FBI, who should unquestionably be able to find laws that Trump has broken.
Who am I to complain about what the president is doing?
I am no one and I am everyone; I am one of the 81 million people who elected him; I am America, as we the people are all America.
We are those who need to "Take Back America;" we need to take it back from politicians. They work on our behalf for our welfare and they need to be reminded of the fact.
Tell them.
--- Diogenes, 6 October 2021
The name Ackerman McQueen may not ring a bell for you, but you've heard their catchy slogans: "Guns don't kill people, people kill people," and "I'll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands," growled out by Charlton Heston.
The first is patently preposterous. No unarmed person can enter a school or church or assembly hall and kill or maim more than one or two people. If you want to kill or wound a lot of people you have two options: a bomb or a gun. Guns are far easier to obtain and use, and are the obvious choice. Guns kill people because people use them for that purpose.
As for the "cold dead hands," it's so outrageous I laugh out loud when I hear it.
Ackerman McQueen is the public relations firm that dreamed up those phrases for the National Rifle Association, the self-appointed guardian of Americans' right to bear arms. A&M, or Ack-Mac, is headquartered in Oklahoma City, the capital of a state where anyone over 21 can openly carry a gun without a permit, where machismo runs in the streets, and the mascot of the state land-grant university is a gun-toting cowboy named Pistol Pete.
Founded in 1871 to foster the skill of rifle shooting, the NRA was a respectable organization for nearly a century. It became involved in lobbying and politics in 1934. From then until the late 1960s it was nonpartisan, and consistently supported gun control legislation.
Throughout the 1970s the organization grew more conservative and more heavily involved in lobbying. In 1977 a right-wing activist group within the organization took over leadership with the agenda of seeking expansion of Second Amendment rights and resolutely opposing any legislation with even a whiff of gun control. This was a 180 degree policy change and was the event that brought the NRA firmly into the slimy embrace of the Republican Party.
NRA marketing strategy shifted from the "Field & Stream" model to making up bogus threats to gun rights: "The government is trying to take your guns away."
That, my friends, is the Big Lie of the NRA's very own the-sky-is-falling conspiracy theory. It has been fed to the American people for more than 40 years and too many continue to believe it.
And let's not forget the Great NRA Politician Blackmail Con.
They called it The Political Victory Fund. The purpose of the fund was to support pro-gun candidates and to work against those who supported gun control. Political candidates at all levels were "graded" by the traditional letter-grade system, with A+ signifying a true believer and F grades going to sworn enemies of the cause.
"Now just be a good little Congress member and vote the way we tell you and we'll send you money to keep you close to power where you want to be. If you don't follow our suggestions, well, . . ."
In 2008 with District of Columbia v. Heller the Supreme Court made gun control personal, ruling it legal to keep a loaded handgun in one's home for the purpose of self-defense. That was when the floodgates of the Second Amendment lie opened. Everything and everyone who even mentioned gun control was suspect.
Anyone who knows anything about the Constitution--and that should include every member of Congress--knows that warnings about threats to the Second Amendment are empty rhetoric.
No Amendment nor any part of the Constitution can be "stolen" or diminished in any way by the whim of a president or any group--not even Congress. Repealing an Amendment requires supermajority approval of Congress plus similar approval by two-thirds of the legislatures of the 50 states. That's 33 separate legislatures. It can be a lengthy process, and many attempts have fallen by the wayside. Moreover, as an element of the Bill of Rights, the Second is probably untouchable anyway--for better or for worse it's a genuine "third-rail" issue.The NRA became apologists for mass shooters, suggesting Trump-worthy remedies before the Orange Ogre was even in the frame. "Arm teachers!" "Arm students!" "Deny guns to the mentally ill!" "Surround schools with armed guards!" "Protect the sacred Second Amendment."
Guns, guns, guns, always more guns. The NRA has a morbid gun fetish.
As the organization became ever wealthier and influential it also became more corrupt. As Lord Acton noted, "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely."
In 2017 the FBI found reasonable cause to believe the NRA had acted as a funnel for Russian money to flow into Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign and indicted a number of Russian nationals.
In 2020 the attorney general of New York filed a civil suit against the NRA alleging fraud, financial misconduct, and misuse of charitable funds by some of its executives. The DC attorney general simultaneously filed a similar suit. The New York suit sought the dissolution of the NRA for being "fraught with fraud and abuse."
The NRA mission has never been about "protecting" the Second Amendment; it has been about selling guns.
The NRA has had the gall to call itself a civil rights organization. It is not. The classes of Americans protected by true civil rights legislation are protected against discrimination based on personal qualities over which they have no control: e.g. their race, color, and sex.
Owning and using weapons is a choice made by each individual. One is not born with the genetic need to carry a gun. Under the Second Amendment we may have the right to keep and bear arms, but the Framers could never have imagined the proliferation of weapons in the modern world. It is a right that must be tempered if chaos and violence are to be overcome.
I place responsibility for every mass shooting and a great many street crimes since 1980 on the policies of the National Rifle Association and the political toadies who accepted their money.
They should--they must--be held to account.
La lutte continue!
--- Diogenes, 10/2/2021
On Saturday September 18 a few hundred deluded individuals showed up in Washington DC to demand justice for the criminals jailed for the January 6 insurrection.
Where were the hundreds of thousands of Americans who should be demanding justice for themselves? For four long years we the people were lied to, swindled, disrespected, disregarded, and flimflammed by a pretender to the presidency, a parasite on the body politic, who cares for nothing and no one outside his own skin, and who came frighteningly close to dismantling our democracy for no better reason than because he could.
And yet Donald Trump remains free to work his mischief and manage his cult.
We all know that Trump is a criminal. We all have a pretty good idea of the crimes he has committed. We all want to know why he isn't locked up.
I expect a number of us have a fantasy in which DJTrump is snatched, hooded, thrown into the back of a windowless van, delivered to a secret penal facility, and habeas corpus be damned.
My personal fantasy is based on a short story from 1955 by Steve Allen, called "The Public Hating." Simply put, a traitor is strapped to a chair in the center of an arena, and the huge audience he betrayed focus their loathing at him, literally hating him to death.¹
I think that would be wonderfully poetic.
Only there's that pesky idea called presumption of innocence. It's not spelled out in the Constitution, probably because it has been a cornerstone of civilized legal systems for so long the Framers took it for granted.
It is one reason why the legal process is slow. It is slow because it has to be done right. If there is the faintest flicker of reasonable doubt in the prosecutor's case the accused could well go free. But while the process plods on, we feel the need for speed because the 2022 elections are coming at us, and we want to know something that will assure us of Trump's criminality.
Just Security, a litigation tracking site,² lists a total of 16 federal and state major criminal and civil cases pending against Trump in DC, Georgia, Michigan, New York, and Scotland.
Complaints include conspiracy to disrupt congressional proceedings, defamation, election tampering, fraud, incitement to violence, money laundering, personal injury, tax and insurance fraud, and violation of civil rights.
Yet the most crucial and necessary charges that should be brought to bear on him, those that would prohibit his ever again seeking public office, are absent. He could be found guilty and imprisoned on any of the charges listed above and still run for any office, including president.
To the best of my knowledge there are only two potentially applicable crimes that, if he were found guilty, could prohibit Trump ever from holding office again: Treason (18 USC 2381) and Rebellion or insurrection (18 USC 2383). Prosecutors at every level seem to be dancing around the more serious charges.
In 2020, 81,284,666 Americans voted against Donald Trump. Could not even one thousandth of one percent of them--813 people--organize to petition the government for redress of their grievances? As citizens of the nation that was victimized by its alleged former leader we surely have grounds and standing.
If 813 people gathered each week, or each day, in different parts of the country and the gatherings were covered by media, might that not call some attention to the importance of prosecuting the man who has done so much damage to our nation and society? And still does, through his minions?
Justice for the people!
--- Diogenes, 9/23/2021
¹ Allen, Steve. The Public Hating: A Collection of Short Stories. Dembner Books, 1990.
This is September 18, 2021. Will it be another day of infamy, or just 9/18/21?
It's interesting that this date falls just one week after the 20th anniversary of only the second time in our national history that our homeland has been attacked by forces of another country.
One week ago everybody who is anybody in the United States was attending a 9/11 memorial ceremony. The latest former president was not. The Orange Golem was announcing a pay-per-view boxing match and flogging his Great Lie between blows.
Are you listening, Donald? This is you we’re talking about. You, the utter disgrace to your family and blight on your country, the most egregious waste of space in this land's history.
Yet people whose minds have been infected with your filth may gather in the national capital and other cities around the country today seeking justice for those who may not deserve it. They come in the name of justice, but seek amnesty.
Justice involves due process, with the emphasis on process. Facts are gathered, statements taken, pros and cons weighed, past offenses considered, juries empaneled; it moves deliberately, not precipitately, to ensure fairness to all. Your people just want all the jail doors to open.
The genuinely fake news outlets, Fox, OAN, Newsmax, et al., have been spreading lies to the gullible. The usual suspects claim that arrestees from the January 6 uprising are held as political prisoners in 23-hour solitary confinement, denied medical care and legal counsel, trapped in a gulag somewhere, blah-blah-blah ad nauseam.
It's not true. The people who participated in the January 6 riot violently attacked the seat of their own government, seeking to kidnap, injure or kill its leaders, to disrupt its constitutional processes, to deny the will of the majority of its people.
In many countries they would be summarily executed.
But they are Americans, and the very system they denounce and seek to overthrow protects them and provides them justice as it does all its citizens.
Those who come out today may do so under cover of the First Amendment right of the American people to gather together and to seek redress. Let’s just make sure we all understand the exact phrasing of that blessing of liberty: we have "the right . . . peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
We have the conditional right to gather, and that condition is “peaceably.” We have the right to petition for redress of grievances. A petition is a formal request, not a demand.
The second this gathering becomes violent it will be in violation of the Constitution and its members will be subject to arrest for rioting or insurrection.
The far-right protesters who may gather today do so in the name of people who broke the most sacred of laws, and who were responsible for the deaths of others trying to defend their country. They claim they come in the memory of insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, who was shot while attempting to attack members of Congress.
Let's be clear: the police officers who died as a result of the January 6 insurrection were patriots; Ashli Babbitt was a traitor.
--- Diogenes, 9/18/2021
In the first post of this new series I mentioned Émile Zola's 1866 Mes Haines, a collection of his literary criticism whose title means "My Hatreds." I'm borrowing that title for this series because I do in fact hate the subjects I'll be writing about.
I use "flat earther" as an umbrella term for people who against all evidence refuse to believe the truth, whether presented by science or law or scholarship or mathematics or divine revelation. They are willfully ignorant.
They are not necessarily stupid, although they seem so. But stupidity, denseness, foolishness and similar afflictions are incapacities of the mind that hinder people from learning, absorbing, or understanding information. Those who are willfully ignorant have chosen to be so. They ignore and choose not to believe truths that do not cohere with their world view, or that they simply don't like.
In short, they want to make the world in their own image, or in the image of something they have been told they should believe in. So they supplant the truth with something else.
There are still people in the world who believe the Earth is flat, although that error was disproved about 2500 years ago.¹ They are, I think, relatively harmless.
Not so those who choose to believe more modern absurdities, e.g.: There are tracking devices in vaccines; World governments are dominated by an ultra-secret cabal; COVID-19 is a hoax; Joe Biden stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump; The space program is a lie; The Holocaust never happened; Absentee voting is invalid; Face masks are dangerous. The list, ridiculous as it is, goes on.
The more rational among us dismiss these theories out of hand. We should not dismiss the true believers, however, because they can be exceedingly dangerous--dangerous enough to overrun the U. S. Capitol seeking to overturn the will of the people and to do harm to former Vice-president Pence.
Millions of Americans believe Donald Trump's Big Lie that he actually won the 2020 election. They believe it because they want to believe it, not because it's true. They, and the Manure Spreader in Charge of Lies, must be called out, not coddled, not excused, not humored, not given any benefit of doubt.
We--the rational people of America of all political stripes--we need, we must, say "No, you're wrong." It will take time to deprogram Trump cultists, but we owe it to our country, to our children, to those infected with the Big Lie, to heal this pernicious disease now.
Consider this truth: "There is no nobility in stupidity, particularly when that stupidity is allowed to take up the mantle of power. Americans need to stop celebrating their ignorance. This is a country with too much influence to allow fools the opportunity to lead."²
--- Diogenes, 9/17/2021
¹ From The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/may/27/is-the-earth-pancake-flat-among-the-flat-earthers-conspiracy-theories-fake-news
² From An Injustice! https://aninjusticemag.com/the-opinion-of-willfully-ignorant-americans-doesnt-matter-c8434b59fbb1 NOTE: Some security programs may raise a red flag on this site. I do not think it's hazardous but it is subversive, and doesn't document its sources as well as I would like. Visit at your own risk.
OK, we're not exactly in a desert, but we have a message we strongly believe in that we want as many people as possible to hear.
Here at Vox Populi we haven't the means to boost our posts or subscribe to services that do, so we're asking for assistance.
Nothing as crass as money, of course. We'd just be grateful if you would share some of our posts occasionally.
We're looking for coverage, not agreement. If you have friends or a group you think might be interested in what we have to say, or who might just hate it, send them over to diogenes8.blogspot.com. We welcome dialogue.
Thanks,
Richard L. Brown, 9/15/21
This is the second part of a list cataloguing the most despicable people in America. To no one's surprise it consists entirely of politicians.
Addison Mitchell "Mitch" McConnell III (R-KY), Senate Minority Leader.
I didn't put the Archdemon in the first list because I wanted to include him at the head of this list of other deniers of science, logic, decency, truth, goodness, and the American way. Their only allegiance is to their political party and their own deluded world view. They have their own little circle of Hell, as it were.
Mitch would have been the perfect snake oil salesman. He can lie all day long, switch policy positions at the drop of a hat, deny statements he made just yesterday--or even ten minutes ago.
He's an adept at what George Orwell in 1984 called Newspeak: Saying one thing while doing the polar opposite. Claiming to be fighting for peoples' rights while undermining the Constitution, for example.
He's a dyed-in-the-wool racist. At the beginning of President Obama's first term he said that his priority was to make Obama a one-term president. The GOP order of the day was always and everywhere to block Obama--not because he was in the opposition party, but because he was Black. McConnell stunned the nation by holding a Supreme Court nomination hostage for a full year. Yet four years later he forgot the spurious reasoning behind that act ("a nomination in the last year of a president's term should be held for the next president") and nominated Amy Coney Barrett obscenely soon after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He has no sense of shame and he has no loyalty to the Constitution.
Gregory Wayne Abbott (R-TX), Governor of Texas, Trump minion, the bigoted reactionary leader of the Southern charge back into Jim Crow days--and beyond, if he had his way. He has sponsored and supported legislation that has no purpose other than to keep people of color and people with disabilities from voting. He has also signed a Draconian anti-abortion law that allows private citizens who think a woman has had an abortion to sue her and anyone who assisted her, down to and including any person who provided transportation to the clinic. By my reckoning the two laws together violate Article IV, section 2 and five separate Amendments to the Constitution, the Americans With Disabilities Act, and Roe v. Wade, which is still in force. Abbot is at very least a traitor to the Constitution.
Ronald Dion DeSantis (R-FL), Governor of Florida and another Trump minion, is following his master's example. According to the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel, throughout 2020 DeSantis "suppressed unfavorable facts, dispensed dangerous misinformation,
dismissed public health professionals, and promoted the views of
scientific dissenters who supported the governor’s approach to the
disease." DeSantis is currently battling and suing school systems over the adoption of mask mandates, which he has specifically outlawed. He claims he just wants parents to be free to decide whether their kids go masked to school. In reality he's a power-drunk bully having pissing contests with school boards. He is no friend of children--or of their parents, for all that.
Kristi Lynn Arnold Noem (R-SD), Governor of South Dakota, is another follower of the Trump way. Prior to the pandemic she was a typical far right-wing politician, opposed to legalization of marijuana, abortion, and in favor of carrying firearms without a license. When the pandemic arrived she followed the Trump line to the letter, denying the science, spreading disinformation, implementing no safeguards, and using millions of dollars of pandemic relief funds to support tourism during a surge in COVID-19. She supported the 2020 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, which resulted in hundreds of new cases spread across 29 states; there were similar results following the 2021 rally. Like Trump, Noem just doesn't care.
In each of the headlines about governors my fingers slipped and spelled "governot" the first time. Sometimes typos can be instructive.
New subject next post--stay tuned.
--- Diogenes, 9/14/21
In case the title didn't alert you, I am angry.
I am in fact so utterly flaming furious at the state of the world and the people who brought it about that I am reviving this blog to express that anger before I explode.
In 1866 the French author and activist Émile Zola published Mes Haines, which translates to "My Hatreds," but was actually a collection of his literary criticism. This post begins a series of my hatreds, and I do indeed hate the subjects, which are presented in random order beginning with - - -
Despicable people:
DJTrump is permanently the head of this list. Others may come and go. First up are the two faithless politicians who have shamefully prevented passage of the For The People Act and other important legislation.
Joseph Manchin III, (DINO-WV). Refuses to support the For The People Act on grounds that it is not bipartisan. I don't know what part of Cloud Cuckoo Land Manchin lives in. It's apparently a region where Republicans actually care about their constituency and Americans' right to fair elections. In this real world the Republican Party will do anything it can to deny the American people their constitutional rights, and to block passage of President Biden's programs. That is why the For The People Act lacks bipartisan support. Manchin needs to get his head right and understand that there are bigger issues at stake than his Pollyanna notion of a collegial congress where both sides play fair.
Krysten Lee Sinema (D-AZ). Ditto of Manchin. As she has advanced in politics Sinema has become progressively more conservative. She considers Joe Manchin a role model, which says something about her grasp of reality. She consistently votes against measures that could help Americans financially or socially. As of April 2020 more than half her votes in the Senate followed the Trump position. Both she and Manchin have been praised by Archdemon Mitch McConnell for their conservative stands. On issues that touch her personally she leans to the left. Otherwise she is firmly in the conservative lineup. She calls herself bipartisan and moderate but is clearly a DINO in the making. At her swearing-in Sinema had her hand on the Constitution rather than the Bible; one has to ask just how cynical that was.
Kevin Owen McCarthy (R-CA). House Minority Leader. A dedicated follower of DJT who has bought into the Big Lie hook, line, and sinker and continues to spread it. McCarthy will automatically speak and vote against anything even vaguely democratic. Like many in his party he employs doublethink and doublespeak, in one voice promoting the Constitution while actively working to overthrow it. He is an enemy of the American people.
Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). The resident wingnut of the House. There is nothing she won't say, however illogical, stupid, crass, harmful, loony, hurtful, absurd or ridiculous. She embraces QAnon, which immediately tells us most of what she says is fantasy or an outright lie, usually the latter. She apparently has no sense, and she certainly lacks filters. One wonders if her base is as unhinged as she is. She has been stripped of her committee assignments, roundly denounced by members of both parties, and banned from some social media sites. Yet she has not been formally censured, let alone expelled from the House, because despite her egregious nastiness her fellow members can't muster the political will to take action. She is an enemy and a verbal terrorist.
Stay tuned for Part 2.
La lutte continue.
--- Diogenes, 9/10/21
What I could write I have written.
What I could say I have said.
What I could do I have done.
What I could endure I have endured.
It's someone else's turn.
--- Diogenes, 3 June 2021
Here it is, Memorial Day weekend.
Have you been anticipating the long weekend? Making plans? Let's see--so much to do: Break out the grill, brats, and beer; go to the beach; have the gang over for a cookout; take a weekend vacation; tune in the National Memorial Day Concert; go someplace to get a good seat at a fireworks show; go shopping for holiday deals; take the kids to a favorite theme park; get started on that big outdoor project you've been planning for months; go camping; settle in front of the TV to watch racing from Indy, Charlotte, or Santa Anita; go to the cemetery.
Huh? Wait--what?
You do get the word "Memorial" that gives this day its meaning, right?
Memorial Day, as designated by Congress, is the last Monday in May. The day is set aside specifically as a time to remember and honor deceased members of this country's armed forces who gave their lives in defense of the Constitution.
At this time, when the very foundation of the United States of America is under attack by domestic forces inimical to democracy, it is important to remember that members of the armed services, like all federal officers, take an oath of allegiance to the Constitution.
From the Revolutionary War to the continuing actions in the Middle East, approximately 1,264,493 Americans have given their lives to defend this nation "conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."
To the end of her days my grandmother called this day Decoration Day because that was its name when she was a girl. It was proclaimed and so named in 1868 by General John Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic as a day “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion [Civil War], and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.”
Perhaps we should revert to the original name. It would provide a somewhat more concrete notion of what the day is about than the rather ephemeral "memorial." The act of decorating would help us remember and honor our dead.
Then maybe we could move that visit to the cemetery to the top of our list.
--- Diogenes, 29 May 2021
QED is the abbreviation for the Latin term Quod Erat Demonstrandum, which roughly translates as "Thus it is shown." The term has historically been used by mathematicians, logicians, and philosophers to indicate that an argument has been proved.
It's a pretentious way of saying "So there!"
I am neither a mathematician nor a philosopher. I refer to my post of yesterday, May 27, in which I discussed the lengths to which Senate Republicans will go to block passage of any civil rights or democracy-enhancing legislation, specifically the For The People Act.
Today they proved my argument by defeating the bill that would have established a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection.
QED.
The commission would have investigated the root causes of the insurrection. Of course it would have looked into Republican involvement including that of DJ Trump.
"If they're innocent they have nothing to worry about." How often have you heard that line on television cop shows? Defeating the bill that would have created the investigative commission is clear evidence that Republicans have something to worry about. We all know Trump was the spark that lit the fire and that some Republican congresspeople were complicit.
QED.
What next? Speaker Nancy Pelosi should form a select House committee to look into the insurrection. Such committees have historically been successful in finding the truth behind clandestine activities.
President Biden could create a commission with an executive order. That would be a last-ditch act that would bring accusations of partisanship, but so what? Republicans are nothing if not rabidly partisan. Let them repeat their pot-calling-the-kettle-black arguments. They are, as the Bard said, "a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."
Today's vote underlines the importance of continuing to push senators to pass the For The People Act. Call or email them, regardless of party, to let them know they need to pass the act if our society is to remain the land of the free.
Act now. Time is short.
--- Diogenes, 28 May 2021
Senate Republicans lack a conscience. Senate Democrats appear to lack cojones.
There is one--precisely and only one--bill that should be at the top of the Senate Democrats' agenda. It is called S. 1, aka the For The People Act.¹
S. 1 is sweeping legislation that will clean up decades of bad and unfair electoral policies and practices, including racist gerrymandering and voter suppression. It will quash the neo-Jim Crow laws now pouring out of several state legislatures like so much sewage.
That is if the Democrats show some spine, some gumption, some moxie.
The Republicans are already gearing up to defeat the bill, which has yet to come to the Senate floor. When it does, you can be assured they will be armed with motions to delay, to gut, to filibuster it into the next decade.
The highest hurdle the Democrats have to clear is the filibuster. The practice with the funny name is the GOP's favorite weapon. It's a delaying tactic that allows a senator to hold the floor for as long as she can keep talking. (The subject doesn't have to be legislation. Some filibusterers have read from cookbooks.) This ersatz debate can only be stopped if 60 senators vote to end it.
Because it requires a super majority to close it, the filibuster allows the Republicans to build a wall blocking a floor vote on S. 1, which itself requires only a simple majority to pass.
The Democrats need to deny the Republicans an opportunity to filibuster it either by making an ad hoc change in the filibuster rules or by voting to do away with the filibuster altogether.
The filibuster is a Senate tradition that has neither constitutional nor legal standing. It was brought about unintentionally in the early 19th century.² Republicans will fight tooth and nail to keep it, as it has become an effective and often-used tool of theirs for blocking civil rights legislation
It is imperative that the Democrats mount a rapid and hard-hitting counterattack. A perennial problem with Democrats is they invariably try to play nice: to reach across the aisle, to seek bipartisan consensus, to get their opponents on board.
Have they learned nothing from the past four years? The Republicans care not a bit about fairness or about consensus. They want to kill the bill and crush the opposition. They want to move ever backward to a time when races were divided and anyone not white lived in a second-class world and was not allowed to vote. If some Republicans had their way that lower class would include women.
Democrats, in government and in the public, need to rise up. Leaders of Black organizations must get behind the Democrats and exhort them to action. We the people need to get busy flooding Senate e-mailboxes with polite but firm demands that they listen to their constituency and get that bill passed by any means necessary.
For those who think this is all hyperbole, allow me a simile: Let's say a person has a heart attack while undergoing plastic surgery. The surgeon can drop what he's doing and save the patient's life or continue the scheduled procedure and have a pretty corpse on the table. Is there really a choice?
Our right to vote, to elect our leaders in fair and free elections in which every eligible American participates, is the very emblem and definition of the United States of America.
If we lose it we lose everything. Congress might as well disband and go home. Without the freedom of universal suffrage America will lose its moral and ethical high ground and any respect it may have in the community of world governments.
We will make a beautiful corpse.
--- Diogenes, 27 May 2021
¹ From The Brennan Center For Justice, a guide to the act: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/policy-solutions/annotated-guide-people-act-2021
² Here's a link to a very good and concise history of the filibuster: https://www.brookings.edu/testimonies/the-history-of-the-filibuster/
Being human, among other things, means we're prone to periodic crises. I confess to a recurring crisis regarding this blog. It's best expressed as "Why the hell do I bother?"
I reach very few people, and I'm grateful for every one of them and for the feedback they provide. But like everyone who writes, plays music, or has a message of any kind, I wish for a larger audience.
When I was teaching I frequently asked myself why I was disseminating good information that was apparently lost on the majority of my students. The answer I kept coming back to was the biblical parable of throwing seed onto different kinds of soil: some, even if just a small fraction, is likely to flourish.
So it is with this blog. I haven't the time or the resources to make it more than it is, but what I can do is to make it the best it can be. As to why I do it, the answer is I have to.
I can no more remain silent in the face of social injustice, dirty politics, and public indifference than a rooster can remain silent at dawn. I'm driven to speak because it's the duty of all of us to call out dishonesty and corruption in public offices. We must do this because, to paraphrase: The only thing required for evil to triumph is for good people to remain silent.
And, paraphrasing two poets: I do my best, I know it's not much, . . . I tell the truth [and] I sound my yawp across the internet, hoping for a few syllables to land in ears that will hear.
"I'm back."
--- Diogenes, 24 May 2021
I detest political correctness, which should really be called social correctness. It's a form of benign tyranny formulated by people who think they are masters of right speech and behavior, and want us to emulate them.
It was created in 1807, when siblings Thomas and Henrietta Bowdler published The Family Shakspeare [sic]. Bowdler wrote, “nothing is added to the original text; but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family.”
In the 20th century its first use, as "political," appears to have been in Russia following the 1917 revolution, describing speech that followed the Communist Party line.
In our time the first notable appearance of socially correct language came in 1971 with Gloria Steinem's Ms. magazine, which engendered the "Ms" honorific for women regardless of marital status.
Now, 50 years after Ms. hit the newsstands, its homonymous honorific is used almost exclusively in the United States. No language other than English has a construction remotely like it.
Lately the group of personal honorifics has been expanded again with the introduction of Mx. for people who don't want to reveal their gender. I can see it for people with a unisex name, but if you're tagged with something gender specific like Arabella or Oscar, not so much.
But wait--there are some people who claim to have no gender. That's where I start having trouble with social correctness run amok.
I doubt any other generational cohorts have been so obsessive about self labeling: GenX, GenY (aka Millennials) and now GenZ. What's next? The Greek alphabet?
Much of this labeling zaniness extends to sexual identity.
Millennials naturally have different ways and ideas from their predecessors. Having been raised in an always positive "there are no losers" atmosphere by helicopter parents, many of them believe they can do whatever they want in the world and the world will accommodate them.
That includes identifying as any gender they feel like.
The terminology of gender identity has been expanded beyond reason, and certainly beyond science. Some Millennials identify as "cisgender," which simply means identifying as their birth gender--perhaps they feel a need for label equality with transgender people. Then there are the "non-binaries" who feel they don't belong to either gender, and others with other labels who claim to have no gender, or have multiple genders, or have a fluid, or changeable, gender. Really?
The s.c. folks would have us learn a whole new system of honorifics and personal pronouns to accommodate those who want to be different.¹
We're born with some things we can't choose: our race, our
parents, our gender, the shape of our ears, genetic traits, our sex, and many other things. Yes, both gender and sex are on that list, and only one, sex, can be changed.
A host of terms surround sex change surgery, which is frequently referred to as sexual "reassignment" or "confirmation" surgery. I find the use of those terms humorous. Who initiated the incorrect assignment? God, maybe?
I suggest these terms are part of the Millennial language shift in which all things must have a positive spin.
Here's the fact: sex is mutable, gender is not.
Surgery and drugs can change outward appearance. Primary and secondary sexual characteristics can be added, removed, and reversed. Gender goes much deeper. One's gender is tied to the psyche, to memories, and infuses us right down to the DNA. It cannot, with current medical technology, be changed.
No matter the sex you might change into, you are always, down in that core DNA, the male or female you were born. The Y chromosome can be neither deleted nor added.
God doesn't make mistakes, science doesn't lie, and there are only two genders.
Lest anyone think me biased, bigoted, or prejudiced, let me say for the record that I concur with the Roman playwright Publius Terentius Afer (c. 190-158 B.C.), who said, "I am a man, and consider nothing human to be alien to me."
--- Diogenes, 4/29/2021
¹ Here are two links that go to informational material published
independently by two separate American universities. Both concern the
use of respectful and socially correct (according to the publishing
organization) pronouns and forms of address.
University of South Carolina at Aiken: https://www.usca.edu/diversity-initiatives/training-resources/guide-to-inclusive-language/inclusive-language-guide/file
University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee: https://uwm.edu/lgbtrc/support/gender-pronouns/