Mes Haines: Tyranny

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: 

• War is peace
  
• Freedom is slavery
  
• Ignorance is strength

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. 

Mes Haines: Enemies Of The People

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 

 

Mes Haines: Trying Trump Redux

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).
 

 

Mes Haines: Inaction

I have frequently said, even as recently as a couple of days ago, that as an American citizen Donald Trump deserves the protections of the Constitution.

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

 

 

 

Mes Haines: What Do We Want?

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

 

Mes Haines: Disregarding Vox Populi

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

 

Mes Haines: The NRA

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