THIS IS NOT WHO WE ARE

 

Wrong! This is precisely who we are. Some of us always and all of us at our worst.

The attempted coup by Fascists and right wing groups allied to The Orange Führer on January 6, 2021 is precisely who they are. The scum who caused five deaths in threatening our elected legislators are precisely the Nazis that marched through Skokie, Illinois more than four decades ago and the Nazis that marched through Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. The scum who attempted to end our democracy are precisely the people who hid and supported Eric Robert Rudolph, Olympic Park bomber and assassin. The scum who invaded our Capitol are precisely the people who bombed the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The scum who sought a coup to make The Orange Führer  president for another term and possibly for life are precisely the traitors and tax evaders who incited the stand offs at Ruby Ridge, the Bundy Ranch and the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. 

These scum are not patriots. Regardless of what flags they wave, they are not supporters of American democracy. It is a desecration of our flag to see these insurrectionists carrying American flags as if they supported what that flag stands for, a united nation.

I have noted several times in the past that Dr. Samuel Johnson, in his Dictionary of the English Language, defined Patriotism as "the last refuge of a scoundrel." A century later Ambrose Bierce noted Dr. Johnson's definition but insisted that, on the contrary, "it is the first." The traitors and insurrectionists on January 6th proved Bierce's gloss on Dr. Johnson. Although we must note that the grinning idiot Orange Führer hugging a flag is the paradigm for his imbecile minions waving a banner they too insult by their actions.

Many of my political stripe have thumped, foolishly, for elimination of the Electoral College. I understand their frustration because a 110 year old refusal to reapportion the House of Representatives based on a Census that showed that most Americans live in urban areas has biased the House and the Electoral College toward rural states. However, a Constitutional Amendment to eliminate the Electoral College is treating the symptom rather than the disease. The U. S. House needs to be reapportioned, as the Constitution intended, to account for the 340% increase in our population since the 1910 Census. The Electoral College is a part of our Constitution because its framers had a healthy mistrust of rabble rousers like The Orange Führer. To guard against such would-be dictators they created an alternate means of confirming election results to prevent the presidency from falling into the hands of demagogues of which there were plenty in their time and midst.

The United States of America is a great nation. Contrary to the message on The Orange Führer's red baseball caps, this 45th president has sullied the nation and its reputation worldwide. The Orange Führer and his Republiscum minions have made our nation more vile and venal, a nation to be pitied and derided, an example of how not to treat people both citizens and immigrants. That is not anything like patriotism. Wearing a flag lapel pin as one tears down our democracy is not patriotism. White supremacy is not patriotism. Supporting a would-be dictator and insurrectionist is not patriotism. Attacks on people of other religious faiths is not patriotism. Vilifying the duly elected representatives of the people  and exalting those who participate in insurrection is not patriotism. Fomenting dissention and discord on the public airwaves is not patriotism.

We cannot hide behind the easy disclaimer that "This not who we are!" It is exactly who some of us are. It is exactly who some 74 million of us are. If we refuse to confront the fact that many of us are these racist, vicious lunatics who would bring down our democracy in loyalty to on single con man then the next would be Führer may succeed in destroying everything that our nation has stood for for nearly 250 years. Should we allow that to happen by not rooting out the disease in our population, this will certainly be who we all are like it or not.

MARVEL-ING AT FASCISM

 

First, let's understand the term. Fascism is a right-wing authoritarian political philosophy which melds corporations and the state. It opposes unions, workers' rights, free speech, democratic government, a free press, an independent judiciary and all education which is not in service to the state. The term was coined by Benito Mussolini who became the Fascist Party's Dictator of Italy in 1922. Adolph Hitler's Nazis were Fascists as was the Spanish government of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. World War II was started in Europe by Fascist Axis powers of Germany and Italy. Britain, free military forces representing many countries conquered by the Nazis and, eventually, the United States fought Fascism in Europe during the war that lasted from September 1, 1939 to May 8, 1945. A slightly different species of Fascism was practiced by Japan in the period from July 7, 1937 to September 2, 1945. World War II in the Pacific officially ended on October 14, 1945.

For decades the Republiscum Party and its toadies in neo-Fascist media (e.g. Fox, Sinclair, OANN, Rash Lamebrain, Glenn Beck, Alec Jones and others) and right-wing fundamentalist religious fanatics have been brain washing their adherents with the farrago that Communism and Fascism are both left-wing political philosophies. They insist that because Communism is a spin-off of Socialism and the Nazis called themselves the Natzionalische Socialistische Partei (National Socialist Party) that Communism, Socialism and Fascism are all the same. That assertion is patently false. Russian, Chinese and several other forms of Communism are or have been Totalitarian (the state, usually in the form a a single strong man, is all powerful in Totalitarian states) as was Italy under Benito Mussolini and Germany under Adolph Hitler, the authoritarianism and violent tactics are the same but the similarity ends there. The Republiscum Party has given itself over to Fascism wholeheartedly since the end of World War II. Those who would say otherwise are either uninformed or incapable of thinking for themselves.

I am proud to say that my father and my Uncle Eddy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George C. Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower and Winston Churchill were all anti-Fascists.

One of the main characteristics of a Fascist government is it's readiness to set aside law and even common decency to achieve and maintain power. Murder, mob rule, vigilantism, assassinations, all outside the law and usually in flagrant opposition to established law, are Fascism's hallmarks. Usually this lawlessness is carried out in service to some special hero/strong man. Which brings me to a series of shows on NetFlix that I have been watching with some pleasure but great trepidation recently.

As a boy, I was a DC Comics lover. I had a huge stack to Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash and Green Lantern comics as well as their spin-offs like Jimmy Olsen, Supergirl et al. I wasn't much of a Marvel Comics fan at all. Still, here I am, an old man, in a universe that Marvel Comics dominates.

Not surprisingly at all as a pre-teen I was fascinated by superhero comic books. Every child feels powerless. Children must do as parents say. Even the best of parents deny their children agency to some degree. That denial is the nature of parenting while rebellion against that denial, sometimes in the pages of a superhero comic book, is the nature of the growing child. I would suggest that all fascination with superheroes is a function of feelings of powerlessness.

In July, 2020 I heard some good things about the series Jessica Jones so I started watching it and fell in love with Kristen Ritter, the damned good actress who plays the conflicted, post-traumatic stressed Jessica brilliantly. I like the fact that Jessica is very down scale, distressed and wary of her super power that is also pretty limited. I watched the whole 3 seasons of the series before finding out that it was one part of a larger Marvel universe that includes the ethically and morally ambivalent Daredevil, the invulnerable Luke Cage, the rich boy turned Kung Fu monk, Danny Rand aka The Iron Fist and the vengeful, violent ex-Marine, Frank Castle, The Punisher. I have viewed the whole series and become increasingly anxious about my country while doing so.

So how can Captain America, who started out fighting the Nazis, be a fascist or any of these characters be such? Let's take a look.

Each of these characters is him or herself a "strong man" who carries out his or her vengeance/actions in furtherance of his or her individual goals. That those goals are established as "the good of society" is a tissue thin distraction. Adolph Hitler murdered between 9 and 12 million people in concentration camps for what he claimed was "the good of society".

Each of these characters fights some sort of super-villain whose over-the-top viciousness makes an over-the-top response logical and even necessary. Let me return to Chancellor Hitler for a moment and note that "The Eternal Jew" (The Ewige Jude) was his super-villain that made "The Final Solution" codified by the Wansee Conference, logical and, to these fascist scum, necessary.

Democracy, literally government of, by and for the people, is the antithesis of "strong man" autocracy (literally government of, by and for one's self). When the "strong man", however noble his or her goals, makes the rules and up ends the laws of the people we are in a dictatorship. Dictatorships may be of the political right or left but they are never a democracy. By definition a Dictator imposes the rules of government, the definitions of right and wrong behavior. Government by a Dictator imposes restrictions or allows license at the whim of the Dictator. We all know how that goes whether it was the show trials and purges under Stalin in Russia, the state sanctioned murders and repression under Mussolini and Franco, the murders of Jews, gays, the disabled, Roma, socialists and communists under Hitler, Mao's Cultural Revolution or Pol Pot's Killing Fields.

In the United States we have periodically faced calls for dictatorship. For all the superficial gloss of "states' rights" our Civil War was about a dictatorship that allowed enslavement of human beings simply because of their skin color. Dictatorship by slave owners, after the 13th and 14th Amendments, morphed into dictatorship by corporate magnates who denied workers their basic rights and commodities speculators who denied farmers fair prices for their produce. Calls for right wing dictatorship produced the ultimately thwarted "Business Coup" of 1934. Over the last century and a half corporate dictatorship and monopoly practices have had few setbacks to their growth and no restraints whatever since the 1970s and the farrago of "supply-side economics". This right wing corporate Fascism has brought great wealth to the few and stagnant wages, ever increasing debt and calls for a strong man to right the wrongs that strong men have imposed. The most laughable, were it even slightly funny, argument is that "a business man" would right the wrongs that "business men" have imposed on the middle class.

All of the Marvel heroes come equipped with doubts about their actions and worries about how they will be perceived. The super-villains who oppose them, however, make those heroes' actions necessary thus overcoming the heroes' doubts and worries. Let me say quite definitively that super-villains do exist. The 45th President of the United States, The Orange Führer, is one though about the least competent of the bunch. What is true of most super-villains is that they hide in the shadows. They send their support for Fascism through dark money paid into protected and untraceable accounts to fund right wing militias, white supremacist groups, foundations designed to put forward plausible but utterly false reports to confuse otherwise decent people about corporate depredations, pollution and climate change, evangelical religious organizations that teach falsehoods as writ from one god or other and always to fund the political campaigns of frauds and demagogues so vile that only distractions keep them from being laughed off the ballot.

Though I am certain that super-villains exist I am just as certain that super-heroes do not exist. The only way to resist the super-villains is through an educated and active people who cling to truth, science and decency toward their fellow men and women. We are all immigrants, early or late. We are all human beings regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, language or heritage. We are all Americans simply by the fact that we choose to live in this nation. We are all neighbors regardless of the distance, physical or philosophical, between us. We are all heirs to a history of greater and greater democracy. We deny all of those things by insisting on divisions, succumbing to hatreds and giving in to the Fascists who would dictate to us. 

No Superman or Luke Cage or Jessica Jones is going to rescue us from America's decades long slide toward Fascism. We, the people, collectively are powerful. Anyone who denies our power is looking to delude us for his or her own ends We, the people have proved our power several times over in Georgia over the last few months. We are and must be our own super-heroes. We are the only ones who can rescue ourselves.

Post Script: During the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U. S. Capitol a former Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, Larry Randall Brock, Jr., invaded the Senate Chamber in full tactical gear. He had previously been fired from the military for threatening and racist statements to airmen under his supervision. He also had posted messages on social media about taking members of Congress hostage and executing them. Mr. Brock wore, among other patches on his riot gear, a Texas flag over the skull logo of The Punisher, one of the Marvel series discussed above.

JANUARY 6, 2021

 

On Wednesday, January 6, 2021, we saw American Fascism express itself in Washington, D. C. in terms so obvious and unequivocal that only the Fascists themselves could ignore it. The Orange Führer and his lunatic minions stormed the United States Capitol and were allowed in. The Orwellian nature of the mob of rioters was striking. For these QAnonsense cultists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, secessionists, Proud Boys, Boogaloo Bois, and Republiscum hate of their government is love of their fantasy of country, overthrow of the government is patriotism, authoritarian Fascism is the true Constitutional government, allegiance to The Orange Führer is the true expression of representative democracy.

For years the neo-Fascist media at Fox, Sinclair, OANN and others have vilified the anti-fascist movement (Antifa) while exalting The Orange Führer and the Republiscum who enabled him. Those same neo-Fascist outlets are now expressing the lie that the scum who invaded the U. S. Capitol weren't really supporters of The Orange Führer but rather Antifa anarchists who masqueraded as right-wing scum. In the 1931 movie Monkey Business, Groucho Marx, trying to convince a witness that he hasn't seen what actually just transpired asks, "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" That was supposed to be a joke 90 years ago. It's not a joke anymore or at least I'm not laughing.

Well, who are you going to believe, the neo-Fascist scum like Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Janine Piro, and Tucker Carlson, Glenn Beck, Alec Jones, Rash Lamebrain, and their vile ilk or your "lying" eyes that saw the right-wing rioters and traitors invade and vandalize the Capitol?

Who are you going to believe, the husband who loved Ashli Babbitt and supported her lunatic views, or the police officer who was confronted by a screaming, fanatic rioter and shot her to protect the people's House from her irrational rage stoked by the lies of a conman, The Orange Führer?

Who are you going to believe, The Orange Führer and his lunatic fringe minions like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell or the courts that have carefully reviewed the accusations backed by nary a single shred of evidence that there was malfeasance in counting votes and found those claims to be appalling and false?

Who are you going to believe, The Orange Führer who tried to get Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to engage in vote fraud or Secretary Raffensperger who took his oath of office seriously and refused to commit fraud at the insistence of The Orange Führer?

Who are you going to believe, the 147 members of Congress who attempted a treasonous coup by challenging the votes of the American people or the 81,283,098 citizens who repudiated The Orange Führer and said that they had had enough of nepotism, treason, malfeasance and incompetence from The Orange Führer?

Who are you going to believe, the Constitution and laws of our nation or a Republiscum Party that perverts and violates the Constitution and those laws with every breath they individually and collectively take?

Make no mistake in considering the riot at the U. S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, the flags that extolled The Orange Führer, the Confederate flags, the Don't Tread On Me flags waved by the mob at the Capitol had nothing to do with America or American patriotism or history. They were a farrago, a substitute for the Nazi flag and its swastika that would have flown over our country had The Orange Führer and his imbecile mob succeeded in their attempted coup.

For that crime against our Constitution every one of the 147 Congresspersons who sought a legislative coup should be removed from office forthwith and banned from ever holding political office at any level for the rest of their lives. For his crimes too numerous to list The Orange Führer and his vile offspring and minions should spend the rest of their miserable, vicious lives in jail cells as traitors to our nation too dangerous to be allowed to see the light of day except in a prison exercise yard.

THE TWELVE (IF ONLY THERE WERE THAT FEW!) (DAMNED!) EAR WORMS OF CHRISTMAS

 

Every year (and ever earlier it seems) we are treated (there's a misnomer if ever there was one!) to Christmas music and Christmas muzak (there is a difference) for weeks on end. When I was a boy, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, the songs started on the day after Thanksgiving which we now know as "Black Friday", a term that previously had been reserved for describing the two worst stock market crashes in United States history. Today that Friday post Thanksgiving is defined by lunatic bargain hunters trampling and fighting one another for "hot items" which are laid out in retail stores in a planned, artificial scarcity. And as the consumers commit mayhem on one another lovely music plays about them to put them in the "true Christmas spirit®". Since we are actually still in the Christmas season, the 12 days that begin with Christmas Day, December 25th, and end on the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6th, I want to take up the subject of that music/muzak for a final curmudgeonly shot at the season. 

The following are a more than Baker's dozen songs that are those of which I've heard far more than enough for any lifetime. For a more comprehensive and, as if that were possible, more curmudgeonly view of Christmas music/muzak I suggest that you run through Washington Post columnist, Alexandra Petri's dish on the songs. Here beginneth my list from moderately offensive to AaaaRRRRRGGGG!...

12d. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer: As a very young boy I had Gene Autry's recording of this classic. It was always too cute by half and over the last 70 odd years it's been done to death. The song is the fantasy of every child who's a little bit different and is, therefore, bullied and excluded from every "reindeer game" and social activity under the sun. So Rudolph gets his moment of glory but we know how this goes. A day or two after Rudolph goes down in history the other reindeer start with things like, "Isn't red the color of TAIL lights?" "Yeah! I wonder how fast Rudolph the TAIL light could go if we lit one of his farts?" "Yeah! Rudolph the 'jet pack' TAIL light!" Rudolph with your nose so bright, I'm sorry, kid, but we're done.

12c. Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer: Keeping with a reindeer theme, I am one of the last people to criticize satire and black humor but after 1 single hearing this song deserves the trash bin. If it weren't for the reindeer this song would be much higher on the list of horribles.

12b. Up on the Housetop: More damned reindeer! Enough already!

12a. It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas: This song come to us from Meredith Wilson's final Broadway venture and only flop, a stage musical version of Miracle on 34th Street. It actually looks a lot like Christmas as early as Halloween these days and for all the modest charm of the song, stuff it!

12. We Need a Little Christmas: This song comes from the Broadway musical Mame and the film version that starred a nearly embalmed Lucille Ball. It figures in the story as a plea in summer to brush away depression by getting out the Christmas decorations 6 months early. Since the day after Thanksgiving is already too early we have far too much of Christmas so we'll need none of this song.

11. I'm Gettin' Nuttin' for Christmas: a nascent sociopath complains that he's not getting any Christmas presents because he's been a jerk all year. If there were justice in the world he would get juvenile detention and never be elected the 45th President of the United States. Tough shit kid and shut up about it.

10. Do You Hear What I Hear?: How could you not? Bing Crosby gave it his best shot but this song has lousy lyrics and a faux religiosity that is beyond the faux inherent in religiosity. I never want to hear it again.

9. Santa Baby: This is no reflection on Ertha Kitt who, as Eddie Murphy wisely pointed out, was hot and sexy will into old age, but it's been done to death. This song is a vibrator with dead batteries.

8. Rockin' 'Round the Christmas Tree: the day someone makes a truly plausible explanation of what "the good, old fashioned way" is, I will move this song up a couple of notches but it still sucks.

7. Blue Christmas: O. k. I will bring down some real wrath upon my head by saying that I never thought much of Elvis. He was a poor white boy who could sing and made it viable for white kids to like the blues and rock that had been segregated into the black ghettos for decades. Can you say, "cultural appropriation"? This isn't good blues and it's not a good Christmas song.

6. The Little Drummer Boy: after 1 verse, let alone the whole interminable treacly, religiose song I want to take his drum sticks and ram them up his pa-rum-pa-pum-pum so hard he'll walk funny for the rest of his life. This song makes it to 6 simply because there a 5 worse, not because it has anything to recommend it.

5. Holly, Jolly Christmas: when I was a very little boy one of my favorite records was of Burl Ives singing about that "Little Green Frog, sittin' in the water". I liked Burl Ives. It wasn't until much later that I learned that to save his own career he'd thrown Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert and Lee Hays under the HUAC bus. That tarnished Ives for me forever. However, apart from that this is just an awful song.

4. The Hawaiian Christmas Song: this song deserves to be stuffed and stuffed hard up your Mele Kalikimaka and never removed.

3. Silver Bells: It was Christmas, 1975. I had 1 single day in which to do all of my shopping, food, presents, everything. In addition I had to drive, in a sleet storm, from Waterbury, Connecticut to New Haven (good toy store) to Windsor Locks (meaning from the extreme south of the state to the extreme north) for work on what was supposed to be my day off and back to Waterbury again. The moment I entered any store, building, bathroom or phone booth this song began playing. It became the theme for a hectic and fraught Christmas and a trigger for a very mild case of PTSD from that day. I absolutely HATE this song.

2. The Chipmunks Christmas Song: this song makes me want to torture small woodland creatures because it is utter torture to hear and I generally like small woodland creatures. Call the taxidermist because I want Alvin's little head mounted on my wall encircled by a tiny hula-hoop. 

1. The Most Wonderful Time of the Year: it isn't. There is little more to say. This song with its relentless, pell-mell rush and thumping, strained positivity just calls for strangulation of anyone who sings or plays a recording of it. That it can beat out the Chipmunks for worst Christmas song of all time is a superlative that beggars the imagination.  Or as that great philosopher to whom Berkeley Breathed introduced me long ago, Bill the Cat would say, "Gack!"

Let's be honest here. The birth of Jesus of Nazareth was not "in the bleak mid-winter". Christmas is the Christianized Roman Saturnalia. It is a celebration of the slow but inexorable return of the light so nearly extinguished at the winter solstice. It is the faint but growing sense that spring and new life will conquer the deadly cold and white of winter. That alone, without any saviors' births, is worthy of feasting and celebration yet it is further made sublime by the addition of a birth. I do not believe in anything supernatural but I do believe in the sublime, that in the presence of which Vladimir Nabokov wrote, makes the small hairs at the back of our necks stand up. I attended the birth of my 3 daughters and can say unequivocally that there are few things as sublime as a newborn child, small, wrinkled, crying and a manifest piece of all the power and potential of the entire universe. The birth of any child, every child and, as the ancients would have it, the birth of the sun link together in what we call Christmas. That, in itself, is great cause for celebration and feasting and for raising our voices in song.

Lest I be claimed as a soldier in the phony "War on Christmas" let me say that I adore some Christmas songs. Good King Wenceslaus, God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen, and the 3 World War II Christmas songs that have made it into the canon, I'll be Home for Christmas, White Christmas and (only as Judy Garland sang it in Meet Me in St. Louis) Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.

I eschew all shining stars upon the highest boughs but wish you all to have or have had a merry little Christmas now.

CROCODILE TEARS

 

During the 2020 election some adherents of the Republiscum Party have drawn back in horror at the actions of the Orange Führer and collected themselves into a sort of political kaffeklatsch called "The Lincoln Project". This Neo-Fascist Liberation Front is opposing the re-election of the Orange Führer in a fuddled flurry of regret and crocodile tears. They are the precise equivalent of Dr. Frankenstein recoiling in horror at the monster he has created. 

Many years ago one of my dearest and oldest friends had to put up with meetings her partner held with his friends to discuss Marxism and other Lefty ideologies over wine and snacks. She called them "The Bourgeoisie Liberation Front". Basically they were pretentious "Limousine Liberals" who couldn't afford a 10-year old Volkswagen Beetle but had hopes. The Lincoln Project recalls that to me because they seem to be the Neo-Fascist right wing's answer to that old group of chit-chatters.

Let me say at the outset that all opposition to the Orange Führer has been and will continue to be good opposition regardless of whence it comes. I applaud their advertising and interventions on behalf of the Orange Führer opponents. The enemy of my enemy is definitely my friend...through November 3, 2020. Yet while I am pleased to get in the proverbial bed with these folks I think a "bundling board" is necessary lest we get too close and I become infected with the syphilitic Neo-Fascism of which they are carriers.

As usual with these blog posts, let me take you on a brief and admittedly jaundiced (Because it's factual) view of history.

The Republican Party (they hadn't yet become scum) came together from four disparate groups following the election of 1852. In that log cabin in Ripon, Wisconsin were "free soil" westerners, abolitionists and representatives of the essentially defunct Whig Party.  Their candidate in the 1856 presidential election, John Charles Fremont, carried the Whig and free soil strongholds of New England, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa. He also carried New York despite New Yorker Millard Fillmore's candidacy that claimed only Maryland's electors. Fillmore, who had started his career in the bigoted, conspiracy drenched Anti-Masonic Party, was the candidate of the American Party. Democrat James Buchanan of Pennsylvania became president and perhaps our most ineffectual holder of that office. Once the American Party better known as the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic and racist Know-Nothings showed an ability to win votes in the east and border states the nascent Republican Party quickly allied themselves with that rabble.

The rest is, as they say, history. Abraham Lincoln won the presidency with but 40% of the popular vote in 1860 yet he got us through our Civil War, preserved the Union, established that we were once and for all United states and ended all slavery within our nation. After his assassination in 1865, at the very moment of victory, the Republican Party began morphing into the Republiscum Party of today.

The Republican Party inherited from the defunct Whigs a tradition of putting forward candidates who were war heroes (some with thin claim to any heroism). In the aftermath of our Civil War Republican candidates for national office continuously "waved the bloody shirt" which, beside claiming wartime service and heroism, also pointed out that Democrats were not the Party that "saved the Union".

The other major result of the Civil War was an officer corps which started off as politically connected, gained the friendship, counsel and support of the business men who greatly profited from the war and ensuing Reconstruction, and who later advanced the veteran officers' post-war careers. This situation created a cadre of staunchly Republican, exceptionally wealthy men who always had ambitions to wield power and often had ambitions to front for that power as office holders. 

Not that ambition is an inherently bad thing or, contrary to the proverbial, that money is inherently evil. No insentient and insensible object is inherently evil though such objects do frequently bring out the evil in those who desire and accumulate them. Fighting to the death (usually someone else's) to keep increasing one's wealth, power and serve ever expanding ambitions, that is the very definition of evil. So it came about that cadre of staunch Republicans in the decades following the Civil War morphed inexorably from the Republican Party of Lincoln into the Republiscum Party of Mitch McConnell and the Orange Führer.

As the Republican Party morphs into a club for monied, elitist scum you get the violent suppression of voting and civil rights of Afro-Americans through segregation, Ku Klux Klan violence and "Jim Crow" Laws once the Republican Party turned their backs on the black folks they'd just fought to free, so that they might get Rutherford B. Hayes elected president in early 1877. You get the murderous suppression of workers' rights both with private armies of "Pinkerton Men" and with Federal troops in multiple cases and even the aerial bombing of strikers in the 1920s. You get often violent suppression of the rights of small farmers seeking fair prices for their goods and agricultural workers seeking fair wages on industrial farms. You get financial scandals involving government officials, major banks, public funds and massive corruption every 3 to 5 years and major Depressions about every 20 years. You get a political party that represents an ever diminishing portion of the population that seeks to stay in power by sowing fear, hatred and division between religious, ethnic, racial and economic groups with common interests in order to keep their opposition fragmented and weak. Throw in a generous helping of suppressing the voting rights of non-whites and you get, by 1920, The Republiscum Party.

Yes, I will admit that there have been individual bright spots in the Republiscum Party's record of darkness over the last century but all of them have flashed brightly only to be enveloped in darkness and amnesia. Robert M. LaFollette, Margaret Chase Smith, Millicent Fenwick, Elliot Richardson, William Ruckelshaus, Pete McCloskey and a number of others. Besides a love of their country and Constitution and a profound sense of decency the other thing that these Republicans, except Pete McClosky, have in common is that they are all dead.

The Republiscum Party has relentlessly moved to positions that would be familiar to the fascists of the 1920s and '30s, Benito Mussolini or Fransisco Franco. At the same time they have adopted the vilest tactics of the Nazi Party's rise in the 1928 to 1933 period. Take any speech on immigration by any Republiscum office holder over the last 20 years and substitute the word "Jew" for "immigrant" and you will find something entirely consistent with Brown Shirts goosestepping by torchlight at Nürnberg. Compare the tactics of Nazis in the Reichstag before the fall of the Weimar Republic with Mitch McConnell's tactics of obstruction since 2011 and you will find what I wish I could say is an uncanny correlation. A sizeable number of Republiscum supporters style themselves as "Patriots" in much the same way as a majority of evangelicals style themselves as "Christian" though in neither case do their alleged patriotism or Christianity relate in any substantive way to the tenets of our nation or the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

From out of this noisome cesspool of fascism called the Republiscum Party now rise some "Never Trumpers" and newly annointed "Not Anymore Trumpers" like Jeff Flake and Ben Sass, Bill Kristol and George Will and the "Team" at The Lincoln Project. I am happy to find that there are members of the Republiscum Party who reject our Orange Führer. With any luck at all some or even all of them actually support our Constitution and have a modest belief in democracy though those qualities have been in drastically short supply amongst Republiscum for the last 60 years.

These are people who have polluted the airwaves with their right-wing screeds, who have worked to steal the 2000 election, which is, by the way, the only presidential election in the United States that has been stolen from its rightful winner since 1876, who have sewn the seeds that the Orange Führer has been reaping. To say that the Orange Führer is an aberration, something inconsistent with the Republiscum Party that has sought to ruin our nation and destroy democracy itself since the 1920s is to be blind to history and those in The Lincoln Project that have worked mightily to bring a neo-Nazi scum like the Orange Führer to power. These are the very people who have derided progressive taxation as an assault on enterprise when it is the very source for enterprise. These people in The Lincoln Project have promoted the insane theory that giving ever greater wealth to the few raises the standard of living for the many. They have promoted authoritarian approaches to policing, justice for and decency to the poor and middle classes setting the one against the other. They have sewn division of region against region, race against race, religion against religion and neighbor against neighbor for the sole purpose of fragmenting an electorate that might otherwise rise up against their failed and self-serving policies. They have promoted and enacted a militarization of local police forces turning those who should protect and serve all our citizens into an occupying army that murders the poor and minorities with impunity.

Now, at long last, when their vicious, anti-democratic policies have reached the goal for which they have worked so mightily to achieve, now they expect us to forget their rush toward totalitarian plutocracy has achieved its goal and a piddling, mewling sop to the democracy, in which they do not at all believe, will make us forgive all their fascism.

On leaving the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, Benjamin Franklin supposedly answered a call from the crowd asking, "Do we have a republic or a monarchy?" by saying, "A republic if you can keep it." If we simply thank The Lincoln Project's founders and adherents and welcome these vipers back into the life of our nation we are not only failing to keep our republic but failing to deserve it as well.

A MELTING SNOWFLAKE

 

Two days after our national election at about 9:00 P. M. Eastern Standard Time a national embarrassment embarrassed the nation further while undermining American democracy. Let's face it, when our Orange Führer opens his mouth he embarrasses everyone in the nation and most of the world except for himself and his family and his cadre of grifters, yes-men, white supremacists and just scumbags that form the Republiscum Party. He came forth to meet reporters in a house that he never should have occupied in the first place because he was and is unworthy of the office that racists, lunatics, fascists and stupid "reality" television show fans elected him to in 2016.

 The Orange Führer and the Republiscum Party have never been thrilled with the messiness of democracy. In Republiscum ideology they know what's good for the nation and they have to tolerate, at least, and manipulate, usually, the "great unwashed" so that democracy doesn't get too "uppity" and try to do positive things for the poor and middle class. In Republiscum ideology fascism is the object; they just don't like to be up front about it. 

William F. Buckley, looking at the problems of the Republiscum Party in the 1950s and 1960s, offered the formula that Republiscum could be as fascist as they wished in private as long as they pretended to patriotism and gave lip service to democracy in public. Buckley's formula began to degrade with the election of Richard Milhous Nixon in 1968. Once Nixon and the Republiscum absorbed the white supremacists in the "Southern Strategy" at the urging of dyed-in-the-wool racist, Strom Thurmond, the marriage of fascism and native racism brought both a bit too far out in public. It was the equivalent of the drunk relative at the family gathering who forgot to zip his fly though he was still tucked in.

Since the Reagan Administration, however, what once was trucked in has (there isn't any good adjective for this) increasingly hung out to the disgust of many. A lot of revisionists in politics have tried to find positive things in the Reagan Administration. I lived through it. The only positive things about the presidency of corporate spokes clown, Ronald McReagan, were the positive brakes imposed on him by Tip O'Neill and a Democratic Congress.

What Reagan did manage to do was upset the Democratic coalition of working class Americans by convincing millions, with no evidence but empty rhetoric, that the Republiscum Party really had the interests of the middle class at heart. It doesn't and never has had but as Abraham Lincoln put it, "you can fool some of the people, all of the time and all of the people some of the time...." Thus, for 40 years the Republiscum, with the complicity of many Democrats, have cut taxes on the wealthiest few in America while also cutting services to the poor and middle class. This farrago has the effect of making the middle class angry at the poor, who do get a small and shrinking safety net, while adoring the rich which they delude themselves into thinking they can be with the correct lottery bet.

Very few understand that the taxes "cut" were providing them with essential services and reliable ways out of poverty and debt for themselves and their children. Those tax cuts that have disproportionately benefited the small percentage of the wealthiest Americans have brought on higher tuition at public colleges and universities, stagnant wages, greater personal debt and decreased upward mobility for themselves and their children. Meanwhile phony "news" services like Faux, Sterling and NewsMax con the unwary into hatred of those who are worse off than themselves so that few of the middle class understand that they are being fleeced by the wealthy.

This election saw the Republiscum Party and our Orange Führer move from their ambient fascism to full totalitarian Nazi mode by undercutting democracy itself and inciting violence against even their own elected officials, those who had the temerity to break with the Orange Führer's party line and tell the truth for once.

American democracy has evolved over the last 233 years. That evolution has seen us move to a greater and greater inclusiveness in our electorate which is a good thing as long as that electorate is informed by actual facts and genuine concern for the broad education of the public. That is what our Freedoms of the Press and of Speech were intended to promote. When those freedoms are perverted into the spouting of lies in the guise of news our democracy breaks down into camps of those who can be fooled "all of the time".

For the 7 weeks since the national election the Orange Führer and a majority of Republiscum office holders have lied, obfuscated and generally undermined our democratic institutions in order to promote the false claim that the Orange Führer actually won an election that he lost by 7 million votes of the people and 39 Electoral College votes. Even a U. S. Supreme Court heavily weighted with Republiscum ideologues could not stomach the Orange Führer's false claims or the lunatic conspiracy theories of his unethical lawyers.

According to legend, as Benjamin Franklin left the Constitutional Convention in 1787 a person in the crowd outside of Independence Hall shouted, "Dr. Franklin, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" To which Franklin replied, "A republic, if you can keep it." It is the job of every American to keep it. The self-styled "patriot" militias, Proud Boys, Bugaloo Bois, white supremacists, Ku Klux Klansmen, "Patriot" Prayer members and right wing evangelicals that make up the Republiscum Party are not keepers of our republic. They seek to undermine it with every foul breath they take. They are abetted in their treason to their nation by the right wing extremist television and radio media that trumpet nonsense instead of news, conspiracies instead of facts and idiocy disguised as opinion.

Thanks to the Orange Führer and the Republiscum Party we are on the verge of not being able to keep the republic we have and of losing the democracy that we have won at great cost over the last 2 centuries.

THE MOST BASIC OF RIGHTS

I write today about the right to vote and the need for every citizen to exercise that franchise. Please bear with me while I establish my bona fides and indulge, as I too often do, in a bit of history.

In an absolute monarchy as existed in Britain and its colonies in the 1770s no one could vote for the king. In fact, no one votes for king or queen in any country with one today. Back in the 1770s there was some unpleasantness that lasted for more that 6 years between Britain and her American colonies over the fact that the people of those American colonies could not vote and be represented in the British government. In consequence of that unpleasantness those British colonies became the United States of America, the nation in which I was born and have lived all my life.

Not only am I a native of the United States of America but I also feel a special bond to this nation that goes beyond my lifetime. My earliest ancestors on the North American continent were William and Suzanna White. Suzanna was pregnant when she left Europe. Before she could even land she gave birth aboard ship to a son and named him Peregrine after the falcon that travels great distances. Peregrine White was born on November 20, 1620 (Old Style) aboard the ship Mayflower as it lay at anchor off the tip of what we now know as Cape Cod. Other ancestor immigrants from Britain were among the first settlers of Watertown, Massachusetts and Chandler's River (now Jonesboro), Maine. Some of those ancestors stood to stop the progress of General Howe's troops at Lexington Green and also fought "by the rude bridge that arched the flood" in Concord, Massachusetts later that day.

As I say, I feel a special bond to my nation. Man and boy I have visited many of the shrines of our nation from Saratoga, Ticonderoga, the U. S. S. Constitution, the Bunker Hill Monument, Ulysses Grant's Tomb, Valley Forge, Independence Hall, the Gettysburg battlefield, the many monuments in Washington, D. C., and the battlefields of Virginia including Yorktown, Fredericksburg, Winchester and others. I've been to Mt. Rushmore, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Muir Woods and walked through Abraham Lincoln's home in Springfield, Illinois as well as been awed by his monument in our capital, my capital.

I've been able to do all these things because my ancestors, including my Father and Uncle Ed who fought Fascism in Europe during World War II, could and did vote. The ability to vote for your representatives in government is the first and foremost right for which we fought our Revolutionary War. Some will say that the Revolutionary slogan was "No Taxation without Representation". That was one of the Revolutionary slogans but it is utterly wrong to place the sole emphasis on the word "Taxation" and forget "Representation" and the vote that elects representatives.

We have a flag that I cherish. We have all those monuments that I've named and many more. Yet the flag, the monuments, the ancestry and history is meaningless without the right of franchise, the right to vote.

During our Civil War, with the nation torn apart over the disgusting idea that one group of people had the right to enslave another group of people because of the color of their skin, our nation held Congressional elections in 1862 and a Presidential and Congressional election in 1864. That right to vote was so essential, so sacred that even a civil war could not gainsay it.

Today, however, we face a different kind of crisis which some try with all their might, money and influence to turn into a civil war. We are faced with an epidemic. Today it is not armed traitors in grey uniforms that we fight; it is a microbe that is passed from infected person to uninfected persons by our very breath. Today the traitors who would do us in are our very breath or that of someone near us. In our 19th Century Civil War, Maine, Michigan and Minnesota were far from the battlefields. Today every state, every town, every community is the battlefield against this virus and. once again, we face an election.

The only effective way we have at the moment of winning this war against this CoVid-19 virus is by limiting our contacts with others. I don't like it much. No one I know likes it much. However, using social distancing and wearing face masks means that I am, so far, not infected and am not potentially infecting people with whom I come in contact. With our national elections just over two months away, the safest way for us to conduct that election is by limiting our contact with others. We are fortunate in having a fine postal system through which we could readily conduct our election this year so why shouldn't we do so?

The answer to that is that there is no real reason other than the fear that our Orange Führer and the Republiscum Party have that they will lose catastrophically if everyone votes. The propaganda that voting by mail opens the process to fraud is nonsense. The state in which I live has voted entirely by mail for a decade without any hint of fraud. In fact the only instances of verified and actual fraud in elections have been carried out by the Republiscum Party in North Carolina and Georgia. Further, there is no evidence whatever that shows an advantage for one party over another in voting by mail.

But it isn't the method of voting that is really under attack here. The Orange Führer and the Republiscums are attacking the universal franchise itself. They know that they lost the fair and honest popular vote in 2016. They also know that their crony capitalism, treason with Putin's Russian dictatorship and influence peddling both in and outside the United States isn't likely to claim even the Electoral College in 2020. Their best hope is to keep as many American Citizens from exercising their most basic right, the right to vote. We have already seen their nefarious attacks on voting. In 2018 voters in predominantly white wards in Georgia waited an average of 3 minutes to vote while citizen voters in predominantly Afro-American wards had to wait 51 minutes to vote thanks to closing of polling places, intimidation and intentional delays. Similar things happened in Republiscum dominated Wisconsin. 

Attacking the right to vote is anti-democratic and a clear violation of our Constitution. Attacking the right of every citizen to vote is absolutely and incontrovertibly UnAmerican. Coupled with the use of Gestapo-like tactics in Portland, Oregon and the Orange Führer's encouragement of neo-Fascist vigilantism our nation, my nation is descending into the same sort of Fascism that my Father and uncle fought against 80 years ago. We MUST stop it here, now and in this presidential election if we are not to forsake our history, our democracy and all that my ancestors fought to save so that "this government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth." If we cannot stop the Orange Führer and the Republiscum now we will not have a democracy in 2024 and won't deserve to have one.

PYROMANIACS

Yesterday, July 1, 2020, I heard one of the men in my building telling another that the Democrats (to this Trumpite/Republiscum a dirty word) are trying to cancel the Fourth of July and want to bomb Mount Rushmore. For the moment let's set aside the absurdity of his oral diarrhea and focus just on his assertions.

It is correct that our Orange Fürher has scheduled one of his rallies for Mount Rushmore in South Dakota for the Fourth of July.

It is also correct that many people, not just Democrats, see his rallies as major vectors for transmission of the CoVid-19 virus since there will be neither social distancing nor mask wearing at the event. With new infections from the novel corona virus hitting new peaks daily (48,000 new cases on July 1 alone) all opportunities for mass transmission of the disease should be curtailed.

Further, it is correct that the Orange Fürher has scheduled a fireworks spectacular for the close of his rally at Mount Rushmore. Both the National Park Service and the Forestry Service have asked that the fireworks display be eliminated because of a serious risk of forest fires. The Orange Fürher and the Republiscum Party have ignored those warnings.

If you, dear reader if you exist, ever played the game of "Telephone" when you were younger you know that information can get garbled and strangely perverted in the course of transmission. While such things do happen, this nonsense is of a particularly nasty and vicious order. The message that my Trumpite/Republiscum co-resident receives has been intentionally garbled and intentionally perverted to suit the Trumpite/Republiscum supporters and rile them up to new heights of frenzy. This imbecile in my building has no idea who is shoveling this offal onto the Internet pages he frequents. He doesn't know who funds his sources or where they are actually located. All he cares about is that they feed his bigotries and stupidity with drivel that he's predisposed to credit.

As America began burning up with rage over the murders of George Floyd and others, far too many others for far too long, the German magazine, Der Spiegle published with a cover that showed America on fire in the background through a White House window. In the foreground sat the Orange Fürher holding a lighted match. The caption to the artwork reads, "Der Feuerteufel/ Eine Präsident setzt sein Land in Brand". In English that means literally "The Fire-Devil (Pyromaniac)/ A President sets his Nation on Fire (to the Torch)".

The great and very Conservative Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote in the opinion in Schenck v. United States that "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing panic." The scum who use any forum to foment panic by shouting the kind of idiocies that my co-resident mouths are precisely "falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing panic." The Rash Lamebrians, Ann Coulters, Sean Hannitys, Janine Pirros, Laura Ingrahams, Glenn Becks, Alex Joneses and others both in and out of Russia and China are fomenting hate and violence against those whose politics simply differs from theirs or the candidate that they prefer. They know that the gasoline they are pouring on the fire is gasoline. They are abetted in their pyromania by Mark Zuckerberg and some more well-meaning Internet entrepreneurs confused as to the scope of our Constitutionally guaranteed free speech.

Perhaps you will recall "Pizzagate" in which Alex Jones and other ultra right-wing and white supremacist web sites spent weeks promoting the farrago that Hillary Clinton and her campaign chairman, John Podesta, were running a child trafficing ring out of the basement of a Washington, D. C. pizza parlor that didn't have a basement. The result was that on December 4, 2016 a North Carolina man who, like my imbecile co-resident, credited such crap invaded the pizza parlor and briefly shot up the place before being arrested and disarmed by the police. What went unnoticed was that the businesses neighboring the pizza parlor as well as others as far afield as New York City and Austin, Texas were harassed and vandalized by the idiots taken in by this heinous lie. Members of the pizza parlors owner's family, his friends and even members of bands who'd played at the parlor received threatening phone calls and mail.

Our Constitution enshrines our right to speak our minds and make our opinions known. It does not, however, protect those who incite violence, as  our Orange Fürher and his minions on Fox News and the Internet have done. Deliberately promulgating patently false information is not protected free speech. It is rather incitement to violence. My freedom of expression is not curbed by being forced, under penalties established under law, to wear a face mask or stay at least 6 feet from other persons during an epidemic. Mary Mallon, known to history as Typhoid Mary, was not unjustly imprisoned when she'd infected 53 people with typhoid fever and caused 3 deaths. Public safety, that is the safety of the public at large, was endangered by her free movement. When Mary Mallon refused to give up her work as a cook, she had to lose her personal freedom to prevent more and wider infections.

Not only are the Orange Fürher and his syncophants of the Republiscum Party  pyromaniacs, the Orange Fürher himself is also a Typhoid Mary spreading the disease of phony conspiracies, lies, bigotry and hatred to thousands who share his bigotry and ignorance.

My co-resident is an imbecile and a fool. He never seeks to question anything he hears as long as it comports with his hatred and ignorance. He is not alone in that. He is far from alone in that. My very faint hope is that Abraham Lincoln was correct in saying (and he may never have said it but it's still a pretty good line), "You can fool some of the people all of the time and you can fool all of the people some of the time but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." I will stick with the attribution to Lincoln and hope against hope that enough of the voters in enough of the states will not be fooled this coming November 3rd.

SPEAKING ILL OF THE DEAD I

On Friday, November 30, 2018 George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st President of the United States, died and has been graciously and effusively eulogized since. Some of those attempts at hagiography have been genuine and valid but they ignore the gross weight of the negatives justly heaped upon Bush 41 for the great evil that he did.

First, George H. W. Bush carried on a tradition of questionable heroism in war. His father, Prescott Sheldon Bush, served in the American Expeditionary Force in World War I. He claimed in a letter to his parents that he had batted away from General John J. Pershing an artillery shell and thereby saving the life of the A.E.F. commander. Prescott's proud parents made the letter and his alleged act of heroism public. However, once out in public Prescott's great heroic act came under scrutiny which quickly determined that his baseball skill, let alone that of Babe Ruth, could not have altered the course of an artillery shell. Prescott's claim of heroism was utterly false and physically impossible. Faced with public derision, Prescott was forced to admit that his purported saving of General Pershing was a complete fiction. Whether Prescott ever intended it to become public or not isn't and cannot be known. There is no doubt that Prescott's son, George H. W. Bush was a Navy pilot in the Pacific Theatre during World War II. On one of his last missions, George H. W.'s plane was hit by Japanese fire. He was able to bail out but his two crewmen died in the crash of the plane. George H. W. was quickly rescued by a submarine that happened to be conveniently on the ocean surface nearby. During the 1988 presidential campaign some serious questions arose as to whether George H. W. had bailed out of his torpedo plane early leaving his crewmen to their death and, much like his father's heroism, his serendipitous salvation by that submarine wasn't as serendipitous as it's said to be. The question that has never been answered was did George H. W., piloting a damaged plane, see the submarine and parachute out leaving his crew to die. We don't know but it would carry on a less than savory family tradition.

Prescott Bush became a protege of W. Averell Harriman and Harriman's investment banking firm in the 1920s and took up residence in the Connecticut commuter suburbs of New York City. In the explicitly Liberal 1930s and 40s Prescott became an officer of the the Connecticut chapter of the United Negro College Fund and of the American Birth Control League in Catholic dominated Connecticut where all forms of birth control were illegal. In a period in which such things were not anomalous, Prescott was also the finance chairman of the Connecticut Republican Party. The long connection to support for birth control and abortion became a millstone around George H. W.'s neck when he sought the presidency in 1980.

During World War II Prescott set another family tradition of making loyalty secondary to business. Prescott was a director, along with his mentor Harriman, of the Union Banking Corporation, a bank that held significant assets for German steel magnate Fritz Thyssen. Thyssen's Vereinigte Stahlwereke AG controlled about 75% of Germany's iron ore reserves and made much of the steel that went into Hitler's planes, tanks and other armaments. Thyssen was a Nazi supporter from 1923 onward. He was one of the signers of the letter to German president Paul von Hindenberg that convinced von Hindenberg to appoint Adolph Hitler as German Chancellor in 1933.  He was in complete agreement with the Nazi expulsion of Jews from jobs and industry but demurred in the mid-1930s when Hitler turned on the Roman Catholic Church. Shortly after Germany began World War II by invading Poland, Thyssen, believing that war was not appropriate at the time, fled to Switzerland. He was subsequently condemned by the Nazi Party and government. However, Thyssen continued to profit from his steel industry. Rumors were flying that Union Banking Corp. was holding gold for high ranking Nazis including Thyssen and in October, 1942 the U. S. Government seized the assets of Union Banking under the Trading with the Enemy Act, retaining those assets for the duration of the war. Though there is no reason to believe that Prescott Bush was a Nazi sympathizer, it is impossible to believe that he was unaware of Thyssen's Nazi sympathies, anti-Semitism and involvement in the German armaments industry. Thus, Prescott Bush established his son, George H. W.'s belief that loyalty to country is one thing that's all well and good but loyalty to money is forever.

In 1950 Prescott made his first run for senator from Connecticut against Sen. William Burnett Benton as a Liberal Republican, something that was then not the imaginary, fantastical beast it is today. He lost by 1,000 votes. Prescott planned a run again in 1952. As part of that planning W. Averell Harriman advised Prescott that he could not be elected if he did not take a vigorous anti-communist stance in line with Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy and California Senator Richard Nixon. Prescott won election as senator from Connecticut in 1952 riding the wave of Dwight David Eisenhower's presidential campaign and anti-communist fearmongering. Thus Prescott set another tradition that George H. W. followed in 1980 and 1988 of jettisoning all personal beliefs and ethics in favor of claiming power.

Following his military service George H. W. moved to Texas where his family wealth and prominence gave him entree into the oil industry and even greater wealth and influence.

Prescott Bush retired from the senate in 1962. His second son, George H. W., ran for Congress unsuccessfully in 1964 when Barry Goldwater led the Republican's to near universal defeat. George H. W. ran again in 1966 and won the election to represent Texas' 7th District where he served for 2 terms. During George H. W.'s 2 terms in the House of Representatives the Vietnam War was at it height as was opposition to it in America. Coincidentally, his son George W., hereinafter referred to as "Shrub" (the late Milly Ivins' delightful nickname for "Dubya" graduated from an undistinguished 4 years at Yale University and needed both a military "career" and to stay alive. George H. W. got Dubya a position in the Texas Air National Guard far from even the faint prospect of actual combat. Dubya managed to be accepted for pilot training despite low scores on the pilot aptitude tests, irregular attendance at pilot training and frequent drunkenness. In 1971 Dubya miraculously got transferred to the 187th Fighter Wing of the Alabama Air National Guard but really so that he could work on the senatorial campaign of Winton Blount. Shrub's pilot career ended when he refused to appear for a required physical leaving him with a military career less distinguished though less public than his grandfather's.

Once George H. W. lost his seat in Congress, his father's friend, and our first overtly criminal president, Richard Milhous Nixon appointed him U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations, a cabinet level position. In January, 1973 as the Watergate Break-In began to develop into the Watergate Scandal, George H. W. became chairman of the Republican National Committee. He held that post until September, 1974 when newly anointed President Gerald R. Ford shipped him off to be chief of the new liaison office in China, effectively making Poppy Bush our ambassador to Beijing. That job lasted about 16 months until Ford brought Poppy back to Washington, actually Langley, Virginia, to head the CIA. Ford acted in the shadow of the investigations of the Church Committee (Senate) and Pike Committee (House) into CIA operations many of which flagrantly violated U. S. and International Law and treaties. Poppy came in to the CIA as someone ostensibly untainted by the questionable operations and bizarre policies of the Intelligence Community.

Once Jimmy Carter became president on January 20, 1977, Poppy retired to investment banking in Houston, Texas, joined the Trilateral Commission and prepared himself for a run at the presidency in 1980. That year the ultra-right wing of the Republiscum Party made it's comeback from the Goldwater debacle of 1964 with Ronald Reagan as their front man. Reagan, who was probably showing signs of Alzheimer's Disease, needed a reliable vice-president. Poppy put himself forward as not only that reliable man but as the representative of entrenched oligarchical power within the Republiscum Party. Carter's inept handling of first the Shah of Iran and then the subsequent Iranian Hostage Crisis doomed his bid for reelection and Poppy became the 43rd Vice-President of the United States.

When Reagan was clearly losing mental capacity during the 1984 campaign, Poppy Bush became an increasingly important part of the Administration. Though he claimed to have "gone to the bathroom" during the time that Reagan authorized the illegal actions that became known as the Iran-Contra Affair there is plenty of reason to believe that Poppy was deeply involved in the illegal acts in Iran and Nicaragua with Col. Oliver North and Admiral John Poindexter. Poppy Bush's involvement in Iran-Contra is the most likely reason that his son, Shrub, immediately on taking office, changed the availability of presidential papers to scholars from 25 to 50 years following the end of an Administration. The Reagan Administration papers would have become available after January 20, 2014 while his father's papers would have been open to scholars after January 20, 2018. Now the Reagan papers are locked up until 2039 and the Bush 41 papers won't become available for critical review until 2043. Justice delayed is justice denied and history delayed is truth denied. We won't know all of the crimes of the Shrub-Cheney Administration until 2058 far too late for the American people to know and understand how they have been misled and ill-served by Ronald Reagan, Poppy Bush, his feckless son.

So belatedly I am here to speak ill of the dead who deserve to be spoken ill of. I am sure that there are good things to be said of George Herbert Walker Bush but as a public man, I cannot think of any and can think of more than I've listed above that are ill.

As far as that goes, for more speaking ill of the dead I eagerly await the obituaries for the following:
Richard (Dick) Cheney
Donald Rumsfeld
Oliver North
John Poindexter
William Barr
Donald J. Trump
Michael Pence

None of those obituaries can come too soon.

MODERATION IN...NOTHING

Two years ago I listened to a lot of news up to and following the 2018 mid-term elections. One of the tropes that kept coming up was the "demise of the Moderate Republican". It seemed to be something that news outlets enjoy discussing and airing interviews with self-appointed experts and even alleged Republiscum Moderates. The problem with this Republiscum Moderate trope is that it comes 50 or 60 years too late, possibly even more. The only reason that some Republiscum look "moderate" is that, like Ivory Soap, the Republiscum Party is 99 and 44/100ths per cent pure fascist shading over to full Nazi. If you're a Republiscum elected official who doesn't think that our military should be shooting refugees from Central America, you're a moderate because you only want to make it impossible for those same refugees to gain acknowledged refugee status and ultimately become U. S. citizens. The only way that is "moderate" is in contrast to the "build the wall and shoot anyone who tries to climb over" vast majority of Republiscum.

I'm sorry, Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, and a few others but you would have been right-wing extremists in 1950 and Goldwaterites in the early 1960s. Now that the vast majority of your colleagues are goosestepping to whatever tune The Orange Führer is tweeting you look moderate but you are absolutely, definitively not anything like moderate. Jeff, brokering a week of seriously curtailed investigation of Brett Kavanaugh and then voting for the alcoholic, rapist, ultra-right-wing bastard is not the stuff of which moderation is made. You may be a fascist looking for some cover in case we ever get a U. S. version of the Nürnberg Trials but that is not the stuff of moderation.


I have been paraphrasing General Philip Sheridan for decades saying the only good Republiscum is a dead Republiscum. That doesn't mean I or anyone should go out and start shooting Republiscum. By ignoring sensible precautions to control the corona virus pandemic the Republiscum will be making plenty of dead Republiscum without my or anyone's intervention. What I mean by that phrase is there are plenty of good Republicans but they are all dead: Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root, Robert LaFollette, Margaret Chase Smith, Millicent Fenwick and Elliot Richardson to name but a few. All moderates and even Progressives of their day but they are all dead.

Actually, I'm being a little unfair because Pete McCloskey is still alive at 93 and William Ruckelhaus only died last November at 87. Some might point out that Mitt Romney passes as a moderate but that is sort of like saying that Albert Speer wasn't much of a Nazi. Mitt, whether governor of Massachusetts or senator from Utah, is a vacuum filled by whatever makes Mitt look good for the moment. That self-serving thing of the moment can then be whisked away in the slightest breeze from a different direction. Mitt Romney is the walking, talking personification of there being no "there", there.

Currently the Republiscum Party has committed itself to Trumpist dictatorship. Mitch McConnell has been running the U. S. Senate with a playbook cadged from the Nazi takeover of the Weimar Parliament. Like the rise of the Nazis in 1929-33 there is no concern with venality and corruption in government as long as those corrupt, venal Republiscum in question adhere to the Republiscum Party line. There is no concern with actual violation of the Constitution so long it is a Republiscum who's violating it.

There are some differences between the Republiscum of today and the Nazis of the 1920s and 1930s. For one they don't resort to assassination, so far as we can tell. They just make as many legitimate voters as possible ineligible to vote so that their inability to attract a majority, one they congenitally despise anyway, won't be a bar to elective office.

Unless I am somehow mistaken, along with every dictionary and close to two hundred and fifty years of political rhetoric in this country, "democracy" means "government of the people, by the people and for the people" just to add in Abraham Lincoln's apt phrase. Keeping "people" from casting votes on specious and spurious grounds is the very definition of "anti-democratic", that is opposite to democracy itself. But that doesn't bother the Republiscum. They are only interested in the oligarchs who fund them and in hugging a flag now and then for show or using a Bible as a prop and means of paying no taxes.

The Orange Führer and his Republiscum allies like Mitch McConnell and Tom Cotton decry voting by mail as an invitation to vote fraud. They ignore the fact that many states have used vote-by-mail for a decade or more without any hint of voter fraud. Meanwhile the only confirmed case of voter fraud in the nation over the last fifty years was a systematic action by the Republiscum Party in one Congressional District in North Carolina in 2018. If we are worried about vote fraud, it is the Republiscum Party whose actions we must vigilantly check, not the individual voter mailing in a ballot.

When the demos, the Greek word for the people, take to the streets peaceably because, regardless of our skin color, we have had more than enough of police abusing their power by murdering citizens, most often citizens of color, the Republiscum start screaming about riots and suppressing dissent. I seem to recall that their attitude was a bit different when smaller demonstrations by the Astroturf "Tea Party" group their oligarchs funded were carrying idiot signs that read things like, "Keep Govt out of my Medicare!" The Orange Führer's attitude toward protesters was different when neo-Nazis demonstrated in Charlottesville, Virginia and one of their number used his car to murder and maim protesters. Also, it's particularly interesting to watch the talking heads of the Volkische Beobachter (i. e. Fox News) scream about violent protesters when time after time in Minnesota, Colorado, Washington and California it has been police who have initiated the violence or the Republiscum and "Libertarian" supporters like the "Proud Boys" or the "Boogaloo Bois" (spelling and, more broadly, education are not the strong suit of these thugs) who have infiltrated peaceful protests and initiated violence.

The fact is that the Republiscum have no shame and no moderation at all. They incite and condone violence in defense of their anti-democratic attempts to establish a neo-Fascist oligarchy in the United States. There is no instance in which we can rationally speak of a "Moderate Republiscum". Like fairies, demons and unicorns the "Moderate Republiscum" simply does not exist except in the rhetoric of some news networks desperate to fill air time. How "moderate" is the Mussolini-style Fascist when compared with his Simese Twin brother the neo-Nazi anyway?