Day 1117 The Giant Shitstorm – A Retrospective
Saturday October 19, 2019
382 Days until the 2020 election and 464 days until the Inauguration
I have tried to keep track and do a proper countdown, but I may be off by a few days. However, redoing, again, at this point seems to me to just confuse the issue. I’ll wait until we get closer to revamp – if necessary.
The temperature is dropping at nighttime. The last two mornings it’s been 40 degrees. Cold enough to let you feel winter coming. The air is clearer because most of the moisture has dropped out. The sky early in the morning snows Orion clearly with Sirus shining brightly. You can see not only the belt, but the sword of Orion. The first star in the sword is actually a binary star combination. You’ll beed binoculars to see that. I remember when Mr. Perkin showed it to me.
Looking at the stars reminds me of the timelessness of all this. We humans haven’t been around that long, and at the rate we are going we may not be here that much longer. Earth will survive, but will we? Ah me, if I only knew.
The idiocies are piling up fast now, It makes one wonder if the dam will break. (Cue Led Zep?) Trump has done an amazing thing. In ten days he was able to destroy thirty (or is it sixty?) years of stumbling effort in the Middle East. This will not end well for the forces of freedom and the hopes for democracy. But then when I think about it, Republicans have never much liked democracy, preferring tyrants, capitalists, and fascists. Some may think that harsh, but consider the evidence, both past and recent.
Most of the fathers of the powerful right wingers of today backed the fascists in Italy, Spain, and Germany in the 1930s: be it Mussolini, Franco, or Hitler. In Argentina it was Peron. While Hemingway and Orwell were backing the dually elected Republicans of Spain many of our business leaders were privately backing a coup d’etat led by Francisco Franco, which eventually took over Spain. Franco let Hitler bomb and machine gun the people of Guernica. Picasso made his famous painting of that event, which went on for three days. The painting Guernica was given to the people of Spain and hung in the New York at MoMA until Franco died and then was shipped to the Prado. Franco’s success was in no small part due to the treachery of Texaco.
Thomas Jefferson complained about the merchants of New England not backing their government in the War of 1812 because they feared a loss of transatlantic commerce. Big Oil like those merchants has little loyalty to any country, as Rachel Maddow has recently documented, proving the point once again. In Texaco’s case their leader in the 30s commented that he preferred to work with dictators as they were more decisive (and less troublesome) than democracies.
Donald Trump is just the latest in a long line of these sorts of people. He’s an extreme case, but that’s not to say that others in the Republican party don’t share that proclivity. Remember Iran Contra? That was an attempt by the Republicans of that time to try and overthrow an elected president that they couldn’t do business with. And there was another fellow in Central America that was assassinated because business folks in the U.S. wanted him to sign off on big projects that his country didn’t need.
I can remember when Kabul was a jewel of western civilization, and Tehran, and Beirut. Now all are either in flames and ruins or in the hands of Islamic religious folk. Whatever it is, it sure isn’t democracy and freedom.
Why people want to exert their dominance and control over others based on their beliefs seems to be part of human history. In our country the religious right wants to tell women what they can, and can not, do with their bodies. The United States is one of the few places where, by and large, the government and others leave you alone. Not that it isn’t under constant attempts by someone or some group to try and seize control and steer the ship of state off a cliff, but so far we’ve managed to hang on.
Most historians consider democracies transitional periods. It seems democracy does not age well. We in this country are facing some big structural problems. The less populated areas have a huge, disproportionate influence over the politics. This means that the populated areas don’t get their problems resolved. Take gun violence, what does someone living in Montana with a population of seven per square mile know about urban gun violence? Compare that to New York City’s population density of 26,403 per square mile.
Every major step forward for the average person in America has come from programs initiated by Democrats. In Europe the Marshall Plan, initiated in 1948 by a Democratic administration rebuilt Europe and is pointed to by many as the way to fix big structural problems. The alternative might be the work of Calvin Coolidge (“The purpose of business is business.”) or Herbert Hoover and the Hoovervilles. It was FDR who had to fight the Republicans ever step of the way to get our country going again. It wasn’t until WWII that they finally let up.
So where are we now in the Middle East?
Well, a CIA backed overthrow of the legitimately elected government, which led to the Shah’s return, which led to his overthrow and the government being in the hands of religious clerics is now challenging the order in the Middle East. They were being held in check by Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Dick Cheney wanted to get at Iraq’s oil and used the excuse of 9/11 to invade the country and replace the regime with chaos and corruption.
During Reagan’s time our troops in Beirut got bombed and we withdrew from there.
Now we’ve withdrawn from Syria leaving the country in the clutches of a brutal dictator and puppet of the Russians. Our supposed ally, Turkey, has been playing three card monte with us and Trump was stupid enough to be manipulated by them.
There are a lot of refuges from Syria. Many of them are living in Jordan. I have seen the camps. They are Quonset hut like structures that stretch for miles. How many refugees there are is hard to say, because many are living with relatives in Jordan or elsewhere. The number is several million. They are waiting for Assad to be deposed, then they will return home. For some reason they don’t want to live in a place where they could be gassed, beaten, tortured, and killed – all for no reason. Our leaving Syria has dashed the hopes of many of those people that they will be able to return in their lifetime.
In impeachment news, Mick Mulvaney held a press conference. I now see why the administration stopped holding press conferences. Former prosecutors who are now commentators were stumbling over their cliches and metaphors to explain what Mulvaney had done. The best description I can come up with is he handed the prosecution a smoking gun, now they have to establish the facts. (See, usually the accused doesn’t want to admit to the crime and tries to hide the evidence and not confess until some key piece of evidence is revealed (ie the smoking gun) and they are cornered. Here, the Trump defense is to admit to it; whatever it is, and then either to say, “So what? (Everybody does it)” or to say, “No, that’s not what we did (said)” etc. When, in fact, it’s exactly what they did.)
What did Mulvaney do? He admitted that the money for Ukraine was held up for partisan political reasons. His defense? “We do it all the time. Get over it.”
(Shades of Jack Nicholson in a Few Good Men, “You’re God Damn right I did!”)
However, the most interesting thing I read yesterday was Hillary Clinton’s observation (thought?) that the Russians are looking at the Democratic field for a candidate to run as a third party candidate to siphon votes away from the Dems. She thinks it will be Tulsi Gabbard.
Sit up and pay attention folks. When Hillary has made such statements in the past, folks have been pissed off and belittle her. However, her predictions come true. Remember her “vast right wing conspiracy” comment? The only question now is, “How big is it?” Or her “Deplorables” comment? Yeah, Trump and the Klan and the right and the far right made memes of it, and made fun of her, but will anyone say that there aren’t people at a Trump rally that aren’t deplorable?
382 Days until the 2020 election and 464 days until the Inauguration
PS Lion of the Desert
Leave a Reply