A Basket Of Dotards

Eyes and brains to the dotard lethargic and dull,
Pale ravener of horrible meat.
-- from Herman Melville's "The Maldive Shark"

Kim Jong-un was on to something when he recently called Trump  a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard.”  But he wasn't the first to do so.  The otherwise inimitable Charles Pierce had this to say back in May (in the context of L'Affaire Russe):  "He's not up to the job. This should be obvious by now. The most innocent explanation for the president*'s actions is that he's a blundering dotard who can't stop himself from destroying democratic institutions and from tripping over federal statutes."

The dictionary definition of dotard is “a state or period of senile decay marked by decline of mental poise and alertness.”  Seems to me this applies not only to Trump, but to the political party that enables him and the basket of deplorables that supports him -- no matter what he does. For example, they clearly lack the mental alertness to recognize that his juvenile taunting of the aforementioned North Korean leader could trigger a nuclear confrontation.  And they sure haven't exhibited mental poise at Trump's campaign rallies, like the one just held in Alabama, where they cheered the unhinged shit gibbon as he resorted to an unsavory combination of word salad, racist demagoguery and trampling on the First Amendment. 

Nationwide senile decay is as good an explanation as any for the inability to reckon with this country's legacy of racism and how it continues to taint every aspect of our society -- from mass incarceration and drug policy to police brutality and police killings to immigration bans and wall-building to confederate flag waving and neo-Nazis.  As Ta-Nehisi Coates argues in his latest must read essay, "Donald Trump Is The First White President," Trump's rise to power owes far more to white supremacy than to his appeal to the working class on economic and cultural issues.  And as Bryan Stevenson explains, our country badly needs truth and reconciliation, but before we can get to reconciliation, we have to tell the truth -- the truth about slavery and white terrorism, about lynching and segregation, and about entrenched racial inequality and discrimination in this country -- and confronting the truth is not something we, as a country, are very good at.  If it were, we would not have an ignorant, corrupt, racist as president. 

And so, Trump refers to the marchers in Charlottesville as "very fine people" while calling African American athletes who respectfully protest police killings of African Americans sons of bitches.  He continues to goad Kim Jong-un into war.  Meanwhile, he refuses to take note of the devastation in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria.  (Does he even know Puerto Rico is part of the United States?)  He supports another lame effort by the GOP to take away affordable health insurance from vulnerable Americans while preparing to propose a tax cut for the wealthy.  Meanwhile, his supporters -- an overwhelming majority of Republicans -- continue to hail his leadership.  And the leaders of the Party itself continue their race against time, hoping to get their tax cuts and to fill the federal courts with more right wing judges before he implodes or comes undone by indictments or unwittingly launches a war.

What a bunch of dotards.

You Say Dotard, I Say Moron, Let's Call The Whole Thing Off

What do you call an ignorant, lying, malignant narcissistic bigot who happened to get elected President of the United States?  North Korean leader Kim Jong-un calls him a "mentally deranged U.S. dotard."  U.S. Secretary of State refers to him as a "fucking moron." 

One of the earliest entries is, or course, from Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, who got under his thin orange skin with "Short-fingered Vulgarian."

Then there are the late night tv hosts.  John Oliver has called him "America's back mole," "Rome burning in man form" and "Donald Drumpf."  Stephen Colbert has gone with "Toupee-Human Hybrid," "Microwave Circus Peanut," "Godzilla with less foreign policy experience," and far worse.  John Stewart's classic still resonates:  "Fuckface von Clownstick."  Trevor Noah has described him as "the face of a butternut squash who wished on a shooting star and became a real boy.”  Samantha Bee has a million of them, including, "Thrice-Married Foul-Mouthed Tit Judge," "Crotch-Fondling Slab of Rancid Meatloaf," "Melting Hunk of Uninformed Apricot Jello," and "America’s Burst Appendix."   

Conservative columnist George Will called him a "Bloviating Ignoramus,"  Sarah Palin (fondly) called him a "Golden Wrecking Ball," and Republican strategist Rick Wilson referred to him as "Cheeto Jesus."  On the Democratic side, former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley called him a "Facist Carnival Barker."

My all time favorite to date comes from Pennsylvania State Senator Daylin Leach: "Fascist, Loofa-faced, Shit-gibbon." 

Care to pile on?

Speaking Truth To Power

“Was anyone going to say anything about the turn the country’s taking?” -- Bishop Mariann E. Budde

In 2006, at the height of George W. Bush's popularity, Stephen Colbert was invited to speak at the White House Correspondent's Dinner. Staying in his Colbert Report character, he literally spoke truth (or "truthiness") to power, courageously and hilariously skewering the President and mocking the all-too-compliant national press (e.g., "I believe the government that governs best is the government that governs least. And by these standards, we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.") And the beauty was that it was done in such a deadpan manner that a clueless Bush didn't get that he was the joke and lamely laughed along while the reporters squirmed uncomfortably.    

But not even a dotard like Donald Trump could miss that he was being called out by Bishop Budde, the spiritual leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, while he slumped in the front row at the Washington National Cathedral this week. Here's how she closed her sermon:

Let me make one final plea. Mr. President, millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives. And the people, the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants, and work the night shifts in hospitals, they — they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurdwara and temples.

I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people, the good of all people in this nation and the world.

Calling out the President of the United States, especially when he is sitting right in front of you, is not for the faint of heart. And when that President is as vindictive and emotionally fragile as the current one, and has just pardoned the entire swath of Brownshirts, doing so is particularly fraught. But Bishop Budde felt compelled to appeal to the President to show mercy and compassion to those who are vulnerable rather than demonize broad categories of people. Now, I can't imagine she thought this would spur some spark of humanity and change his rancid mind. She was speaking to all of us. She was reminding us how important it is to not acquiesce, to not normalize, to rebut the false narratives that Trump and his cult are so adept at creating.

Indeed, in these early days of the regime it is especially critical to push back on the notion that Trump's narrowly-won election victory created a mandate for his Nazi-inspired agenda. Speaking truth to power shows that the opposition does not believe in the autocrat's invincibility or infallibility. But, unfortunately, the Democratic leadership has decided that voters care more about decorum and bipartisanship, and that it is better to sip tea with the President-elect than sound the fucking alarm.

In November 2016, M. Gessen wrote a remarkably prescient piece entitled "Autocracy: Rules for Survival." Gessen criticized Democratic leaders for their far too conciliatory post-election reactions that pretended Trump was a "normal" politician to be given the benefit of the doubt. Gessen sharply observed that their magnanimous responses may have been meant to ensure a peaceful transfer of power but effectively closed off any alternative to despair and acquiescence by implying that there was no daylight between acceptable, indeed necessary, peaceful protest and a violent insurgency. 

And here we are again. Nothing has been as dispiriting as the defeatist attitude of the Democratic Party while Trump enriches himself and his family, shreds the Constitution, pardons seditionists, undermines civil and human rights, and destroys that administrative state. With rare exceptions, such as AOC (who the geriatrics of the Party stubbornly denied a leadership position) and Bernie Sanders (who isn't even a Democrat), the Silent Minority says nothing and does nothing, except when it comes to going along with a MAGA-inspired immigration bill. 

This is not a time for compromise; it is a time for outrage. The Democrats should be railing every day about the pardons, the corruption, and the myriad abuses of power. Move for censure or, dare I say, impeachment. Force votes. Call for investigations into Trump's corruption and his apparently impulsive decision to pardon violent and non-violent January 6 rioters alike. Act with a sense of urgency regardless of the likelihood of success. Show the American People that the alarmist rhetoric about Project 2025 and Trump's fascism was not simply a campaign tactic.

If a 65-year old grandmother and spiritual leader can speak truth to power, can't the Democrats?

Investigate, Prosecute, "Lock Him Up"

For years I've regarded his very existence as a monument to all the rancid genes and broken chromosomes that corrupt the possibilities of the American Dream; he was a foul caricature of himself, a man with no soul, no inner convictions, with the integrity of a hyena and the style of a poison toad.”  -- Hunter S. Thompson (on Richard Nixon)

When President Ford pardoned Richard Nixon for "all offenses against the United States," he stated that it was out of concern for the "immediate future of this great country."  Next came Iran-Contra, which culminated in the pardon by the first President Bush (with the support of then-Attorney General Barr) of several key participants who had been indicted and whose trials would likely have dispelled the notion that Bush was, as he claimed, "out of the loop."  More recently, President Obama refused to seek any investigation of Bush II's "War on Terror," despite substantial evidence that wiretapping laws were broken and torture was authorized at the highest levels.  Much like President Ford, Obama claimed that “nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.” 

And now that the end is nigh for the malevolent orange shit-gibbon, there are the frustratingly familiar calls for abstaining from investigating and prosecuting the myriad acts of abuse of power and corruption that have marked this horrid presidency from Day One.  The argument goes that we should be grateful that we are rid of this "mentally deranged U.S. dotard," as dear leader Kim Jong-un calls his dear friend  -- that, in the words of President Ford, "our long national nightmare is over." 

Accordingly, we are supposed to maintain our democratic cred by not engaging in political retribution against those who have lost power.  Further, given the immediate attention needed to address the economic, environmental and, most urgently, public health, disasters that will have been left in the disastrous wake of this disastrous presidency, we must, as President Obama said about his predecessor, "look forward as opposed to looking backwards." 

In The Atlantic, my old high school classmate (and favorite Republican), Paul Rosenzweig, gamely tried to thread the needle, arguing that any investigation and prosecution of Trump should be limited to his conduct before and after his presidency, and that declining to pursue him for his actions as president is "the price we pay for the routine peaceful transition of power."  In Rosenzweig's view, going after Trump for his acts as president would result in an "ever-escalating cycle of retribution," with each administration prosecuting its opponents -- that "indicting one former president risks making a habit of doing so, and reducing America to little more than a revolving-door banana republic."  As Rosenzweig put it, if we think "lock her up" is wrong to say about Hillary Clinton, then "lock him up" is equally improper.  

First, the notion that Democrats should not launch legitimate investigations into the most corrupt administration in history out of fear that Republicans would respond in kind once they are again in control of the White House assumes, wrongly, that the GOP is not a nihilistic, anti-majoritarian cabal.  The modern Republican Party is not constrained by civility or norms or any notion of decency.  As Mitch McConnell made clear in completing his theft of the Supreme Court, the GOP will always put party over country and wield whatever power they can, while they still can.  Indeed, if they manage to hold onto the Senate, stay tuned for their shameless obstruction of Biden's efforts to restore the economy or deal responsibly with COVID or climate change, their refusal to pass any meaningful legislation or confirm judicial and executive nominees, and their bogus investigations of Hunter Biden and others in order to sabotage the new Administration. The Pelosi/Schumer/Feinstein non-confrontational approach (e.g., limited investigations, narrowly-drawn impeachment, docile SCOTUS confirmation opposition) does nothing but embolden Republicans, who know that Democrats default to compromise and appeasement.    

Second, there is a world of difference between fevered cult-inspired cries at Trump rallies for locking up Hillary Clinton, who was never found to have committed any criminal wrongdoing, with the reasonable investigation and pursuit of justice in response to the unprecedented level of corruption committed by, what Sarah Kendzior so aptly calls, "a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government."  

 

Rosenzweig agrees that the tax and mortgage fraud, campaign finance violations, and sexual assaults that occurred pre-presidency are all fair game.  But he would stop there, although he concedes that "the discretionary policy of not prosecuting an ex-president for acts committed while in office ... would have to yield in extreme cases."  But if this isn't an extreme case, I'm hard pressed to imagine what would be.  Trump's pervasive malfeasance as president has been far more egregious and has posed a far greater threat to our nation than anything he did before he slithered into office.  

Under normal circumstances it is certainly not ideal to go after a leader who has been justly defeated in a popular election.  BUT THESE ARE NOT NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES.  There has never been a more corrupt president and the bill of particulars grows larger every day.  Indeed, we have only recently learned about Trump's interference with a criminal case against a state-owned Turkish bank at the urging of Turkey's authoritarian leader and presumably so as not to jeopardize Trump business interests there.  More details are emerging about Trump's unfettered self-enrichment while in office and reports of millions of dollars that taxpayers have paid to Trump-owned entities.  He appears to have worked with Russian disinformation operations to taint his opponent, used the resources of the government in his reelection campaign and undermined the efficacy of the Post Office to thwart the timely arrival of mail-in ballots.  And he's got a couple of months to do even more damage.

There has been a disturbing pattern of Republican Administrations, beginning with Nixon, to engage in abuse of power, violate of the Constitution and federal law, and break formerly-sacrosanct norms.  Each time we are persuaded it would be unseemly and undemocratic to hold them accountable. This has led us to this moment and to this presidency.  

And as Kendzior recently lamented: 

The current American crisis is in part due to those officials who refused to curb Mr. Trump’s worst behaviour. When organized crime hijacks government, officials must act aggressively, transparently, and immediately. They cannot waste time like Robert Mueller did with his plodding, placating probe. They cannot “impeach at the ballot box,” which Nancy Pelosi – a staunch opponent of impeachment until she buckled to pressure from her colleagues and the public – suggested throughout 2019. They cannot go by the book when the book is burning.

We need to hold Trump, his family and his cronies accountable because their brazen wrongdoing demands it.  But we also have to come to grips with how easy it was for this "fascist carnival barker" to undermine our system of government.  All it took was a political party willing to follow him in lock step and a compliant media that normalized his pathology.  And so, a full accounting of all the ways our institutions have been corrupted is essential so we can figure out how to better protect the nation from the next wannabe kleptocrat -- one who may not be as clownish and incompetent as this one.  

Could Be Worse. Could Be Raining

[Dr. Frankenstein and Igor are digging up a body from a graveyard]
Dr. Frankenstein: What a filthy job.
Igor: Could be worse.
Dr. Frankenstein: How?
Igor: Could be raining.
[it starts to pour]
-- Young Frankenstein

Last year, the unthinkable happened and choose your epithet -- a malevolent orange shit gibbon, vulgar talking yam, fucking moron, mentally deranged U.S. dotard -- became the President of these United States. The way he has brazenly violated well-established norms and degraded the office (not to mention high crimes and misdemeanors), and demonstrated his utter lack of intellectual, psychological and moral fitness for office, has been far worse and far more frightening than most of us living in the rational world could have imagined.

He is seemingly incapable of telling the truth and, according to a Washington Post tally, averages about a half-a-dozen falsehoods a day.  He and his family continue to enrich themselves by commingling their business interests with the White House, not merely ignoring conflicts of interests but affirmatively benefitting from them. But it could be worse.  Could be raining.

He has stocked his administration with a remarkable collection of venal, ethically-challenged men and Betsy DeVos, who are systematically destroying the agencies in their charge with enormous ramifications for the environment, education, energy policy and criminal justice. He withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement and is pushing fossil fuel production that will exacerbate global warming.  But it could be worse.  Could be raining.

He continues his relentless attacks on democratic institutions, from judges to U.S. intelligence agencies to the press -- and most recently, on the Special Counsel investigating his and his administration's involvement in Russia's interference with the 2016 election.  He has already fired the FBI director to thwart this investigation and there are rising fears that he will take steps to remove the Special Counsel too. And he has refused to take meaningful steps to stop Russia from interfering again.  But it could be worse.  Could be raining.

His racist and xenophobic rhetoric has energized Nazis and white supremacists.  The hastily crafted Muslim ban and unilateral rescission of the DACA program, as well as the unleashing of his Justice Department on undocumented immigrants, has been needlessly cruel and destructive, heartlessly breaking up families and sweeping up hard-working, law-abiding, long-standing residents.  But it could be worse.  Could be raining.

His nomination of extreme right wing judges to fill vacancies left open due to Republican obstruction during the Obama presidency (including, of course, the Supreme Court), most of whom are that are anti-LGBT, anti-choice, anti-civil rights, anti-regulation, anti-labor, will very likely transform the federal judiciary for a generation or more.  But it could be worse.  Could be raining.

He has just chosen John Bolton to be his National Security Advisor who, together with Mike Pompeo, nominated for Secretary of State, creates, as the New York Times describes "the most radically aggressive foreign policy team around the American president in modern memory."  As a Times editorial states, Bolton's views are simplistic and wrong-headed, he disdains diplomacy and arms control, and "there are few people more likely to lead us into war."

It's raining.

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