A Dark Benefit of the Trump Presidency

It’s become painfully obvious that Americans’ view of the world has split into two irreconcilable, non-intersecting  and drastically different universes. On the one hand, there are a majority of Americans who reject this Presidency as the worst they’ve ever experienced or heard of. The size of that majority is calculated first by the 2016 popular  vote, plus the large numbers who have been subsequently appalled by Trump’s continuous assault on democratic ideals, as well as the corruption, foreign policy blunders, hatefulness, and outright racism that has been the unrelenting hallmark of this administration.

Then there are the Trumpeters, that hard-core bastion of true-believers who support every action, every tweet, every insane pronouncement. There is literally nothing that Trump can do or say that blunts their blind allegiance. Their enthusiasm is as boundless as it is incomprehensible. Incomprehensible, that is, until one realizes that they are merely revealing the hatefulness, racism and fearful anger that has obviously been festering within them for a long time. The only difference is that now they feel emboldened to articulate (well, perhaps articulate is too strong a word) their deep dislike of everything different. Overwhelmingly white, and male-dominated, this core of seething hatred sees in Trump a kindred voice, who gives them targets to blame for an economy that has passed them by, leaving them frustrated and vengeful.

The election of Trump to the most powerful office in the world (at least it was when he was inaugurated; he has singlehandedly managed to siphon away huge swaths of that power, as well as losing respect around the world), that election has been seen by many, if not most, of us in the anti-Trump camp as an unmitigated disaster. We are all of us hoping things can hang together for what is likely to be 2 1/2 more years of cringe-worthy speeches and tweets, as well as attacks on the environment, voting rights and countless other democratic fronts. We hang on and work ceaselessly to remove this deadly cancer from the body politic.

But there is one unanticipated advantage the Trump phenomenon has presented us with. The Trump looking glass has made crystal clear the bigotries and terrible hatred in some of the people around you. People whom you may never have suspected of harboring such negative sympathies. People who have perhaps always seemed reasonable, intelligent, even educated, cultured and “aware” of injustice and bigotry, are now revealed as unreasonable in the extreme. They may possess intelligence, but have willfully chosen to avoid its use in discerning the atrocities they see being perpetrated on our society. Who may even take part in those atrocities. Those who are educated have chosen to ignore the lessons of history, both ancient and recent.

Just as the Romper Room lady could see so many in her Magic Mirror, the Trump Magic Mirror, when trained on the Trumpeters, reveals them for who they are: innately bigoted, racist, hate-filled and seeking vengeance for perceived wrongs. Enthusiastic partakers of white privilege  whose fear of losing that privilege has driven them to this extreme.

The advantage in this? Simply that these people are in fact revealed in their true nature. It is incredibly important to recognize what people truly represent, what they truly wish for. Before the advent of Trump, we may never have known the baleful nature of their inner souls. Because there can be no mistake: for anyone to actively support this sociopathic, egotistical bully, this pathetic excuse for a human being, can only mean that such a supporter is equally mean-spirited, racist, xenophobic, close-minded and likely as unredeemable.

In short, they have revealed themselves as someone to ignore, someone to leave behind.

Look, it was understandable, in the election, and before Trump made it clear that he really was as despicable as he made himself out to be, it was at least comprehensible why some voters either just stayed away from the voting booth, or even voted for Trump. There was a huge animus against Hillary, not to mention that she ran one of the worst campaigns in memory. The strong support for Sanders was also a clear indicator of the swell of anitpathy to establishment politics. Trump rode that wave.

But whatever reasons made Trump a real possibility to moderates, and that galvanized his base (while simultaneously turning off Democratic support), the fact of the matter is that subsequent events have proven without a doubt that this blowhard clown is completely incapable of governing as POTUS. Further, it has become glaringly obvious that he is incapable of even pretending to act like a decent human being. He cruelly separated babies and young children from their parents, with no thought whatsoever as to how they might ever be reunited. He attempted to arbitrarily deny entry to Muslims, originally based solely on their religion. He continues to whittle away at the Affordable Care Act, putting thousands, maybe millions, out of reach of basic health care. He continues to erode safeguards against air and water pollution, and eliminating regulations that have kept toxins out of the environment. He is scrapping all efforts to reduce climate change, and in fact makes changes that will increase CO2 emissions. He cozies up to dictators and strong men, while simultaneously undermining decades old alliances with democratic allies.

If the Magic Mirror has stripped away the facade of decency among friends and relatives who still support Trump, even after a year and a half of non-stop outrageous behavior, then one has to ask oneself whether these friends and acquaintances are indeed people who deserve your friendship and allegiance. The short answer is, of course not. There has to be something deeply wrong in their psyche and soul to continue to support this insanity.

The hardest part is turning your back on long time relationships. But it is necessary to ask, on what basis were these relationships founded? If someone is adamantly a Trumpter, with no remorse, willing to accept his outright lies as truth, willing to spend not the slightest effort in seeing through his demagoguery, willing to vote for him again… then that person is terribly defective.

Once you’ve seen someone’s true nature revealed in the Trump Magic Mirror, isn’t it required that you deny that nature and turn your back? Perhaps they may one day regain some reasonable perspective on the world. But until then, they are only capable of negatively impacting the world.

But at least you know that now.

© 2018 Chuck Puckett

Tonight (Sunday, April 8, 2018) MSNBC’s Headliner program had as its subject Special Counsel and former FBI Director Robert Mueller. Mueller is of course in charge of investigating the Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, as well as any involvement the Trump campaign may have had in that interference. In addition, Mueller was given a broad scope to investigate any ancillary criminal activity that his investigations might unearth during the process. This state of affairs is pretty well-known by just about anyone who has not been living under a rock for the past 10 months. I note in passing that, unfortunately, there are probably a good many citizens who have been living under a rock, but that’s another topic.

I urge everyone who missed the hour long program to make every effort to catch a rerun, or visit the MSNBC web site and look for the video that will surely be available in due course. Why do I think that’s important? There are several reasons.

Primarily, it is critical that the public learn what kind of man Bob Mueller is. Fox News, in conjunction  with GOP members of Congress (primarily the House) have waged a ceaseless campaign trying to discredit Mueller personally. This effort attempts to paint Mueller as a partisan hack, out to destroy Trump for purely partisan reasons. This is beyond ludicrous, which becomes evident when one learns the details of Mueller’s life, and especially his record of service to our nation.

It is also enlightening to see the contrast of character between Robert Mueller and Donald Trump, and then to weigh the actions of the two men and judge for yourself whom you would believe, whom you would pay heed to, whom you would trust.

Bob Mueller graduated from Princeton and immediately enlisted in the Marines to fight in Viet Nam. He was awarded a Bronzed Star for valor and a Purple Heart. Trump had bone spurs. When Mueller left military service, he immediately prepared himself for further service to his country. He became a criminal prosecutor, joined the FBI. He was eventually nominated by George W. Bush to head the FBI, and was confirmed by the Senate unanimously. Nine days after he took the job, 9/11 happened. He served heroically in that national disaster, and maintained a cool head, insisting on the strict rule of law while pursuing the terrorists. He inherited an FBI that operated in a technical stone age, lacking even email. He left the department fully modernized, and stronger than ever.

FBI Directors serve a 10 year term. When he completed his ten years, Obama asked him to stay on an additional two years. This required a special dispensation by the Senate, and the Republican majority in that body again voted unanimously to extend his term.

Mueller is a lifelong Republican. Republicans in the Senate have twice supported him unanimously to serve as FBI Director. To suggest that he is in anyway partisan, and especially partial to Democrats, is just plain stupid.

In Washington political and professional circles, Bob Mueller has always enjoyed universal acclaim and honor. His character has been universally admired and his reputation is absolutely untarnished. When he was first appointed Special Counsel, both sides of the aisle, and pundits everywhere enthusiastically applauded the choice. Everyone knew this was a man with impeccable credentials, a man who would simply seek the truth. It is only when the truth apparently went sour that the right-wing pundits and the Congressional ferrets began trying to discredit the messenger, since the message was unacceptable to them.

Contrast Mueller to Donald Trump. The latter cannot go 24 hours without bending or breaking the truth. He golfs much more than he governs. His administration has suffered more scandal and corruption than any in modern memory. He never divested himself of his business, and makes tons of money trading on the Office of POTUS. He has stiffed contractors for decades. He is incapable of communicating in anything above than a grade-school level. He has had more administration position resignations and firings in his first year than any POTUS ever. Members of his campaign staff have suffered indictments and convictions as a result of Mueller’s investigation. And on and on and on.

Watch the Headliner program about Mueller. Then decide for yourself who is the most likely to be seeking the truth. Who has more character and integrity.

Who is working for the American people.

© 2018 Chuck Puckett

The examples of outright callous meanness and utter disregard for human decency that have been exhibited by the Humpty Trumpty administration are legion. Just consider a budget that eliminates Meals On Wheels and free after school lunches for poor children. That pulls the plug on the NEA and NPR. That ignores science and the future of our children with a 32% cut to the EPA because “we don’t believe in climate change and we’re not going to waste any money on it.” That cuts the State Department budget by 30%, mainly in foreign aid, including relief to millions starving in Africa. Meanwhile, the military budget sees a very hefty increase, even though American military might already dwarfs the all nations on the planet, combined. 

But TrumpCare offers an especially cynical stab at the less fortunate, right here in the U.S.A. And since it originates from Paul Ryan and his like-minded party, it reflects the kind of disdain for anyone not rich that so completely characterizes the party of Trump. He absolutely endorses the legislation, btw, even though it flies in the face of every promise he made w.r.t health care during the campaign.

Here’s what I consider the major flaw that lies at the heart of the darkness that is TrumpCare. Rather than scaling things so that richer people take on more, TrumpCare offers a single-size tax credit, regardless of the income of the recipient. I believe it’s $4000. The person gets the tax credit, and in some sort of distorted Objectivism, then negotiates his or her own health care. No mandate, you don’t have to actually get a plan.

Understanding health plans is complicated, as any one who has negotiated for one will attest. Throwing the entire population into the deep end of this pool means that only the well-off and the well-educated will swim successfully. Maybe that’s what Paul Ryan has in mind, as he re-reads Atlas Shrugged for the umpteenth time, and sneers at those who don’t meet his expectations. A healthy pruning of the gene pool never bothered a true believer in the “philosophy” of Ayn Rand. Let the wolves have the slow and the aged.

Now, put aside for a moment the aspects that have  (rightfully so) been castigated by opponents of the GOP “plan”. Namely, that low income and the elderly are going to take it on the chin, paying as much as 2-300% more for whatever health care they can get. Medicaid (for the needy) gets slashed way back. These are awful situations, and they will most severely affect (in many cases) the very people who were fooled into voting for the Trickster.

But here’s another hidden cost, one that will devolve directly onto the taxpayer. There is no mandate to purchase insurance. The one thing that makes health insurance work is having a large pool of fairly healthy people (read “young”) paying premiums, and this off-sets the costs of the elderly and seriously ill. But with no mandate, there’s no reason to buy a plan. So, instead of having lots of insured people to average out the cost, we’ll inevitably have very many young and, shall we say, not particularly forward-looking, people opting NOT to be insured. The result? An overall decrease in health, and lots of people showing up in emergency rooms, since they have no doctor (or insurance). The hospitals can’t refuse them, so the costs ultimately come back to the taxpayers.

The only solution that will ever make sense (economic and ethical) is universal single payer health care. Medicare for every American, and if the well-to-do want more, fine. Their choice. But if we only guarantee that that the wealthy are adequately covered, we have made a moral choice that reduces us to that of scavengers.

But wait… that happened when they decided to cut Meals On Wheels.

© 2017 Chuck Puckett

The student riots in Tuscaloosa at the University of Alabama. May, 1970. I remember those few days vividly, wrapping up my freshman year. That year had started innocently enough. Buckling down to the books as I made the transition from the high school educational experience to the newfound freedom of college. Classes every other day, and stretched out over the day, rather than closely sequential. And more intense, or so it seemed at first. High school had always been fun, and comparatively easy for me, and of course I knew everyone, including all the teachers and their reputations. But college brought with it the apprehension of uncertainty, and my response was to focus on the courses and the assignments.

Second semester, I had a better grip on things, and started looking around and noticing the rest of the college experience. New ideas, wider perspectives. I even began to pay close attention to the national political scene. The Vietnam War was raging. and the protests reached a fever pitch that spring, mainly on campuses across the country, although Tuscaloosa had managed to remain largely unaffected.

And then Kent State happened.

Kent State was so horrific, and in some way, so personal, that even the sleepy Capstone was stirred into action. Students gathered in groups, then into crowds, chanting and singing. It was hard to tell how real it all was, but it was really happening.

I remember Jerry Pruett and I going out to protest, with my bed sheet sign hung between us, “Gestapo Go Home” printed in large letters across the linen (we weren’t very creative). We stood on the corner of University Boulevard right at the edge of campus, across the street from The Dickery, holding our sign and waving our fists at the police cruisers that paraded endlessly up and down the road. This was the day after the Tuscaloosa cops had raided the frat houses on University Boulevard, in particular the Deke house. (Those houses are all gone now; the Bryant-Denny stadium expansion razed all of them to the ground). The police stormed into the frat houses, their name tags taped over, billy-clubbing and arresting the frat guys. As a result of this excessive use of force, the governor (or somebody) had called in the (believe it or not) much more responsible and well-trained State Troopers to control the situation.

Jerry and I got thru with our “protesting”, feeling pretty good about our radical selves. We walked back to my house, which was a couple blocks away. As we crossed an empty parking lot, a Jeep holding 4-5 Crimson Tide football players (they looked like linemen), zoomed up, screeched to a halt in front of us, and the jocks jumped out, surrounding us. They took our makeshift sign, unrolled it and started threatening us, yelling “Commie Fascist faggots!”, etc. I tried to calmly explain that you can’t be a Commie and a Fascist at the same time, but, to my utter surprise, this logic failed to impress them. Then I tried the tactic of letting them know that a year ago, I had been a fellow football player myself, in Cullman. This attempt at comradery also had no mollifying effect.

We were pretty sure we were on the verge of having the shit beat out us, when a State Trooper wheeled in beside the Jeep. The officer got out, and the whole thing broke up very quickly. Of course, the jocks were just told to move on, but Jerry and I were more than happy to withdraw from the battlefield, skulls and other body parts intact.

It was a grand moment in my personal history. No, there was no massive change in the overall face of the Capstone. In fact, there were only two concrete results of the “Riots of 1970”: An old abandoned building down near the river was burned down, but no arrests were made, and (suspiciously) that was where construction began on the new Ferguson Center almost immediately. The other thing that happened was the University cancelled all final exams that semester. Yes! I guess we showed the Man!

No, I don’t think any lasting changes occurred in Tuscaloosa. But there has always existed a liberal undercurrent at the University of Alabama, sometimes very well hidden. Nevertheless, it is a strong and persistent force for the same reason that Blue Dots in Red States are strong: we know how isolated we are, and therefore always seek out like-minded spirits.

© 2017 Chuck Puckett

“What has happened down here is the wind done changed”
– Randy Newman, Louisiana 1927

The United States of America in January 2017 appears to be a madhouse. All the clichés being bandied about seem completely inadequate: unchartered territory. Terra incognita. Off the map. Never seen this before. The Twilight Zone.

Indeed. The sheer numbers of conflicting and absurd actions spewing out of the White House is enough to keep our collective heads spinning. Each new day brings a new craziness, and it seems impossible to discern any pattern. What in holy hell do Trump and Company have in mind? Where are they trying to take us?

What’s the end game?

Look, everyone knows by now that Steve Bannon is an avowed Leninist, bordering on anarchist. As recently as 2013, he said as much in an interview with the Daily Beast. He claimed he wanted to see the Establishment come crashing down, all of it. The chaos that has so rapidly become the norm, less than two weeks into this Presidency, certainly seems to bear out that strategy.

The Muslim Ban, in all its ineptitude, lack of prior dissemination to the very people required to implement it (Justice, State and ICE), and internal contradictions (eg, including green card holders and permanent residents), is a perfect example of orchestrated chaos. Trump issued the thing without prior discussion or even announcement, and ICE and Justice were suddenly faced with implementing a drastic action, while having absolutely no forewarning or direction. Of course, all hell broke loose. Meanwhile, the entire top echelon of the State Department had been fired only a few days before. So any possible nuanced international response was spayed from the gitgo.

Bannon must certainly be happy. Bannon almost certainly orchestrated the whole thing. God knows Trump doesn’t have the mental wherewithal to conceive, much less implement, such a long-term (ie, 2-3 days) tactic. Anything beyond 140 Tweet characters is quite beyond his ability to focus.

But even postulating Bannon as the mastermind (and, just to be totally Ian Fleming about it, we should include Vladimir Putin’s “invisible hand”), surely to God we can’t expect the entire entourage to buy in to such a “plan”. Pence, for all his abhorrent ideology, is the furthest thing from an anarchist. He requires an operational government in order to further his personal religious agenda against abortion and LGBT. Kelly Ann Conway is an attack dog with no detectable ethics, willing to lash out at anything that moves in the Opposition, but probably not interested in destroying the government. Priebus? Come on, he’s about as Establishment as you can get.

The cabinet nominations are also not noted for their anarchical tendencies. Jeff Sessions is a lap dog (and, please God, find some way to derail his confirmation; the Monday Night Massacre at Justice and ICE have revealed exactly how much regard the Trump administration has for an independent Justice Department. Answer: Zero). Besides, Sessions is incapable of even imagining the country under attack from within.

DeVos, Pruitt, Price all have ideologies, but they seem mainly constrained to dismantling the specific department for which they are targeted. Oddly enough, the one silver lining is perhaps Rick Perry, who, while obviously not the sharpest tool in the shed, seemed genuinely surprised to learn what useful things the Energy Department does, and even eager to do them. Not that he’d be given any leeway to act.

Because then we have Tillerson. It seems blatantly obvious that one critical move in the end game (or perhaps this is more in the opening gambit), is to reverse the sanctions on Russia due to their Crimean invasion, and thus open the way for Exxon to finally take advantage of its half a trillion-dollar investment in Artic drilling in Russia. Cleaning out the upper management at State, while putting the nation at a severe disadvantage in normal avenues of diplomacy, is nevertheless a perfect first step towards that goal. With no one to gainsay anything, no expertise left in house, getting the sanctions cancelled will be much easier. As for other potential barriers, one must at least wonder how many Congresspeople own Exxon stock. I’ll bet it’s popular. In fact, CNN Money reports that Exxon is among the Top Ten stocks owned by members of Congress.

The point is, it is almost impossible to detect a cohesive and structured end game for all the insane machinations being instigated by Trumpville. Is it a coup to gain autocratic control? Seems like the military would have to be involved down to the last battalion, and that seems absurdly unlikely. Even with Mattis as DoD. Is it just a blatant grab at self-enrichment on a colossal scale, via Russia and Exxon? Is it somehow possible that Bannon is orchestrating a way to destroy the Establishment, and by some trick, no one in the inner circle has noticed? I can imagine Mike Pence playing a waiting game, thinking that impeachment is inevitable (a good bet), and standing ready to step up and take the reins. Maybe Priebus and other minor players are simply intoxicated by being on “the inside”. The allure of proximity to power has corrupted many with far more integrity than this bunch has exhibited.

And maybe there simply is no end game. Maybe this Hieronymus Bosch landscape is simply the natural result when the “man in charge” has no policy nor agenda whatsoever, while the various factions that do have agendas are all playing their own games, and the result is a chess board that obeys no rules.

Whatever the case, rest assured that when checkmate does occur, the end result will not advance national harmony or prestige. In fact, the end game may simply be the board and all its players summarily thrown off the table.

Game over.

© 2017 Chuck Puckett