Call it what you may. Trump Land has a mind of its own. That is where 49 million Americans live. This is the other America which "the progressives" choose not to see. But they are there. Living under two flags: The Stars and Stripes (for the USA), and the Confederate flag for the region below the Mason-Dixon line.
That other America refuses to be ignored. It has its own ethos, its own version of history, its own heroes, including General Robert E. Lee and Donald Trump. This is the so-called "Base" which fills Trump's lungs with lots of oxygen. Yes, their highest level of education is probably a high school certificate. But they are very vocal.
Where is the mind of that "other America?" What is their symbiotic relationship with Donald Trump -America's mad emperor? Why are they sticking with him? Why does he exult in their presence? Especially when they are wearing his hat proclaiming MAGA (Make America Great Again) -A kind of swastika, not in a symbol, but in letters.
Here is what they think, what they passionately believe in, what propels them to say "Trump is the greatest American President," even as they lose jobs. Their sincerity is pathetic -but cannot be overlooked.
"Build The Wall!!" They yell. Without a wall on the southern border, they feel unsafe. When you ask them: "Would Mexico pay for it?" They do not stutter as they respond: "It may." What are their statistics on the benefit of calling for the wall? Ninety-percent has been the reduction in the number of "those invading us from the south." How about the central Americans fleeing north for fear of their lives? "That is their problem. We have to keep Americans and our jobs safe from them."
When you point out the devastation of climate change, such as Hurricane Harvey which decimated parts of the South, including Texas, they shrug it off. They mouth off what Trump has been proclaiming: "It is a hoax." "Not man-made." The Bible, to them, has replaced scientific studies regarding storms and hurricanes. Devastation is a heavenly reminder to them to build it again. A symbol of death and resurrection.
Is coal good or bad? To the other America, it is good. Good for jobs, good for energy, good for America. How about its effects on the environment, on health, on the landscape? Negligible, they say. "When Hillary attacked coal, she attacked our livelihood, our way of life." To them, smoke stacks are signs of progress, of America the manufacturer, America is bountiful.
"Are these your views also about oil exploration and refining?" No hesitation as they respond gleefully "yes." "Otherwise," they add argumentatively, "go back to America of old-America of horse and buggy." They show off with the miles and miles of oil installations. To them, when they smell oil, they smell money. The same coveted odor.
How about God? "Do you believe in God?" -you ask? They look at you as if you were stark crazy. "Jesus Is Alive," they respond, with their hands pointing at big signs making that proclamation at the entrance to most of their towns. Revival singing is their connection to the Almighty, and the words in their holy books are taken literally. Like in the case of Muslim Brotherhood which, since its inception in 1928 in Egypt, has tried to spread the belief that "The Quran Is Our Constitution."
Abortion in Trump Land is a violation of both the will of God, and of personal liberty. They regard life as beginning at conception. Roe v. Wade, as a case granting the right to abortion as "a constitutional right," was wrongly decided. Reversing it by the same high court is a course correction. "If you don't want children, give them to someone who can raise them," they insist. Yes we agree to the death penalty for adults, they point out, but not to fetuses which have no say until they are born.
"What do you think of Trump's support for people marching with swastikas on arm bands?" This is the right of those marching. The right to freedom of expression. They keep "the leftists from the North out of our streets." Without those defenders of our autonomy, Government as an evil intruder, would run our lives. The States are the decider, not Washington.
"Are you a racist when espousing that virulent type of nationalism?" No, is their quick answer. We are proud white Americans. And we shall defend the Trump call for "America First" at all costs. Even when it means that "America is for Whites only." Why? "Because we believe that the Whites are supporting the non-Whites, by their tax dollars.
And what do you think of removing the statues of southern generals, like Robert E. Lee, from your public squares? Indignantly they respond: "This is atrocious. Those generals have fought for our freedom. They lived and died for us. This is our history. Don't obliterate our history. If you don't like our statues or our flag of the Confederacy, stay out of our midst. This is our part of the United States. Don't call what happens during the Lincoln presidency 'the civil war.' Call it by its real name: 'The War Between the States.'"
Conclusion: The United States is at present, a divided country. The civil ware of old is now fought as "a cultural civil war." The demonstrators for "the Blue Wave," (democrats winning in the midterm elections of November 6, 2018) are called "the grand children of Nancy Pelosi" (the former democratic House Speaker and the next, as of January 2019.)
Regardless of the outcome of the midterm elections which won for the Democrats 40 additional seats, "the other America" is not likely to fade away. The Trump's efforts at dividing this nation threatens to be lasting. "Toward a More Perfect Union" looks today to be a pie in the sky.
For the Republican party has now been coopted by Trump. Alas!! Hate, chaos, isolation from the world are the big signs of America of today. "Power Is Fear" -to quote Trump!! The other America with tattoos over its arms has espoused it.
Note: With this posting, Alazhar Forever blog series shall terminate. Happy Holidays.
Friday, December 21, 2018
Friday, December 7, 2018
The Rule of Law vs. The Rule of Trump!!
By nearly all accounts, this is a dark period in American history. By choices made by a real estate deal maker, called Donald Trump, America stands alone in a world of diversity. The deal maker has proved to be a deal breaker. From the sanity of prior administrations, we are now in a cold war with China, compliant with the whims of Russia, in an attack mode towards Canada and Mexico.
Gone with the wind "Make America Great Again." Why? It was only an empty and destructive slogan. Its primary evisceration has been due to the fact that the Rule of Law has been confronted at every corner by the Rule of Trump. An America, under that unhinged man is threatened by being disemboweled of its true vibrancy -a Rules-based government.
Trump's wreaking ball was programmed to hit people's trust in the Constitution and laws as a first target. His early mentor, Steve Bannon opined that "the destruction of the Administrative State" is priority No. One. When they softened that term, the Trumpists began to refer to "the deep State" interlaced with conspiracies. The court system, as a by-product of the Constitution became an inviting target.
Upon his inauguration as President in January 2017, Trump has violated his Oath of Office. Under the Constitution, he has sworn that he will "to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." (Article II, Section I). However prior to that inauguration, Trump has publicly called on Russia to interfere in the 2016 elections to tip the scales against Hillary Clinton.
That call was never rescinded; in fact it was followed up by praise for Putin, one on one meeting with Putin, and by indicting Michael Flynn, his first national security advisor, by Special Counsel Robert Mueller on a variety of charges relating to connections to both Russia and Turkey.
The unlawful attempts by Trump to sabotage the independence of both the Department of Justice and the FBI backfired in two directions: The President failed to get FBI Director James Comey either to pledge loyalty to him personally, or to go easy on investigating "a good man" (Flynn), eventuated in the dismissal of Comey.
After publicly asserting that that dismissal was the result of "that Russia thing" (to quote Trump), the unthinking President put that action at the wrong door: Comey's handling of the Hillary Clinton's run for the presidency -Comey's unfortunate divulging immediately prior to the 2016 elections that Hillary was under investigations (because of an innocuous finding in the emails of a former aide -Huma Abedin.
These patterns of illegal violations under the Rule of Trump could not be separated from his championing of the "Birther Movement." That phony non-issue was hurled at the legitimacy of Trump's predecessor -President Obama. That issue's central claim was that Obama was not born in the US, but in Kenya. It was contrived to cast Trump's predecessor as not a "person (who was not) a natural born citizen" (Article I, Section I of the Constitution).
When Trump was confronted by "the long form" of Obama's birth certificate from Hawaii, he hid in his usual rabbit hole. Claiming that "many people told me that," or "documents can be forged," Trump's wreaking ball was targeting the trust of the populace in the legitimacy of its constitutional system.
That fraud by Trump, which had all the hallmarks of a dishonest trickery (the crafty underhanded ingenuity) had one aim: Deception as a means of shaking the pillars of faith of the American people in their system of governance. For the production of an "interloper" occupying the White House was one of the many instruments in Trump's tool-box to induce suspicion in the electoral system.
Those Trump shenanigans paved the way to the hallucinating claims under the Rule of Trump of "fake news." That mantra became a crafty Trump mischievous activity -an industry. The press and the media were now declared by the Trump's Oval Office "enemy of the people."
"Fake news" were Trump's response to the Constitutional call in its first Amendment to "no law ... abridging the freedom of the press." Only a fake president like Trump could not comprehend that the press is for the governed not the government. His fear of the truth forces him to look upon reality as a worthless imitation passed off as genuine.
Under the Rule of Trump, the curtailment of another Constitutional right to "the freedom of speech" is a presidential prerogative. For he, being an alien to any vehicle or voice of documented news, such as CNN, catapults him in the dictatorial zone of Nixonian cover-ups. No surprise. Trump's aspiration to the demise of democracy makes him aspire to reinvent America in the mold of North Korea.
Trump's concept of "my base" rejects the notion that a president has only one base as large as the entire American population. He was not elected to take care of 49 million people who support him, but of 340 million co-citizens. His abstention from condemnation of neo-Nazism, anti-Semitism, and racism has provided a redundancy of evidence of his being unfit to be president.
The ban on Muslims, representing an unconstitutional joining of religion and the State, was rejected by the US judiciary. So in true form to his soul-mate, Goebbels of the Nazi era, another language had to be used to cover his religious fascism. Thus the term of "Middle Easterners" became a dog-whistle to his base that national security was at peril because of Muslims (i.e. Middle Easterners).
But isn't the Muslim region one of the primary locations for Trump, his family, and his organization to make more money? Yes, it is. But Trump, from the get-go, has regarded the Supreme Executive as above the law. So what if the Constitution, in Article II, Section I provides that "The President ... shall not receive within (his tenure) any other Emolument...?!"
Trump has made it public that the law is an impediment; that "I can run the country and my company at the same time;" and that higher rents from foreigners as tenants at his hotels or clubs cannot be regarded as "emoluments." Nor can the use of the White House (which is the people's house) as a sales area, like Macy's in New York City, for his daughter, Ivanka's clothes and jewelry. All of this is forbidden under the emoluments clause.
Like her father, Ivanka became a Senior Advisor to the president, and a salesperson at the same time. Is Ivanka a presidential staffer whose security clearance is limited by the law, or is she an admittee to meetings where only those with high security clearance are enabled to be participants? In Bob Woodward's book on Trump, "Fear," the issue of defining Ivanka was the subject of a "shout-out." It was between Bannon and Ivanka who defied Bannon by shouting "I shall never be a staffer."
Total vagueness!! The very environment in which the Trump's presidency lives its daily life. Such as: Is the Department of Justice intended as personal lawyers for the Presidency? No!! But this is what Trump fancied Eric Holder, Obama's attorney general to be. In the fashion of medieval kings, Trump had told Obama that he admired how Holder had protected him. Obama's response is reported to have been that the position of an attorney-general is to protect the people.
These are alien thoughts to Trump. His life parameters have always been, not external, but internal. And law to Trump is an externality -an imposition on the whims of a crafty potentate. This was reflected in many ways, including his firing of Jeff Sessions as attorney general. For appropriately recusing himself from the Mueller investigation of Russia meddling in the 2016 American elections and beyond, Sessions has been viewed by Trump as a traitor.
For a replacement, crazy Trump picked up an Acting Attorney General, Whitaker, (now gone). His main qualification was that he had publicly advocated that the Mueller probe was an over-reach, thus illegitimate.
That appointment was violative of the law. It does not comport with the Constitution's Appointments clause. Nor does it accord with the 1998 Federal Vacancies Reform Act.
Clashing with Trump on the meaning of judicial independence, Chief Justice John Roberts of the US Supreme Court struck back. Trump had attacked a judge who had ruled against his asylum policy. The President called that federal judge "an Obama judge." In a dignified rebuttal, Roberts said on November 21: "We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges..That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for."
And Trump was forced to provide written answers to Mueller's questions. "Those were easy questions," Trump intoned. "I did not need lawyers to help me answer them." Those were words worthy of the captain of a sinking regime.
A quiet military resistance to the impudence of Trump as Commander in Chief cannot be missed. Its latest manifestations is the rebuke targeting Trump by retired Admiral William McRaven. As the chancellor of the huge University of Texas system, that American hero characterized in Trump's attack on the news media in a graphic way. Trump's description of the media as the "enemy of the people" was "the greatest threat to American democracy."
As President, Trump knows only one form of sacrifice. Instead of "one for all," it is "all for Trump." In the 2018 mid-term elections, Trump was not on the ballot. But at his rallies, he declaimed: "A vote for (name of candidate) is a vote for me."
He lost the House of Representatives in spite of the gerrymandering and vote suppression. But being of a psychopathic personality, Trump claimed "a near perfect victory." To his delusional mind, law is a dark cloud. It does not exist if you don't look at it!!
In the final analysis, the Rule of Trump is expected to be overwhelmed by the Rule of Law. For the latter is in the DNA of this country. The former is a foreign transplant which shall be rejected by the American body politic!!
The avalanche of indictments and guilty pleas by top aides of Trump tells us that the dawn is about to vanquish the Trump dark era.
Gone with the wind "Make America Great Again." Why? It was only an empty and destructive slogan. Its primary evisceration has been due to the fact that the Rule of Law has been confronted at every corner by the Rule of Trump. An America, under that unhinged man is threatened by being disemboweled of its true vibrancy -a Rules-based government.
Trump's wreaking ball was programmed to hit people's trust in the Constitution and laws as a first target. His early mentor, Steve Bannon opined that "the destruction of the Administrative State" is priority No. One. When they softened that term, the Trumpists began to refer to "the deep State" interlaced with conspiracies. The court system, as a by-product of the Constitution became an inviting target.
Upon his inauguration as President in January 2017, Trump has violated his Oath of Office. Under the Constitution, he has sworn that he will "to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." (Article II, Section I). However prior to that inauguration, Trump has publicly called on Russia to interfere in the 2016 elections to tip the scales against Hillary Clinton.
That call was never rescinded; in fact it was followed up by praise for Putin, one on one meeting with Putin, and by indicting Michael Flynn, his first national security advisor, by Special Counsel Robert Mueller on a variety of charges relating to connections to both Russia and Turkey.
The unlawful attempts by Trump to sabotage the independence of both the Department of Justice and the FBI backfired in two directions: The President failed to get FBI Director James Comey either to pledge loyalty to him personally, or to go easy on investigating "a good man" (Flynn), eventuated in the dismissal of Comey.
After publicly asserting that that dismissal was the result of "that Russia thing" (to quote Trump), the unthinking President put that action at the wrong door: Comey's handling of the Hillary Clinton's run for the presidency -Comey's unfortunate divulging immediately prior to the 2016 elections that Hillary was under investigations (because of an innocuous finding in the emails of a former aide -Huma Abedin.
These patterns of illegal violations under the Rule of Trump could not be separated from his championing of the "Birther Movement." That phony non-issue was hurled at the legitimacy of Trump's predecessor -President Obama. That issue's central claim was that Obama was not born in the US, but in Kenya. It was contrived to cast Trump's predecessor as not a "person (who was not) a natural born citizen" (Article I, Section I of the Constitution).
When Trump was confronted by "the long form" of Obama's birth certificate from Hawaii, he hid in his usual rabbit hole. Claiming that "many people told me that," or "documents can be forged," Trump's wreaking ball was targeting the trust of the populace in the legitimacy of its constitutional system.
That fraud by Trump, which had all the hallmarks of a dishonest trickery (the crafty underhanded ingenuity) had one aim: Deception as a means of shaking the pillars of faith of the American people in their system of governance. For the production of an "interloper" occupying the White House was one of the many instruments in Trump's tool-box to induce suspicion in the electoral system.
Those Trump shenanigans paved the way to the hallucinating claims under the Rule of Trump of "fake news." That mantra became a crafty Trump mischievous activity -an industry. The press and the media were now declared by the Trump's Oval Office "enemy of the people."
"Fake news" were Trump's response to the Constitutional call in its first Amendment to "no law ... abridging the freedom of the press." Only a fake president like Trump could not comprehend that the press is for the governed not the government. His fear of the truth forces him to look upon reality as a worthless imitation passed off as genuine.
Under the Rule of Trump, the curtailment of another Constitutional right to "the freedom of speech" is a presidential prerogative. For he, being an alien to any vehicle or voice of documented news, such as CNN, catapults him in the dictatorial zone of Nixonian cover-ups. No surprise. Trump's aspiration to the demise of democracy makes him aspire to reinvent America in the mold of North Korea.
Trump's concept of "my base" rejects the notion that a president has only one base as large as the entire American population. He was not elected to take care of 49 million people who support him, but of 340 million co-citizens. His abstention from condemnation of neo-Nazism, anti-Semitism, and racism has provided a redundancy of evidence of his being unfit to be president.
The ban on Muslims, representing an unconstitutional joining of religion and the State, was rejected by the US judiciary. So in true form to his soul-mate, Goebbels of the Nazi era, another language had to be used to cover his religious fascism. Thus the term of "Middle Easterners" became a dog-whistle to his base that national security was at peril because of Muslims (i.e. Middle Easterners).
But isn't the Muslim region one of the primary locations for Trump, his family, and his organization to make more money? Yes, it is. But Trump, from the get-go, has regarded the Supreme Executive as above the law. So what if the Constitution, in Article II, Section I provides that "The President ... shall not receive within (his tenure) any other Emolument...?!"
Trump has made it public that the law is an impediment; that "I can run the country and my company at the same time;" and that higher rents from foreigners as tenants at his hotels or clubs cannot be regarded as "emoluments." Nor can the use of the White House (which is the people's house) as a sales area, like Macy's in New York City, for his daughter, Ivanka's clothes and jewelry. All of this is forbidden under the emoluments clause.
Like her father, Ivanka became a Senior Advisor to the president, and a salesperson at the same time. Is Ivanka a presidential staffer whose security clearance is limited by the law, or is she an admittee to meetings where only those with high security clearance are enabled to be participants? In Bob Woodward's book on Trump, "Fear," the issue of defining Ivanka was the subject of a "shout-out." It was between Bannon and Ivanka who defied Bannon by shouting "I shall never be a staffer."
Total vagueness!! The very environment in which the Trump's presidency lives its daily life. Such as: Is the Department of Justice intended as personal lawyers for the Presidency? No!! But this is what Trump fancied Eric Holder, Obama's attorney general to be. In the fashion of medieval kings, Trump had told Obama that he admired how Holder had protected him. Obama's response is reported to have been that the position of an attorney-general is to protect the people.
These are alien thoughts to Trump. His life parameters have always been, not external, but internal. And law to Trump is an externality -an imposition on the whims of a crafty potentate. This was reflected in many ways, including his firing of Jeff Sessions as attorney general. For appropriately recusing himself from the Mueller investigation of Russia meddling in the 2016 American elections and beyond, Sessions has been viewed by Trump as a traitor.
For a replacement, crazy Trump picked up an Acting Attorney General, Whitaker, (now gone). His main qualification was that he had publicly advocated that the Mueller probe was an over-reach, thus illegitimate.
That appointment was violative of the law. It does not comport with the Constitution's Appointments clause. Nor does it accord with the 1998 Federal Vacancies Reform Act.
Clashing with Trump on the meaning of judicial independence, Chief Justice John Roberts of the US Supreme Court struck back. Trump had attacked a judge who had ruled against his asylum policy. The President called that federal judge "an Obama judge." In a dignified rebuttal, Roberts said on November 21: "We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges..That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for."
And Trump was forced to provide written answers to Mueller's questions. "Those were easy questions," Trump intoned. "I did not need lawyers to help me answer them." Those were words worthy of the captain of a sinking regime.
A quiet military resistance to the impudence of Trump as Commander in Chief cannot be missed. Its latest manifestations is the rebuke targeting Trump by retired Admiral William McRaven. As the chancellor of the huge University of Texas system, that American hero characterized in Trump's attack on the news media in a graphic way. Trump's description of the media as the "enemy of the people" was "the greatest threat to American democracy."
As President, Trump knows only one form of sacrifice. Instead of "one for all," it is "all for Trump." In the 2018 mid-term elections, Trump was not on the ballot. But at his rallies, he declaimed: "A vote for (name of candidate) is a vote for me."
He lost the House of Representatives in spite of the gerrymandering and vote suppression. But being of a psychopathic personality, Trump claimed "a near perfect victory." To his delusional mind, law is a dark cloud. It does not exist if you don't look at it!!
In the final analysis, the Rule of Trump is expected to be overwhelmed by the Rule of Law. For the latter is in the DNA of this country. The former is a foreign transplant which shall be rejected by the American body politic!!
The avalanche of indictments and guilty pleas by top aides of Trump tells us that the dawn is about to vanquish the Trump dark era.
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