Journal of the Plague Years

December 4, 2019

     After three years of Trump, we have grown accustomed to experiencing the news as a series of body blows, so it was only a slight aberration to absorb not one, but two, major news stories that broke within hours of each other yesterday.  First, Senator Kamala Harris announced that she was suspending her presidential bid. With low poll numbers hindering her ability to raise enough money to field a competitive race, Harris confessed that she didn’t see a viable path forward (Source:  “Kamala Harris Says She’s Still ‘in This Fight,’ but Out of the 2020 Race,” by Astead W. Herndon, Shane Goldmacher and Jonathan Martin, The New York Times, 12/3/19).  While it is legitimate to criticize Senator Harris for failing to articulate a clear rationale for her candidacy, the role of the media in shaping the narrative cannot be discounted. Continue reading “Twice as good”

11-28-19

       Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday.  It is a day focused on food, family and football, without the baggage of religiosity or crass materialism that can sully Christmas.   Yet Thanksgiving has a messy history. The first Thanksgiving in 1621 was more a moment of detente between temporary allies, than a celebration of beloved community.  Far from being a prelude to the establishment of a new society marked by multicultural democracy, it was the comma before the continuation of a campaign of colonization and genocide, (Source:  “The Invention of Thanksgiving,” by Phillip Deloria, The New Yorker, 11/18/19, h/t Marcia Smith).

      We have papered over that messy history with a comforting myth, pretending that we have absorbed all of our differences into a beautiful mosaic. We avert our eyes from the violence and subjugation in our history in our pathological need to cling to unearned innocence.  Our steadfast refusal to grapple with the truth of our history has brought us to this frightening precipice. Continue reading “Happy Thanksgiving!”

11/21/19

       E.U. Ambassador Gordon Sondland’s Congressional testimony landed like a grenade yesterday, piercing the torpor of official Beltway punditry.   Although a steady parade of career diplomats had soberly laid out the case that the Trump administration had engaged in a sleazy and illegal bribery scheme to force the Ukraine to announce investigations into the Bidens in exchange for military aid and a White House visit, it took Sondland’s smirking betrayal to shake the cynical belief that nothing in the hearings would fundamentally affect the outcome. Continue reading “Barbarians at the gate”

November 12, 2019

      On Friday, the news broke that former NYC mayor, Mike Bloomberg, was again toying with a presidential run.  Apparently, Bloomberg is concerned that the current moderate frontrunner, former Vice President Joe Biden, is losing steam and that if one of the other leading Democratic candidates, Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, wins the primary, they will be unable to defeat Donald Trump (Source: “Analysis:  Bloomberg’s Move a Slam on Biden, 2020 Democrats,” by Steve Peoples, AssociatedPress.com, 11/8/19).  On one level, Bloomberg’s fear is understandable.  He is hardly alone in being panicked at the thought of four more years of Trump.  That is the existential dread underlying the entire Democratic primary. Continue reading “Okay, Boomer”

November 8, 2019

     Tuesday’s election results gave us reason for guarded optimism.  In Virginia, Democrats gained full control of state government for the first time in 26 years (Source:  “Democrats Gain Full Control of State Government in Virginia for First Time in Decades,” by Anna Kaplan, TheDailyBeast.com, 11/5/19).  The impact of that victory cannot be overstated.  Virginia Democrats have pledged to undo Republican gerrymandering and draw fairer districts; to pass gun control measures in the home state of the NRA and to pass legislation ending felon disenfranchisement (Source: “The Blue Wave Hasn’t Crested,” by Russell Berman, TheAtlantic.com, 11/6/2019).   Continue reading “Victory lap”

October 31, 2019

       The impeachment inquiry has taken on the flavor of a serialized drama, with each day bringing a new bombshell revelation that leaves no doubt as to Trump’s criminality.  Every day adds a new hero to the cast who calmly indicts Trump through their simple recitation of the facts. We have forgotten what it’s like to see people willing to risk their careers for the good of the country.  Last week, Ambassador Bill Taylor, a West Point graduate who has dedicated his life to public service, soberly detailed the contours of the shadow foreign policy being conducted in the Ukraine by Rudy Giuliani and Gordon Sondland. Continue reading “Groundhog Day”

October 27, 2019

     This week, we have crossed the Rubicon.  While we have never had any illusions about Trump and his cabal of corrupt toadies, this week we have seen definitively that if they can’t maintain power through subterfuge, they will take it by force.

     On Wednesday, Florida Frat Boy, Matt Gaetz led a band of miscreants to storm the SCIF where witnesses in the impeachment inquiry were being heard. The stunt was a trifecta of stupid, dangerous and violent.  It was stupid because 12 of the group who busted into the SCIF sit on one of the three committees conducting the impeachment inquiry and have ability to question witnesses and elicit information.  It was dangerous because the purpose of a SCIF (which stands for Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) is to enable discussion and handling of classified or sensitive intelligence information in a secure environment.  Cell phones are not allowed in a SCIF because they can be hacked and turned into listening devices by any number of hostile foreign actors.  Yet several of these heedless lunkheads refused to give up their cellphones and tweeted and attempted to live stream from the SCIF.  It was violent because the sight of more than 30 men rushing into a secure facility was designed to intimidate the woman there to testify-  Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Laura Cooper, (Source: “Republican storm closed-door impeachment hearing as escalatingUkraine scandal threatens Trump,” by Toluse Olurunnipa, Josh Dawsey and Mike DeBonis, The Washington Post, 10/23/19). Continue reading “The same old playbook”

October 22, 2019

     As the walls of the impeachment inquiry close in, Trump responds by ratcheting up his chaotic and corrupt behavior.  Yesterday he railed against the “crazy” Democrats, blaming them for forcing him to rescind his decision to host the G-7 at his failing Doral Resort in Miami.  This was a rare reversal for someone whose approach to being criticized is to brazen it out. As The New York Times reported, it was Republicans, weary of defending the indefensible, angered by Trump’s inexplicable betrayal of the Kurds, who told Trump that his decision simply could not stand, (Source:  “Why Trump Dropped His Idea to Hold the G7 at His Own Hotel,” by Maggie Haberman, Eric Lipton and Katie Rogers, The New York Times, 10/20/19).

      After three years of seeing no repercussions for his blatant and unceasing corruption, of having foreign leaders book rooms at his hotel as if they were paying tributes to a Roman emperor, Trump is in all likelihood, shocked by the uproar.  Like the petulant moron that he is, Trump responded by attacking the Emoluments Clause as “phony” and making the fantastical claim that George Washington “continued to run a business while he was president and used two desks,” (Source: “Trump Dismisses ‘Phony Emoluments Clause,’ Defending Doral,” by Annie Karni, The New York Times, 10/21/19).

     Like the cornered rat that he is, Trump reacts to being belatedly held to account by upping the ante.  This morning’s unhinged tweet compared the impeachment inquiry to a “lynching,” a racist framing that equates Constitutionally mandated oversight to the terroristic murder of innocent Black people, (Source:  “Today’s Agenda: Trump Calls Impeachment Inquiry a ‘Lynching,’” by Kate Riga and Nicole Lafond, TalkingPointsMemo.com, 10/22/19). Continue reading “Taking it to the streets”

October 17, 2019

     Every time that we think it can’t get worse, Trump finds a new low.  In yesterday’s aborted meeting with Congressional leaders, Trump resorted to hurling grade school insults at The House Speaker, calling her a “third rate [or third grade] politician,” (Source:  “Inside the Derailed White House Meeting,” by Katie Rogers, The New York Times, 10/16/19).  We have become inured to the “President” directing his ignorant, bellicose rants towards anyone who criticizes him.  We are seeing, on the global stage, the consequences of giving unchecked power to an unserious, incurious, toxic narcissist.  Four year olds regularly display greater emotional maturity and impulse control than this “president” does. The fact that someone so manifestly unfit has ascended this high should be a cause for deep introspection.  It is easy enough to say that this is the result of some anonymous diehard racists who comprise 40% of the electorate being empowered by that holdover from slavery, the Electoral College. The truth is more complicated and far less flattering than that. Continue reading “The Age of Innocence”

October 13, 2019

     We have had a year’s worth of earth-shattering news in the last few days.  In the Middle East, Trump’s stunning betrayal of our Kurdish allies has had depressingly predictable results.  Civilian casualties are mounting; we have all seen the heartrending footage of the Kurdish mother cradling her dead child (trigger warning) and there are claims that Turkish backed militants were responsible for the murder yesterday of Hevrin Khalaf, the brave woman leader of the Syrian Future Party, (Source:  “Kurdish politician and ten others killed by ‘Turkish backed militia’ in Syria, SDF claims,” by Kareem Khadder, Jennifer Deaton and Sharif Paget, CNN.com, 10/13/19).  To add insult to injury, Turkish forces “launched multiple artillery rounds near a U.S. Special Operations outpost in northern Syria on Friday,” despite having known the location of U.S. troops for months, (Source:  “U.S. forces say Turkey targeted them in Syria,” by Dan Lamothe, The Washington Post, 10/12/19).  Most enraging of all is knowing that this chaos and carnage was unleashed for no more consequential reason than Trump’s avarice and ignorance.

     Those same venal qualities were behind the savage sabotage of the 30 year career of committed diplomat, Marie L. Yovanovitch.  As she laid out in a bitingly clear opening statement, she was attacked and abruptly removed from her post because she was working to stop corruption rather than enable it, (Source:  “Ukraine Envoy Says She Was Told Trump Wanted Her Out Over Lack of Trust,” by Sharon LaFraniere, Nicholas Fandos and Andrew E. Kramer, The New York Times, 10/11/19). Continue reading “The ties that bind”