a chronicle of life during and after Trump, with analysis and tools for saving democracy
June 9, 2018
“The world is too much with us, late and soon
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!”
After the week we have endured, Wordsworth’s lines are hauntingly resonant. Our world seems to be devolving at warp speed, our own country trapped in a real life version of Le Grand Guignol, an amoral horror show where children are tortured and decades long alliances are shredded.
June 7, 2018
In the news yesterday we learned that border arrests have exceeded 50,000 for the third month in a row (Source: “Illegal crossings remain high,” by Nick Miroff, The Washington Post, 6/6/18). This is three times the number from a year ago. In addition, the ranks of immigrant children being held in custody has swelled to 20,000, increasing by 20% in the last month alone, an undoubted consequence of Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy (ibid).
We have seen the footage of U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley being blocked from entering the former Walmart with blacked out windows that has been re-purposed as a detention center for immigrant children. When Senator Merkley persisted in seeking entrance, the government officials at the Brownsville, Texas facility called the police. Senator Merkley said that he saw children in another facility in McAllen, Texas being held in cages (Source: “Senator Jeff Merkley denied entry into one migrant detention facility, claims he saw kids caged in another,” by Emily Tillet, CBSNews.com, 6/4/18). Continue reading “This is who we are”
June 5, 2018
We have been told that yesterday’s Supreme Court decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 584 U.S. ____ (2018) was a narrow ruling. The 7-2 majority decision held that the Commission was inappropriately hostile to baker Jack Phillip’s contention that his earnestly held religious beliefs compelled him to refuse to bake a wedding cake for Charlie Craig and David Mullin. Justice Kennedy found evidence of “hostility” to religion in the Commission’s scathingly accurate statement that “freedom of religion and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the holocaust…one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use to -to use their religion to hurt others,” (Masterpiece, quoting Commission transcript at 11-12). The fact that the Court was more offended by a righteous expression of contempt for the use of religion as a weapon of intolerance is telling indeed.
June 3, 2018
The news this week has provided the strongest evidence yet of the hollow hypocrisy at the core of Republican orthodoxy. Literally for decades, Republicans have insisted that free trade and unfettered market capitalism are best for the country. In light of that history, consider the major policy decisions made this week.
First, Trump launched a trade war with our staunchest allies, announcing 25% tariffs on steel and 10% tariffs on aluminum imported from Canada, Mexico and the E.U., in the name of national security, (Source: “White House to Impose Metal Tariffs on E.U., Canada and Mexico,” by Ana Swanson, The New York Times, 5/31/18). These inexplicable moves drew an immediate rebuke from Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, who condemned it as “an affront to the longstanding security partnership between Canada and the United States, and in particular, to the thousands of Canadians who fought and died alongside American comrades in arms,” (Source: “Trudeau: Trump tariffs are ‘an affront’ to Canadian soldiers who ‘fought and died’ alongside Americans,” by John Bowden, TheHill.com, 5/31/18). Continue reading “It’s later than you think”
May 31, 2018
Since the spate of stories regarding the Trump administration’s heinous policy of ripping children from their parents at the border and immediately transforming them into “unaccompanied minors,” we have learned more about the context of the 1500 “missing” immigrant children. That number represents children who were released to the custody of a sponsor, which in 80% of cases, was a parent (Source: “Following Up on 1500 Missing Immigrant Children in the U.S.,” transcript of interview with Celia Munoz (Obama Domestic Policy Advisor in charge of immigration, Morning Edition, NPR.org, 5/29/18). Their failure to appear is in all likelihood a result of their well-founded fear of engagement with the immigration authorities of the Trump administration. Continue reading “What can we do?”
May 27, 2018
This is how it begins. For weeks, we have read that the administration was going to separate children from their parents at the U.S. border to deter asylum seekers and other Latin American immigrants from coming to this country. Earlier this month, serial perjurer and committed racist, Jeff Sessions, announced that, as part of its stepped up prosecution of people crossing the border, ICE would separate children from their families, (Source: “U.S. says it will separate families crossing the border illegally,” by Jennifer McEntee, Mica Rosenberg, Reuters.com, 5/7/18). This was on the heels of a “zero tolerance” policy, announced in April, to treat each attempted border crossing as a federal offense to be prosecuted in court (ibid). Continue reading “This is how it starts”
May 23, 2018
The sinkhole that has opened up on The White House lawn is an apt metaphor for what is happening to our democracy. Like sinkholes, the crisis we are facing has been caused by the constant erosion precipitating what seems like a sudden collapse. In the last week, we have been alternatively confused and alarmed by a series of over the top accusations that the FBI “implanted” an informant in the Trump campaign, presumably to entrap them all into committing treasonous acts. Hardline Congressional Republicans, led by Devin Nunes, demanded to see the FBI’s case files. Over the weekend, Trump tweeted that the FBI’s actions were an effort to frame him and demanded that the DOJ commence an investigation into the FBI’s conduct. Continue reading “Leave nothing to chance”
May 20, 2018
The news bulletins flashed across our screens mid-morning on Friday, alerting us to an “active shooter” on the grounds of a high school in Santa Fe, Texas. By the time the day was over, ten people (nine of them students) had been murdered and another 13 hospitalized with serious injuries. The 17–year-old shooter had been captured alive. The post shooting Kabuki theater unfolded almost instantly, with conservative Texas politicians offering thoughts and prayers, together with a resolve to prevent it from happening again, as long as the preventive measures had nothing to do with gun control. The absurd proposals included the suggestion of having schools with fewer doors (although this wouldn’t have prevented this shooter, as he was a student entitled to enter). Lt. Governor Dan Patrick has called for ramping up the effort to arm teachers (even though there was an armed officer at the high school, who was shot by the gunman), (Source: “Texas Lt. Governor Blames Everything but Guns after school shooting,” by Terence Cullen and Erin Durkin, The New York Daily News, 5/20/18). Continue reading “Government by gun”
May 17, 2018
The last twenty four hours have seen a flurry of developments relating to the Russian investigation and concurrent Stormy Daniels’ lawsuit, none of it good for Trump. In rapid succession, we learned that the Suspicious Activity Report (“SAR”) relating to Michael Cohen’s bank account was one of three and that an anonymous official had leaked it because the other two SARs were missing from the FinCEN database.
Trump then filed a financial disclosure form that confirmed what we already suspected, that he had reimbursed Michael Cohen for his hush money payment to Stormy Daniels. The Office of Government Ethics reacted to that disclosure by sending a letter to the Justice Department asserting its view that the disclosure was “relevant to any inquiry you may be pursuing regarding the president’s prior report that was signed on June 14, 2017 (Source: “Trump Discloses Cohen Payment, Raising Questions About Previous Omission,” by Steve Eder, Eric Lipton and Ben Protess, The New York Times, 5/16/18). Continue reading “Not on our watch”
May 15, 2018
In a chilling article yesterday in Vox, Matthew Yglesias cogently made the case that the raison d’etre of the Trump administration is cruelty. The evidence is there in the hundreds of policy decisions, large and small, that seem to have no other purpose than to inflict the maximum amount of misery on the targeted groups, whether they are immigrants seeking asylum or transgender troops seeking to serve their country. Yglesias warns the complacent majority that a government fine tuned to deliver pain doesn’t turn on a dime and become benevolent when it runs out of targets. It simply pivots to other ones — be they journalists, or Democrats or Californians.
Trump has made no secret of his admiration for murderous autocrats and it is his most profound desire to achieve the same absolute power and obeisance borne of fear that they enjoy. As a result, he has deputized everyone in his administration, and instructed his Republican accomplices, to work feverishly to hasten our descent into penury and ignorance. Continue reading “Cruelty is the point”