Politics: National

Illustration by Carl Muecke.

A few random thoughts as we circle the drain.

The drumbeat asks, why don't Republicans do something about Trump? It's simple. First, he's giving them their heart's desire: A reactionary Supreme Court for decades to come; tax cuts; rollback of regulations; sabotage of the Affordable Care Act, and well on the way to repealing the Nixon administration, Great Society, New Deal, and the Enlightenment. Second, they fear his base. So all the outraged tweets by John McCain and Jeff Flake add up to nothing when they vote to approve Trump's corrupt cabinet and agenda. The GOP has become a cult, far from the party that sent Barry Goldwater, John Rhodes, and Howard Baker to the White House demanding Richard Nixon resign.

What does Putin have on Trump — because the Helsinki disaster resembled what spys call the handler and the asset? Pee tape aside, I suspect it has something to do with money. Speaking of which, one of the least-reported blockbusters was how retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy's son was Trump's banker at Deutsche Bank. Maybe this doesn't prove a quid pro quo over Kennedy leaving the court, but it's another suspicious correlation of forces. I stick with Robert Gates' assessment of Putin: "Stone cold killer."

What really happened at Helsinki, the summit that followed Trump's attack on NATO? We don't know because Trump was alone with the Russians, just as he was in the Oval Office with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in May 2017. Trump dismissed the conclusions of our intelligence agencies about the Russian attack on the 2016 election to favor him. He tried to walk it back, but the damage was done — except for his Fox-zombie base. Trump has long tried to deny the attack. In Helsinki, he initially appeared open to having the Kremlin interrogate former U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul, a persistent critic. McFaul is only the second ambassador to Moscow to be declared persona non grata (the first being George Kennan, author of the Long Telegram and father of containment). Not even Stalin dared seek to "interview" our ambassador.

Meanwhile, Trump is aggressively destroying the American-led rules-based order that brought unprecedented prosperity and peace among the great powers since 1945. Pax Americana, gone.

It's impossible to be paying attention and not conclude that Donald Trump is a de facto agent of the Russian government. This is without precedent in American history. It is a national security and constitutional crisis. 

I've been watching reruns of the original X-Files. Especially before it got too baroque weird in the later seasons, it was one of the best things on television in the 1990s. One thing that most strikes me is how good they look in their suits. We looked good in the '90s. I wore a suit and tie every day. Growing up without much money, this sartorial armor always made me feel wonderful. They were classy, too, not today’s clown short coats and flat-front slacks  

Admittedly, I now mostly live in Seattle, one of the worst-dressed cities in America. But norms are collapsing everywhere. When I boarded a flight recently from Phoenix to Seattle, my fellow passengers were a catalogue of the current American freak show, with their abundant tats, Civil War beards long enough to support a large ecosystem of vermin, and infantile "casual" clothes. Some of the richest businessmen now dress like 15-year-olds in T-shirts, or wreck the sexy design of a suit by going without a tie. It's all a sham. We're less casual in reality than in the 1950s, only the taboos are different and deviancy has not only been defined downward but mainstreamed.

But I watch the X-Files and think about the '90s — we looked good.

From today's perspective, the decade was the latest Fin de siècle, every bit the end of an age as the runup to the Great War. Bill Clinton was in the White House. The economy was enjoying its longest boom in history — widespread, too — and a modest tax increase put us on the way to the first federal surpluses in decades. The nation was at peace. Americans generally agreed on facts. Science was accepted and admired.

My professional life was good, too. Newspapers had yet to be "disrupted" by Craig's List and the internet. I was in demand as a turnaround business editor, and enjoyed helping build top business sections at the Rocky Mountain News, Cincinnati Enquirer, and Charlotte Observer. Living in Denver and Cincinnati turned me into a committed urbanite.

This isn't the whole story. 

Everyone on my Twitter feed is in high moral dudgeon about the Trump administration's policy of separating children from illegal immigrant parents. It's compared unfavorably to the World War II…

With the firing of Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State and H.R. McMaster as National Security Adviser, and their replacement by unfit, unqualified, and dangerous men…anyone paying attention has a pucker factor of 9.5. The only thing standing between us and World War III is Jim Mattis as Secretary of Defense, and how long until he is replaced by a Fox "News" personality?

The "positive" rejoinder can only be: Don't worry, we'll merely continue to see the President of the United States, run as an asset by the former KGB man in the Kremlin, undermine the norms of self-government, wreck the government from the inside, and shovel in private treasure like the head of a Third World failed state. Happy, brightsiders?

Sometimes, in this nightmarish period since Donald Trump won the second-most votes but still the presidency, I've tried to comfort myself with the notion that he's too lazy and obtuse to become a dictator. After all, Stalin was an intellectual and, as Simon Sebag Montefiore puts it, "a people person" in his rise to supreme power. Mussolini was smart, driven and shrewdly undermined democracy through populism (Republicans couldn't like this Fascism because they hate the trains that would run on time). Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey has been highly competent in setting up his strongman state. Trump, a reality television personality and often-failed developer, is none of these.

But going all the way back to paramedic days — even before,  noticing javelinas in the desert — the most unlikely mammal can react with unpredictable guile and violence if cornered. 

I don't know.

Arizona history has been a comforting topic of late. Writing on contemporary events is too much. I'm still poleaxed that Hillary Clinton isn't the president, that at best 70,000 voters in three states determined our nightmare, that it had even been that close. The evidence mounts — latest with a blockbuster article in The New Yorker by Jane Mayer —  that Trump is not merely uniquely unqualified for the Oval Office but a traitor, a Russian Quisling. I'm old enough to remember when the Republicans warned that the Democrats would surrender us to Russia. How does one write about these things, even read them, without a certain madness setting in?

David Brooks, the stopped clock of American pundits, recently wrote:

…once the norms of acceptable behavior are violated and once the institutions of government are weakened, it is very hard to re-establish them. Instead, you get this cycle of ever more extreme behavior, as politicians compete to be the most radical outsider. The political center collapses, the normal left/right political categories cease to apply and you see the rise of strange new political groups that are crazier than anything you could have imagined before…. Vladimir Putin’s admirers are surging. The center is still hollowing out. Nothing is inevitable in life, but liberal democracy clearly ain’t going to automatically fix itself.

Indeed. So will we be OK? I'm less worried about nuclear war than two months ago — but that could change in a late-night Trump tweetstorm. Otherwise, who knows. The Roman empire endured for almost 500 years in the West and another thousand years in the East after the death of the Roman Republic. So might it be with the American Empire. Or not, after one or more Sino-American wars and/or the disruption of climate change. But I'm not sure we're going back to the country we knew, flaws notwithstanding.

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

— Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

We've made it through the first year of the presidency of Donald Trump (let that name attached to that title sink in) without a nuclear war with North Korea. But there's next year.

Meanwhile, despite all the speculation and hope for a Democratic wave in the fall, great damage has been done to the republic. Total Republican control of the federal government resulted in the passage of a ruinous tax bill. Among its worst consequences will be the opportunity costs — no nice things for us, such as high-speed rail or rail transit for our metropolitan areas — because $1.5 trillion will be looted from the Treasury for the very rich. The resulting deficit will embolden Paul Ryan and the GOP-controlled Congress to come after our "entitlements" (read earned benefits). The cabinet is largely staffed by billionaire stooges committed to wrecking from the inside. The administration is rolling back laws to protect the environment and financial system. The people's lands, intended as a sacred trust for future generations, is under assault.

One of the biggest impediments to a Blue wave is the normalization of this norm-breaking, authoritarian-wanna-be president even by the respected press. This situation doesn't have "both sides" — only one. Then there's the lie machine of right-wing media. Beyond that, it must contend with vote suppression, gerrymandering, and no doubt new Russian interference.

Illustration by Carl Muecke

I've been trying to lie low on the national circus, write about Phoenix history and transitions. I can add little to the latest social-media driven fads or distractions. It's tempting to watch from the sidelines and wait for this to pass. If it does. Yet every morning I wake up to the reality of the most unfit president we've ever had, the fact that Hillary Clinton should be in the Oval Office, won the most votes, but no… It's tempting tao watch total Republican control of the federal government and think this is the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight (e.g. the failed ACA repeal), and wait for some deliverance in next year's elections.

It's a comforting thought, but much is happening behind the latest twitter storm. The Supreme Court has been turned solidly reactionary thanks to Trump getting the vacant seat stolen from President Obama. With the guidance of the right-wing infrastructure such as the Federalist Society, the administration is remaking the federal courts more rapidly than any time in decades. This gift from the Bernie Bros/Susan Sarandon/Jill Stein faction will be with us for many years. Agencies, from the State Department to the EPA, are being wrecked from the inside. Obamacare is being sabotaged despite posting record enrollment. Politicization of the Federal Reserve and the Census carries huge risks, from the health of the economy to the integrity of critical data. Everywhere is a sense of retrograde movement.

That some 70,000 voters in three states determined our election, and perhaps our destiny — can't get that out of my craw. Or the widening disparity between population and representation in the Senate. Or the gerrymandered House, with the risk of worse voter suppression to come. The very structure of Madison's genius creation is showing dangerous cracks. And this is small compared with the pervasive odor of a stolen election, even treason. It doesn't bother the Republican-controlled Congress, the only body that could make things right.

While i'm finishing up the next David Mapstone Mystery, talented friend of the blog Carl Muecke has been commenting on the administration in his wonderful way. Until World War III engulfs us, enjoy a laugh:

I've returned from a long a lovely train trip to Denver, one of adopted hometowns (and what a stunning job they've done with Union Station and LoDo). So I was blessedly off the grid during the latest culture-war battle, over standing or kneeling for the national anthem. At the risk of losing friends among right-thinking people, I am torn about this.

On the one hand, protest has a long history in sports and if one or many of the pro-football millionaires wants to kneel to protest racism, that's his prerogative. Jehovah's Witnesses don't stand. For the players, I'm not sure it's a First Amendment right. I can't write anything I want as a Seattle Times columnist. To be sure, my masters give me wide latitude but there is an invisible fence. I am an employee. Nobody thought my First Amendment Rights were being trampled when the Arizona Republic took away my column because my writings offended the boosters and Real Estate Industrial Complex. Let's also state at the outset that the quisling in the Oval Office has no standing to lecture on anyone's patriotism.

Yet I also couldn't shake two other impressions. First, beyond the symbolism, can anything make amends? What would it take? Even on police shootings of unarmed black men, I have yet to see journalism to tell me whether this is worse now than in, say, the 1960s. It's bad no matter what, but are things getting better as President Obama, who may be remembered as the last American president, said? Or not? This question is beyond my aim today. Second, can't we have any modest civic above politic war, such as standing for the national anthem? We once had a common culture that assumed such things, for all our flaws. I won't even ask if it's a given to stand during the "Hallelujah" chorus. On the anthem, the answer is apparently, no.

On Facebook, my friend Tom Zoellner, one of the smartest people I know, wrote:

Historical reminder: "The Star-Spangled Banner" was a baroque nationalist poem written by a lawyer who helped slaveowners recapture their escaped property. In the third verse (almost always unsung) a line celebrates the murder of African-Americans slaves who had been recruited to fight for their freedom on the British side in the War of 1812. Here's the line: "No refuge could save the hireling and slave/From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave"

Illustration by Carl Muecke

Four months into the Trump administration, it's clear that the president's agenda is anything but his promised "America First."

A budget that slashes Medicaid funding between $800 billion and $1.4 trillion won't just hurt "those people." To be sure, it disproportionately hurts minorities in certain states. But 42 percent of Medicaid recipients are white, many of them likely Trump supporters. Many Medicaid recipients have jobs — their employers are able to socialize their healthcare costs while privatizing the profits from the labor of the low-wage workers. America first?

The Republican repeal of Obamacare will leave 23 million Americans without health insurance. It has passed the GOP-controlled House and stopping it in the Senate is by no means assured, even likely. Remember, Obamacare was a market-based plan created by conservatives — but because it was proposed by President Obama, Republicans have devoted years to destroying it. They're doing it now, even though repeal has yet to pass, because of the uncertainty caused in the insurance markets. Every other advanced nation in the world has universal healthcare. We will lose even the modest gains of Obamacare. America will be even more last in healthcare. And all to ensure a tax cut to the rich and, well, because the Republicans like hurting people.

Other advanced, urbanized nations enjoy high-speed rail and modern subway systems in their cities. Trump wants to dismantle Amtrak — a longtime Republican goal — is holding up federal funding to help electrify the commuter-train line in the Bay Area, severely cut aid for transit, and do nothing to advance high-speed rail. Subways and mass-transit systems across the country are ailing. Only a nation with as many rubes as the United States would be oblivious to how far behind we are.