Politics: National

Illustration by Carl Muecke

Let's be clear about James Comey. He was fired by the president who he was investigating for ties to Russia, in other words treason. Comey's FBI must have been getting close, so Donald Trump acted through his Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, who had already recused himself from the Russia probe.

All the rest, about Comey and Hillary's emails (for God's sake), is a distraction or another of Trump's many lies.

At risk is the rule of law and a chilling future. Most immediately, it means Trump can install a crony as FBI Director (Rudy Giuliani?), as he has done in other federal agencies, to wreck from the inside. The independence of the premier federal law enforcement agency would be politicized and compromised. And the investigation into the depth of Trump's connections with the Kremlin — election meddling, money laundering, business connections, blackmail — would be stopped.

If the roles were reversed and the president was Hillary Clinton, she would already be facing impeachment and removal from office. But besides from some tut-tutting by the likes of wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III and Jeff Flake — the Republican-controlled Congress is doing nothing. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (with a wife in the Trump cabinet) has defended Trump's action.

The nation's infrastructure is graded D-plus by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Bridges collapse with frightening regularity. Our transportation system is stuck back in the 1970s. While other advanced, urbanized nations have high-speed rail, we've struggled for years merely to keep Amtrak alive, a system that eliminated hundreds of passenger trains when it came into being. We have no manned space program aside from astronauts hitching rides with the Russians. The military is at a breaking point after more than 15 years at undeclared wars. All over the country, cities struggle to keep up or rebuild such basics as parks and bus service. Inequality is at historic highs. Our education system is a shambles. The share of national income going to labor is at historic lows. On and on.

Your tax cuts at work.

The greatest con perpetuated on the American people began with Ronald Reagan, continued with George W. Bush, and now comes again with Donald Trump. That taxes must always be cut, especially for the wealthy and for corporations (which "are people," as Mitt Romney said).

We can't have nice things because of tax cuts. We're rapidly falling into Third World status because of tax cuts. This religion is an unkillable zombie. While Democrats fight over LGBTQI rights, gay marriage, transgender bathrooms, homelessness, "privilege," Confederate monuments, Black Lives Matter, mass incarceration, gun violence, microaggressions and safe spaces on university campuses, free college, pronouns, universal healthcare, and, of course, Her Speeches, Republicans persist with a message as monotonous and simple as the words of the Aflac duck: tax cuts. And it has worked spectacularly as a political weapon.

Illustration by Carl Muecke

Donald Trump lost the popular vote by a historic margin, three million votes. He never released his tax returns. He asked for, and received, the help of Russian intelligence in hacking the Democrats and undermining his challenger, Hillary Clinton. He is in violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, has not stepped back from his tangled business interests, has stuffed his cabinet with similarly compromised billionaires. His first National Security Adviser was a Russian agent. The fate of 319 million Americans was decided by 77,744 votes in three states out of more than 136 million ballots cast nationwide. Now he has claimed a mandate to radically remake America.

For many, if not most, of Hillary Clinton voters, Trump is an illegitimate president.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stymied President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, an unprecedented act. Garland received neither a hearing nor a vote. McConnell recently executed the "nuclear option," denying the filibuster to Democrats so he could assure the confirmation of the arch-conservative Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. For millions of Americans, we now have an illegitimate Supreme Court, too.

The reaction of Republicans is along the lines of, "This is how we felt during the Obama presidency, too." This is symptomatic of our Cold Civil War. But Obama was soundly elected and re-elected. He was careful to preserve continuity with his predecessor, George W. Bush, observed every norm, and governed from the center — even using the Republican health-care plan as the template for the Affordable Care Act.

Illustration by Carl Muecke

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. — H.L. Mencken

Nobody can claim that Donald Trump isn't keeping his campaign promises. After his fashion, of course. He has added so many financiers, billionaire moguls and generals to his swamp that even the most recalcitrant Bernie Bro or Jill Steiner might wish for Hillary. But on the thing that matters most to his voters, white majoritarianism in the form of Muslim bans and the wall, he's delivering. Erasing Obama's legacy — check. Making war on cities with devastating cuts to public investments — check. Rolling back environmental regulations at a time when climate change is growing much worse, cleansing government agencies of competent "elites," and a budget that goes after every GOP bugaboo — check, check, and check.

When 24 million or more Americans — including the vaunted white working class — are deprived of health care, don't count on a midterm backlash. After all, dozens of Republican governors and legislatures refused to set up state ACA exchanges or expand Medicaid and no price was paid. The states got even redder. Trump's continuing discarding of norms, disgracing his office, and the timebomb of his connections with the Kremlin? I doubt any of this will affect his support. And remember, his supporters lie to pollsters, so don't believe his approval ratings. Nothing is too outrageous for them. They don't believe the news. Of course the Kenyan socialist tapped Trump Tower, no matter what the Republican intelligence committee chairmen say.

Trump stands very little chance of returning manufacturing jobs to America. His Commerce Secretary made his fortune in the "rip, strip, and flip" game, destroying companies and jobs. His Labor Secretary has praised robots. The billionaire and financial class he is empowering by cutting taxes and rolling back "burdensome" regulations grows ever richer by screwing working people.

A slew of Republican bills to repeal the New Deal, Great Society, Nixon administration, and the Enlightenment will be signed. Trump's Education Secretary is a charter-school racketeer who is actively hostile to public education. A trade war will result in higher prices at Wal-Mart and lost American jobs. Our standing in the world is already that of a sick joke. No price will be paid. Arizona has proved that, where decades of single-party control has led to disaster. Yet Arizona is redder as a result.

Carl Muecke's take:

Budweiser's "Born the Hard Way" advertisement during the Super Bowl won plaudits for putting today's anti-immigrant sentiment under a harsh light. But it was a stretch. In reality, the white Anglo-Saxon America of the 19th century was generally welcoming of Germans. They were Christian, often Protestant, hard working. Which is not to say the migration was without troubles.

For example, especially after the failed revolutions of 1848, German immigrants transformed Cincinnati. They congregated in the dense neighborhood north of the Miami-Erie Canal. The city's English and Scots-Irish majority sniffed, "There are a lot of Germans over the Rhine," meaning the canal. And the district, still one of America's architectural treasures, gained its name. The Germans brought great beer and helped make Cincinnati a magnificent music city. Before World War I, Cincinnati had many German-language newspapers — these, and much of the German culture, were victims of wartime xenophobia. Later, the German families moved to the west side. Even today, Interstate 75 is called the Sauerkraut Curtain, dividing old German from old English Cincinnati. The Germans assimilated and became some of the city's leading citizens. Samuel Adams beer is based on a recipe from co-founder Jim Koch's great-grandfather.

The Irish were reviled in many cities in the same century. They went on to become among the most American of Americans, producing two presidents. The largest mass lynching in American history was carried out in 1891 against 11 Italian immigrants in New Orleans. Italians, too, assimilated, and became a distinguished (and sometimes, with the Mafia, notorious) part of America. In the early 21st century, the governor of Arizona, most prominent businessman in Phoenix and, ironically, anti-immigrant sheriff of Maricopa County were all Italian-Americans (many of Phoenix's most important earlier leaders were of Jewish extraction). So it went for scores of different ethnic and religious groups who came here. Native fear, discrimination and even atrocities, assimilation and acceptance. America is a credal nation, not an ethnic one. And we have been stronger for it.

Here's a question for readers and friends who served in the military, particularly those who worked with nukes (I know you're there). Can a president order a nuclear strike with no intermediating checks in the National Command Authority?

Everywhere else in the military where nuclear weapons are involved, the "two man rule" applies, from authenticating an Emergency War Order and turning launch keys to even being in the vicinity of warheads and delivery systems. I always thought this applied at the top, where the ironically nicknamed "Mad Dog" Mattis would have to authenticate the so-called Gold Codes along with the president. Mattis is the most rational person in the administration. And yet, people have told me this is wrong: Donald Trump can give the launch order on his own. How about it? With the Martin Bormann/Joseph Goebbels clone Steve Bannon now a member of the National Security Council and an unhinged president, this inquiry takes on a certain…urgency.

The progressives have their marches — many thousands in city centers and airports over the weekend — and they believe they are mighty. Farhad Manjoo, the savvy technology columnist for the New York Times, appears to agree:

We’re witnessing the stirrings of a national popular movement aimed at defeating the policies of Mr. Trump. It is a movement without official leaders. In fact, to a noteworthy degree, the formal apparatus of the Democratic Party has been nearly absent from the uprisings. Unlike the Tea Party and the white-supremacist “alt-right,” the new movement has no name. Call it the alt-left, or, if you want to really drive Mr. Trump up the wall, the alt-majority.

Or call it nothing. Though nameless and decentralized, the movement isn’t chaotic. Because it was hatched on social networks and is dispatched by mobile phones, it appears to be organizationally sophisticated and ferociously savvy about conquering the media.

I'm not so sure. Crowd psychology is a funny thing and it can lead to magical thinking. Some have been mentioning 1968, as if that year of famous civil unrest ushered in a new progressive era. Quite the contrary happened, as the American liberal consensus was shattered and conservatives ("law and order") triumphed. Now I am suspicious of the progressive echo chamber on social media and in "the streets."

There's good reason to be. Donald Trump was elected by nearly 63 million votes. Although this was less by a record margin than the tally Hillary Clinton received, it's difficult to believe many of these Trump voters have buyer's remorse. He is doing exactly what he promised, and fast. I suspect they dig it, to use 1968 slang. It's what they voted for. But they are easy to ignore because they don't hold massive street demonstrations and they don't dominate social media. They just vote. And this has left us with the Republicans in charge of both the White House and Congress, 25 statehouses in entirety (including Arizona), and soon the federal courts. The ramifications of this fact are beyond enumeration.

Only a week into this disaster and years to go, here's the great Carl Muecke's take. Have a laugh…or a chill.

(Illustration by Carl Muecke, click for a larger image)

The framers of the Constitution put three roadblocks in place to prevent a demagogue from assuming or discharging the office of President. One, the Electoral College, has already fallen. The courts, packed with Republican-appointed judges and Supreme Court mini-me Scalias, will also fail to stop the descent into an authoritarian kleptocracy.

That leaves the Congress. Unfortunately for the future of the republic, this Congress is, if anything, a greater threat than the showman-stooge-traitor Donald J. Trump.

Under Republican control, it waged a scorched-earth campaign to undercut President Obama at every juncture. His well-qualified, centrist nominee to the high court was blocked for nearly a year, an unprecedented act. Efforts to build infrastructure and create jobs, to fill the hole in demand caused by the Great Recession, were victims of needless "austerity." Republicans threatened to default on U.S. debt, one of their many hostage-takings to ensure that they "broke him," in the pungent words of former South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint (now head of the premier right-wing "think tank," the Heritage Foundation).

Now, even though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and more people voted for Democrats than Republicans, this minority has total control of the national government. They represent the New Confederacy in our Cold Civil War. The beneficiaries of the vicious backlash to a black president. And they intend to use this power to the fullest.

Illustration by Carl Muecke.

In the near future, I will examine the Obama presidency. But one thing is certain: For the past eight years, I have slept well knowing this fine, scandal-free man was in the White House. No Drama Obama. History will be very kind to him. He may well be remembered as the last president of the United States.

Now we're headed into an ominous "experiment."

Donald Trump enters the White House with less legitimacy than any president in history. His opponent, Hillary Clinton, won the popular vote by the largest margin ever (tying Obama in 2012). Trump's approval rating is the lowest for an incoming chief executive in history. His Electoral College victory will forever be tainted by the tilting of the election in his favor by Russian intelligence, FBI Director James Comey, and media malpractice — manically overplaying fake Clinton scandals while downplaying or ignoring Trump's massive real scandals and conflicts of interest. And never forget voter suppression. This was the first presidential election after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act.

Nevertheless, Trump and the Republicans are claiming a mandate to undertake a massive shift in our nation's life and trajectory. Taking health care away from 30 million Americans — at least half of whom are in the vaunted white working class — is Job No. 1. But the damage won't stop there.

The Republicans are hot to cut taxes on the rich and eviscerate "entitlements" (read the earned benefits of Social Security and Medicare). To roll back regulations protecting the environment and holding back the looting from anti-competitive mergers, too big to fail banks, and the oligarchs. The latter, along with a proto-junta of generals, stuff his cabinet nominees. If we only see America turned into a banana republic kleptocracy, we'll be lucky.