Trump's Tyranny
Some say the world will end in Trump,
Some say in Pence.
From what I’ve heard out on the stump,
I hold with those who favor Trump;
For if he’s stopped they both might be.
If not, the chance may come too late
For Mr. Pence the throne to capture
And make our fate
His longed-for rapture.
SHIP’S LOG, February 15, 2018 — How the Earthlings have survived is a mystery. Ever since the United States impeached and removed Donald Trump for accidentally live-streaming himself sexually assaulting a tourist (or was it really for refusing to bomb Moscow? unclear) events have spiraled out of control.
Trump is now residing on a private island, making offers by tweet of trillions of dollars to various nations in exchange for their willingness to bomb the United States. No nation is known to have yet accepted. Nor has anyone yet seen Trump’s tax returns. He may or may not have, or have access to, trillions of dollars.
Some of the earthlings believe the impeachment process drove Trump out of his mind, while others blame the water supply on his island abode. But 92% in a scientific survey conducted in 43 countries this week actually volunteered or wrote in: “When was he not out of his mind — WTF?”
On Tuesday the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on whether Trump can just up and nuke people or not. The hand-picked witnesses, all former military, all said there was some chance that if Trump ordered a nuking, somebody might refuse to carry out the order. On what grounds? No witness or Senator ever mentioned the illegality of war under the UN Charter or the Kellogg-Briand Pact. But one witness brought up “necessity” and “proportionality” as grounds for deeming a particular apocalypse-creating act illegal and another legal. But these “just war” concepts are not empirical. There’s no standard for determining whether an action is “necessary” or “proportional.” It comes down to the mood the commander of Strategic Command is in that day, or the partisan identity of some official, or the courage and integrity of rank-and-filers ordered to begin the earth’s destruction. If, like me, you’re not convinced that’s good enough, here are some other possible approaches:
n his latest impersonation of the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland, the president of the United States stopped just short of shouting “Off with his head!” at the latest New York terror suspect, but pretty much everyone knows that’s exactly what he meant. Lewis Carroll intended the Red Queen to be an entertaining caricature by virtue of her absurdity. That’s a luxury we don’t have when considering our Trump’s affinity with the Red Queen’s jurisprudence: “Sentence first – verdict afterwards.” That’s just what our Trump demands again and again from legal proceedings, with appalling disregard for the Constitution and any other law that happens to displease him.
ffering official, token comfort to the families of fallen American soldiers has been a virtually reflexive ritual since George Washington, and rightly so. The dead are men and women who gave their brief lives for belief in the country, even when their government let them die for a lie or a fraud.
Ok, let’s dismiss the continuing fantasy that Donald Trump is the president of all Americans. He’s not. And he’s never going to be. He is the president of the United Base of America.
The conventional wisdom is that during the primaries candidates appeal to the extreme wing of their party and then move to the center in the general election campaign. Trump re-wrote that playbook. He was elected by his base, he continues to play to his base and the only Americans he gives a shit about are his core Trumpsters. The base. The 30% who, as Trump himself bragged, would still support him even if he shot someone in the middle of New York’s 5th Avenue.
So we should stop expecting the Trump pivot. It’s never coming. He’s never going to become “presidential.” He’s never going to be the president of all Americans. He’s never going to unite. He will continue to divide. To pit his rabid, vapid hate-filled base against everyone else. Against logic, facts and rational thinking.
– Minority President Donald Trump, September 19, 2017, addressing the United Nations
Kneel, touch the earth.
“Oh say can you see . . . ”
The anthem starts. I can feel the courage . . . of Colin Kaepernick, the (then) San Francisco 49ers quarterback who refused to stand for the national war hymn, not when one of the wars was directed at Americans of color. Occupying the public spotlight that he did, Kaepernick risked — and received — widespread condemnation. Rabid fans burned replicas of his jersey. I’m sure as he knelt that first time, as his knee touched the earth, he had a sense of what he was setting off.
This is patriotism.
A year later, his action still resonates. The president got involved (of course), ranting and tweeting that kneeling NFL players should be fired, thus, as Adam Erickson points out, joining his list of scapegoats: