Bullshitter in Chief

What we knew from the very beginning about Donald Trump became ever clearer this past week. It is that Trump is a blowhard, a con-man, someone who has no control over his impulse to frame every action or thought that erupts into his tiny brain into the 'greatest, most amazing piece of courage and mental gymnastics ever to emanate from a human cortex.' Thus, in recent days, he has made a huge deal of his not recertifying the Iran nuclear deal painstakingly crafted by Barack Obama and the big five nations of England, France, Germany, Russia and China, and agreed to by the UN Security Council to make it international law. His reasons were pure bullshit as usual, (Iran’s compliance has been certified countless times by the IAEA, and even attested to by Trump’s own cabinet officers like General Mattis), but he claimed to be attempting to force Iran back to the bargaining table to get the U.S. “a better deal.” Shortly thereafter, still frustrated by Congress’s inability to repeal and replace Obamacare, he took the executive-order route he constantly criticized Obama for, signing a first order ending the Affordable Care Act’s cost-sharing reduction payments meant to help low income Americans get health care. He then signed another order allowing individuals (usually younger and healthier) to buy short-term insurance exempt from Obamacare provisions, and also allowing small businesses to pool together to buy health insurance. His none-too-subtle hope, in all of these measures, was to cripple the signature legislative achievement of his predecessor: to wit, insurance companies won’t be able to continue if their younger customers do not offset their huge payments to the elderly, nor would they be able to continue offering health care subsidies to low-income Americans without government help. And to cripple it to the point where the whole thing implodes and Congress would be forced to come up with a new health plan. But of course, the Republican-controlled Congress has already proven several times that it can’t come up with a replacement plan, and even if it could, huge portions of the nation would probably rebel.

            What’s astonishing about these measures is that the health-care orders, in particular, would end up hurting Trump’s core supporters the most: those un- and under-employed poor whites living in the South and Midwest who can barely afford to keep themselves above water as it is. And yet, these fools keep supporting their dear Bullshitter because he presents himself as certain and tough and commanding, and because the great unwashed love to venerate those who so present themselves. It’s why they’re easy prey to the likes of used car salesmen and fundamentalist preachers.

            What’s more astonishing, or perhaps not, is that none of the Drumpf’s so-called “actions” are going to fundamentally alter the situations they’re pretending to change. As numerous commentators have by now noted, the ACA is going to go on, no matter what Trump does. It’s the law of the land, most people have gotten used to it, and people are very reluctant to give up a benefit they’ve grown used to. Moreover, the only thing that can really change it is a repeal-and-replace plan that Republicans are incapable of crafting, much less passing into law. As for the Iran nuclear deal, essentially the same thing applies. The deal is not a treaty issued by the United States alone; it is a multi-nation deal that has been sanctioned into international law by the United Nations. As such, it can’t be dismantled or re-negotiated by all the parties together, much less by one nation on its own. And especially for bullshit reasons such as “not living up to the spirit” of the deal, as Trump would have it. So unless Congress is so stupid as to re-impose sanctions unilaterally (and all signs are that they will not, pressure from those ‘sanctuaries of democracy,’ Israel and Saudi Arabia, notwithstanding), the Iran deal will remain essentially as it stands.

            So what the hell was this all about?

            Well, as with much of what Donald Trump does, it was about public relations (bullshit) and shoring up his base. Trump has been hammered so hard of late (even from Republicans like Bob Corker), and is feeling so much pressure from that bulldog, former-FBI director Robert Mueller, that he constantly must revert to the only area where he can still get applause: his none-too-bright supporters. That’s why he must regularly schedule his neo-campaign rallies—like the recent ones in Phoenix, and Alabama. Approval, adulation is like oxygen for this malignant narcissist (the term is Erich Fromm’s, coined in 1964 to describe “severe mental sickness” representing “the quintessence of evil.”) And that is what he gets when he holds one of his rallies; cheers, raised fists, and thunderous applause when he attacks his usual targets such as those ‘football player sons of bitches.’ (Of course, when he attacks real opponents, such as Kim Jong Un, the Bullshitter limits himself to derogatory tweets, proving even here, even with a nation a twentieth the size of the U.S., that he’s a bullying coward whose default mode is bullshit—which allows him to reverse course as he seems to have done today, apparently ordering Secretary of State Tillerson to continue the negotiations Drumpf had just days ago derided as a “waste of time.”)

            The only real question continues to be: how long can he continue to get away with this? What will it take for his idiot white fans (not to mention his Republican enablers) to realize that he is leading them down the garden path to both financial and political ruin? That his policies, if they hurt anyone, are not going to hurt the “elites” that they hate so deeply, but rather people just like themselves? That Donald Trump really gives not two shits for his supporters in general—he’s always been an elitist wannabe himself—and that he probably has massive contempt for them, for their gullibility in believing a bullshitter like himself.

            Perhaps only the approval ratings offer some hope. As of Oct. 13, Trump’s approval rating nationally had dropped to 36%, the lowest of any presidency in modern times. Even George W. Bush’s ratings after Katrina dropped only to 44%. Trump’s is well below that, and erosion is increasingly appearing even in the so-called ‘red’ states of the South and Midwest—the core area of his support. So though most of us would have thought that a presidency such as this, reeling from one disaster to another at light speed, would have imploded long ago, we still find ourselves asking the same question: what keeps it afloat? and for how long? And can the Bullshitter even last to the next presidential election? It’s an open question, so we may never know for certain how accurate or predictive these approval ratings are. One thing we do know, though: some people can be fooled and bullshitted and scorned and treated with contempt till they’re covered with excrement, and incapable, like good Germans under Hitler, of changing their tiny minds. It’s the only thing the Bullshitter-in-Chief can count on these days—aside from a little war to pump things up, that is.

Lawrence DiStasi

Blog 5-23

I’m not sure what I’m going to write about today, so I’ve titled this simply, “Blog 5-23.” Not that there aren’t ample things to write about. The news about the latest event where the Repugnant candidates for President were speaking, for example, gives us an accurate preview of what the dominant theme will be: Obama was the one who screwed up Iraq. Obama’s responsible for the latest ISIS triumph in Ramadi. Not George W. Bush, the president they hardly mention anymore. Oh no. Georgie had it all right, had Iraq conquered and pacified—until Barack Hussein came along and withdrew the troops. It’s amazing, really. Completely ignoring the fact that it was the illegal American invasion of Iraq that blew the place up, that destabilized the nation and incited the sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shia populations that had always gotten along, that it was Bush himself who negotiated the timeline for American withdrawal, these yahoos appeal to the great American worship of weapons and say ‘we had ‘em beat until that wuss Obama came along and removed all our power. And then ISIS burst into the power vacuum Obama created and took over half the damn country we spent so much life and treasure liberating.’ But wait! Where did ISIS come from? Wasn’t it from the remnants of al Quaeda in Iraq? And isn’t it the case that al Quaeda never even existed in Iraq until the United States destroyed the damn country with its invasion? And isn’t it also the case that the reason ISIS (morphed from the al Quaeda that never before existed) has triumphed so easily is also due to the stupidity of the Bush adminisration’s strategy of canning Saddam’s existing army and bureaucracy, almost all Sunnis, to a man? Isn’t the area ISIS has rolled over almost fully Sunni territory, those Sunnis who were so completely destroyed by the American invasion that they have opted to cooperate with ISIS in order to get back at the Shia-dominated government America put in place? Duh. Facts. Just dull old facts. Who gives a damn about facts? Only eggheads and some democrats. The important thing in an election is emotion, so appeal to the emotional outrage over America’s great ‘handiwork’ being destroyed, over a band of ragtag barbarians overrunning one city after another in defiance of the greatest military power in the world, US, and blame it on the black wuss in the White House.

            But it’s not only that simpleminded diversion that outrages. Because no one can avoid feeling revulsion at the other side, too. At the group calling itself The Islamic State in Syria, or in the Levant, or whatever they’re calling themselves. Fanatics. The world seems increasingly to be falling into the hands of fundamentalist fanatics. It seems that a simple, fundamentalist religious stance is the only way masses of people can be galvanized these days. Yearning for certainty in a world that seems always on the brink of catastrophe, the masses of humans seem zombified except in response to a fanatic reversion to a simplistic worldview. Follow sharia law. Arm oneself to the teeth. Execute those who disagree. Roll over every departure from that simple certainty, slaughter coldly those who don’t conform, and count on bliss in a future life. And now, horror of horrors, these wackadoos have taken over one of the most ancient and precious World Heritage Sites on the planet, Palmyra. Take a look at the ancient ruins left from long centuries of occupation on the oldest of trade routes.

There are Aramaic ruins, Babylonian ruins, Mesopotamian ruins, Roman ruins—each one more precious than the last. This “Bride of the Desert” is like some fantasyland of antiquities in the desert. And now it is controlled by a gaggle of lunatics. Contemplating what these image-destroyers will do to these remnants of “infidel art” is enough to make one weep. And yet, there they are in force, already having taken control of the antiquities museum, posted guards outside, executed everyone they could find with any connection to the Syrian government, and impelled anyone with concern for his head and the means to do so, to flee.

            Whether there is anything to stop them now is an open question. But one thing that comes to mind is this: these Wahhabi warriors are supported, or were originally, by the Gulf monarchies, Sunnis all, despotisms all, that are our purported allies—chief among them Saudi Arabia. Couldn’t a little American pressure cause the Saudis to use their influence (if any is left) with their proxies? Because that’s what they are: proxies for the Sunni monarchies in their conflict with Iran (a Shia nation) and Syria (whose Alawite minority, also Shia, controls the last secular government in the Middle East). It’s a bit like the support the United States gave to the mujahideen in Afghanistan and for a similar proxy purpose: to defeat our Soviet enemies. And the Saudis will live to regret their machinations, just as the U.S. has lived to regret its build-up of the mujahideen into al Quaeda. But in the meantime, couldn’t the U.S. put pressure on our oil-wealthy allies and get them to at least spare the antiquities in Palmyra? But then, that might make too much sense, and the world lacks sense more than anything else these days.

            As we see in yet another outrage that occurred recently. Competely different, but similar in its possible effects. I’m referring to the move by the allegedly environment-friendly Obama Administration to approve Shell Oil’s petition to drill in the Chukchi Sea in the Arctic. Talk about an outrage. Talk about ignoring the plea of every sane climate scientist to forego any more drilling of the world’s most dangerously-sited oil. Talk about ignoring the history of accidents in Alaska, in Santa Barbara, in the Gulf of Mexico, all of which tell us that sea-floor drilling is a recipe for disaster. Especially in this fierce sea, miles off the coast, with perilous conditions that would make an oil spill a disaster beyond anything we’ve ever seen—and we’ve seen a lot. Especially since, after the initial approval in 2012, Shell’s Kulluk oil rig ran aground and had to be towed to safety. And yet. President (I love the environment) Obama has just given his second presidential approval to Shell to drill in this (so far) pristine ocean. It is baffling. It is heartbreaking. It is mystifying. It is enough to make one want to vaporize these fools.

            But after all, it’s not that much different from Palmyra, is it? The ocean. There’s so much of it. The desert. So much of it, too, and most just a wasteland. Antiquities. So many of them, and so old and in such bad condition they can’t be occupied by living humans in any case. What good are they? What good is the ocean? What good are all the creatures that live there? We’ll soon be able to synthesize all of the nutrients and vitamins and elements they contain. Just as we’ll soon be able to clone any missing species. What’s the big deal?

            Ah humanity. Shiva the destroyer of worlds must be exulting about now.

Lawrence DiStasi

            

            

A Tune We've Heard Before

The bovine feces issuing from the Obama Administration regarding its proposed attack on Syria is nauseatingly familiar: ‘this is going to be precise, and limited, and will teach Assad that he shouldn’t use chemical weapons again,’ said one of Obama’s National Security advisers, ‘and degrade his capability to the point that he will conclude that coming to the bargaining table is his best option because if he doesn’t, what he holds dear—his weapons, his army—will be taken from him’ (neverminding the fact that coming to the so-called bargaining table under the conditions set by the United States—that the Assad regime must hand over its power to the opposition—will by that very move lose “what he holds dear;” so what is the incentive to “come to the table"???). It is this kind of stupidity, this kind of logical contradiction that once again fills the airwaves. But let us take things one step at a time.

First, it should be clear: if the United States attacks Syria, it is not a “teachable moment,” or a warning, or an inducement to negotiate; it is an act of war. Though the President and his spokespeople keep referring to “punishing the Assad regime for violations of international norms,” there is no, repeat NO international authorization whatever for this so-called punitive attack. Short of a Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force—and the use of force is almost exclusively reserved, by the UN charter, for situations in which one nation attacks another nation—there is NO legal justification for any attack on Syria. None. Not that this has ever stopped the United States before, of course. Just think Iraq and/or Afghanistan in 2003 or Grenada or Korea or Panama or any of a number of invasions just since WWII; though it must be said that in almost every other case, at least some figment of a fig leaf was fashioned to create the illusion of legitimacy or the resolve of the collective world community. Here, alas, we have neither.

Then there’s the so-called evidence the administration keeps braying about. Marc Seibel of the McClatchy newspapers has just (Sept 4) written a piece about the widespread doubts over this so-called evidence. First, no chemical tests or satellite photos or anything else have been made public. Just some videos, apparently taken by the opposition. Then there’s the so-called “preparations” evidence. The U.S. claims it knew of preparations three or four days before the attack on Aug 21. But even the opposition forces are puzzled by this one: if the U.S. knew a gas attack was coming, several have said, why didn’t it warn them so lives could be saved, so the deaths of those darling children we’re all told about could be prevented? The answer is that the pre-attack evidence is probably manipulated, not least because the evidence came after the fact, after some spook analyst or other came up with conclusions that didn’t appear originally from the so-called evidence. Oh look, someone apparently said, here’s evidence of Assad’s troops putting on gas masks and getting their chemical attack mode ready. Very convincing. And then there’s the constantly-repeated claim by U.S. spokesmen that the UN inspectors were prevented from doing their work because Assad wouldn’t let them near the site of the attack for four or five days. This is total nonsense. In fact, countless observers testify that Assad gave permission to the inspectors to go to the site the very next day. No matter; citing the delay and the supposedly “degraded” condition the chemical evidence would be in (actually, sarin gas can be detected years after an attack), the U.S. simply withdrew all reliance on the UN inspectors (sound familiar? remember Iraq?), and said that the U.S. didn’t need UN evidence. Such evidence would come too late, anyway, it said, and wouldn’t matter because we already had conclusive proof that the gas used was sarin (problematic; even with the UN’s sophisticated equipment being applied in a lab, it could take weeks and up to a month to come to a valid conclusion; so how did the U.S. in mere hours conclude that it was sarin? and who gave them the samples and in what condition? unless… the conclusion was foreordained.)

Then there’s one more element of this UN inspection team brouhaha that bears consideration. We have been told that one reason for not putting any faith in UN findings is that the UN inspectors can’t even address the question of who delivered the alleged gas attack (which we already “know”); their mandate limits them to only determining if poison gas was used. This seems crazy on its surface. But does anyone ever mention why this UN mandate is now so limited? The fact is, we know very well why. It’s because an earlier UN inspection, referred to in a news interview by Carla del Ponte of Switzerland, one of the members of the UN investigating commission and a renowned prosecutor, found that gas was indeed used, and it was used by the opposition. That’s right. All the West (and that includes Israel) accused Assad of using poison gas and demanded a UN inspection, and when the UN found that indeed gas had been used and that it was the opposition forces that were using it (see BBC news 6 May), the conclusion was dismissed and ignored, and Carla del Ponte has not been heard from since. And just to be sure no repetition of this embarrassing conclusion was presented to the world, the subsequent request for UN investigations of poison gas use was stripped of its mandate to find out who used the gas, and limited to only the determination of whether gas was used. Period.

Of course there are other anomalies in the so-called evidence, such as that the proportions of deaths to those affected are not high enough; nor is there enough vomiting of victims. That is, Doctors Without Borders has cited figures of over 3,000 people attacked but only around 300 deaths. The proportion of those killed by sarin should be much much higher. Too, one of the significant marks of sarin gas poisoning is constant vomiting; it appears from video evidence that almost none of the alleged victims vomited. And of course, the numbers. Most estimates of the number of deaths hover in the 300 to 400 range; but according to U.S. spokesmen like John Kerry and President Obama since last week, a very precise number—1,429 victims killed—suddenly emerged. How could such a precise number have been arrived at, and how was it determined? No one can say.

Finally, there’s the supposed “overheard” communications that the U.S. detected: Syrian commanders were allegedly heard by the renowned U.S. listening technology (see all, know all, hear all) talking about the attack and the fear it would be discovered. Well, it turns out that the source for that conversation was not U.S. but Israeli “intelligence,” Mossad, presumably, which is not exactly known for being unbiased where its Arab neighbors are concerned. Which means that, once again, we are being led or urged or hijacked into an unwanted war against an Arab country by none other than peace-loving Israel.

So here we are at the brink. Unsubstantiated allegations. The drums of war beating. The Congress full of thundering declamations of humanitarian intervention to “stop the horrible slaughter of children,” and all of it based on flimsy, ever-changing accusations devoid of any real proof. And the underlying question that keeps being suppressed: why, if Bashar al Assad’s force were winning in recent months, driving the opposition into more and more remote areas, with no real opposition force capable of taking over if Assad falls—even in the estimation of the United States—why would Assad at such a triumphal moment spoil his momentum by using chemical weapons that are no more effective than the more conventional artillery and air assaults he’s already been using? Why would he do this? If he were backed into a corner, perhaps. But when his forces were winning? It makes no sense.

What really makes sense is this: the U.S. and its (rapidly dwindling) allies have concluded with alarm that the opposition was being defeated; that Assad was about to take back the whole country. Since the U.S. and its allies had early on torpedoed any attempt for a negotiated settlement (even though Assad had agreed to negotiate—until, that is, the U.S. insisted that the only settlement could be one in which he conceded defeat; what kind of negotiation is that?), then all that was left was a military solution. But a pretext for a huge military intervention was needed. Poison gas, yet another “weapon of mass destruction used by yet another ‘Hitler of the Middle East,’ fit the bill. Now the U.S. can not only “punish” Assad for the use of WMDs, but also step up its already robust supplies to the opposition, to now include anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons it has been reluctant thus far to give them. It means to go all in, and tip the balance, once again, to the rebels. No matter that they are led by al-Quaeda elements; no matter that the al Nusra front (an al-Quaeda affiliate) is, according to almost all observers, the dominant opposition group. No matter. That wonderful, democracy-seeking Free Syrian Army, according to administration hacks, is the only group we will supply. And they will prevail.

The only remaining question is why? Why is it so important that Assad be unseated? Because his nation is the only real Arab power left in the region. And Israel has always planned to get rid of any and every Arab country that could threaten its plans for the Palestinians (extermination) and hegemony over the entire region. With U.S. help it got rid of Saddam and crippled Iraq in 2003. It reduced Lebanon in the 1980s. It got rid of Egypt’s Muslim brotherhood a couple of months ago, and Libya a few months before that. It long ago pocketed the quisling Saudis and Jordanians. And now it is determined to get rid of Syria. Who drops next? You guessed it, Iran. That’s what this is all about. Cripple Iran by destroying Assad so that the US/Israel axis can finally bomb or sanction Iran back into the stone age. And the American public will be stampeded, as it always is, into this new war waged from ships outside the range of any retaliation. That’s the kind of war we really like. We invulnerable Americans, dropping high-tech death from ships at sea or drones or high-flying bombers above. The wogs slaughtered on the ground by our super-smart weapons (not of mass destruction, to be sure; we moral Americans don’t use those; well, maybe a little white phosphorus, or napalm or uranium-tipped shells or cluster bombs or nukes, but always with the best of intentions—so that the Middle East can finally be made safe for democracy—well, democracy that we approve of—not like those fake democracies that put into power Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, but good democracies. Like Israel (What, you don’t approve of democracies that have religious requirements; that refuse to establish actual borders?). Like Saudi Arabia and Jordan and Kuwait and the UAE (What, you don’t approve of democracies run by royal families?) Like Egypt (What, you don’t approve of democracies run by military coup?)

   The sad thing is that the Syrian people are being massacred in a vicious war that is in part a proxy war. And sadder still that the man elected to extricate us from military ventures in the region, a Nobel Peace laureate, no less, is now moving heaven and earth and every possible pretext to get us into another one.  

Lawrence DiStasi