[UPDATE: October 10, 2020]
The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer reported today — according to four high-level sources within the White House — that the nuclear “football,” a 42-pound briefcase, which contains the codes and equipment enabling the President to launch or respond to a nuclear strike, has been transferred to Vice President Pence.
“The President has always been erratic and borderline crazy,” one source told Mayer, “but since contracting Covid-19 he has become much, much worse. Perhaps it’s the drugs he’s been taking, but whatever the cause, it would be a dereliction of duty to allow him to start a nuclear war on a whim. Or if he is hallucinating.
“So the Joint Chiefs determined that the most appropriate action would be to transfer the football. Especially since one of the aides-de-camp who carries the football has contracted Covid-19 too, and might not be thinking clearly either.”
Other sources told Mayer that to avoid arousing the President’s suspicion, an aide-de-camp still carries a 42 pound briefcase when the President leaves the White House. But this briefcase contains lead weights rather than the launch codes and equipment necessary to deploy nuclear warheads. As rumor has it, one wag with a sense of humor and a love of Charles Shultz and “Peanuts” cartoons has inserted an actual football in the fake nuclear briefcase, conjuring up images of Lucy yanking the pigskin away whenever Charlie Brown tried to boot it.
July 22, 2020
Section 1: The Fear ‘N Smear Machine
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, I’m sports announcer Jim Nantz, the sappily sentimental voice of The Masters and the Final Four. I’ve been staying home, snug as a bug in a rug at my palatial home in Pebble Beach.
“And tonight, I have the high honor of introducing the GOAT, the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, who will be presiding over ‘The Daily Tantrump Show,’ the Number One program in America. We’re thrilled that the President came to town today to play a round of golf at the world famous Pebble Beach course.
“For those of you who aren’t sports fans, the acronym GOAT means Greatest of All Time, as opposed to the traditional meaning of goat, the loser who chokes under pressure and costs his team the game.
“The President will be speaking to you from his High Chair, created in his honor by the fine people at Koch Industries, after viewers complained that he looked puny when he addressed the nation a few months ago at the Lincoln Memorial. The High Chair elevates President Trump 10 feet above the height of the statue of Lincoln and requires an elevator to reach the top.
“President Trump is now entering the studio and striding toward the elevator to the cheers of the studio audience, so a couple of quick announcements before we begin.
“Tonight’s episode of ‘The Daily Tantrump Show’ is brought to you by Lysol, the disinfectant that clings 10 times better than Clorox.
“But remember folks – Lysol goes in your toilet bowl, not your oral hole. The Food & Drug Administration reminds you not to drink, ingest in suppository form, or inject Lysol or any other disinfectant. On the other hand, as President Trump has stated about various possible Covid-19 treatments, ‘It might work. You never know.’
“Tonight’s episode is also brought to you by the CBS gambling app, ‘You Might Win, You Never Know.’ For those of you who are new to ‘The Daily Tantrump Show,’ we welcome you to wager on any or all of the 200 proposition bets established by oddsmakers in Las Vegas.
“The proposition bets relate to people that President Trump singles out for insults during the broadcast. For example, tonight’s odds are even money that the President will call Joe Biden, senile, a crook, or a pedophile. The odds are 5-1 that he calls Biden all three.
“If you’re looking to win big money, the odds that President Trump will insult both John and Meghan McCain are 25-1. And if you’re looking for a potentially life-changing score, the current odds that the President will claim Nancy Pelosi is moonlighting as a madam in a Bangkok brothel are a juicy 150-1, down from a morning line of 250-1.
“Just one final announcement, folks, before I introduce the man you’ve all been waiting for. The CDC and the American Association of Hospitals urges you to refrain from playing the at-home drinking game that has been dubbed Trump Words.
“The rules of the game require you to take a drink of your favorite beverage whenever the President uses the words huge, moron, greatest, loser, tremendous, stupid, or fake news. Unfortunately, there has been a massive surge of staggering and even comatose drunks flooding emergency rooms in the hours after the broadcast.
“The President has just entered the elevator that will take him to his High Chair. So without further ado, here he is, your GOAT and mine, President Donald J. Trump!”
And so it goes.
I was a mental health counselor at my small town local hospital in Northern California from 2013-2020, but you don’t need any formal training in psychopathology to know that Trump resides in Bonkersville. Sane people don’t recommend drinking or injecting disinfectants.
“Our mad and decomposing president,” “New York Times” columnist Michelle Goldberg described him on May 4, as Trump’s narcissistic personality disorder and borderline personality disorder deepen by the day.
“When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” Trump tweeted, when demonstrations broke out across the country in the wake of the casually barbaric torture and execution of George Floyd.
“A presidential threat to have the United States military shoot civilians is the opposite of leadership, the antithesis of wisdom,” responded Jelani Cobb in the “New Yorker” on May 30. “[It’s] a comment as ill-advised and as detrimental to the public well-being as recommending injecting disinfectant or self-prescribing hydroxycloroquine.”
It can be a challenge to pinpoint Trump’s ugliest and most despicable moment during his presidency. But it will be hard to top Agent Orange’s “upbeat” speech on June 5. Trump issued more threats to bring in the military to “dominate” U.S. citizens, crowed about a 13.7 percent unemployment rate, and bragged about our “dominance” of China.
Then he brought the unspeakably ugly and despicable, saying it was a “great day for [George Floyd].”
Yeah, a great day for George. He doesn’t have to worry about not being able to breathe anymore.
We wrestle to make sense of it all. More than 140,000 dead Americans from Covid-19. Some 40 million Americans who are unemployed. People lining up in miles-long car caravans at food banks. Peaceful protesters tear-gassed so Trump can pose for pictures with a Bible at a church, a stunt reportedly “masterminded,” by Ivanka Trump. Camouflaged federal agents tear-gassing and firing “non-lethal” projectiles at peaceful protestors in Portland, rounding up some of them and herding them into unmarked vans, tactics more commonly seen in police states than in America.
Calls for “law and order” from a President more lawless – from obstruction of justice to cashing in on his office to paying off porn stars to draft dodging – and more disorderly than any in American history. Dire warnings of ginned-up threats from radical left wing “socialists” and “anarchists” and “terrorists.” Dog whistles of white supremacy elevated to bullhorn volume by Trump’s rabid Fox News propagandists.
Such as Tucker Carlson, who uses the words “criminal mob” or “riot” when talking about both peaceful protesters and looters. An understandable mistake – they all look alike, right Tucker?
You know who looks alike to me? White nationalists, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis. Can’t tell them apart no matter how hard I try.
During an interview on Fox with Ted Cruz, who called the murder of George Floyd a “horrific act of police brutality,” Carlson clapped back, questioning whether Floyd’s killer should be even be arrested, whining, “Why doesn’t anybody stand up for the rest of us, for civilization.”
Apparently Carlson thinks wearing a coat and tie makes you civilized. That’s a pretty low bar. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has called Carlson a “white supremacist sympathizer.” Leave out the word “sympathizer” and she’s right on target.
And now, a quick word -- or actually two words -- about looting.
It’s wrong.
And looting and destroying local businesses that serve communities is particularly reprehensible. As well as counterproductive, tarnishing the aims of the protest and providing fodder for Trump and Carlson.
But perspective is required. The sporadic looting and violence in the wake of George Floyd’s murder is the equivalent of a small river. The continuing, peaceful demonstrations and protests, all across the country, are a mighty ocean.
More perspective -- there is looting and there is LOOTING. Smashing a store window and grabbing a few phones or a handful of jewelry is small-time, petty-ante, minor- league stuff. In comparison, how much do you suppose wealthy individuals and big corporations have ripped off with their systematic looting of the U.S. Treasury in recent years? Millions, billions, trillions, gazillions?
Tax loopholes, offshore accounts, lobbyists writing legislation in cahoots with Congressmen and agency administrators, politicians exchanging favors for dark money contributions. And all of it – well, almost all of it – is perfectly legal. That’s how LOOTING is done in the big leagues.
Meanwhile, the unmasked man-child, a.k.a. the President of the United States of America, rolls on, unencumbered by the duties of his office. Trump effectively resigned, bailed out, abdicated, cut and ran from the presidency on March 13. Asked why the federal government hadn’t ramped up testing for Covid-19, Trump declared, “ I take no responsibility for it.”
As Washington State governor Jay Inslee mused, “Can you imagine if FDR said, ‘I’ll be right behind you Connecticut. Good luck building those battleships.’”
With Memorial Day fast approaching, Trump grudgingly lowered flags to half-staff on April 20, and tossed out a few desultory words of condolence to the bereaved.
Why no national day of mourning for over 140,000 dead Americans? Do you really need to ask? Because Trump doesn’t care!
Okay, unfair. Trump cares about a few things. Money. His pathetically fragile ego, more easily bruised than a ripe banana. And his re-election. The latter two are inextricably intertwined, so Trump has been in full-on campaign mode since abandoning his post in mid-March.
Trump’s message – and that of the pusillanimous Republicans in Congress -- to America has been crystal-clear.
“GET BACK TO WORK!!! You lazy, sick, scared of getting sick, and dead people are destroying my re-election chances! You want more handouts, more unemployment benefits, more food stamps? You greedy bastards. Get back to the killing fields -- the slaughterhouses, the restaurant kitchens, the farms, the factory floors. You’re expendable! Excuse me, essential!
“And don’t forget. This is American, not some shit-hole country. If you live in a Snowpiercer Caboose, inhaling coal dust is part of the deal. If God wanted you in the white glove compartment, he would have made sure you were born rich.”
Of course, a large and disproportionate percentage of the folks riding in the back of the train are people of color. “The [Covid-19] crisis is exposing the class savagery of American democracy and the economic carnage that it has always countenanced,” wrote “NYT” columnist Charles M. Blow on May 15.
Meanwhile, the Republican Fear ‘N Smear Machine has kicked into overdrive, desperate to find someone, something, anything to blame. China? Left-wing radical Democratic socialists? Antifa? Immigrants? Barack Obama? George Soros? Colin Kaepernick? Dr. Fauci? Elmo?
Fear ‘N Smear has been the main weapon in the GOP arsenal for decades, from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump. But it’s never been the only arrow in the quiver of Republican lawmakers, many of whom used to be concerned with such mundane things as fiscal integrity, the air and water, international cooperation, and tax reform that benefitted more than the 1%.
Until recently.
Now Fear ‘N Smear is the only arrow left, and it’s poison-tipped. Trump calls Biden senile. His knucklehead sons double down. Donnie Jr. “hints” Biden is a pedophile and Eric accuses Democrats of creating a fake Covid-19 scare to win the election, claiming the virus will “disappear like a mirage” after Election Day.
And the Fear ‘N Smear Machine is just getting cranked up. We’re still months away from Election Day. As “NYT” columnist Timothy Egan puts it, Trump has “no bottom.”
Is the Fear ‘N Smear Machine, Egan wonders, sufficiently amoral to claim Biden orchestrated the car crash that killed his daughter and first wife? Is it sufficiently amoral, I wonder, to claim Beau Biden didn’t die of brain cancer but was poisoned by his father?
Do you really have to ask?
Trump and the GOP milked a strong economy – with the foundation built by the Obama Administration – for three years. Now their luck has run out. Under the cover of low unemployment, Trump and the GOP got away with ruthless measures to reward their wealthy donor class, individual and corporate. Cutting taxes for the 1%. Reversing environmental protections. Imposing tariffs willy-nilly. Ripping up international peace agreements.
Those are not winning issues.
So what can Trump and the Republicans roll out to augment its Fear ‘N Smear campaign?
Health care? Not bloody likely since Republicans remain crazily obsessed with murdering Obamacare.
Education? Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, married to the billionaire co-founder of the [Sc]Amway empire, is hell-bent on killing public education as test scores of American kids continue to decline.
Housing? Paging Dr. Ben Carlson. Hey Ben, are you aware there’s a homeless problem in America? Are you aware your boss is a white nationalist? Are you still reading furniture catalogues, looking for an office couch to go with the $31,000 dining room set you tried to put on the government’s tab? Could you please resign, pick up a scalpel, and return to the operating room, where you made your mark as a brilliant pediatric brain surgeon? Stat!
Environment? Oh, for christ sake, let’s not waste our breath. We’ll need it as we cough and choke our way through the onrushing global warming nightmare, a time of reckoning that will make Covid-19 look like a hangnail. “When it comes to trying to unravel this nation’s environmental protection laws, this Administration never sleeps,” Harvard environmental law professor Richard Lazarus told the “NYT.”
Mitch McConnell, sensing that it all might be slipping away, is likely to make a few head feints at doing something about something. Another coronavirus relief bill. Some talk about “infrastructure.” A watery police reform bill.
As Jane Mayer discovered during her research for her April 20, “New Yorker” article, McConnell’s all-consuming lust for money and power has convinced a number of former friends, and even some former big donors, that the second most powerful man in the country is an empty vessel, a shell of a human being devoid of conscience, guilt, or shame.
In 2017, McConnell rammed through the tax cut that funneled 80 percent of the money to the top 1 %. He practiced his black magic on the 2020 CARES coronavirus relief bill as well. “Many of the tax benefits in the stimulus are ‘just shoveling money to rich people,’” University of California at Irvine tax law professor Victor Fleischer told the “NYT.”
As relentless as the creature in “Alien” or the machine in “The Terminator,” or the T-Rexes in “Jurassic Park,” McConnell won’t rest until he sucks the remaining marrow out of the middle class and rips the safety net to shreds.
Too harsh?
Consider the words that come out of McConnell’s mouth, oozing forth in a miasmic fog that carries the stench of rotting flesh.
“This is not a time for aspirational legislation,” he said of the $3 trillion dollar Heroes Bill passed by the House, declaring it dead on arrival.
Definition of aspirational (Merriam-Webster) – “having or showing a desire to achieve a high level of success or social status.”
Right, Mitch. Why would we seek a high level of success in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic when we can settle for so much less?
Making clear where his priorities lie, McConnell declared he wants to “prevent a second pandemic of frivolous lawsuits,” equating over 140,000 dead Americans with a threat of litigation against companies who don’t provide adequate safety conditions for their workers.
Such as at slaughterhouses, which continue to be Covid-19 hotspots and employ a heavily Latino workforce. In addition to cattle, pigs, chickens and sheep, let’s butcher some sacrificial lambs too.
As Paul Krugman acidly wrote in the “NYT” on May 19, the cold calculus of Trump, McConnell, and the GOP is based on “unassailable logic – get people back to work, juice the economy by the fall, ignore the rising death toll, protect employers … force Americans to go to work even if it kills them.”
A sign from a reopen protester at the Tennessee Capital put it bluntly: “Sacrifice the weak. Reopen.”
Yep. Cull the herd. We want steak! We want bacon! It’s our false-god given right as Americans!
Even McConnell’s three daughters oppose his re-election. The eldest, Porter McConnell, is a progressive activist with Take on Wall Street. The organization has gone after Blackstone, the massive hedge fund that just so happens to be McConnell’s biggest donor. A Shakespearian tragedy about the McConnell family begs to be written.
McConnell’s crucial role as a conductor of the GOP’s Fear ‘N Smear Machine in 2020 is a given. But some of his allies are sadder cases.
Take Lindsey Graham.
Please.
Once upon a time, Graham was a respectable and collegial senator who championed bipartisan legislation. In 2016, he called candidate Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.” He didn’t even vote for Trump, casting a ballot for an obscure third party candidate.
Now Graham is Trump’s #1 Fan Boy, a back-slapping, ass-kissing, boot-licking caddie, toting Trump’s bag and cleaning his clubs. Graham’s red-faced fury at Democrats during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings was telling, a petulant demonstration by a morally bankrupt human being. How does Graham explain the selling of his soul? He says he’s trying to remain “relevant,” and brags about his membership in Trump’s “inner circle.”
Now Graham’s 2016 remarks about Trump as well as his past remarks about Biden – “as good a man as God ever created” – are the centerpiece of an ad from the Republican Voters Against Trump. On his blog, Harvard economics professor Greg Nankin, who chaired the President’s Council of Economic Advisors for a couple of years under George W. Bush, said it’s “perhaps the greatest campaign ad ever.”
As with almost every other Republican, Graham has willingly become a flunky in the Fear ‘N Smear Machine.
So it’s no surprise that Graham was fully on board with Trump’s demand to open up the economy, dismissing worries that it wasn’t safe to do so.
He appeared on May 28 at a campaign event in Conway, South Carolina. There were handshakes and hugging. No masks on Graham or other Republican officials and candidates for state offices who were introduced at in the event. No social distancing. Few masks in the crowd.
And guess what? By June, South Carolina was reporting a record number of Covid-19 cases, as people went about their business with a “What Me Worry?” nonchalance fostered by their state leaders.
Earlier, on April 29, Graham met with a number of South Carolina businessmen. Graham condemned the weekly $600 unemployment bonus payments included in the first coronavirus bill approved by Congress. Those bonus payments, which have kept many people afloat during the pandemic, are due to expire on July 31. The Heroes Act passed by the House, would extend the bonus payments until January 2021.
Graham was incensed that some low-income people are getting a modest windfall from the bonus payments. He said the Senate would approve an extension of those payments “over our dead bodies.”
That presents us with an ethical dilemma, does it not?
Should we be rooting for Graham to croak? Would we be justified in cheering -- perhaps even praying? -- for the demise of one solitary 64-year-old man, when he could block needed pandemic relief for millions of low-income, unemployed Americans?
Personally, I can’t go that far. Too much bad karma. But there’s a strong argument on the other side. Recently Graham -- facing a surprisingly competitive re-election race -- hinted he might support a lower level of bonus payments.
Still, any high school, college, or graduate school classroom pondering ethics, morality, philosophy, or politics, could present the Graham Dilemma as a case study. Perhaps as a corollary to the Trolley Problem, recently highlighted on “The Good Place.” Expect lively discussions to ensue.
And you could create an entire curriculum by adding the Trump Dilemma. At a Memorial Day event, Trump struggled to stand up straight without swaying. At the West Point graduation ceremony on June 13, Trump couldn’t lift a glass of water to his lips with one hand and he haltingly walked down a ramp from podium after his speech.
In addition to mental illness, Trump seems to be physically deteriorating as well. Too much burnt meat and Diet Cokes? Too little exercise for a morbidly obese 74-year-old, other than riding in a cart and flailing at a golf ball?
Another ethical dilemma. Do we root for his demise? Or for illness to sideline him and elevate Mike Pence to the top job?
Again, I can’t support the death penalty. Karma is a bitch. But sidelined by illness? Hmm … tough call.
The Fear ‘N Smear Machine has been fueled for decades by victimization, paranoia, conspiracy mongering, and fear of The Other. But it took a Donald Trump to supercharge it, cranking it up to a white-hot, death metal craziness in order to justify ripping little brown kids from the arms of their parents.
Conspiracy theories, the more absurd the better, stoke the Machine and inflame both Trump and his True Believers. A Clinton sex trafficking ring operating out of Comet Ping Pong, a D.C. pizza parlor. A talk show host, hundreds of miles from the scene of the crime, somehow murdering his assistant. A group of religious fanatics, drinking the blood of Christian babies. Oh wait, that one goes back for centuries.
Trump latches onto conspiracy theories like a dog sniffing out a soup bone. It’s not an act. It’s another symptom of mental illness.
“Mr. Trump also appears to believe many of the conspiratorial claims he makes, people close to him say …” reported the “NYT” on May 15.
Gee, ya think? Trump has embraced conspiracy thinking for decades; he jump-started his political rise with birtherism accusations about Barack Obama.
(And if you’ll indulge in a brief aside, the Milquetoasty, on the one hand/on the other hand, “objective” reporting by the “NYT” that helps normalize Trump is a rather sorry example of journalistic malfeasance. I’m willing to bet that every “NYT” reporter who covers Trump knows he’s mentally ill. So say it. This mini-rant does not apply to “NYT” columnists, who bluntly write the truth as they see it.)
On June 4, a 75-year-old peaceful protester in Buffalo, community activist Martin Gugino, was shoved to the ground by two police officers. He smashed his head on the pavement and lay bleeding as other cops walked past him. Gugino spent the next week in the hospital in serious condition.
On June 9, Trump tweeted that Gugino might be a “antifa provocateur,” based on the so-called “reporting” of a right wing website known for nutjob conspiracy theories. Although the video of the assault, showing blood seeping from Gugino’s ear into the cement, was horrifying to most people, to Trump it seemed like a set-up job concocted by his enemies.
What would it take to snap Trump out of his delusions? Other than years of therapy, medication, and an intensive series of electric shock treatments?
What if we dug up the bodies of the 36,000 American Covid-19 victims -- who, according to the CDC, could have been saved if the administration had acted just a week earlier -- and stacked them sky-high on the White House lawn? Would that do it?
Doubtful. Trump probably would think they were supporters lining up early for one of his campaign rallies.
Asked for a comment about Trump’s Gugino tweet by reporters, Republican senators fled like startled jackrabbits. Only a few tiny cracks have appeared in the solid red wall propping up Trump. Mitt Romney marching in a “Black Lives Matter” demonstration. Lisa Murkowski declaring she might not vote for Trump.
It’s better than nothing. But not much. Someone should write a book entitled, “Profiles in Cowardice.” Republicans could have ousted Trump twice, either convicting him in the Senate or invoking Section 4 of the 25th Amendment to declare him unfit for office.
And so the Fear ‘N Smear Machine rolls on with Trump at the wheel, despite a sneaking suspicion in GOP circles -- bolstered by tanking poll numbers -- that Trump might take them all down in November, a blue tsunami sweeping the land and cleansing the Capitol.
Still, Trump retains his legions of unwavering acolytes, who are easily manipulated by the Machine.
In Klamath Falls, Oregon, peaceful “Black Lives Matter” demonstrators were confronted by a number of armed Trump supporters, freaked out by rumors of an possible invasion by busloads of antifa terrorists. In other small towns across America, peaceful protest organizers have been subjected to death threats.
So no matter how low Trump goes, it’s a pretty good bet that his starry-eyed supporters will follow.
On May 20, “NYT” columnist Thomas Edsall wrote, “The pandemic has become another example of Trump’s mastery over his most loyal subjects, his ability to manipulate them into violating their own instincts.”
Wrong!
Like any effective cult leader, Trump manipulates his followers into violating their own common sense and their own best interests in favor of embracing their (worst) instincts.
At Trump rallies, his slap-happy, dazzled supporters gaze upon their Leader with a glassy-eyed adoration seldom seen since the heyday of the Manson girls. Or the heyday of Jim Jones. Or the heyday of “Heaven’s Gate” guru Marshall Applegate. The musician turned cult leader convinced himself and 38 other young men and women in San Diego in 1997 that a spaceship, hidden behind the Hale-Bopp Comet, would transport their souls to paradise if they broke free from their earthly bodies in preparation for the journey. A cocktail of vodka and barbiturates did the trick. (For the younger viewers in the audience, I am not making this up.)
The Heaven’s Gate cult members wore matching outfits and sneakers. Kind of like those ubiquitous red “MAGA” caps?
Trump’s hard-eyed wealthy conservative donors, individual and corporate, the plutocrats of the 1%, will follow Trump to the bottom as well, fighting like wolverines to hang onto their money and privilege.
Call them our American Royalty, the beneficiaries of a stacked deck, take-no-prisoners capitalism that has resulted in grotesque inequalities. How grotesque? In July, while many Americans waited for hours in food lines, a Ford Shelby Mustang sold for $3,850,000 and a LeBron James rookie card sold for $1,800,000. How grotesque? On May 21, “Forbes” reported that the 600 plus billionaires in America saw their wealth increase by $434 billion during the first two months of the global pandemic.
Nice work if you can get it.
Win or lose in November, both Trump’s starry-eyed and hard-eyed followers will abide.
The American Horror Story plays on. The immediate question is whether it will be renewed in November. Four more haunting, blood-soaked seasons?
On November 1, 2020, two days before the election, President Trump addresses reporters in the Rose Garden. With a sneer on his face, Trump says, “Pay attention, you repulsive fake news people. You enemies of the people. For months you’ve been reporting about people dying from the Kung Flu. First, it was 100,000 dead. Now it’s 200,000 dead.
“Fake News! I fooled you all! Not a single person has died from Covid-19! Not one! When the Kung Flu hit China, we sprang into action. I told you I was the only one who could fix it. And I did.
“Where are those 200,000 people? I’ll tell you. They’re on cruise ships! Fifty big, beautiful cruise ships! They’re floating around the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, having the time of their lives. They’re soaking up the sun, playing shuffleboard, eating at the Trump buffets, and trying their luck at the Trump casinos.
“They’ll be coming home the week after the election. Unless they’re having such a good time they want to stay on the ship. Who knows, maybe they’re never coming back. We’ll see.
“So remember – I’m the one to thank. No one else could have done it! No one but me! Not Washington, not Lincoln, not Roosevelt. Obama? One of the worst presidents in history. And Sleepy Joe? Give me a break! He doesn’t even remember how to tie his shoes!
“So get out and vote on Tuesday. Make America Even Greater! The Greatest!! Ever!!!”
Section 2: BLOWTORCH
“Imagine there’s no Facebook.
It’s easy if you try
No genocide in Myanmar
Or politicians who lie
“Imagine there’s no Twitter
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing for madmen to play with
As they whine boo-hoo, boo hoo
“You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
Someday social media will disappear
And the world will be more fun.”
--- with profuse apologies to John Lennon
And what, you might ask, have the all-powerful high tech titans been up to during a time of death and discontent? Helping solve the pandemic? Encouraging racial harmony? Countering the partisan divide that plagues us?
Cashing in and growing ever more powerful, according to Kara Swisher, longtime tech writer and editor at “Recode.”
After the pandemic, wrote Swisher in the “NYT,” “there will be a culling of most competition of these giants that will only strengthen the power and reach of the behemoths, eliminating pesky roadblocks to their further domination.”
“NYT” columnist Maureen Dowd is often wry, snarky, astute, and occasionally weird. But seldom furious. Here’s what she wrote as the pandemic deepened.
“On Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, the fat cats who carved up the country, drained us dry, and left us with no safety net profiteered off the virus.”
Once upon a time, the creators of Big Tech were scrappy outsiders, breaking stuff and disrupting tired and bloated industries. Those days are long gone. Now, the titans of Big Tech use their mountains of cash – as of November 2019, Google was sitting on $121 billion, Apple $102 billion, Microsoft $136 billion, Facebook $52, and Amazon $43 billion – to buy up or squash competitors, extend their reach into other sectors of economy, and hire legions of lawyers and lobbyists to fight to preserve their tax breaks and ward off antitrust actions that might break up their empires.
Jeff Bezos, for example has been summoned by Congress to explain why Amazon has allegedly collected date from small fish merchants on its site and then used that information to create competing products. If true, it’s a ruthless and predatory scheme cooked up to make Amazon and Bezos, the richest man in the world with a reported wealth of $138 billion, even richer. Oops, a correction. Bezos’ wealth has increased an additional $36 billion since the pandemic hit. And that number will be out of date by the time you read this It’s entirely possible he could become the first $200 Billion Dollar Person before 2020 comes to an end. [Update: Bezos hit $200 billion in August. Is $1 Trillion on the horizon?]
You would hope that a company owned and run by the richest man in the world would -- at the very least -- treat its lower-level employees with respect.
But it’s just the opposite.
A “Reveal” investigative report in April found that injury rates at Amazon warehouses were double the rate of the industry average. “A need for speed compromises safety,” stated a company safety manager. The investigation compared the warehouse workers who survive the grueling conditions to highly-trained athletes, racing to keep up while relentlessly pushed by their robot co-workers, who never get tired or sick.
Amazon warehouse worker Chris Smalls was one of the ringleaders of an employee effort to improve safety conditions by providing more protective equipment for workers, after reports surfaced that 650 employees in 150 Amazon warehouses had contracted Covid-19. Those figures were gathered by employees and investigative reporters; Amazon refuses to release the total number of infected workers and warehouses.
As a “reward” for his attempts to protect his fellow employees, Smalls was fired along with three other whistleblowers. Smalls, who is Black, was smeared by an Amazon attorney, who called him “not smart or articulate.”
In May, Tim Bray, a distinguished engineer and vice president at Amazon, quit in disgust, calling Amazon a “chickenshit” company for firing employees asking for safer working conditions. Instead of treating warehouse workers as human beings, wrote Bray, Amazon considers them to be “fungible units of pick-and-pack potential.”
The robots are treated much better.
Bray went on to state that firing whistleblowers is “evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture. I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison.”
Here’s a question: why do we need a new CD or blender or vacuum cleaner on a Tuesday instead of a Wednesday? Why do we give our business to a company that has helped wreck small businesses and decimate Main Street in many communities? Just to save a measly buck or two?
Hey, I’m as complicit as anyone else. When the shelter-at-home order came down in California, I mindlessly ordered a few items from Amazon. Shameful.
Maybe it’s time to boycott Amazon. Maybe it’s long past time.
Or maybe Bezos can raise the price of everything he sells by a stinking quarter and use that vast pot of money to create safer conditions and better pay for its blue-collar workforce.
Or maybe he can speed up his rocket program to emigrate and colonize the Moon or Mars or distant galaxies far, far away.
As Francis Foer, who has written extensively about Bezos and Amazon, noted in a long 2019 profile in “The Atlantic,” Bezos has been a science fiction nerd and “Star Trek” fanatic since childhood, lionizing the fictional character Luc Picard, captain of the USS Enterprise. According to Foer, Bezos talked the producers of “Star Trek Beyond” into giving him a cameo in the movie.
Bezos even seems to have adopted the look of the actor who played Picard, Patrick Stewart, shaving his head and buffing up to super fit levels.
Not long ago, Bezos said he has essentially given up on Earth, stating that we’ve wrecked it. More recently, Bezos has been hedging his bets -- and muting criticism -- by claiming we have to go to space in order to off-planet heavy manufacturing, which will in turn help heal the earth.
To that end, in February, 2020, he pledged to spend $10 billion of his fortune to combat global warming, announcing the Bezos Earth Fund. One of his first acts was to rename Seattle’s Key Arena, former home to the Seattle Sonics basketball team. Now it’s called the Climate Pledge Arena, one of the most banal names ever slapped on a building.
Sincere philanthropy or simply an exercise in good PR?
One could make a case for either or both.
Bezos and Amazon have been under fire from climate activists for some time. In January, 350 Amazon employees protested the company’s carbon footprint, a King Kong-sized monster stomping across the earth.
As Matt Reynolds reported in “Wired,” in 2018 the carbon dioxide emissions from Amazon were equal to those of the entire country of Norway. And things don’t seem to be improving. A recent Sustainability Report reported a 15 percent increase in emissions by the company in 2019.
Amazon’s mixed and muddled messages concerning global warming are matched in other areas. Amazon touts itself as a good corporate citizen, yet in 2018 it pitched a fit when the Seattle City Council proposed a tax on large Seattle companies in order to fund homeless services. The City Council backed down. More recently, Amazon dedicated $200 million toward fighting homelessness and inequality.
Sincere philanthropy or good PR?
Amazon didn’t pay a single penny in federal income taxes in 2018, parking huge chunks of revenue in foreign tax shelters and exploiting legal tax loopholes. As it continues to advance its agenda in Washington D.C., Amazon has employed a phalanx of lobbyists, entangled itself with government officials, and thrown its weight around in an attempt to win massive government contracts from agencies who buy tons of products that Amazon would be only too happy to sell to them.
And that’s not all. Amazon Web Services has bid on government contracts with national security agencies.
AWS is Amazon’s primary money maker, supplying roughly 50% of cloud computing services in America. Amazon controls roughly 40% of e-commerce as well. The Bezos Empire reaches into every corner of American life, from journalism to Hollywood.
And it wants more. And more. According to Foer, Bezos favorite word is “relentless.”
“Jeff Bezos has won capitalism,” wrote Foer. “The question for the democracy is, are we okay with that?”
That’s a very disturbing question. But perhaps not as disturbing as the relentless march of social media, which encourages, monetizes, and celebrates the worst of human behavior.
But don’t take my word for it.
Kara Swisher: Twitter publishes “an endless spew of toxic bile.”
Maureen Dowd: Social media’s business model is based on “the society-crushing pursuit of monetized rage.”
Nancy Pelosi, whose district include Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters: “Facebook, all of them, they are all about making money. Their business model is to make money at the expense of the truth and the facts.”
Timothy Aveni, a high-level Facebook employee who quit on June 1. “Facebook is providing a platform that enables politicians to radicalize individuals and glorify violence.”
On July 7, a two-year audit, sponsored by Facebook and conducted by a number of civil rights leaders and attorneys, declared that Facebook “itself is becoming a sort of radicalization engine … “driving people toward self-reinforcing echo chambers of extremism … “
In David Fincher’s mesmerizing bio-pic, “The Social Network,” about the creation and early years of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg is portrayed as a sociopathic weasel.
He originally created TheFacebook.com to retaliate against a girlfriend who dumped him, screwed over his initial business partners, and royally fucked over his best friend and co-founder, tricking him into signing papers that reduced his ownership share of Facebook from 30% to virtually nothing.
Roughly 20 years later, has anything changed?
In the past few years, Zuckerberg has sucked up to the Trump Administration, hiring Joel Kaplan an ex-Republican staffer and lobbyist to direct its affairs in Washington D.C., refused to ban political ads on Facebook that contain lies, offered, as “SFist” put it, “mush-mouthed justifications” for his stubborn reluctance to police his site, and wrapped himself in the cloak of the 1st Amendment as a champion of free speech.
On the day the civil rights audit of Facebook became public, some of the civil rights leaders and attorneys who conducted the audit met with Zuckerberg and other high-ranking Facebook executives.
The meeting didn’t go well.
Two days later, one of the participants, Rashad Robinson, the director of Color of Change, expressed his frustration with Zuckerberg and Facebook in an interview with the “NYT.” “They wanted an ‘A’ [just] for attendance.”
Zuckerberg focused on numbers, claiming that Facebook catches 89% of hate speech before it gets broadcast on its platform. Robinson calls that “gaslighting.” He says Zuckerberg and Facebook don’t “seem to understand the actual problem of their platform.” He worries that Facebook’s reluctance to monitor or remove Trump’s social media efforts to suppress the vote could lead to nightmare scenarios in November.
Meanwhile, Zuckerberg tap dances on, bending a bit whenever the bottom line is threatened, such as when major advertisers boycotted Amazon for its refusal to police hate speech.
Robinson, a backer of the advertising boycott, has met with Zuckerberg a number of times. He sounds like a man who is weary of beating his head against an obstinate brick wall. “I think his politics are basically just Facebook,” says Robinson, portraying Zuckerberg as a person who will “always have deep blind spots.”
Sociopathic weasels usually do.
And then there’s Twitter. Franz Kafka wrote, “There are two sins from which all others spring – impatience and laziness.”
Has any communications device ever exalted those two sins more that Twitter, which enables anyone to bleat/barf/burp/fart whatever they’re thinking or feeling at any moment to the entire world so easily and instantaneously?
Here are “NYT” columnists, conservative Bret Stephens and liberal Gail Collins, wringing their hands over the evils of social media on May 19.
Stevens: “My view of most social media, Twitter especially, is that it’s the digital equivalent of cocaine. People first do it because everyone else does. Then it makes them feel witty, confident, and popular. Over time, it turns them into obnoxious creeps In the end, it leaves them out of a job and feeling very sorry about all the people they’ve hurt.”
Collins: “The thing that makes everything seems sour now is the Internet. The many, many Americans who were steaming in silence back in the day now get to howl their outrage to the world on Facebook and Twitter.”
Jack Dorsey, co-creator and CEO of Twitter, is no Mark Zuckerberg. He donated $1 billion of his estimated $4 billion fortune when the pandemic hit. And he has deleted or put warning labels on some of Trump’s more incendiary or baseless tweets as well as shutting down many posts from QAnon, the loony and dangerous conspiracy site.
Not that Dorsey isn’t pretty strange in his own way. Writer Nellie Bowles describes him as a “one-man ‘Goop’” for his embrace of fasting, ice baths, cryotherapy pods, and vegan meditation centers. He’s really big on the powers of salt juice too. Dorsey has a cult following, largely made up of tech bros, who worship him as some sort of guru.
Hey, nothing wrong with strange. IMHO, all of us are pretty weird.
But few of us are running companies that pollute the world with never-ending rivers of bile. Not to mention threats of violence that easily can turn into actual violence. Dorsey’s efforts at “reforming” Twitter are the equivalent of slapping lipstick on a pig that is riddled with swine flu.
Hey, Jack, why don’t you just shut the whole thing down. Earmark another billion of your fortune to cushion Twitter employees who will be out of work after you close the doors. Then live in blissful meditative peace. Or go into business with Gwyneth.
Various academics and social media experts and politicians of both parties gnash their teeth over how to reform social media. Most of the suggestions sound about as effective as slapping a Band-Aid on a gushing head wound. Or adding mascara, Botox, and plastic surgery to that lipsticked, swine-flu ridden pig. It’s still a diseased pig.
The only treatment that actually might work is to strip Internet platforms of their protection under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Passed in 1996, it states, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as a publisher …” What began as a well-intentioned effort to promote free expression on the web soon became Frankenstein’s monster.
A newspaper or magazine or TV station or radio station can’t publish or broadcast material that libels or slanders you and demolishes your reputation, can’t intentionally inflict emotional distress, can’t falsely rile up other people who threaten to attack you -- or actually do attack you -- without opening itself up to lawsuits and potential ruin.
Why should social media be able to do so? Simply because a law was passed in 1996 that didn’t anticipate the evils that would follow? Section 230 should be consigned to the dust bin of history.
Some wail that the repeal would cripple social media sites and put them out of business.
One can only hope!
A more responsible social media might survive and perhaps even thrive. A repeal of Section 230 would force social media sites to slow down the machinery in order to fend off a potential avalanche of lawsuits. Your nasty tweet might not see the light of day for two days. Or ever.
Big fucking deal. The 1st Amendment protects us from the governmental suppression of speech. It doesn’t give you or me the right to spout off anytime or anywhere – such as on a privately-owned media sites, social or otherwise -- about anything our fool heads desire to tell the world at a particular instant.
Today’s social media encourages millions of people to scream “FIRE!” in thousands of crowded theatres. All the time. At the top of their lungs. The din is ear-shattering and brain damaging. Confusion, chaos, and panic follows. People are inevitably trampled.
In recent months, TikTok posts with a Pizza Gate hashtag have been viewed an astonishing 82 million times, mushrooming to include various celebrities from Ellen to Oprah as part of the alleged sex trafficking ring operating out of that D.C. pizza parlor, Comet Ping Pong. In 2016, a true believer drove from North Carolina to Comet Ping Pong and fired an assault weapon at a locked cabinet he believed contained abused children.
Maybe the kids on TikTok are just messing with conspiracy theories as a goof. But some of them are sure to get sucked in and indoctrinated in such craziness. Getting kids hooked on conspiracy mongering at a tender age – another triumph for social media!
Monitoring content before publication would be a huge job. But hardly impossible. Newspapers and magazines do it every day.
And guess what? According to a Pew Research Study released in April, some 36,000 journalists lost their jobs from 2008-2019. The situation is even worse now. As the “NYT” reported on July 7, “The economic paralysis caused by the pandemic has clobbered a newspaper industry already on the mat.”
Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, Blurt – actually I made that last one up – and all the rest of social media could tap into this huge pool of writers and editors to create professional and responsible sites.
Let’s face it. Social media is a Blowtorch that has scorched the earth, incinerating a sense of community, open and honest dialog, reasoned discourse, and common courtesy. Repeal Section 230 and allow social media to reform itself or die a deserving death.
Section 3: PEACE IN OUR TIME?
“… in America, we’re not supposed to leave anybody behind. In a country this rich, it isn’t right. A dignified decent living is not too much to ask. Where you take it from there is up to you but that much should be your birthright.”
--- Bruce Springsteen, from his 2016 memoir “Born to Run”
The Boss wrote those words about the 1992 riots in Los Angeles. The city exploded after the acquittal of white four cops who were charged with the brutal beating of Rodney King, a Black man, which was televised for the world to see. Springsteen was living in the city at the time, and he watched L.A. burn while perched on a motorcycle, high in the Hollywood Hills.
That was 28 years ago. Not all that much has changed. In the year of George Floyd, in the year of massive anti-racist demonstrations, we continue to leave tens of millions of Americans -- and especially Americans of color -- behind.
On June 3, “NYT” columnist David Brooks wrote, “I had hopes that the crisis would bring us together, but it’s made everything harder and worse.”
Our uncivil war has been accelerating.
One might have hoped that the 2017 murder of 32-year-old Heather Heyer, a paralegal and civil rights activist, by a white supremacist who drove his truck into a crowd of peaceful protestors in Charlottesville, killing Heyer and injuring over 30 others, would prove to be an isolated incident.
Fat chance.
From late May to late June, 2020, there were 50 attacks by people driving cars into Black Lives Matter protestors. As reported by “NPR,” 18 of those attacks were deemed deliberate with another 24 under investigation. As of mid-July the number of car attacks had risen to over 65, including the murderous death of 24-year-old activist and peaceful protestor Summer Taylor. Taylor, who worked at a vet’s clinic in Portland, was run down by the driver of a white Jaguar, who drove at high speed around barriers set up to protect demonstrators.
“The use of car attacks against peaceful protestors is increasingly a deliberate tactic for white supremacists,” Amy Spitalnick, executive director for the civil rights group Integrity First for American, told “NPR.”
Car assaults have been a tactic used by ISIS and Al Qaeda. In America, right-wing extremists adopted it in 2015 and 2016 during protests by Black Lives Matter and Dakota Pipeline demonstrators. The meme “Run Over Them” gained steam.
Recently, a fire chief in West Virginia was pictured in a T-shirt showing a car smashing into protestors. The T-shirt read, “All Lives Splatter.” The cretin was fired. But that’s not the point. Extremism, which used to be confined to the margins of American life, has steadily infiltrated the mainstream, egged on by Trump and his cult followers.
Assault-toting thugs invade a state legislature and terrorize elected officials. Reopen protestors threaten the lives of health officials. Government officials, including the President of the United States, threaten to unleash the military against its own citizens, and send anonymous federal agents to Portland as some sort of secret police force. Fourteen supporters of QAnon are on the ballot in 2020. Heavily weaponized police departments terrorize the people they are sworn to protect.
America has devolved into a fractured country that is more pitied than admired. A Pew Research Center survey in July: Only 12% of Americans are satisfied with the state of the country. Only 17% are proud. 71% of us are angry and 66% of us are fearful.
It’s time to acknowledge reality. There is no way to mend the partisan divide. Do you really think Trump and his cult are going to disappear if/when he loses? The Trumpsters will be angrier and more dangerous than ever. Trump will be on TV every day, either on Fox or his own network. Bitching, whining, lying, stirring up trouble.
Consider one of the dictionary definitions of community. “A feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.”
Our national sense of community has been shattered. What unites us in 2020? The Super Bowl? The Super Bowl Halftime Show? (How cool were Jennifer Lopez and Shakira?)
So it’s time to separate.
For the past 10 years, I’ve been a mediator in a small Northern California town. Our conflict resolution group mediates private disputes as well as cases slated for trial at the county courthouse.
It’s my fervent belief that 99% of conflicts can be successfully resolved. Sometimes transformation occurs and people locked in bitter, sometimes even violent, disputes are able to hash out their differences in a civil manner. A sincere handshake follows. Sometimes even a hug.
Other times the bitterness and rancor remain, but the parties realize it’s necessary to go their separate ways. Such as in a mediated divorce agreement, with property divvied up and kids protected.
That’s what America needs now. A divorce agreement.
Am I serious? Yes? No? Maybe?
YES!!!
America faces enormous challenges and numerous crisis. An uncontrolled pandemic. The existential threat of global warming. Centuries of racial injustice. Massive income inequality.
We’re at a tipping point. “This is as serious as it gets,” financial crisis expert and Berkeley economics professor Barry Eichengreen told “The New Yorker.” “Now, suddenly, there are larger issues than who wins the next Presidential election. Can we function as a country? Is there any social solidarity? Is there any hope for dealing with this virus? I think the stakes are cosmic at this point.”
On July 5, an editorial in the “NYT” described the present state of America in stark terms.
“Picture the nation as a pirate crew: In recent decades, the owners of the ship have gradually claimed a larger share of the booty at the expense of the crew. The annual sum that has shifted from workers to owners now tops $1 trillion.”
The editorial goes on to state that the bottom 90% of Americans should be making $12,000 more per year. Essentially, we’re sending a check for that amount to a person in the top 10%.
It’s impossible to work for the common good with people who reject science. Who swat away facts as if they were pesky mosquitos. Who wallow in bizarre conspiracy theories. Who believe everyone is out to get them. Who try to obliterate the wall between church and state, and believe Donald Trump was ordained by God to lead the nation. Who extort more and more from the public trough. Who believe they have the right to say anything and do anything they want at any time, no matter who gets hurt in the process.
A reopen protestor wrapped in an American flag put it succinctly with a sign that read: “Selfish. Proud.”
For those warm-hearted and soft-headed folks who think that more dialog, understanding, sympathy, and empathy can reach such people and turn them around, bless you for your sweet, gooey, kumbaya drum circle goodness. And I’ve got some swamp land in Florida that my good friends at the real estate firm of Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy, and Pretty Unicorn would like to sell you.
So let’s give the Trumpsters what they seem to want.
A land of their own. A bunch of red states. Start with North and South Dakota, where Trump can have his face chiseled on Mount Rushmore, and work down diagonally to the Deep South. Maybe we’ll even throw in Florida, “the poster child of nationwide dysfunction,” said native son Carl Hiasssen.
Yeah, we’ll give up Florida. Too many bugs. Too much humidity. Too many hanging chads.
Whoever wants to leave the United States can emigrate to the New Confederacy or Caucasian Nation or whatever they choose to call their country.
It will be strictly voluntary. Everyone can choose which land they want to live in. With a few exceptions. For example, anyone who refuses to wear a mask while Covid-19 continues to ravage America would be evicted.
And we’ll give those who decide to join the New Confederacy really nice going-away presents. Huge flatscreen TVs so they can watch all their favorite Fox News personalities. All the statues they can load on flatbed trucks. Money -- $100,000 per person to leave. It will be worth it.
We’ll also give them all the symbols they seem to crave so much. The flag, for example. It’s a piece of cloth. We’ll have a TV show, similar to “The Voice,” with artists competing to design a new one.
They can have the war-glorifying “Star Spangled Banner” too. Except for Whitney Houston, Beyoncé, Marvin Gaye, Lady Gaga, Renee Fleming, and a small number of others, no one can sing it. We’ll keep “This Land is Your Land,” a vastly superior song.
Only one condition: the people who choose to emigrate can’t ever come back. Although their kids can apply for asylum when they turn 18.
After the divorce, we can get to work. There’s a lot to do.
In the past few years, I’ve written some columns, under the title of “Sheer Madness,” about the Devolution of America. I wrote about holding onto shards of hope for an American revival and renaissance, despite my belief that those shards are going to cut us to ribbons.
But perhaps there are newfound reasons for hope. On July 16, Nicholas Kristof wrote,
“The grim awareness of national failures – on the coronavirus, racism, health care and jobs – may be a necessary prelude to fixing our country.”
That might be wishful thinking. Grim awareness is all well and good. But action is essential. Defang social media. Negotiate a divorce. And end America’s Uncivil War.
***
Jim Burnett has written about politics, legal and social issues, sports, travel, business, and the startup world for a wide variety of national and West Coast publications. He graduated from Duke Law School and Whitman College, where he majored in political science and played on the golf team. He is the founder of the consumer guide ExpertRex.com. In recent years, he has worked as a mental health counselor and a mediator for conflict resolution organizations. Some of his previous work can be found at substack.com.