The Big Shake Down & Shuffle: American Politics at What It Does Best These Days or at Least Often Enough (And Whence Pence?)

This blog, The Perched Eye (formally "The Eclectic Commentary from Pericles21') was started in February 2009, at the time of President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration. Initially, this blog would simply serve to chronicle standout happenings and trends in American politics judged to be significant from the the author's experience as a past candidate for elected political office and from extensive foreign travel. Also thrown in would be commentary about anything else in American affairs the author judged to significantly affect American life in general. Since 2008, America's 'life' has evolved in dramatic ways and directions; we appear to be faced with a totally new political paradigm, Trumpist 'populism' which seems to be Populism maybe in demographics and belief as the definition might dictate...but no one is totally certain about the reality of who are the participants or what the base ideology really is...beyond an apparent unity structured around racism and fear...but even that is cloudy. Anyway, times since the Obama presidency have 'morphed' radically in all manner of different and new, often bizarre and certainly unexpected directions that are revealed from the White House in almost every 24 hour cycle. But there seems to be an emerging pattern - things in Trumpland are getting more and more unusual, more and more extending beyond the Constitutional boundaries set by America's founders for the powers of America's chief executive ('Chief Executive' because after all, American democracy was founded on the principle of the separation of co-equal branches (3) whose smooth operation relies mostly on well-intentioned elected officers whose actions are guided in broad stroke with minimal (but strictured where the Founders, from their newly conceptualized and enthusiastic 18th century enlightenment, deemed necessary). Such seems to be where America is today...trying to hold onto the Founders' dream for an enduring Democracy, but faced with a political 'sport' a different kind of 'politician-citizen' whose talents, morality and even election (as far as we can tell) do not appear to fit the position and responsibilities of an American president.
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So far as we know, this morning October 5, 2019, Vice President Pence has not committed readily identifiable, or publicly released, criminal acts like Richard Nixon's VP Agnew who in the 70s received brown paper bags filled with bribery money delivered to his VP office in Washington, DC. But VP Pence might have aided s scheme to to purchase an unlawful political service, by unlawful means from a foreign nation..i.e., to have possibly aided a strong-arm shakedown of a foreign nation, Ukraine, through a $400 million bribe (through a Trump delay of an already Congress-approved, aid package to Ukraine). The ultimate goal was/is to obtain Ukraine's 'quid pro quo' participation in a scheme to influence the 2020 American presidential election bay falsely smirching Joe Biden, Donald Trump's potential 2020 presidential rival.

Overall, it seems at least on the national level, the venue of American political shenanigans has changed since the 70s Nixon-Agnew days. More than ever, American political crime schemes impacting even our domestic politics extend internationally in scope and and utilize degrees-removed foreign nation participation.

Now American politics' criminal activity utilizes impersonal, ultra-sophisticated technology that replaces actual people walking around carrying paper bags of cash,...or at least they use international first class seats. Anyway, the 70s brown paper bags of cash bribes walked into political office buildings, at the national level 'passe'.

But some things remain the same since the Nixon-Agnew 70s. Although there is more 'smoke and mirrors' and newer technologies are used to disguise political crime, there remains at the core the quintessential 'quid pro quo', the 'something-for-something', the 'deal'(why Pericles21 doesn't like to hear 'deal' used to refer to legitimate diplomatic negotiations, agreements and treaty). By this definition Trumps current 'Ukraine' mess is not 'diplomacy' - it is a shakedown deal done in the crime-language of a bad Hollywood gangster film.

In today's political crime, as with more of crime in general (but outside of the world of the poor caste who are capital/imfluence limited to do criminal deals the 'old fashioned way' through direct force and face-to-face threats), the high-level criminal activity has replaced the paper bag with impersonal, multi-tiered, intricately-webbed and hopefully untraceable, electronic-digital systems disguised as 'something else' but intended, ultimately, to deliver criminally obtained, or unlawful, assets or service of value.

In the world of international relations, things criminal or unlawful have changed, too. Modern political international criminal activity is increasingly centered around grey banking transactions involving hidden and/or degrees-removed participants whose intentions and everything possibly linked with the true criminal plot are cloaked under innocent-seeming disguises.

As in the case of some Trump business 'deals (schemes), there are sophisticated, superficially legal-but-disguised financial transactions (sales) that are not 'normal but in reality are 'long-con' political-business deals involving inflated priced assets whose presently-exorbitant price tags are based on hidden or long-term 'dodges'.

An example is the sale of vacant condominiums (at exorbitant prices) to pregnant foreign-national women 'tourists' to deliver their babies on American soil so as to gain future-generational extended family immigration into America and tax-advantages for the women's foreign families when the babies turn 21... when they then have the right to bring primary family into America (or something like that...).

Even shady international political 'deals' begin with the "quid pro quo", though disguised in quasi-diplomatic agreements (in reality criminal 'deals' about the 'give and take').

Finally, there is the sophisticated, global cyber-crime, the disguised bribery of even foreign nations, where at both ends the participants are two or more degrees removed from direct, cash money transactions - like Russia's influencing the 2016 American election through several intermediate cyber-criminal 'cutouts' but where the ultimate 'payoff' was to be the potential-president Trump's lifting of economic sanctions against Russia...a scheme disguised behind a seemingly harmless and innocent 'baby adoption' disagreement. And there is the most recent political crime attempt by Trump and co-actors, whereby strong-arm bribery was used to obtain Ukrainian 'interference' in the upcoming 2020 election by Ukrainian false smirching of the reputations of Trump's political rivals...and their families.

But again, some things are the same... behind the layers of disguise and magician's curtains, there lies the pile of money.

And interestingly, the perpetrators seem drawn to use the same spoken shakedown language... like actors in a 1940s American gangster movie. Only instead of 'you wouldn't want bad things to happen to that nice family you have...', it's now graduated to threats against a president's country, "...it would be a shame if something happened to your beautiful country..." [ 2019, DTrump speaking 1940s Hollywood 'gangsterish' to 'muscle' 2020 election interference from Ukrainian President Zelensky...and possibly using the same delivery to obtain 2020 interference from several other country leaders internationally, e.g, possibly Australia, Denmark, Italy and more]. How did Nixon-Agnew wind up?