WHAT LIES AHEAD FROM THE TRUMP DEBACLE?

Today, Pericles21 wrote a comment on John Amato’s Nov 27, 2020, ‘Crooks and Liars’ article on the future political effect of the 2020 election and was drawn back in memory to the honor of sitting in a small group college seminar listening to Hannah Arendt’s impromptu explorations on human vulnerability to authoritarianism manipulations and specifically on the rise and inhuman atrocities of 1930s-40s totalitarian Nazism (The Origins of Talitarianism, H. Arendt, 1951).  (The remarkable thing about Hannah Arendt is that her explorations, though not satisfying to everyone, were in my opinion 100 percent sincere ... one could tell by her visible pain in attempting, again, after no doubt many such presentations, to express ‘The Answer’, and we still haven’t figured this out.) Although Arendt’s thoughts, explorations and writings did not ‘close the book’ on authoritarianism, Arendt did leave vital ‘thought equipment’ outlining a path to frame, ‘see’ and describe how the human conditions leading to ‘modern’ authoritarian leadership and excesses (such as Trumpism’?). 

One feels that Hannah Arendt would be saddened but perhaps in a resigned yet ever hopeful way not shocked, that her musings and writings on authoritarianism continue to be sought out and critically pertinent after nearly a century ... and raise the same questions in current times! 

In his article referred to above, John Am@to asks ‘what did we learn from the rise, four years of the atrump ‘presidency’ and  the recent election details?  And, ‘can we prevent a future Trump?’ 

One answer, if not the most at-fault agent, is the pernicious effect of deliberate misinformation spread by profit-focused media outlets such as Fox News and similar right-wing outlets. But, in this blogger’s view, is this a too simple jand too quick jump to hand out ‘blame’ ... no matter how satisfying that might feel?  Does such an ‘easy’ labeling actually help create an opposite atmosphere of fear of expressing opinions, i.e., an equivalent misdeed?  

And an important corollary question is, ‘who will be the judge of media boundaries?’ 

Here is Pericles21’s comment on the John Amato article:

“Newsmax CEO Admits Airing Conspiracy Theories As News”  (John Amato, Crooks and Liars, Nov 27, 2020):

Pericles21: “We must be careful of capricious and dangerous censorship, I.e., ‘What is, or is not, News?’ And ‘who or what entity shall judge on that question?’  Why can’t we simply rely on the robustness of American ‘freedom of the press’? Hmmm ... but that ‘freedom’ got us Fox ‘News’, and Trump, didn’t it!!”  

 There is no doubt, in the minds of the majority of American voters (an excess of 7 million votes over Trump voters in 2020) that Trump and Trumpism was a bullet that America blessedly dodged ... and actually dodged back in 2016 when Hillary Clinton won the majority vote. How Hillary won but still ‘lost’ her election must be answered and preventive, but equitable, measures designed and implemented ... such as finally removing or neutralizing the Electoral College.

 

 

ARE WE SEEING AN ‘AMY CONEY BARRETT SCOTUS REGRESSIVE EFFECT’ ON THE LGBTQ COMMUNITY?

Is this a sign of movement toward a conservative regression?

BACKGROUND: 

A November 20, 2020, article cites a Boca Raton, Florida (of course) federal appeals court repeal (2-1) of a ban on gay conversion therapy as a “violation of First Amendment right to free speech”. Both majority judges are Trump appointees.  This repeal struck this blogger as a not-just-coincidental indication that the recent addition of ‘originalist’, Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court might encourage lower court conservative judges to begin to dismantle the gains made by the LGBTQ community. It is very pertinent that the arguments for recognizing gay conversion therapy were robed in religious costume: 

The therapists said their clients typically had "sincerely held religious beliefs conflicting with homosexuality," and sought counseling to conform their identities and behaviors with those beliefs.

TO THE POINT:

This blogger references back the warning of October 19, 2020, (AMY CONEY BARRETT ‘S ‘ORIGINALISM’ WILL PUSH AMERICA BACK TO 1800s VICTORIANISM) noting the potential dangers to social balance and gains made by the American LGBTQ community, from her views expressed in the US Senate hearings on her nomination to the US Supreme Court, the now SCOTUS Associate Justice, Amy Coney Barrett, described the LGBTQ community as essentially a lifestyle of “sexual preference”, a statement which this blogger challenged as being “scientifically invalid”, harmful to members of that community and potentially opening the door to re-activate the  false notions and marketing of so-called “conversion” therapies. This is supported by a brief look at the following excerpts from the Wikipedia article on conversion therapy:

the advancement of conversion therapy may cause social harm by disseminating unscientific views about sexual orientation.^[10] 

And, 

In 2001, United States Surgeon General David Satcher issued a report stating that "there is no valid scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be changed".^[15]”

Further, the same article gives examples of some of the torturing, so-called conversion ‘therapies’:

Techniques used in conversion therapy in the United States and Western Europe have included ice-pick lobotomies;^{[3][4][16][17][18][19]} chemical castration with hormonal treatment;^[20] aversive treatments, such as "the application of electric shock to the hands and/or genitals"; "nausea-inducing drugs ...

Currently, the invalid concept of sexuality as a preference or choice ... or at least a reparable state of mind has created a new type of charlatan, the spiritual interventionist and psychoanalytic ‘reconditionist’ - both are newer faces of the same old ‘snake oil’ industry, and still owe their existence to the false description of sexuality as a “preference” (ala Amy Coney Barrett): 

The point being made here is that ‘sexuality as a choice or preference’ is scientifically debunked and harmful.  

But we shall see if Judge Barrett can evolve in breadth and wisdom under her new, national, diversity accountability to a nation of real and broadly diverse  peoples.

IS THIS A TIME TO SUMMON THE PRAETORIANS?

 ”Praetorians”? From the shadows of the halls, from behind the curtain folds, metal-on-metal unsheathed? No, we must not slide further into that dark play. But there's no ethic owned by DT that prevents him from acting as an emperor from long ago....with a sycophant Senate and split America veering, maybe the current impasse awaits the his declaration he ’will’ serve a second term, at least, ...and ”then, we'll see”. That would be a perfect final exam for our Republic... to see ’how that cookie crumbles’.  Though, today's  Praetorian's carry people out on cushions and crossed arms and all else remains safely sheathed.

AN OVERVIEW AFTER THE 2020 ELECTION - BIDEN WON AND TRUMP LOST! AMERICA HOPEFULLY HAS LEARNED

 Yes, America escaped a dark, dark hole that could have made us a short footnote in some history book a century from now written about failed states.

THE CHURCH SUPPORTS LEGAL STATUS OF SAME SEX UNIONS

As reported in the October 21, New York Times, Pope Francis, in the documentary film (Francesco) released the same day at the Rome Film Festival, voiced a progressive shift in the Church’s tone affecting the LGBTQ community by supporting same-sex civil unions. The Catholic Church remains, though, opposed to same sex marriage).  The documentary reaffirms Pope Francis’ position that gay people are ’children of God’.

AMY CONEY BARRETT ‘S ‘ORIGINALISM’ WILL PUSH AMERICA BACK TO 1800s VICTORIANISM

The recent Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, used the term ”Sexual Preference” to describe the membership of the LGBTQ community. This was both shocking and foreboding. ’Shocking’ because, first, ’Sexual Preference’ as applied to the LBGTQ community is scientifically an obsolete and inaccurate descriptor by at least a couple of decades... as established by genetic studies that.prove human gender is not the 1800s strictly (and strictly ’enforced’) heterosexual picture and therefore variances (LGBTQ) from traditionalist heterosexuality are genetically ’natural and legitimate’ and therefore cannot, should not, be an issue for legal punishment, social ostracizing. employment discrimination ... or any form of gender-disadvantaging..

Second, equally as shocking, Barrett’s use of “sexual preference”, if sincere and not the rote-spouting of an ideologue who knows better, either reveals she is embarrassingly ’out  of touch’ or painfully ignorant about current scientific realism regarding sexuality and is thus unqualified to render a SCOTUS opinion on some of today's most important and sensitive legal protection issues in America. 

(if Barrett was insincerely spouting learned ideology then America is indeed screwed because Barrett comes with a ’preformed, Radical-right agenda’.).  

With Justice Barrett in the lead, will America see a revival of gender conversion therapy that will, in disguise as a ’corrective’ medical treatment, legally pressure LGBTQ persons to recant their ‘flawed’ sexual ‘choice’, i.e., LGBTQ, to miraculously and enthusiastically embrace their new heterosexuality... a genetic lie?  

And then, lastly, Barrett’s use of the ‘sexual preference’ descriptor is foreboding because whether sincere or not, Barrett will be a factor for regressing America by fifty years or more on several critical legal fronts - healthcare, ‘abortion rights, voting rights and protections, women’s equal pay in the workplace, labor rights, minority issues, ...and in other issues that are not strictly in the ’progressive’camp but are vital to the security and quality of American life.

ORIGINALISM!  

(This post is a warning about the dangerous, regressive effect an ultra-conservative ‘Originalism’ interpretation of the American Constitution will likely have on America. And more, will the recent nomination to the Supreme Court of Amy Coney Barrett, a self-described ‘Originalist’ (ala her legal mentor Anthonin Scalia under whom she clerked) bring about a radically imbalanced Supreme Court (6-3 conservative) in favor of ultra-conservatism and consequentially reverse a century of American social progress.

CRITIQUING ORIGINALISM. 

This blogger regards ‘Originalism” as an excuse to avoid putting the extra effort, beyond simply reading, into studying and understanding the deeper meanings of the American Constitution as they relate to an evolved America two hundred years after the Founders, ...and gaining a perspective about future issues that might face the Constitution . This and more would be the benefits of a non-literalist interpretation of the Constitution. Doesn’t it seem that the ‘sacred’ jurisprudence goal of any serious candidate for the Supreme Court would be to present the benefits of such deeper search for meaning ... to show palpable, distinguished evidence in writings and case opinions that the candidate to the court has delved to and outstanding degree into the ‘What’s’,‘Wherefores’, Why’s’ and ‘Hows’ that underpin the deeper philosophical concepts that shaped the Founders’ thoughts and intentions, especially regarding the potential ‘Relevancy’ contained in a ‘Living Constitution’. 

IMHO, Originalists take a permanent lunch break midway in the above sequence of Constitutional interpretayion while others are left to clean up the wreckage caused by ‘mis-application’ from too-narrow interpretations resulting in mis-applicaton.

A quick explanation of legal-world ‘Originalism’ could be by comparison with its opposite’s view of the Constitution. 

For an ‘Originalist’, the Constituion is a static document containing the Founders holy words which should only be read and memorized like a catechism...and not ‘messed with’ by verlaying things and opinions outside its exact historical context. For example, an Originalist ‘studying’ the Constitution as written’ would not see any relation between the written words and the multitude of passing cars (no horses in sight) and especially seeing people of all colors and gender endowmemts walking around blithely and unworried by their ‘differences’ from a so-called norm... as written, or implied in our Constitution, 200 plus years ago.

The apposite legalist, on ther other hand, becomes immersed in the Constituion and attempts to interpret its words relevant to the here and now. 

Given that a majority of the Founders were slave owners, and saw neither slaves nor women as potential voters, it seems highly threatening to current social meaning and stability to take ‘Originalism’ seriously. 

OTHERS’ VIEWS ON ORIGINALISM

Umair Haque’s article (Medium, October 24, 2020) cuts right to the core of his distaste for Originalism in its relation to the Senate Confirmation Hearing on the nominaton of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court:

Umair Haque on Originalism:                                                                                                  “How “Originalism” Prevented America From Becoming Part of the Modern World  (“The ACB Hearings Show How Antiquated, Racist, and Misogynist Trying to Think Like a 18th Century White Man Really Is”)

Haque’s is a fitting social media title that aptly conveys the controversy about judge Barrett’s unsuitability because of her “Originalist” interpretation of the American Constitution. 

America may have a decades-long clean-up ahead if Amy Coney Barrett indeed sits on the Supreme Court. (Of course, there will be many praying that she will ‘grow’ to acknowledge America’s evolution since the Founders and Barrett will adapt her legal and moral perspectives in accord.

==============================

The title of this post summarizes the atmosphere surrounding the potential Supreme Court shift toward a strict (radical, perhaps) conservativist interpretation of the American Constitution in both legal philosophy and applied principles. This shift is anticipated from Donald Trump’s nomination to fill the recently vacant seat of liberal SCOTUS Associate Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsberg (deceased Sept 18, 2020) with the conservative Amy Coney Barrett (Appelate Justice).  

Judge Bader Ginsberg was ‘with’ us from 1993 to 2020, and played a central role, in her unassuming way, in shaping a modern America .... despite America’s strong counter-tides of tradionalist, even regressionist sentiments and factionism.  Ruth Bader Ginsberg will be more than missed.

  

Donald Trump, in a not unexpected manner, plans to drop on America, a souvenir of his hopefully only term as president.   

Trump’s ‘gift’ to America in this case is the nomination of Amy Conney Barrett to fill the now empty seat of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Justice Ginsberg was a champion of women’s rights and equality, and made every effort to develop and extend the protections of those principles to everyone. Amy Conney Barrett is a stark contrast to Judge Ginsberg. Barrett is a career legal conservative and a somewhat more-than-even-traditional religious conservative - although raised in a strongly Catholic family, Barrett belonged to an ecumenical, charismatic covenant group, the People of Praise centered in Indiana.

Barrett comes with several areas of doubt about her suitability and legal ‘fit’ for the Supreme Court in today’s world, i.e., her ability to understand and relate to how America, and the world, have evolved over the 200 years since the Constitution was created. 

Recent article titles examplify the debate over her suitability to the nation;s highest court.  One such title is the lead-off to this post from ‘David’, Crooks and Liars (October 14, 2020)

 Internet Recoils In Horror Over Barrett's Ruling That Saying N-word Doesn't Make Workplace ‘Hostile’  (A ruling by Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett that whitewashed racism in the workplace shocked the Internet this week.)

Umair Haque notes this reservation in blunt manner (agreed with by Pericles21) in the above-mentioned Medium article (October 14, 2020);  

How “Originalism” Prevented America From Becoming Part of the Modern World  (“The ACB Hearings Show How Antiquated, Racist, and Misogynist Trying to Think Like a 18th Century White Man Really Is”)

And finally from  CathyYoung’s article on the Barrett nomination (ArcDigital, October 13, 2020):

The Handmaid and the Feminist                                                                                    Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination raises difficult questions of faith, justice, and gender.                                                                                                                                        “I believe that Barrett’s under-the-wire nomination — especially in conjunction with the Garland fiasco — stinks to high heaven on fair-play grounds. In fact, I would argue that if Barrett has not been confirmed by November 3 and if Trump loses, she should withdraw.”

Most notable from Ms Young’s just quoted ArcDigital article is it disparages the importance the LGBTQA community attaches to Coney Barrett’s “Sexual Preference” descriptor ... about which this blogger ‘Strongly’ takes issue in that “Sexual Preference” is so much a ‘Tell’ about where Coney Barrett’s mental context seems to belong, historically .... perhaps in Victorian England in the 1870s or so when LGBTQ were imprisoned or sent to mental wards). Or, most recently, in the 1950s America ...

“It’s this issue — the compromised moral legitimacy of the nomination itself — that Barrett’s critics should emphasize. Instead, much of the left has chosen ridiculous lines of attack such as Barrett’s use of the term “sexual preference” rather than “sexual orientation.” (Some LBGT activists argue “preference” is offensive because it implies that sexual orientation is a choice — even though the term is still widely used in scientific literature.) 

This blogger is not LGBTQA but “Sexual Preference” is so rmbarrasingly ‘yesterday’! Amy Coney Barrett has a lot of catching up to do to become a positive factor in America’s continued evoltition/

WHAT IF TRUMP JUMPS SHIP? (THERE ARE SO MANY SUCH SCENARIOS)

 To be brief - ‘we’d best be thinking about this last Knuckle Ball thrown by a ‘C&C’ master - Chaos and Confusion’, that is!!   

(This post makes note and recommends this possible scenario from the recent NewYorkMagazine article,  What If Trump Is All Too Eager to Give up Power? (Josh Barrow, Intelligencer, New York Magazine, October 19, 2020)

HEAR WE ARE (AGAIN) - HIGH FOOLISHNESS: THE EMPEROR’S CLOTHES....(FILL IN AS WISHED)

It seems we (in America) are living in endless, daily-repeating episodes of a ‘Ship of Fools’, Middle Ages’ response to the 1346 AD, Black Plague - a chaotic, frightened and confused era that was ’led‘ by (or better, ’driven by’) deranged, ranting, kakistocratic demagogue-saviors who in turn were followed by a mobs of superstitious, anti-rational opportunists. Familiar? (See Pericles21’s 2020, posts of July 5 and May 16 - respectively:

“AMERICA UNDER TRUMP: A SHIP OF FOOLS SAILING RUDDERLESS IN STORMY SEAS ... WHERE, OR WHO, OR WHAT IS THE CAPTAIN? IS IT TRUMP, COVID-19, RACISM...OR ALL THREE? HEAVEN HELP US”

and (May 16), 

HISTORY REPEATS: COMPARING OUR COVID-19 PANDEMIC TO THE 1346 AD GREAT BLACK PLAGUE

Our government leadership has gone over the cliff and the rest of us are about to blindly follow or are considering about joining in the leap, or are standing back, gaped mouthed, watching it all but afraid time has run out to save what's left of the American experiment ... even if the rest of us see clearly that Trump, the Republican orthodox conservatives and their (none-written) agenda are all smoke-and-mirror BS!  

The apex of this farce will be, when DT returns to office and says he was always recommending masks and social distancing and masks, how loudly the WH staff, MAGAs and other Trumpists will shout their support and  with blood-rage, cry louder for heavy punishment on those who still refuse to mask up and distance. Whack-a-doodle America .... but hard to laugh anymore.

Seems we’re in a poorly written, badly cast (“D level”), fictional, morality tv episode that loops round and round. 

It's hard to find the words to describe how the White House crowd, mostly educated and certainly privileged,  blindly followed Trump and willingly (even proudly) exposed themselves to the virus; then put nooses around their own necks, and now are looking at their colleagues and families getting the virus but with idiotic, wide-eyed smiles are not able to see a way to self-extricate from the Trump train wreck... even though the very simple solution is to just walk away. 

Trumpism! What a lesson in cult dynamics. 

Every Day in Trumpworld is new chaos and confusion.  And even now, hospitalized with full-on Covid19, it appears he’s conned his doctors to lie for him (that he is doing well) although their misconduct endangers even his own life. 

What an evil level of Dante’s Hell this is....and the upcoming  ‘election’ result is a coin toss (rigged?). This might be a deliriously comic play if it didn’t involve 214,000 deaths ...so far.

THE DEBATE DEBACLE WAS NO SURPRISE BUT CHRIS WALLACE’S MODERATOR ATTEMPT WAS A FLOP

This post is a reaction to an October 1 (2020) article in CNN news (Failure of Imagination: Why Trump can still shock the media) that covers the September 29 (2020) First Presidential Debate of the 2020 election. By several media accounts, the debate was a ‘Sh...tshow’ and much cyber print has been given to what contributed to that outcome. This blogger, Pericles21, was strongly unimpressed especially by the non-performance of the moderator, Chris Wallace, who is touted as a ‘star’ Fox News element (anchor or actor - depending on one’s attitude about Fox News).

Note: Pericles21, in ’normal’ universes, has a warm respect for Mr Wallace but to be kind, the debate was very far from home.

Àn opinion overall - even a dummy expected Trump to ’perform’ at his most outrageous level. so why was the media apparently.taken by surprise? 

A second opinion - as to why the debate fell apart: of course the main actor, Trump, carries most of the weight for that failure but there was also a second factor, and not always a minor actor, the media moderator Chris Wallace who just plain failed to be an effective moderator. Wallace’s performance was a cringe-worthy side show as he struggled to keep control of the debate but then fell to preserving what little dignity left in the debate and belonging to him personally.  After 15 minutes, Wallace’s priority seemed to be to save what remained of his packaged media facade - the cultivated, stiff, poseur posture and out-of-touch fake voice modulation. (Does he whine in real life?)  Wallace appeared to be struggling to step outside from his ’poseur’ media straight jacket but he was never successful. He never became a ’real’ and moderating agent. Wallace looked so trapped in a faux media costume, desperately trying to maintain his image as Trump ranted away and just chased Wallace around.  Wallace should go on retreat and try to figure out who he is, what current America is all about and what side/pov he feels comfortable with. He was nearly as much a turn-off as DT.

MIGHT THERE BE LIFE ON VENUS? PHOSPHORUS GIVES A HINT.

As reported Sept, 2020, scientists have detected Phosphine (PH3) in the atmosphere of Venus. This is significant because it suggests the possibility of life based in part upon a biochemistry that incorporates phosphorus as a byproduct or ‘mainframe’ of at least one life form on Venus.

In solution chemistry the salvation coefficient ‘determines’ the effectiveness of a chemical species to have an effective Dynamic in a specific solvent. And this coefficient is a function of the predominant pressure and temperature. The sigificance for extraterrestrial life forms is that under varying standard conditions (T,P, radiation...) there exists for a range of extraterrestrial environments a correlated range of solvation populations much like various fauna populations in planetary zones. Consequently, there are ‘families’ of chemical species, with similar solvation properties, stability-suited for various extraterrestrial zones. And, as well, there are families of solvents available to match to those zones. Consequently, just as water, H2O - the hydride of Oxygen is the predominant solvent on Earth (and ammonia, NH3, the predominant  atmospheric component... and the building block of our protein and DNA-RNA bio-information transfer systems),  we might expect ‘hydride cousins’ to be favored solvents and basic chemical building blocks on other planets. Thus on Venus, it is not surprising in that very different ‘T,P’ environment, to find the hydride of phosphorus, PH3 (Phosphine), to be a (stable?) ‘Life-marker’. (There also are other families of chemical life-markers, each distinctive to, and thermodynamically appropriate for, a wide range of extraterrestrial environments.) These basic points lead to the wonderful expectation that for nearly every extraterrestrial environment, there could theoretically be a characteristic (and ‘stable’) life-chemistry (‘life’ is a chemical system as far as we know.) With that said, we should expect ‘life’, varying from ‘primitive’ to ‘sentient forms, to exist throughout the universe... but with the proviso that other factors are present to sustain life ... for at least some time. Relative to cosmic time, billions of years, Earth’s life didn’t take long to appear (organized RNA assemblages) but it took several billion years of stop-and-go, near-total-extinctions and dead-end ‘life experiments’ for planetary conditions to ‘stabilize’ long enough, or ‘be influenced by’ eg cosmic ray mutations, for sentience to appear and be sustained. Of course, as we’ve come to realize there is a downside to sentience that human thinkers recognize to be a detriment to our continued existence, I.e., ‘Poised Sentience’, enough to build our own shelters and ‘husband’ our own food supply , not enough sentience to understand when to stop selfish gratification and save ourselves from self-extinction.

2020 TRUMPISM: THE LEGACY OF THE 1964-68 NIXON-GOLDWATER SOUTHERN (RACIST) STRATEGY

Richard Nixon’s evil political trick, his Presidential campaign’s  1968 Southern Strategy, lives on even more destructively than ever!  The Southern Strategy was, and remains, the work of the ‘Rancid Old One’ dwelling in the brains of Nixon and his campaign managers that made race-mongering the focal point of the campaign. The ‘Southern Strategy’  was, and remains, a life-threatening piece of political poison - dangerous skullduggery that easily can, did and continues to hurt and kill both target and users. It let bad stuff out of the bottle.

America’s current political-social turmoil, especially its extremes of public destructiveness and ‘shoot-to-kill’ reality, can be arguably credited to the extremist, manipulative, opportunist, venal, power hungry ... yet fragile ego of our incumbent president, Donald Trump. Likewise, the accompanying, intense racial discordance seems strongly linked, again, to the coded and overt public exhortations of Donal Trump to his 35% ‘base’ supporters - the ‘Maga Hatters’, religious southern evangelicals, right-wing conspiracy theorists, race-war proponents, gun culture 2nd-amendment right-ists, and so on, including several other fringe groups sheltered under the Trump tent. 

This blogger proposes that the above, current civil distress, and especially its root racism, goes back to 1964, when the ‘libertarian’ presidential campaign of  Barry Goldwater  was devastatingly rejected by the voters,...and, from that political failure, left the Republican Party with neither message nor person of substance to carry its banner forward. (In  retrospect, the Goldwater ‘message’ was actually a subliminal brain-mirage left by clever-sounding ‘media bites’ that upon repeating and further contemplation evaporated into meaningless Sophomoric quips.) 

‘Goldwater’ shocked the 1964 Republicans to the reality that they were ‘running on empty’ as far as message ideas and far worse, they realized themselves their messaging lacked a basic meaning. But, they also saw they had fallen into a trap of their own making - the Republicans had rejected so much in competing with the Democrats, there was nothing of real substance left for them ... they had even rejected science and technology in favor of evangelicalism, creationism, international isolationism and more.  

But the political obverse was that aided by the willing assistance from the backwards looking-and-longing Republicans, the Democrats had cruised by default (and by their own predilections) to near-exclusive ownership of ‘messaging’ the new American reality - youth, education, urban needs, American diversity (race, gender, age, etc).

In brief, the 1964, Goldwater-costumed, Republican Party had ‘achieved’ a near-overall rejection of reason and was regressing to a feudal condition ... while the Democrats were equally going full-blast in the opposite direction - upwards and onwards on the reality path to the future.

(And though the Democrats were surfing high on the crest of ‘what’s happening now’, there was the classic human ‘glitch’ written about by the ancients such as Aeschylus - ‘no picture is so perfect that it paints itself.’  Thusly so, with the Dems, even in a world with so many riches and open doors, just how does one start, use them, program them, message about them, unify behind them, etc... too much of a plentitude of riches. In other words, the classic, seemingly omni-present, Democratic Party ‘angst’ was opening fissures that allowed Republican presidential wins - the two terms of Reagan followed by the three terms of Bushes.

While the  ‘Old Guard Republican conservatives, in their vow not to repeat the ‘Goldwater Error’, were guiding the Party to the center - with some success, they were not totally successful in that struggle. 

After Goldwater, the Old Guard, conservative Republican ‘tide’ was always fighting against an ‘ebb’ tide of reactionary sentiment from the Republican base whose center was in the old South - ruralist (at least in cultural leaning) and religiously evangelical Protestant.  They made a good struggle to keep the Party ‘aucurant’ with a changing America, but there weren’t enough remaining rationality-messaging hand-holds to save the Party from regressing the ‘rest of the way’. 

But meanwhile, since 1964 and Goldwater, the American voter had grown a bit and was not so easily impressed (tricked) by the ‘quick-slick-worded one-liner’, vapid, behind-the-curtain, dismalness that Republican messaging had become. This was a tough situation - how and where could Republicans find a new hand-hold on their worn-slick, skeletal bones to message something to appeal to the newer voters, or even to hoodwink them.

These post-Goldwater challenges ideally required breadth and subtlety of thinking and problem-solving talents and skills, not ideological ‘magic and believing’ - tricks of self-deception that quickly evaporated under ‘second order’ examination into ... nothingness. Republican ideology, though, excelled in ‘faux-argumentation’ which was (is still) based largely on the rejections of classical rationality and Reason mixed with a strong measure of authoritarianism, and was thus automatically incapable of adapting and addressing these challenges.  (Once more, as exampled by Goldwater in 1964, Republican ideology had that tendency to ‘crash and burn’ before takeoff.)  

 

But the Republican messaging gap had to be overcome. A ‘fix’ had to be found.

Then, in 1968, there appeared from the dark imaginings of Kevin Phillips,  a young political consultant to Richard Nixon’s campaign, a new plate of Republican messaging magic - the race-baiting slogans, trigger phrases and graphic race-hate images now known as ‘The Nixon Southern Strategy’, which has become the core of all subsequent Republican Party messaging. (Mr Phillips has since, after maturation, left the Republican Party.) The Republican’s race-baiting often enough hit a mark - it did offer simple-concept reality-substitutes, i.e., hate and authoritarianism which easily satisfied the southern White majority and eventually a major segment of the working class (arguably aided by Democratic defocusing from the exceptionally strong relationship that had existed between the Democratic Party and labor unions.)

The current race-baiting, white nationalist messaging from Trump’s Republican Party is then the direct descendent of the 1968 Nixon “Southern Strategy” which was dreamed up to save that near defunct Party by stealing from the Democrat Party the southern White, conservatives (Dixie-crats) ... and Donald Trump is the current legacee of that terrible 1968, Republican wrong-turn-at-the-crossroads.

At the core of what Pericles21 suggests was the ‘Republican Problem’ in 1964, and that remains now, is that in 1964, they realized that largely through their own fault they had guided themselves, or allowed themselves to be guided, into irrelevance to American issues. And they hadn't found a way out.  And althoughhemselves be g they saw from the 1964 ‘Goldwater Affair’, that their conservative ideology, even when embellished with ear-catchy phrases, invariably if not too quickly,  collapsed on itself and thus offered nothing useful to resolving the real American problems that were evolving on several challenging fronts - social, international, technological and more, there was not much Republicans could do to mask that inadequacy except to “double down” on a losing bet’

The Democrats, by their natural alliance (it seems) with scientific rationalism, have been near-perfectly aligned with modern problem analytical methods and thinking and thusly have been comfortable with America’s new technology base and are especially coherent with AMERICA’S ‘NEW DIVERSITY’ (a historically preexistent racial diversity that in 1964, with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, was taken out from behind the ‘Jim Crow’ curtain and became a legitimate, ‘full-rights’ picture of America... and was subsequently complemented by gender-rights laws and social acknowledgments.)

In comparison to the above evolving America, and to the Democrats’ easy adaptation to those mentioned changes, the Republicans, largely through Nixon’s 1968 Southern Strategy which relied on race hatred at its core, had self-isolated from America’s reality, and also from the international world. 

By 1968,The Republican campaign messaging had become an almost-empty bag of emptier-sounding  clever quips that actually scared voters when read or heard spoken a second time (Goldwater, 1964 campaign). 

(COMMENT: it is worth noting that, imho, there is in 2020 a Goldwater heir of sorts the clever-phrase wonder, Rand Paul (Republican Senator, Kentucky)

So, even after a debatably illegal 2016 ‘Trumpism’ electoral college ‘win’ (although Hilary Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million), America and the Republican Party, were faced with the problematic ‘realty’ of Donald Trump as President because the Trump ‘success’ ‘came with’ (not ‘because of’) an all-embracing alliance with the empty leftovers from the 1964 Goldwater debacle. But it was all about the Goldwater ‘leftovers’, anyway.

Predictably, within weeks after the 2017 inauguration, Trump turned full-on rogue, and aided by an increasingly complicit Old Guard, rapidly began regressing America to a feudal, autocratic, oligarchic-fascist status ...complete with walled borders, hunched shoulders rejecting centuries-old allies and treaties - all of the inappropriate formats for 20th century world leadership.

So now, in 2020, with Trump, the Republican Party finds itself again regressed to a 1964 Goldwater ‘poseur’ status with nothing to offer except empty words and phrases drooling from the mouth of an authoritarian, con-artist (who is also alleged to a paper-marche puppet of an foreign state enemy -a true nightmare for that super-patriotic party.

COVID19: TRUMP’S ‘BIG HOAX’ LIE’ AND WOODWARD’S (ENABLING) AUDIENCE ROLE - MORE TRUMP-WORLD STUFF ‘BEHIND-THE-LOOKING GLASS’

 Seems to be there might be several crimes, criminal and/or ethical, associated with Woodward’s revelations in his recently released book, <b><i>Rage</i></b>’. At the least, Trump created a lie about the virus for political gain - “ it is a Democrat hoax’. But then Woodward kept quiet, for maybe too long, about knowing the truth (and having the interview tape to prove it).  Quite logically, from having had 4 years to watch Trump ‘operate’ on many before and after Woodward,  was Woodward’s post-interview silence because he was in ‘a state of ... something’ simply from having logged too many hours interviewing Trump? (A matter having consequences for an observer’s mental clarity.)

Imho , both Trump and Woodward  profited from their roles - certainly as liar (Trump) and arguably, as abettor (was Woodward’s delay in revealing Trump’s Big Lie at the very least, unethical?). First, Trump gained politically (and possibly criminally) from his initial ‘Big-Lie-by-disinformation’ (“the virus is a non-threatening Democrat Party hoax”). Second, Woodward’s withholding the truth about Trump’s Big Lie added book value from hitting the optimal timing for book publication ... i.e., two months before the election).   Might Woodward’s silence be regarded as effectively an ‘abetting’ silence? But, speaking on Woodward’s behalf, how was Woodward to know if Trump’s Big Lie was really a lie in itself, ‘a lie about a lie’ .... such is life in Trump-world behind the ‘Looking Glass’. Where all-at-table have to be careful to keep their heads from being dunked in the teapot.

TRUMP’S BENT-UP, CROOKED TRUMPET HAS LED AMERICA TO BECOME A THIRD RATE DICTATORSHIP

To begin this post, Trump lost the 2016 American presidential election’s popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 3 million votes, but he ‘won’ the electoral college ‘tally’ by a significant number. However, that ‘Win’ resulted from a total margin of 77,000 votes spread strategically (through voter district gerrymandering) over three critical states - an accomplishment critically aided by a murky package of onion-layered data-mining and internet analysis-planting operations, shell companies and ultimately funded by Russian Intelligence. All of this added up to manipulation of the American 2016 election thru the ‘cooperation’  of Trump campaign managers, Wikileaks and an ‘independent’ Ukraine-based (not Ukrainian!), cyber-snooping startup that did ‘business with both the Republican and then the Democrat Party and alongside with  Russian Intelligence (GRU) - a fine mix as they would say in Boston. 

Once in office, Trump has openly, and without restraint from a partisan and blatantly enabling Senate, broached historically normative as well as some Constitutional presidential boundaries.

Trump has proven ignorant of, or ignores knowledge of American diplomatic practices, treaties and objectives; he has set his own personal, often erratic and short-term changeable, new ‘courses’ for American diplomacy that seems to change daily somewhere and appears to the international community to be a kind of drunken random walk. This has negatively impacted America’s trade and financial links.

Trump operates America like a small, sole-owner corner shop; or he wants to operate America that way.  He is a micromanager and to render America suitable to his small-scope managerial capabilities, he has unmethodically (but effectively) reduced America to a giant dressed in rags, now humbled and bent to his small store vision limits. Trump has stripped most of the major government departments of seasoned top staff, reduced significantly operational employees, and inserted his personal directors who like him are unfamiliar with the operations and purposes of their new jobs. As the result, America presents to the world a face of ignorance, amateurish bumbling and unprofessionalism that constantly throws historical allies off-balance and estranged America’s relationships with them. A telling sign of the Trump era are his apparently favorite international leaders, a consistent set of global autocrat dictators - principally those of North Korea, Philippines, Brazil and Russia. America, directed by Trump, is no longer a ‘peer’ within the diplomatic and trade circles of former allies…why…because America no longer knows what it is doing!

On other fronts, Trump has shown a propensity to associate with fringe elements from conspiracy-theory groups to pseudo-science to neo -Nazi racists. Nazi-flage wavers are tolerated in public now and have open-door access to Trump. 

Amid this and more, Trump has attempted to micro-manage America’s response to the COVID-19 virus pandemic - he has fronted new ‘cures’ as often as he hears of them even though some have been bizarre such as calling for testing bleach injections and throat sprays. Continuing with his attitude regarding the pandemic, Trump also displays a hostility to Science methodology and safety testing. Also in this regard, he has nearly destroyed the environmental regulations set up by former republican administrations to assure Americans of safe water, air and products. 

To summarize, but there is much more that can be described, the Trump presidency has been characterized by ignorance, unprofessionalism, anti-science, anti-regulatory, anti-intellectualism, anti-government, small-scope destructiveness and pettiness. Plus all of these characteristics are mixed in with what some see as psychopathy, malignant-narcissism and a projected self-destructive bent.

The question is, at this time, how further down this destructive path and to what darker corners will Trump drag America and the rest of the world?

THE AMERICAN CIRCUS - STARRING PUTIN’S PUPPET, ‘D TRUMP’

We are now in final weeks before the 2020 presidential election and by now, we should have learned to expect any, and every bizarre trick that Trump could conjure to disrupt, corrupt, steal, delay or nullify that election.

A major factor in Trump’s ‘trick bag’ is perhaps not entirely his own to control. This factor is Trump’s backer (or ‘puppet master’, Russia, i.e., Vladimir Putin... arguably one and the same).

                     (foto courtesy of palmerreport.com, August 13, 2020)

Robert Harrington writes in today’s “PalmerReport” blog  his views about the ‘curiously close’ (some say ‘treasonous’) ‘friendship‘ and mutual support alliance between Donald Trump, America’s current president, and Vladimir Putin, the Russian ‘leader-for-life’ (Donald Trump, the Russian President, Palmerreport.com. August 13, 2020). Harrington further opines: 

“I don’t see how America can survive four more years of a Trump presidency.”

This blogger, Percles21, felt alarm about a Trump-Putin shady pairing from its first pre-election signs in June 2016, (perhaps years earlier?) when Trump, and family, had a series of one-on-one meetings with Putin and Russian officials... without the presence of independent, verifying American witnesses. The meetings‘ attendees were close family and associates who were still operating as members of Trump’s business operations.  

(And well after Trump’s inauguration date, Trump’s family members continued https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S9-C8-1/ALDE_00001096/their dual (conflicted) roles as business operatives in the Trump enterprises yet also as Trump-appointed White House advisors with top level security clearances.)  This blurring of the line between Trump’s business interests and the policy integrity of the Presidency looked like clear and perhaps deliberate violations of the US Constitution’s “Emoluments Act”, they are in that respect another blog subject. 

For this blog’s focus, those clandestine (closed-off) meetings seemed to paint another picture - the appearance of ‘treason’. And, those meetings set the stage for others like them after the election and inauguration. 

Back to Robert Harrington’s article cited at the start of this post: Harrington emphasizes the somewhat constant and strong ‘odor‘ hinting that Putin, the Russian ‘leader’, has some kind of ‘hold’ on Donald Trump. 

Harrington writes:

“I call him the Russian President because that’s what he is. Trump exists as an extension of Vladimir Putin’s will, ...and will always remain ‘Putin’s Poodle’.  

Putin...delights in his puppet mastery of Trump and the chaos Trump has sown in America.

Putin knows that another four years of Trump will mean the end of America as a world power. And I think he’s right.”

  Again, Harrington’s opinion of the Putin-Trump pairing: We are now in the final weeks before the 2020 Presidential election and, knowing from more than four years observation how erratic Trump can be, there are no boundaries that Trump might push or exceed to be re-elected.

“I don’t see how America can survive four more years of a Trump presidency.”

 We are now in the final weeks before the 2020 Presidential election and, knowing from more than four years observation how erratic Trump can be, there are no boundaries that Trump might push or exceed to be re-elected.

.

 

                   

DONALD TRUMP HAS A NIECE: AND SHE HAS JUST PUBLISHED A BOOK ABOUT HIM ...

The great thing about Mary Trump’s new book about her Uncle Donald is she comes right out and says Trump is long-time fudcked up, i.e., “permanently damaged” in composed, professional terms  (Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.  Mary Trump, July 14, 2020). 

But, in consequence of America being Trump’s wallowing pit, so is America fudcked up... but only as long as he hangs around.  A neat review of Mary Trump’s new book is written by ‘muckibir’ (Water, July 14, 2020).   Then there is the J. Lederman-D.Gregorian July 7,2020, review, ‘Sociopath,’ ‘clown,’: 8 unflattering anecdotes from Mary Trump’s book‘

Mary Trump’s assessment of Uncle Donald might be the ‘EOS’, end-of-story, in a normal world but now the world is deeeep in Trump territory, i.e., we’re up to eye level in foulness and evil, scheming, lying, grafting, scam ... not to mention a hoard of most foul unmentionable acts and intentions.

 But, ‘Hark, well’,  America’s dire condition should not be surprising since Trump has been at work on America for 3.5 years so what can you expect but our country divided, wearing rags, and dumpster diving.

At least Mary Trump assures us the screwiness we see is real and not our fault ...mostly ... unless we’ve somehow, through simple ignorance or falling for the smoke and mirrors, for the grift and scams, for the ‘Fast-Hand-Freddy’ alley-way come-on, we’ve enabled the fucker.. Matter of fact, according to Mary, if we can see Trump is a piece of-work then we are ‘OK’. It’s when we see nothing wrong then we should be worried.

Mary Trump also tells us not to feel alone in our fear in the face of Donald’s wrecking of America. We’ve plenty of company. But the difference between ‘them’ and us is ‘they’, the true acolytes under Old Nick’s claw, know what they’ve bought into ... and like it; just check out the smug, ‘look-I’m-in-the-incrowd’ ecstatic self-satisfied look on Mitch McConnell’s face whenever he’s around Trump.


https://muckibr4.wordpress.com/2020/07/14/mary-trump-tells-the-truth-about-her-uncle-donald/book

AMERICA FROM THE COLISEUM UPPER TIERS : POLICE KILLING OF GEORGE FLOYD, AHMAUD ARBERY,

Another brief post to convey the shock, disgust and fear for America after viewing these, and more, police killings of unarmed African-American men.

The victims in the title of this post:  

George Floyd, killed May 25, 2020. Choked to death by police after purchasing cigarettes with an alleged $20 bill. (Minneapolis, MINN);

Breonna Taylor, killed March 13, 2020. Mis-identified and shot sleeping in her bed by an invasive police team (Louisville, KY);

Ahmaud Arbery, killed February 3, 2020. While jogging, routinely along regular route - chased, held and shot by 2 private citizens.

This blogger experienced ‘out-of-body’ shock viewing, reacting then seeing these actions from a third-degree-of-distancing perspective... thinking of the blood, noise, victims’ pleas, the ease of killing, the glazed and rage-filled growls of the killer police and gun carriers... pack animal predators in blood lust.

 More, the impression gained from watching how easily, casually and swiftly can police-citizen encounters escalate - from even friendly exchanges tohootings and death ...of the African-American men.   This is disgusting because we saw too much of police losing control..OF THEMSELVES as they, the armed parties, seemed extensions of and subordinate to,  not masters of their guns. Then seeing police, greatly outnumbering the victim, losing their humanity like a gang of bloodthirsty predators around a fallen (and handcuffed) prey.These pictures and videos were not about humans. We saw our fanged ape ancestors came out of their caves and trees to taste the blood and feast.

It is straight up Bullshit to label gun ownership and hunting as ‘SPORT’... hunting in the 21st century is the Ultimate Pornography - the taking of life. and when taking human life for trivial reasons...that is the one true sin.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd
May 25, 2020.  Purchased cigarettes with Alleged counterfeit $20 bill.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Ahmaud_Arbery   
Feb 3, 2020. Georgia.  Jogging

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Breonna_Taylor 
March 13, 2020. Louisville ky sleeping. Mistaken home.

PUNKNG THE AMERICAN BLUE COLLAR WORKER, TRUMP STYLE. (‘RISE UP’, ‘UPTON SINCLAIR!)

This is short just to get it said NOW!

Can we believe it? Just how twisted can Trump get? Apparently really twisted and dark.

In 21c America, DT wanted to force American meat packer workers to go back to work before the Pandemic had abated? Trump appealed to patriotism in the face of the enemy, Coronavirus 19 ... just as his supporters appealed to America’s seniors to refuse treatment in order to cull us of weaker citizens thus achieving an imagined ‘herd immunity’ sooner ... and get the economy (read, Wall Street) sooner.

Plus, threaten the workers whose good judgement said “NO!”  (in the face of no vaccine and no assurances that they will have protective equipment while on the job). with loss of still-active unemployment payments!

Plus, requiring said workers to sign papers absolving meat packing companies and executives from accountability if the workers caught the virus on the job?

Plus, not requiring said workers to wear masks or practice on-the-job distancing? Or require the companies to provide this protective equipment!

Unbelievable1

America under Trump has regressed to the 1920’s meat-packing scandals written about so damningly by Upton Sinclair in his 1906 novel, The Jungle.  ‘The Jungle’ depicts the deplorable life, status and working conditions of the American meat packing worker (which led to the establishment of the Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA,1906) making it a crime to adulterate.or misbrand meat and meat products being sold as food and to assure sanitary conditions to make these products). 

 “...poverty, the lack of social supports, harsh and unpleasant living and working conditions, and a hopelessness among many workers. These elements are contrasted with the deeply rooted corruption of people in power. 

A review by the writer Jack London called it "the Uncle Tom's Cabin of wage slavery."^[3]

Again, America, a ‘Ship of Fools’! Where has Trump led America to?

AMERICA UNDER TRUMP: A SHIP OF FOOLS SAILING RUDDERLESS IN STORMY SEAS ... WHERE, OR WHO, OR WHAT IS THE CAPTAIN? IS IT TRUMP, COVID-19, RACISM...OR ALL THREE? HEAVEN HELP US

PREFACE:
2400 years ago(!), in 375 BC, Plato, the Classical Greek philosopher and arguably the mainstay pillar of critical thought for the whole of subsequent western civilization, wrote  The Republic which seems to describe, in allegory, America’s failed presidency under Donald Trump.  Plato wrote of a bumbling, directionless human condition resulting from farcically inept mis-leadership which Plato described as like the randomly winding journey of a ‘Ship of Fools,  captained (or cheered on from the poop deck) by a cowardly, inadequate fool’s fool.

Note the descriptor of Plato’s Ship of Fools in the ‘Republic’ (Book VI):

“There’s the shipowner, larger and stronger than everyone in the ship, but somewhat deaf and rather short-sighted, with a knowledge of sailing to match his eyesight.”

America, with Trump on the poop deck, flounders rudderless a-sea  like Plato’s ‘Ship of Fools’.

Reflected in the light of Plato’s warning about the dangers to a democratic ship-of-state under inexpert leadership, ‘Trumpist’ America has experienced a systematic  dismantling of  Constitutional principles and norms - an onslaughts that started from the beginning of Trump's tenure and hasn’t lessened.

Trump’s muddling ‘mis-leadership’, has brought America finds to a 2020 state of ‘Chaos and Confusion’ - in danger of falling apart from a three pronged attack of disease, civil division and racism, and looming economic trauma.

The Trump-caused 2020 challenges facing America in it’s 240th year (1781-2020) are:

 (1) an unchecked pandemic disease that already has infected one of every one-hundred Americans (25% of global infections vs America’s 5% of world population!!); 

(2) an America racked internally by toxic racism and harsh political division left over from a terrible civil war that ‘de facto’ is still being fought 160 years later (1861-2020); and 

(3) an about-to-happen economic collapse already set up with 30-40 million Americans out of work (though, mind you, Trump boasts this is a wonderful recovery even as states close down again as the pandemic COVID-19 disease shows us a second phase resurgence that looks to be worse than it’s first wave).

So, here we are, like a ‘ship of fools’ giddily floundering ona stormy sea.  The following 15c. graphic depicts Plato’s ship-of-fools theme (attributed by some of to Albrecht Durer, the German Woodcut master)

——————————————————

DISCOURSE:
Currently, America faces serious challenges to which the American presidency, Trump, like the captain of Plato’s ‘Ship of Fools, is not up to handling.

To begin with, there is the ‘Pandemic’ which America’s ‘captain’, DTrump, has managed to slough off all responsibility for even though he constantly tossed off its threat as a ‘hoax’ during the critically important initial warnings and then surfacing of the disease in America ... thus exacerbating its deadly effect.

By August 2020, There might be 150-160,000 American Covid19 deaths, but even this tragedy-from-farce is made worse by Trump’’s ongoing refusal to publicly wear a protective face mask,... even when members of his own family and staff are afflicted.  (What a terrible, dysfunctional message to send out to his supporters who appear more and more to look like an anachronistic, throwback death-cult from Medieval plague times, near 700 years ago.)

But this digresses from the core rot of America’s unmet problems.

In addition to our current Pandemic, COVID-19 disease, the overall and continuing American theme for the past three years has been the barreling train wreck that is the Trump tenure as America’s somewhat farcical, but seriously globe-threatening, President.

As posted recently, America is currently experiencing not only a pandemic but a severe and unique economic calamity (40 million unemployed) and then on top of all this, America’s ever-present, but long ignored, racial issues have burst open like a ‘Buboe’ marker of another kind of illness - a social ‘dis-ease’ that has too hung around.even after the 1865 Civil War ‘ended’ with the emancipation of African-descended slaves.

And at the crossing point of these issues, at the nexus of America’s woes... stands Trump, negectful or ignorant of his responsibilities to his job, i.e., the notion of ‘service to the country’, that a president must take on as the starting point of his/her presidency. (But ‘our’ Trump appears to lack the intellect, situational awareness and thinking tools to do anything but focus on his own personal interests.)

Speaking further on America’s issue under the Trump tenure, it seems the fragility and impermanence of human society, and nations in particular, are constantly threatened by a leader’s hubris. Is this danger unavoidable? Answer, ‘sometimes’, but America has been blessed, it now appears, with a majority of principled Presidents whose internal checks have kept their integrity intact and provided them with credible vision. Donald Trump’s presidency has proved to be a gross outlier to that group,

Further to comment on America’s current state, reading recorded history of our human species, we can see that even for our ‘modern’ society, which has progressed from a belief in the Ptolemaic earth-centered universe to walking on the moon (a technological miracle), humanity continues to fall short of managing our lives.

Despite our technological advances, the difficulty humanity has with self-management is an ever-present challenge facing us like some Sisyphean burden. Is there a tragic flaw imbedded in our genes that keeps us in place no matter how hard we march and sweat?

The ancient Greeks, who passed to us the formula for our democracy, had two terms they invented from their own experiences with several hundred years of democracy -  kakistocracy and idiocracy.

These terms describe a confused and disorganized government firstly led by those who are completely unqualified, the ‘kakistocrats’; and then, perhaps most importantly to nurture social stability, led by those who also lack a sense of what might be important beyond their own selfishness - the ‘idiots’.  The ‘idiot’ might be very intelligent by measure of standardized scales, e.g., SATs, but nevertheless lacking the ability to see the ‘Common Good’, a pillar principle supporting democracy and a major philosophical theme framing the American Constitution.

(Trump appears amply‘gifted’ with both ‘non-qualities’, ‘idiocy’ and ‘kakistocracy’.... in one package.)

America’s problems aren’t hard to sort. They reduce to principally three issues.

First, there is America’s still very much alive Civil War Of 1861-65. The losing side, the former ten Confederate states, have until very recently in 2020 (owing to the public outrage over the police killings of Afro-Americans George Floyd et al) continued for a century and a half, 155 years, to fly the confederate flags in equal status with the conqueror’s flag, that of the American Union.

Is this a lost war to the Confederacy view? Not at all because the War’s continuance was acknowledged, accepted and then effectively ‘won’ by the Southern Confederacy through legally enforced ‘Jim Crow’ laws which returned former slaves from Constitutionally freed status to de facto, second-class chattel status separated in contact from mainstream (White) America. 

The lingering a legacy of de-facto slavery continually erupts like a dormant volcano, yet America’s partisan political terrain prevents a coherent effort to even discuss this subject.

Second, there is America’s loss of commitment to the Common Good - principally exampled by our failure to have a true, inexpensive, national healthcare-for-all program  (also free of Trumpist financial tricks, e.g., ‘find the pea-in-the-pod’ games that just dig deeper financial holes for the poor and middle class), and our failure to have a free, or almost completely subsidized national higher education program that will allow America’s youth to develop on par with other technologically advanced nations who invest heavily in educating their youth, and educate and train our labor force to make America and its people competitive in an advanced global technology market.

Third, America appears in dire need of principled, focused leadership ...which Donald Trump is not providing.

Again:

Wikipedia: “ship of fools is an allegory about a ship with a dysfunctional crew. The allegory is intended to represent the problems of governance prevailing in a political system not based on expert knowledge, such as democracies!

From the first week of Trump in the White House, we’ve watched America being dismantled ...by Trump himself or by the hands of his groveling henchmen, Attorney General William Barr, is the latest Frog-marched puppet.

At first, we thought, ‘Trump will calm down as soon as the weighty ‘Responsibilities-of-Office’ hit him.

Then it became, ‘Just a bit longer’, and ‘He’ll ‘grow’ into the office‘. But that didn’t happen, either.

And now after near 4 years, we know, or should sense at least, that Trump is not the Presidential type.

Trump does have skills... but not the kind that should occupy the OVAL OFFICE.It seems his chief skill is the ‘business bluff’ and ‘heavy-lean’, i.e., gangsterism and grift.

An example of this was the ‘The Ukraine Affair‘, Trump’s attempted, under-the-table, back room, quid-pro-quo deal to block and trade already House-approved American aide for a promise from Ukraine’s president to state the falsity that Ukraine was investigating the Joe Biden family. (Note the grifter’s subtlety, simply the claim of investigation not a statement of a crime committed!). The House didn’t fall for it and Trump got himself impeached for that!

Grift is Trump’s signature move; not strategy or finesse...although one suspects William Barr was brought on as Trump’s personal Attorney General ‘table pet’ to fill that gap but even the slick steer Barr seems to follow right along in Trump’s footsteps...with inevitable, embarrassing  pratfalls.

Perhaps America is fortunate that Trump and company are not perfect, there are so many clowns faces in that circus ring that their plots and schemes fall apart as much from their own faults as from public oversight.

The American disintegration under Trump has proceeded like a tantrum thrown by a temperamental child - fragile things like treaties and alliances have been broken, and so quickly! And now America is almost down to ashes.

And that is another lesson we’ve been forced to confront: the American constitution really is a framework whose implementation relies on there being a core set of principles within the nature of a president that, despite political party ties, provides ‘constancy‘ and, perhaps above all, explanations for executive actions.

This feature of our Constitution - a framework construction that is broad yet reliant on law and on principled execution - has given America stability combined with robustness, ie., adaptability to history and societal evolution and maturity. Trump seems not able to grasp the wheel of this ship.

It appears that Trump neither meets the qualifications needed for the chief executive nor comprehends the guidelines for performing the job of the American President.

America is now a ‘ship of fools’ captained by the greatest fool of us all, D Trump, the epitome of a kakis-tropic fool.

Again, from Plato’s ’The Republic‘:

“There’s the shipowner, larger and stronger than everyone in the ship, but somewhat deaf and rather short-sighted, with a knowledge of sailing to match his eyesight.“

(Post script: it’s not that Trump has no competence, it’s that his abilities don’t match up with (‘Fit’) requirements for the President of the United States, i.e., he s unfit.)
...............................