GOP BRANDING, AGAIN - BOGGGLING THE MIND (AS THEY DELIGHT IN DOING)

 The Perched Eye blog is 12+ years old, from 2009 with President Obama's first term. The focus has been eclectic ...  the ways and directions of American politics and culture, and occasionally summarizing the potential impacts of new technologies. Pericles21's observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted.                         -----------

Republicans call their boneheadedness 'just Branding'. In a perverse way, they are correct except for the real damage banding can bring upon the gullible. 'Branding' is waving a flag empty of real meaning yet ringing with sonically resonant (but often designed-with-malice, illogical-upon-close-inspection) slogans that identify one's group and, by default, one's enemies who are not gullible enough to repeat them. But close-up inspection causes the sonics of branding to fall apart like wet cardboard instead of solid bricks ... and such was, and still is, the case with the Trump-era's 'Covid Denial' self-identity branding. 

 'Denial of Covid' was, and remains a political genius idea to 'brand' actual pandemic disease as a belief system by painting over a deadly illness with a coat of brightly emotional, quasi-religious noise that defined who not to trust regardless of their medical expertise (shades of Nixonian-Goldwater faux anti-elitist 'egghead-ism'). Christian evangelism and end-times ecstasy's support of Trump were unexpected 'wins' that were woven into the fabric of Covid Denial. Those were Strange Times ...which are still going strong with Trump's rants getting ongoing media coverage as if he isn't the fraudulent conman he is.

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?

Election 2016: Trump as Performance: Operas Buffa (Falstaff ) and Tragedy (Lear) With Some Gatsby Thrown In - Starring Villains and Buffoons, and Wolves and Lambs, and Despots and Martyrs.....but Few Genuine Heroes (Except Warren and Sanders Who Were Squeezed Out Like Good Money)

I've found a new style device for lazy bloggers - repeating at the beginning of a post, the post's conclusion after stream-of-consciousness drafting (because I'm not a professional writer).

Is it appropriate to say that Donald Trump is a 'retro-1920s-Gatsby ala F Scot Fitzgerald'?

I kind of buy into this comparison. Trump can sometimes seem a 'modern' Gatsby because of his 'flash' and glitzy 'armament' which he is not shy to boast about. But this 'retro-ness' is not a true synthesis of current and Gatsbyan types because he has carried out the Gatsbyan charade for so long without crashing. (But Trump's financial reality might reveal that DT is indeed a reincarnate Gatsby, who knows?)

But where DT does resemble Fitzgerald's 'Gatsby' is DT's quality of 'superfluosity ....an even exaggerated superfluosity marked by glitzy, overdone tastes in material possessions (large, 'neo-pharonic' buildings) and blonde, superficially adorned, physically endowed women who he touts for all to hear about... even when he is describing his own daughter. Yet all these outward signs of success carry with them, or emit, a somewhat 'off' fragrance like a person wearing a not-quite fitted suit, purchased bespoke from a good, though not top tier, tailor. Also, a person wearing a strange, ill-fit, badly dyed hairpiece that turns out to be real hair!

This might sound unfair and a bit unkind so I will end this introduction to the Preface by saying, 'Just as some complain about the seeming plastic, impervious surface Hillary presents and compare her lack of projection with Trump's 'out-there-for-all-to-see', we don't really know who lives inside Trump's bluster and energy...but from what is implied, if there is something beneath Trump's flash and glitz, there might not be much to like...and much to run from in abject fear. DT might make for good literature but let not him become President...that's too real for comfort.

And, just as, for some, Hillary appears to be emotionally monochromatic, Trump appears to have successfully substituted money for morality...or maybe, just as likely, Trump didn't have to substitute for morality because morality was maybe never there.

All of this is to say that this election, taken willy-nilly with no regard for consequences, is highly entertaining like a retro Louis-Schmelling heavyweight boxing match of the 1930s. But this election also seems simultaneously vacuous and lacking in substance - this election lacks an energy of vision that a thinking person can bite into, and yet the stakes are so high:

we can't seem to free ourselves from special interests (profitable status quo corporations) to tackle global climate warming with threat of rising sea levels flooding significant portions of all coasts; America's up-to-the-neck self-entrapment in an out-of-date and endangering oil economy (and energy base), our racial impasse, our Congressional paralysis left-over from the Civil War (no, from the pre-Civil War, Clay-Calhoun states' rights debates that were never resolved, etc.

It seems that after 160 years America hasn't been able to shake off it's demons that caused the Civil War and has prevented America from moving on. Kindly speaking, Trump represents going back to the 1830's and reclaiming states rights (embodied in the 'Alt-Right' catch-bag of neo-confederate, hooded thug, revisionists who have glombed onto Trump like roaches around rotten meat).

On the other hand, Hillary Clinton seems to represent continuing 'partnering'('coddling'?) of government cozying up to big banks and big corporations - just about anything big and making money. Let's hope a 'mandate'election win for her will free Hillary from these chains.

Meanwhile, the interests of working America are stuck in a no-man's land yet America has little time and maybe no remaining chances to resolve this problem.

PREFACE:
First, I am an opera fan and despite my 'run-now!' aversion to TD (Tricky Dick), "Nixon in China" (Adams, 1987) is an opera I like very much. (My fav operas are "Norma" (Bellini, 1831) with of course Joan Sutherland, and Mozart's (1786) "Marriage of Figaro". In a good year, I can enjoy a 'Der Ring..')

But to the point of this, I see real opera material in the tragi-comedic figure of Donald Trump. What might be a title for an opera about Trump? Hmmmm, maybe ...'Vice is Nice but Retribution is like a Tidal Wave', ...or something. Trump will someday be an American literary tragi-hero, if he is not elected, or if elected, an American icon of a post-modern monster...as his hypothetical Presidency will so f...k up the world... (that's just the way Trump rolls).

So on to this 'thing' ("Thing' being a memic, Bush I word that this 2016 election process seems to have resurrected from the '80s).

So, here it is, the repeated 'finale', and of course it's all about Donald Trump who this blogger feels is an iconic, living fossil, example of 20th Century Americana at this stage of its decline, or at its cusp of a needed self-transformation whose occurrence is yet to fade away unconsummated. Note: this blog post has lain in draft form for more than a month because I felt it's premise, that Donald Trump is a genuine American comedic-tragedy - a Falstaffian Fool, yes, but more, a genuine 'American Psycho-Bright Lights- Ellisian-McInerny character flesh-rendered from the '80s,...and destined (doomed) to walk amongst us as a modern, living, walking, sniffin' (Debate #1) tragedy. And Trump is easily recognized - from his actual 1980s, days of sparkle and libido - as a shadow character in Tom Wolfe's, 'Bonfire of the Vanities' (1987). Trump is real, just 30 years out of date - he really believes his 'style' of 'courtship' is ....what ever he believes.

And if G.. is kind, 'It' will find the time and inclination to save America from a Trump Presidency.

This article's conclusion, post-Debate #1:

Trump (The Donald, DT, OD (Our Donald),'Scratch' (from Stephen Vincent Benet's 1936,'The Devil and Dan Webster') is a post-modern, but time-revisted Shakespeare-Quixotish-Rabelaisian-Shelley-Bram Stokerish monster-buffon ala Falstaff, Pantagruel,Sancho Panza and straight-man sidekick Don Quixote, Shelley's monster, Henry !V and V, Count Dracula,Philip K Dickian lamenting cyborg,and the all-time modern monster-tragedy icon - Richard Don't-kick-me-again-but-if-you-must-I-know-how-you-feel-I'm-such-a-fool-mama-said Nixon). Buffoonish and over-exaggerated but at the same time tragically out of date and worse, worth attention from our entertainment-warped culture that morphs serious sh..t with laughs.

Donald Trump, or should one say, 'Trumpism, (or maybe both) will be discussed and parsed for many years to come. One could guess that future times will look back on 'Trump' as the nadir of American or even global politics before the renaissance of government for the people, or 'Trump' will be seen as the peak of American capitalist-democracy, or democratic capitalism, before the Great Fall. Writing about the Trump phenomenon is as challenging a struggle as Trump himself is to 'see' clearly - he is this or that, seemingly changeable at a moment's notice ..or with no notice or logical pre-disposition. Trump is as close to an embodiment of the neither-here-nor-there 'Cheshire Cat' as anything yet seen outside of a theoretical physics construct.

So, after one of Trump's non-sensical detours from normalcy ('normalcy' being, relatively speaking for Mr Trump, only a bit less scary than full on psychotic), one is driven to ask,

'Is Trump real?'

To that self-posed question, one is also self-driven to respond,

'Trump is as real as I feel about him ight now, but I don't know how I might feel about him tomorrow,... but probably worse.'

So,after this preamble, this lead-in to what is almost universally acknowledged (despite harsh disagreements about the person) about Trumpism being a genuine and significant American phenomenon, this blogger comes to the nub of this post:

'Trump' and all the irrational trappings surrounding the person - the lore, exaggerations, psychological analyses and theories about him and about his supporters and his non-supporters-but-tolerators, and about his country and about his culture and about his political-economic backdrop,...Trumpism as embodied by Donald Trump the person, is and will be for a looo-ong time a fertile compost of 'guano' (a pile of bird shit for political satirists) or the highest quality 'Green Thumb Fertilizer' for the boutique gardener of the left (i.e., Ivy League scholars and psycho-analysts), or the rallying cry of the (cranially deformed, hmmm shouldn't say that), ecstatic-drenched extreme right. Take your choice.

There will be plays, songs, short stories, off-broadway pieces, and lengthy (serious) works created to express the inner wonderment many thinkers will hve for Trump the man and Trumpism of which Donald Trump is but one minor god's badly or well-done creative example, depending on one's point-of-view.

But only a few of future devotees and scholars will clearly understand how Trump and Trumpism is all of 'us'. 'Us' being the totality of America - our nation, our culture(s), regions and each person residing in America.

How every person residing in America, legal and illegal, contributes in deed or story to our collective esprit and body. As an example, it is fitting for a discussion of 'Trumpism' to mention illegal immigrants are demonized by Trump (supposedly demonized, if one is to go only by his words rather than by who he hires to do the gardening and cooking at his Florida mansion); yet these supposedly (in the Trumpian world) extraneous, worthless and demon-folk play significant and mostly positive roles in the portrayal of America's cultural memes, i.e., the illegal immigrants of especially Mexican origin have a somewhat 'uber' work ethic ...which in America is comical!

So, to the finale: Trump (The Donald, DT, OD (Our Donald),'Scratch' (from Stephen Vincent Benet's 1936,'The Devil and Dan Webster') a post-modern, but time-revisted Shakespeare-Shelley-Bram Stokerish monster (Falstaff, Shelley's monster, Henry !V and V, Count Dracula,Philip K Dickian's lamenting cyborgs ('Blade Runner' ex 'Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep?',and the all-time modern monster-tragedy icon - Richard Don't-kick-me-again-but-if-you-must-I-know-how-you-feel-I'm-such-a-fool-mama-said Nixon.