SHOULD DONALD TRUMP BE INCLUDED IN AMERICA'S OFFICIAL GROUP TO ATTEND QUEEN ELIZABETH’S STATE FUNERAL

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

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Whether or not Donald Trump should be included in the official American contingent to Queen Elizabeth's state funeral is the sort of dilemma that helped destroy the Weimar Republic (Germany, 1920s) and assisted the rise of Adolph Hitler, i.e., a democracy faced with an anti-democracy antagonist (Hitler, Trump) who insists on his democratic-principle ‘rights’ to speak as he wants, although his words incite anti-democracy mob acts. 

The Weimar Republic's historically-proven, correct handling of the early Hitler would have been to keep him in prison for the full 5 years of his 1924 sentence for insurrection and treason… instead of letting him use democracy’s own principles to get out of prison after only 9 months…during which state-supported time and state expense, Hitler wrote “Mein Kampf”… which was a factor largely accountable for the murders and war-killings of about 60 million humans. Once free, Hitler climbed the political ladder supported by his Brown Shirt mob (‘MAGAs), who he later ‘cast aside’ (canceled, murdered, eradicated) when they became a political embarrassment. (MAGAs are now learning that lesson!)

Donald Trump. Trump has proved himself to be an “anti-democracy factor” and has been impeached for an attempted insurrection and failed coup (the "Jan6" 1921 event). 

Whether to include Donald Trump to attend Queen Elizabeth's state funeral as part of the official American contingent, is American democracy’s dilemma. Trump's presence at Elizabeth Regina’s state funeral would appear to be a cruel jibe at the good that Elizabeth symbolizes, and a joke on America itself. 

Trump should not be invited by the current American President to attend per traditional protocol -Trump flaunted, scoffed at, ignored, tainted, and rejected that sort of polite democratic tradition long ago.  (IMO, Trump should be ‘allowed’ to sit this one out, tune into the funeral from one of his 'shady' mansions, and wait for his indictment. Maybe harsh, but 'Jan6' and ‘Weimar’ …history, dammit.)

IT IS INSANE THAT A COUNTRY (RUSSIA), WITH A GDP LESS THAN ITALY’S IS BLACKMAILING THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY TO BEND TO THE WILLFUL CRYING OF A PSYCHOPATHIC DICTATOR (? BUT QED?()

 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.                         -----------

(Biden POTUS's economic sanctions in response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine are brilliant, from the framework of threatening Putin's personal wealth and potentially damaging Russia's national economy. Biden's response has also been effective in its swift response and breadth, especially its application in stages ... as if designed by a psychologist's advice to parents of an acting-out child.)

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Putin’s disinformation campaign is bluntly threatening as if he just doesn't care about the 'rules' of superpower diplomacy. 

Putin misbehaves this way while he whines about not getting the proper respect Russia (him, personally) deserves as a superpower...while he threatens to push his nuclear button toys if he doesn't get his way...even though no one is threatening to invade Russia's borders... and as he violates those borders to terrorize democratically elected governments. 

Putin is getting away with these insane disconnects because he ‘knows’ his  threats of nuclear ‘acting out’ stymies the West from giving back to Russia its own punishments. 

Putin displays a deadpan public countenance while he destroys cities, tortures and mass-graves civilian populations, and ignores ‘rules’ of engagements, all showing he feels no need to excuse or cloak his satanically self-anointing, brutal, cruel, cynical behavior. 

In words, Putin behaves like a traditional autocrat in the style of Stalin, who he openly admits is his guiding mentor for foreign policy ... and personal conduct. 

Any country or belief system that blocks Putin’s targets or objectives is to be eliminated in the style of Stalin - with excessive, overpowering cruelty. The crueler, the better to prevent future rebellion. 

And Putin’s objectives are openly stated — to recover the land and hegemony Russia ‘lost’ in 1991 with the breakup of the USSR, even to recover east Germany, the Baltic states, Finland, and even Poland. These pronouncements should terrify the now proudly sovereign nations.

The West is faced with Putin’s hate and fear of democratic self-determination that resulted in the freeing of Balkan and Baltic states from Russian hegemony — Putin will not stop with his long game of reversing that history. 

And now, after 20-some years of total control over Russia, Putin has very good reason to fear the consequences of his autocratic rule - he is aware that rebellion will no doubt target him personally as its first target.

When you can’t ‘win’ a war with incompetent military strategy, inadequate self-cannibalized equipment, and even your own troops don’t support your purpose, just brutalize, torture, and kill civilians…and do the same with your own troops. (Russia’s Ukraine invasion is a mirror of its WW2 behavior, even to accompanying and threatening its own troops with ‘corrective’ political units (the KGB in WW2, now, the FSB).)

The West’s response should be as direct and harsh as Russia’s but without targeting civilians or even shedding blood if possible, but still as a goal, … like it is doing with recent economic sanctions on Russia…and especially on the oligarchs, who Putin has joined up with, with little disguising, to economically rape and pillage his own country. 

(Biden POTUS's economic sanctions in response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine is brilliant, from the framework of threatening Putin's personal wealth as well as damaging Russia's national economy. And it is brilliant in its swift response,  its breadth, and especially its application in stages ... all as if desigend by a child psychologist's advising of parents of an acting out child.)

As for the West’s response, note Russia’s appeal to its successful maneuvering a proxy leadership into America’s government ….Donald Trump’s first steps as POTUS was to attempt to lift economic sanctions placed on Putin’s Russia resulting from its earlier land-grabbing cruelties in Georgia and Crimea. Trump continues to support Putin and Russia in its invasion of Ukraine.

The overview —there is little chance Putin will (rationally) compromise over his Ukraine invasion. 

But, if Putin’s invasion of Ukraine isn’t stopped, he will proceed to destabilize other border democracies by the same formula — claim vested partial land ownership by population kinship, orchestrate political and civil destabilization from that platform, support insurrection then invasion and finally re-annexation in the face of a paralyzed West. 

Putin has to be stopped cold. THERE IS NO REASON A COUNTRY (RUSSIA), WITH A GDP LESS THAN ITALY’S IS BLACKMAILING THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY TO BEND TO THE WILLFUL CRYING OF AN AUTOCRATIC (AND PERHAPS PSYCHOPATHIC) DICTATOR.

2008 REVISITED? THEN IT WAS A NEW DEM PRESIDENT, AND THE MARKETS "BENT" THEMSELVES (OF COURSE) AND AMERICA DIDN'T MUZZLE THE SHORT-SELLERS

Hmmm, seems again it's time for the financial markets to don their short-sell cloaks, pull the drain plugs, incite market panic, ruin the image of pure market capitalism and along the way ruin common folks' dreams of fair play and maybe some small share of the action ... by short-selling America down the tube.  

But it needn't be that way if preventive will and planning are in place before panic happens.

Team Biden must be wary of the WS players, the 'wise guys', the Trump bedmates. Those who surf, or engineer market panic.

When the faintest signals are seen of market disturbance, Team Biden must act quickly, but deftly, to pre-empt, buffer and prevent run-away short-selling from panicking the financial markets. )  We've seen and learned so much useful stuff from Obama's economic rescue ...and from the dark side of the coin, the Trump years debacle!)

In March 2008, just after the Bush economic 'troubles' started and as Obama came into office, Pericles21 warned about the short-sellers, the perching vultures who are ever poised in the wings of human economic theater to swoop in on a struggling economy and guarantee its death by picking at its still-living heart and liver. 

Now, since early 2021, we hear whispers and rumors of another economic 'problem' perhaps coming. This time, the White House team should get ahead of the matter, announce they are monitoring the hedge funds' activities, and are keeping a close eye on Wall Street's short-selling movements (just in case of 'funny bizness' that might incite a market rout to the exits (but it needn't be stated that explicitly).

Do we already hear the rats below deck chewing the ropes on our renewed ship of state? Again, like in 2008, must we fail to do the right thing and stop the short-sellers before they wreck portfolios, bankrupt cities, and add another 2 trillion$ to the national debt? Or, shall we just go with the flow and it's 'What's to Worry, there's plenty more where the last 8-13 unplanned trillion$ came from.' 

Are the Repub-rats already at the gnaw? 

We laugh at wasting time talking about rigged elections and new voting regs as if they are the 'all' of Repub political tricks. But the signs of the real snarkling Repub demons are there in the derivatives - there's skullduggery afoot, and the sluice gates are a'jiggling, eager to let loose a sledge of smelly goop onto our naive public. 

This time around, the 'good guys' (Team Biden) must act quickly and firmly to pre-empt short-selling as soon as the market-tinkerers reveal themselves.  Europe was quick to stop the short sell trickery by muzzling the rats long-term while America waffled. HBS.

SENATOR MITCH MCCONNELL TRAVESTIES HIMSELF FOR TRUMP, AGAIN - BY ENGINEERING A SENATE IMPEACHMENT ACQUITTAL

Former President Donald Trump recently escaped a second Senate impeachment trial conviction (February 13, 2021) mainly due to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell's cowardly and Machiavellian plotting motivated to curry future support from Trump and his facist, violent, neo-Nazi base. (BEWARE, McConnell, Trump has no reciprocal sense of loyalty and you will live in real fear of his transactional, fickle, chaotic, paranoid mind-set  that can impromptu-ly unleash his armed henchmen upon your soul, home and family!)

(Does an image of the Hitler's 1930's 'Brown Shirts' come to mind? It should - one of Trump's few reading materials as an adult were 'Mein Kampf'' and "My New Order (Hitler's speeches)" which Trump reportedly kept by his bedside (according to an ex-wife)!). 

So, even though Trump lost the election and voted out of office, America faces another four years of Trump's sniping attacks on our leaders and democratic systems. (Furthermore and sadly, it seems Mitch McConnell's political 'skills' and expertise lie in dark, Machiavellian obstruction.)

And, as far as the Democrats are concerned, Trump's proxy, McConnell, will continue obstructing President Biden's work to save America from the Pandemic and economic collapse ... both the result of Trump's incompetence, self-agrandizing policies and treasonous complicity with America's declared state enemies.

This blogger views Trump's continued effect on the forthcoming years with a mix of foreboding and morbid curiosity. 

Just how frequent and damaging to our democracy and with what forms will Trump's psychotic ways dump more chaos and confusion onto America?  The answer is very likely, 'often and smelly', as Trump's style is about everything.

And what about Mitch McConnell? Will McConnell receive his anticipated rewards for his lickspittle loyalty to Trump in engineering the Senate trial's 'Acquittal-by-default?', the failure to convict by lack of a quorum majority? 

One feels that McConnell will not be rewarded to the extent he expects. But McConnell will survive politically because even Trump knows his interests are best served with a live lapdog than a powerless junior senator replacing a McConnell let lapse by Trump's vindictive urges.

But, though Trump will let McConnell survive, it will be just 'survival' in mental pergatory. The next years will not be a bed of roses for McConnell. Trump must now see McConnell for the servile 'nothing' McConnell truly is. And Trump will beat on and defile McConnell with scorn like a moldy old drum because Trump now knows McConnell is his 'bitch'.

This blogger sees a self-resurrecting Trump rewarding McConnell's lickspittle boot polishing with deserved scorn, not so much for McConnell cravenly saving Trump from a Senate conviction but mostly for the minor lapses in McConnell's total loyalty and subservience in the last 5 years.

'BEWARE' Mitch McConnell ... despite your eager knee-scraping to lap up Trump's disrespect and treating you like the servile puppet you are, Trump will 'engineer' ways to belittle and besmirch you, to spite and spit on you ... just because.' Enjoy Trump's hell, Mitch.

AND... behind the Senate's failure to convict Trump of impeachable misconduct as president, Trump's treasonous self-agrandizing acts against the Republic, we must address the glaring question: 'how is it that McConnell is the most powerful senior senator in America?', although he is a prime example of America's 'leak in the dam' of our form of democracy because he 'represents' the 7th most impoverished state in the nation with one of the least-educated and small populations? 

How can McConnell play a leading role for America from the context of representing one of the most demographically and economically marginal state 'anomalies', his home state of Kentucky? From that context, it seems McConnell hasn't a clue about the needs and path forward to a modernized, multi-cultural America with new industries and more jobs.

The answer to why McConnell has disproportional influence is America's 'leak-in-the-democracy' construction - seniority and no-term-limit rules ... which are employed to insincere unpatriotic advantage by the former Confederate states, with their race-based gerrymandering and other means of voter suppression.

McConnell, as a Senator of one of America's most impoverished, uneducated and nationally supported small states, surely can't have a clue about the needs and path forward for a modernized, multi-cultural America. 

McConnell doesnt have the home-state context and personal outlook to help formulate solutions for a future America with new industries and more jobs. 

(Again, sadly, it seems McConnell's chief self-serving, self-preserving political 'skills' and expertise lie in dark, Machiavellian obstruction.)