THE REVERSAL OF ROE v WADE - THE DEMOCRAT PARTY FAILED ITSELF THROUGH POLITICAL NAÏVETÉ AND BICKERING

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

This post responds to 'Jamess's June 25, 2022, article in the DailyKos  (Simply Amazing! The "Common-law experts" that Alito relies on -- Weren't Even Americans). 

Yes, we know that Alito's twisted-history argument leading to the reversal of Row v Wade is bogus. But the Jamess title implicitly carries two lessons for Democrats  -  become grownups, both politically and sometimes personally, and stop the Democrat Party's inclination to drown itself with ego-centered bickering?’  

The lessons from the Trump debacle are: 

POLITE DISSENT, viz., A SPLINTERED BALLOT LOSES EVERYTHING; and 

STOP INTERNAL BICKERING - UNIFY ON BASIC RIGHTS (COMMON GOOD) 

To repeat: the new reality of American politics for Democrats and progressives is that loyal dissent by ballot-splintering factionalism or by abstaining from voting is just 'patio chest-pounding' and the Dem intra-Party bickering is a self-destructive privilege, so 1950s', of a less complex past when we did not lose sleep over Republican or Democrat election winners. (Dems also have their MAGA aspects, too.) 

The Dems lost the 2016 presidential election, IMO, because of their 'naive' internal splintering. 

Democrat Party Loyal Dissent as expressed in do-or-die factionalism and abstaining from voting weakened the progressive vote and helped bring on a regression in America's cultural tone. Within weeks after his inauguration, Trump veered America from Obama's mid-road tone to a hard right wing direction. 

The sudden sharpness of Trump's  right-hand turn ofAmerican governance stunned and demoralized Democrats. More stunning was the barely hidden grift and greed behind Trump's foreign policy and his regressive use of America's national resources. Under Trump, government operations were hidden behind a personal, transactional style that created and favored policies that yielded financial gains for Trump, his family members, and for his corporate supporters. 

As Trump's government operations became more personally transactional, they also became less transparent, And our foreign policy was made a shambles.

Major examples illustrating Trump's radical shifting of America's foreign policy alliances were his November 2017, approval of Phillipine dictator Rodrigo Duterte's bloody campaign to rid the Phillipines of homosexuals and criminal suspects by murdering them on-site by roving right-wing para-military execution squads . 

Then came Trump's September 2018, declaration of "love" for Kim Jong Un, dictator-for-life of North Korea, a rogue nuclear state. 

This was followed by Trump's 2018 expressing that America should withdraw from NATO ... because NATO is a concept outside America's direct interest (which we now strongly suspect really meant that America's NATO membership offended Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin, thus interfering with Trump's negotiations with Putin to construct a Moscow Trump Tower... with huge financial gains for Trump and his family.

This was the cess-pit where Trump had quickly, with a near-savant's nose for money, had lowered America.

America's regression under the Trump presidency could have been avoided if Hillary Clinton had won the Electoral College. Hillary won the popular vote, but lost the election because of Democratic Party vote-splitting factionalism .... and additionally, as is now known, because of Russian intelligence's proxy operations that exploited America's addiction and vulnerability to its world of extremely profitable internet social media platforms. Facebook was front and center among Russian intelligence's social media targets leading up to the 2016 election.  (Russian interference in the 2016 election was known perhaps shortly before and then after the election...but this knowledge quickly was buried under Trump's threats and misinformation  programming.)

Dems must grow up from naive 'do-or-die' idealism ....look around at the pitchfork regressionism that followed Hillary's  2026 'loss' to the Trumpists.  

America's fall into regressionism has been recently capped by the American Supreme Court's June 24, 2022, anti-abortion reversal of its 1973 Roe v Wade decision that had legalized abortion for the past half-century.  

DEMS MUST LEAVE THEIR HIGH SCHOOLISH DREAM STATE AND BECOME ADULTS ABOUT AMERICAN POLITICS  (Yes, Dems feel outraged and disbelief about the Trump camp’s lies and disinformation...and their control of major parts of American governance, e.g., the Supreme Court, which Trump reshaped with the hypocritical support of the Mitch McConnell-led Senate and which is steadily eroding American life.  

But Dem reactions must be within Constitutional (legal) boundaries... because that is a core Dem message.  

Also, Dems can’t do a ‘progressive version of ‘Jan 6’  without becoming what is detested ..along with bloodshed. (MAGA supporters must be ‘itching’ for an excuse to use their automatic weapons on a destructive Dem protest… that is today’s reality). 

A solution to the Democratic Party's current stasis - Dems must first define what lessons have been learned from the 6+ years of the ‘Trump Era’ (his campaign years until Jan 20, 2021 … and in the future).  

LESSON #1: DEMS MUST STOP NAIVE INTERNAL BICKERING...while sustaining their major strengths which are INCLUSIVENESS and PROMOTING THE COMMON GOOD.  

The Dems lost sight of this in the 2016 election which they lost through their own egotistic, (childlike), internal-splintering of Dem voting power by offshoot, dissenting yet liberal Dem candidates who insisted on having their place on the November 2016 election ballot ...regardless of consequences.  

And we saw the consequence: HILLARY CLINTON’S 2016 ELECTION LOSS WAS THE RESULT OF THE DEMS’ OWN FACTIONAL CONTRARINESS ...that splintered the anti-Trump ballot from within the Dem party. 

The era of idealist sincere (but naive) LOYAL DISSENT VOTE, ‘I’ll show them, I just won’t vote’ or ‘I’ll vote for a splinter group, Ha!', ended on the morning after the 2016 national election.

A unified Dem voting bloc would have boosted Hillary’s Electoral College count beyond what was needed to win, but Dem self-centeredness prevented that.

LESSON #2: The Electoral College must be central to the DEM's future political calculus.  The Electoral College is a reality even if it is poisonous and a dinosaur CREATED FROM and sustained by entrenched structures that originate from America’s slavery past.  It seems the Electoral College will live on for a good while under America's two party system.

As stated above, Hillary’s substantial 2016 popular vote win meant nothing because Dems still lived in their own version of the MAGA dream that ‘proper’ America was or should still be life as it was in the 1950’s. 

In summary - ‘when are the Dems going to be adults about American politics and stop the Democratic Party's inclination to internal self-destruction?’ There is so much more to lose by bickering within the Dem bloc. 

PUTIN'S UKRAINE PLAY, AND AMERICA'S SHAME

This blog site is 12+ years old from 2009 with President Obama's first term. The focus has been eclectic though focusing on national affairs and culture, and occasionally discussing new technologies. Sometimes Perilces21's observations receive a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains honed and unblunted as a sharp eye is always kept on the ways and directions of American politics and culture.

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(This post is based on Pericles21's  response to Umair Haque’s Feb 22, 2022, MEDIUM piece on Russian Leader Putin’s putative designs for global Russian dominance ala Hitler’s Third Reich.)

I agree with Mr. Haque’s thesis that there has been a ‘Putin Plan’ perhaps since, but more generically before the 1989-91 “fall’ of the USSR. But, I personally feel that Fall was an artificial orchestration by the Communist Party to boost their embrace of the Marx-Engels “Dialectic Theory of Political Evolution” , i.e., their impatience with achieving a perfect communist state (e.g., Gorbachev's 1980s failed experiment with democracy, or at least some of its features, i.e., Glastnos and Perestroika). The complete script accompanying that hypothetically orchestrated collapse also required the formal structure of the Party to disappear from the public political stage, leaving a shadow 'party' chaperoned by the ever-existent Russian communist secret police, the KGB, now publicly cloaked in name as the FSB, the Russian Federal Security Service, whose membership continued from the KGB and piloted by Vladimir Putin. 

According to Pericles21's thinking, after 1989 (with the fall of the West-East German Berlin Wall), the Russian Communist Party went into a cloaked, public 'hibernation' while the international Soviet Communist Movement (Comintern) was nursed, guardianed and guided by a dialectic-scripted experiment with a kind of neo-democracy (Boris Yeltsin) capped in 1996 with the return of the KGB (now FSB) under the direction of the well-honed KGB wunderkind, and veteran (since 1975), Vladimir Putin , who became the Communist Party's "show operative" and who is currently directing Russia's Ukraine Operation (the March, 2022 invasion).  [This shadow-play is explained in a series of interviews on Putin and his Russian political roots given by Masha Gessen a Moscow-born writer for the New Yorker:  (Masha Gessen: The West Is “Insane” for Thinking Sanctions Will Deter Putin | Amanpour and Company;  The Putin Files: Masha Gessen)

But, the Comintern neither slept nor vacationed under Putin! In recent years, the Putin ‘plan’ seems to have been taken from the domestic and international strategies resembling the milestones in the Hitlerian scenario from agitator to indictment and prison, through a MAGA-like Brown Shirt alliance and on to revival and 1945. 

As the second act of the Russian-Marxist dialectic, the Putin Plan appears to have featured the center-stage, puppet-role played by the narcissistic Donald Trump who was boosted to the American presidency by Soviet operations that took advantage of rumored ‘kompromat’ on Trump, and leveraged by Trump’s self-frustrations to achieve his grandiose business empire dreams…and resultant debt, and cyber machinations that exploited America’s own self-absorbed, commodifying kultur characterized by a collective monster in the form of a few social media giants, eg, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others. And the ‘Putin Plan’ has been accelerating from the first stage to ‘capture’ America — Trump kept by his bed Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” which he read before sleeping. Who directed Trump to read Mein Kampf when Trump dislikes reading and from first-hand reports from ex-White House aides, he doesn’t have the focus, interest, nor attention span to read serious books. But it seemed from Trump’s rhetoric and use of grandiose slogans he was mimicking and idolizing Hitler, as well as displaying a puzzling but unvarying predilection to schmooze current autocrats…even ‘declaring’ a love relationship with the comical but dangerous North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un. Also, there is the questionable and subordinate relationship Trump, even with presidential powers and protection, has had with Putin who appeared to be in control of Trump-potus — even to the point where Trump visibly cowered in Putin’s presence, a quite odd picture for an American president. (Obama stared Putin down.) Third, on January 6, 2021, Trump attempted an American Putsch which incorporated the ‘I-ate-the-whole-thing’ buy-in of pro-Soviet (pro-Putin) propaganda by Trump and his supporters (Republican Partiers and MAGA persons). What is going on? Seems America has, by a vicious agency, been split not just along political party lines but more globally along lines separating its own people into pro-American vs pro-Russian support… when probably a significant portion of Trump’s supporters can’t name Russia’s capitol or even place a finger on Russia in a world map. All of this says that Russia has won a propaganda ‘battle’ to win the brains of a substantial portion of Americans, maybe 90+% of conservative Americans. Meanwhile in ‘HERE-time’ America and its allies watch Putin run amok over Ukraine like a sated Manhattan crowd idly watching a street rape evolve then happen, all the while remaining uninvolved except to offer the victim a handkerchief during the act and perhaps a band-aid after.

[Refs.:  Masha Gessen: The West Is “Insane” for Thinking Sanctions Will Deter Putin | Amanpour and Company, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxJxfSCMvnE;  The Putin Files: Masha Gessen, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk9igTqTx9s]

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.

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A Matter of Perception, or Continuance of Obfuscation?: the Inner Conflicts of American Democracy -Transparency vs. Efficiency

There was a recent article in Politico (Jan 15, 2020) about the pros and cons, and to what degree, of restricting access of the press to the Senate impeachment trial of President D Trump. The Republican head of Senate (actively pro-Trump), Senator Mitch McConnell, favors strict access restriction while the Democrat Senators and House ''plaintiffs' favor open, transparent hearings with more witness allowances and more press access.  All of this seems to resemble the beginning of a Constitutional conflict much resembling, to Pericles21, the pro-States Rights (and defense of slavery) arguments from John C Calhoun in the early (1820s) days of the American republic.

Pericles21 sees a commonality with both the current Senate arguments for strict constitutionality protection of audience limits on the impeachment press attendance and the 1830s States Rights debates led by John C. Calhoun (South Carolina).

The commonality is both the 1800s Calhoun-led debate over States' Rights (a century ago!) and the current 2020, McConnell-led debate over limiting the presence of the press in the Senate impeachment trial involve hidden agendas.

(And what's with South Carolina which seems to so reliably and regularly spawn wreckers of public calm and potentially the nation itself?)

In the case of States Rights, the debate was superficially about the rights of American States; the real debate was about slavery - whether to continue and protect slavery or move towards emancipation.

The hidden agenda in the current debate over limiting the press attendance in the Senate trial of President Trump,  and influencing nearly all post-2016 election Republican Party behavior, is 'Kompromat' (blackmail in American 'lingo') - whether Trump is guilty of treasonous acts and policy resulting from Russian 'Kompromat'.

Underneath it all, the article adds to a picture of how the Republican party's general political philosophy, intentions, and actions since the 2016 election especially have been antithetical to the Constitution's goals that stress open government operating in the public interest and guided by a healthy free press. In this respect, the question from the Senate Republicans was whether the presence of the press would disrupt the trial. The Democrat perspective hs been the press would help keep the Senate to an open (read 'transparent' and honest) track in the trial of Donald Trump.

As background to establish the aims of the Republicans in the impeachment trial, the Senate Republicans, under the 'leadership' of Mitch McConnell, publicly vowed to effect a predetermined outcome which is to throw out the House impeachment and exonerate of Trump. To achieve this result, the Senate made moves to prevent the House Democrats, whose body had voted to impeach Trump, from fully presenting their case for convicting Trump by heavily 'editing' what witnesses, and how many, the Dems could bring forth to testify against Trump. These Republican moves and similar obstructions starting soon after Trump's inauguration contributed to the primary impeachment points the House successfully brought against Trump.

The visible Senate Republican animosity towards the American press, and by default against transparency in government, has been palpable throughout the Trump campaign and the 3 years so far into the first term.  This is the Trumpists' banner so perfectly summarized in the invention of 'fake news' and 'alternative facts' so quickly played against any critical questioning of the Trump presidency.

Pericles21 interprets the Republican use of 'fake news' and 'alternative facts' as 'blocking' devices (sophomore debate tricks) thrown out with deliberate cynicism to obfuscate, divert and kill any and all investigations into Trump, his campaign and conduct in office.

Pericles21 further believes the Republicans' use of these and other obfuscation tricks cover up a dark picture of Russian influence, through Russian Kompromat, over the 2016 presidential election and continuing to influence the actions and policies of Trump himself, with the overt assistance of the Republican Senate and from the House (at least until the reversing 2018 Congressional elections made Democrats the controlling party in the House).

Russia's Kompromat influence over Trump (notably, but not exclusively, the Steele Dossier) is 'blackmail material' which was brought out before the 2016 election but has been left out of the impeachment picture. although directly 'thrown' up by Speaker Pelosi's statement that with Trump, "all roads lead to Putin" {Vladimir Putin, Russia's leader].

Trump's 'transgressions' during his compromised campaign and in his term in office so far present an unbroken trail of treason or near-treason, but certainly impeachable conduct.

Some day, Trump and Russian Kompromat will have to be uncovered. One hopes that American governance (bi-partisan) will learn from the lesson with the Trump debacle.

DC Breakdown: Nancy Caps Big, Bad Don While He Prysadka's to Putin's Orders

" "All roads with you lead to Putin." (House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, addressing Donald Trump at White House meeting October 17, 2019). DT too often found 'bending the knee' (Priysadka) in Moscow's direction to Putin's Tune.