Left Jabs

Donald Trump told a joke the other day. It was a real howler, sort of along the lines of “Russia, if you’re listening,” or “Slow the testing down,” or “I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue.” You’ll recall that we didn’t know those were actually jokes at first. We thought they were at best verbal atrocities and at worst treason. But then his flunkies explained that it was but another example of Trump’s unique wit and fun-loving nature. Most of Trump’s jokes start out not very funny and go rapidly downhill from there. This one landed with a particularly dull thud. It was on Day One of the Republican National Convention, and he was responding to chants of “Four more years! Four more years!” by his fawning worshipers. Which is when he launched this dandy witticism: “Now if you want to really drive them crazy, you say  twelve  more years.” Is that a knee-slapper or what? Didn’t even need explaining. I got it right away. So let’s take a moment to ponder that thought (I know, must w...

Vladimir Putin has a lot on his plate right now. And just like Trump, he appears to be winging it. His most recent poll numbers are significantly lower than Trump’s, and that’s saying something. It’s not a big concern to Putin, since he answers only obliquely to his voters, and fair elections are off the table. Which is what Trump envies most about him. Still, Putin’s rapidly plummeting popular appeal is a sign that the old razzle-dazzle has lost some dazzle. And he finds himself playing whack-a-mole with pop-up crises across seven time zones. While Russia has been hit hard by Covid, it seems to have weathered the worst, at least for now. Not so much because the outbreak was well-managed, as because it wasn’t actively mis-managed, as in this country. Still, the incompetence was there for all to see, and the virus has made a real dent in Putin’s approval rating. So he’s gone for the grand gesture and announced a vaccine. There isn’t a reputable epidemiologist in the world who would even...

Dear Members of the Journalism Community: Our democracy is facing a clear and present danger, and we need you to take sides on behalf of us, your audience. There is, right now, only one story worth covering: the open sabotage of the next election by the sitting President of the United States. There is, as well, only one side to this story — American democracy — and we need you to stop insisting that two sides are required. You have a vested interest in getting this right. If democracy disappears, the press disappears. Reporters will be the first to be silenced, imprisoned, or executed. This is nothing new. It’s Gestapo 101, and every one of you knows it. We need you to protect us, if for no other reason than to protect yourselves. This is not a partisan issue, so please stop treating it like one. If this were a wildfire or a flood or a hurricane, you wouldn’t be looking for both sides of the story. This is worse than those things. Millions of lives are at stake. And we need you to repo...

The other day, I signed up for Facebook. After holding out for decades, I begrudgingly succumbed. It was my only way out of Facebook Jail. Last Friday, shortly after posting my latest, “The Oligarch Agenda,” my cousin — who has been sharing my rants with her Facebook crowd — informed me that she couldn’t share this one because somebody had reported it as “abusive.” I suspect Republicans. It seems I’ve been hard on the poor dears. Seems I’ve offended their delicate sensibilities. Children in cages are, of course, fine. Sabotaging the Post Office, no problem. Voter suppression, botched pandemic, economy in freefall, negligent homicide of 160,000 Americans. What’s the problem? But my post, of all things, has somebody all verklempt. Yes, I implied that they might be racists, misogynists, xenophobes, homophobes, and religious cranks, but why would that bother them? Isn’t that a badge of honor? Aren’t they proud of that stuff? Try to share ‘viralranting.com’ on Facebook and you’ll be told th...

Fifty years of Republicanism has brought us to this. A pandemic so out of control, the world sees us as a slow-motion car crash they can’t look away from. An economic nosedive, steeper and faster than any before it, with no chance of recovery as long as the virus stays rampant. An unemployment catastrophe, with sixteen million people out of work, with their health insurance likely cut off, with massive evictions looming, and their government lifeline severed. These are all directly attributable, yes to Trump, but even more to the Republican party, which has been working its way down to this moment for fifty years. Long before Trump came along to say the bad parts out loud, Republicans were undermining norms, subverting institutions, and playing their constituents for reprogrammable rubes. Since before Reagan, the Republican party has served the American oligarchy, that tiny sliver of the population that commands most of the country’s wealth. Between the very rich and the corporate powe...

Get used to it folks. Biden without gaffes wouldn’t be Biden. Thinking about the gaffe problem, I went back to Time magazine’s “Top 10 Joe Biden Gaffes,” most of them from the Obama years. With the exception of the time he commented that Obama was “articulate” — which was bad enough then, but radioactive now — what the media and Republicans seized on as gaffes, and treated as major news, now look both quaint and ridiculously tame. Compared to what we now see dozens of times a day, both from the current administration and much of Congress, Biden is a master orator on the order of Cicero. Seriously, you can read these so-called gaffes for yourself — I’m not even going there because I’d just look silly. The only thing worth mentioning is that each one was greeted at the time — both by the press and the GOP — as a sure harbinger of imminent Armageddon. Almost all were the remarks of a guy who likes to talk, who observes things around him, and sometimes forgets that the media puts the wors...

The pandemic is pulling everyone to the left.  Both major parties have been dope-slapped by reality, and there might just be a stress point in the human psyche at which anyone with half a brain becomes a liberal. The virus reminds us why humans banded together in the first place. We formed societies to cooperate against threats. The greater the threat, the greater the need to cooperate. Rugged individualism isn’t much help in a pandemic, and it certainly can hurt, as we’ve seen too often lately. And while the impulse to cooperate has long been labelled ‘socialism’ by people who understand neither socialism nor cooperation, even they are starting to get that pulling together is a matter of life and death. Meanwhile, anyone calling for small government right now is either delusional, malevolent, or making a bad joke. Because now is the time for government to go big or go home. And everybody knows it. We need big across the board. Big science. Big relief. Big stimulus. Big healthcare....

Trump is not a natural dictator. Yes, he admires, from afar, the trappings of authoritarianism. Parades, rallies, press censorship, secret police, concentration camps, things like that. These are all deeply seductive to him. But he doesn’t have the management chops to pull them off. If you really want to be a dictator, it’s like anything else. You have to work at it. You have to put in the hours. Grabbing and holding on to corruptly-acquired power is a full-time job. It’s not just about subverting judges and torturing the odd dissident. Just ask Vlad or Xi or Jair. There’s always an official to purge, an oligarch to blackmail, a reporter to arrest, an unlawful assembly to forcibly disperse. Not to mention the occasional uppity country that needs invading. You can’t just mail it in. You can’t get by on cruelty alone. It’s hell on your golf game. Not everyone is cut out for the dictator lifestyle. Your privacy is shot. People watch your every move and they probe for weakness. They're...