Left Jabs

Anger has long played a key role in authoritarian regimes. Since before Julius Caesar, slick propagandists with fascist agendas have routinely used the anger of the downtrodden to market lies and distract attention. The Republican party, taking full advantage of the ignorance and poor education of its constituency, has learned well how to gull the gullible into ignoring their own interests and focusing instead on their anger. Not that the anger isn’t real. It roils in the gut of people who sense they’ve been screwed, but who aren’t sure how, why, or by whom. They just feel messed with, and in the absence of coherent explanations they look for someone to be angry at. Right-wing media is, of course, happy to provide. In that airtight, fact-free bubble, there’s never a shortage of “other” people to blame for everything wrong in their lives: Blacks, women, immigrants, the deep state, Muslims, Jews, queer folk of every stripe, and most of all, Democrats. The anger is always on simme...

We have arrived, at long last, at the beginning of what will soon be an avalanche of legal issues that are likely to dominate the rest of Donald Trump’s life. What will come of these cases remains up in the air, and the pace of legal procedure is frustratingly glacial. But regardless of the actual charges — or the evidence being brought — it has been evident to anyone paying attention that criminal behavior was the background hum of Trump’s entire career. Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s been evident to Trump as well. Which is why virtually his entire presidency begs to be seen — almost exclusively — through the lens of a guy fearing punishment.  He was committing crimes to stay out of prison. An unusual approach, to be sure, but it's the underlying cause of every vile action of the Trump era.  The media only rarely ties cause and effect together, which is disturbing. It’s not that they haven’t chronicled Trump’s crimes, it’s just that they either didn’t see, or couldn’t a...

In my last post, I wandered into the slippery world of idle speculation — sort of a second cousin to conspiracy theory — and found I quite enjoyed it. So continuing in that vein, I’ll weigh in on a question being asked a lot these days:   Why won’t Trump Organization CFO, Allen Weisselberg, flip on Trump? It seems a no-brainer. Between the almost certain prison time and the family upheavals he faces, it is inconceivable that loyalty to Trump could extend that far. But what if it’s not about Trump? What if he’s keeping his mouth shut for more existential reasons? What if the consequences of singing are more dire than we know? Ever wonder why Paul Manafort didn’t flip on Trump? Why he chose real prison time over spilling secrets? I don’t believe for a minute it was for Trump — trusting Trump for anything, much less a future pardon, would be deluded. But when you think about the circles Manafort ran in back in 2015 — the people the Mueller investigation was trying to get him...

Please bear with me as I indulge in a flight of fancy, a reasoned rearrangement of existing facts into a theory that may or may not be provable. I know, it sounds uncomfortably Republican, but hear me out. It’s not my intention to rewrite history, just to look at it from another angle. Which might just prove instructive. I have always been puzzled by the failure of the GOP to kill the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — “Obamacare” — especially when they had their big chance in 2017. They had a president (of sorts) who had repeatedly declared Obamacare “a total disaster.” They had a majority in both houses of Congress. They had the House pass a repeal bill — remember Paul Ryan toasting the tantalizing prospect of twenty million new uninsured? Repeal was just a Senate vote away. Senate Republicans, meanwhile, had designed — using the budget “reconciliation” tactic we now know so well — a filibuster-proof bill, and they’d told the world they were on a mission to “repeal and replace” Obamac...