The Bully Circus

There was a time when Teddy Roosevelt declared the presidency as a kind of "bully pulpit," a means of preaching and advocating for issues that mattered. As Taegan Goddard notes at his Political Dictionary site:

The bully pulpit in Roosevelt’s mind wasn’t about pummeling legislators with presidential authority; rather, he believed the president could encourage the public to push their legislators on behalf of his agenda.

In these times, however, bullying means something darker. Under donald trump, the bullying is a means to treat people not in his circle of power with cruel, insulting, threatening, and aggressive actions.

trump's assaults on Venezuela - not only killing boat crews on dubious accusations, but also seizing oil tankers and running an illegal military operation to capture that nation's president - is but one example of the aggression trump wants to inflict on others.

Here at home, trump's pumped-up immigration police in ICE/Border Patrol under the aegis of "Homeland Security" are committing acts of violence and attempts at intimidation towards the cities of DC, Los Angeles, Portland OR, Chicago, and lately Minneapolis-St. Paul where the escalation has turned bloody (via Edith Olmsted at New Republic):

Following the news that Minnesota and the Twin Cities were suing to stop the Trump administration’s “Operation Metro Surge,” the president took to Truth Social to air his frustration with his besieged constituents.

“Do the people of Minnesota really want to live in a community in which there are thousands of already convicted murderers, drug dealers and addicts, rapists, violent released and escaped prisoners, dangerous people from foreign mental institutions and insane asylums, and other deadly criminals too dangerous to even mention,” Trump wrote. (note: trump is gaslighting again to fearmonger to his flock) 

He claimed that all the “patriots of ICE” wanted was to “remove” these individuals. But last week, the residents of Minneapolis saw something entirely different: an ICE agent senselessly killed a U.S. citizen, Renee Good, and was then defended by every level of government.

Good’s death sparked civil unrest in Minneapolis (and nationwide), as well as requests for federal immigration forces to take their leave. But the Trump administration has doubled down on its occupation, deploying roughly 1,000 more U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers.

Instead of toning down on the rhetoric - the agent who shot Good was caught on his own body cam calling her a "f-cking b-tch" - and violence towards our own communities, the government thugs are crowing and acting worse (from Ashley Vega at People (yes, they're covering this)):

A Minneapolis pastor said he was detained by ICE after heading toward protests near his church. Pastor Kenny Callaghan of All God’s Children MCC shared his account with Fox 9 Minneapolis, saying the encounter unfolded on the morning of Wednesday, Jan. 7.

Callaghan told the outlet he realized something was happening nearby when he heard whistles and car horns outside. He said he grabbed his own whistles and moved toward the commotion, only for the situation to escalate quickly.

He told Fox 9 he managed to take a few photos as the vehicle drove down Portland Avenue before pocketing his phone when he noticed agents surrounding a “brown-skinned woman.”

Callaghan said he joined in as a crowd chanted, “We are not afraid,” and tried to redirect attention toward himself, telling the agents to arrest him instead of the woman they were surrounding.

“Before I knew it, they were putting handcuffs on my arms and they asked me, ‘Are you afraid now?’ ” he recalled.

He said he answered, “No, I am not,” as agents continued detaining him. Callaghan told Fox 9 he was held in the SUV with two other detainees as agents returned multiple times to question him.

Callaghan said the message stayed the same during those check-ins, with agents repeatedly asking if he was afraid. He also said they asked for his ID and his phone while he remained in the back of the vehicle.

At one point, Callaghan said he asked whether he was under arrest and was left alone for a period of time afterward. He also told Fox 9 that an agent allegedly waved a gun in his face, and while fear flickered for a moment, it was quickly overtaken by outrage.

“And then they came back the last time and they said, ‘Are you afraid yet?’ ” he said. “And I said, ‘No.’”

Meanwhile, the ICE and Border thugs are firing tear gas canisters in nearly every crowd and sometimes right in people's faces.

This is what they want, what trump wants, what the Far Right has wanted for decades. They want the thrill and elation of making the rest of us terrified of them, of their authority and their potential for violence.

trump wants the violence to escalate: it will justify any plans he has of suspending the Constitution under "emergency powers" and make himself Dear Leader For Life. While the protesters will do everything proper and avoid conflict whenever possible, expect the armed and body-armored ICE gangs to reenact the worst of police violence that would make Chicago 1968 seem like a block party.

And this all happening here in the U.S. Outside our borders, trump is busy waving his big stick towards Iran (again), Syria, Cuba, and worst of all Denmark in a brazen attempt to seize Greenland from one of our NATO allies. If we do invade Greenland, it would break that alliance and drive Europe - already coping with a belligerent and desperate Russia - into chaos.

Instead of a bully pulpit, what we have is a bully circus. trump and his Far Right allies are running amok behaving like Alpha Male Wannabes, mistaking arrogance for leadership and violence for success. The problem is they don't show any genuine thought or planning into what they're actually doing. They kidnaped Maduro from Venezuela from the looks of things thinking it would immediately collapse that government. Instead, Maduro's party promoted his veep Delcy Rodríguez into acting presidency leaving trump on the outside threatening more attacks and demanding she bend to his will.

If trump thinks there won't be any consequences if he sends an invasion force into Greenland, he's ignoring the reality that the end of NATO would end our military presence across most of Europe: Our extensive overseas base network is a major reason why our logistics and military effectiveness is the best in the world, and if that goes so too goes our military dominance.

Instead of projecting themselves as Alpha Males, trump and his lackeys are posing as clowns... albeit clowns armed with assault weapons, flashbang grenades, and long-range missiles that can ruin anybody's day.

The world tonight is a circus of fear, stained with the blood of innocent lives and propped up by the violent fantasies of an aging, addled narcissist. 

Stay safe, America. Stay safe, people of Venezuela and Greenland and Iran and everywhere else trump is bullying us all.

Tiananmen Square 2025: You Cannot Wash Away the Blood and Tears

No matter what the Chinese government does to erase the massacre of the democratic protests that fateful June 4, 1989, the world will not forget (via Helen Davidson at the Guardian): 

The world will never forget the Tiananmen Square massacre, the US secretary of state and Taiwan president have said on the 36th anniversary of the crackdown, which China’s government still tries to erase from domestic memory.

There is no official death toll but activists believe hundreds, possibly thousands, were killed by China’s People’s Liberation Army in the streets around Tiananmen Square, Beijing’s central plaza, on 4 June 1989...

The date of 4 June remains one of China’s strictest taboos, and the Chinese government employs extensive and increasingly sophisticated resources to censor any discussion or acknowledgment of it inside China. Internet censors scrub even the most obscure references to the date from online spaces, and activists in China are often put under increased surveillance or sent on enforced “holidays” away from Beijing.

New research from human rights workers has found that the sensitive date also sees heightened transnational repression of Chinese government critics overseas by the government and its proxies.

The report published on Wednesday by Article 19, a human rights research and advocacy group, said that the Chinese government “has engaged in a systematic international campaign of transnational repression targeting protesters critical of the Chinese Communist party,” with Uyghurs, Tibetans and Hongkongers particularly likely to be affected.

There are too many other nations opposed to Chinese interference and bullying ways. There are too many people - like myself - who remembered what happened and refuse to forget.

I'm still hoping I get to meet Tank Guy some day.

Some Thoughts On Martin Luther King Jr. 2018 Edition

(Update: Thank you Batocchio for the link to Mike's Blog Round-Up on Crooksandliars.com!)

"...The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes.  ...Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that..." - from Where Do We Go From Here speech (1967)

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice" - a saying attributed to Reverend King, based on sayings from a speech by Unitarian minister Theodore Parker. King says it in one line where Parker took a whole paragraph, and King says it better. (this is kinda like how Jimi Hendrix's take on "All Along the Watchtower" is waaaaay better than Bob Dylan's original)

Never forget King spent his last years fighting against poverty and income inequality, seeing that as a universal problem for everyone's civil rights:

We have come a long way in our understanding of human motivation and of the blind operation of our economic system. Now we realize that dislocations in the market operation of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will. The poor are less often dismissed from our conscience today by being branded as inferior and incompetent. We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands it does not eliminate all poverty...

The problem indicates that our emphasis must be two-fold. We must create full employment or we must create incomes. People must be made consumers by one method or the other. Once they are placed in this position, we need to be concerned that the potential of the individual is not wasted. New forms of work that enhance the social good will have to be devised for those for whom traditional jobs are not available...

MLK essentially argued for guaranteed basic incomes before it came into vogue a few years ago.

Also, this:

I know this kinda goes against Rev. King's admonitions against violence,
but never let a white guy in a bowtie speak for what King stood for.

Also, I really think if Reverend King were alive today (ducks to avoid Huey's thrown chair) he'd be under arrest for beating the everloving hell out of trump.

Breaking News: Trump Denied His Muslim Ban

The ruling coming down from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals today (via The Atlantic):

A three-judge panel in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court’s order blocking the Trump administration from enforcing its immigration and refugee order, handing the president his highest-profile legal defeat yet over the controversial ban.

In an unsigned opinion, the panel decisively rejected the Justice Department’s arguments against the restraining order. “We hold that the Government has not shown a likelihood of success on the merits of its appeal, nor has it shown that failure to enter a stay would cause irreparable injury, and we therefore deny its emergency motion for a stay,” the three judges wrote in their 29-page decision...

It's telling that the decision is unanimous: even in a small, three-judge paneling there would have been room for at least one dissenter. What's more telling is what they focused on:

“The Government has pointed to no evidence that any alien from any of the countries named in the Order has perpetrated a terrorist attack in the United States,” the panel wrote. “Rather than present evidence to explain the need for the Executive Order, the Government has taken the position that we must not review its decision at all.”

“We disagree,” they added.

This part is where the judicial system gives Trump a straight-up middle finger. They are noting Trump's dictatorial need to issues orders without question, and they are reminding him that the Presidency isn't a dictatorship.

Trump, of course, isn't having any of it: His Twitter response - lacking any legal nuance - was "SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!"

Of course Trump would frame the matter as "National Security" instead of the raging violation of civil liberties to our nation's own legal residents his Executive Order really is. To him, the only way towards "better security" is to bully everyone he deems an enemy (both real and imagined) and make them suffer for his fears. Rather than the slow, tedious effective methods of screening already in place - as the Appeals Court noted, the affected nations on Trump's list have NOT turned out to be sources of terrorists in the US - Trump would rather enjoin an emotional, harsh, crass practice of humiliation, arrest, deportation...

Trump would rather give the haters who follow him targets of their fear and rage rather than taking the harder, better path of inclusion and acceptance of immigrants and refugees who WANT to be American, who WANT to be safe here...

This fight isn't over. The haters are still out there, angry and smarting now from the public denial by our courts they'll claim as foolish and disastrous, and every other trigger word they can throw out there to the Fox Not-News and Breitbart crowds.

This is still a big win for the lovers and the fighters for justice. We just need to keep winning more of these fights.