Maybe Trump is right: He can shoot someone on 5th Avenue and that still isn’t low enough for his supporters

Robert Mueller, rather than answer questions before a House committee, decided to just have a press conference, make a statement, and call it day at the Justice Department. But at least he was clear enough in what he had to say; while he could not prove a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, it was not because it didn’t happen, but because witnesses who could have shed light on the subject either gave false testimony or took the Fifth—which suggests that something amiss did occur, and his report did show that some Trump campaign officials did have contact with Russians. The “failure” was that it just could not be proved that this was “coordinated” from a central source—say, Trump himself. On the subject of obstruction, once more Mueller reiterated that there were numerous incidents that could be construed as obstruction on the part of Trump, but that it was up to Congress to make the determination if this constituted an impeachable offense. In fact it almost seemed as if he was pushing that Congress do just that.

Yet Trump immediately took to twitter and “interpreted” Mueller’s comments as “cased closed.” We know that Trump is not a very good reader or speller, but obviously he can’t hear very well either; perhaps he is just parroting the “interpretation” from Fox News’ usual motley crew of hysterical fanatics (shouldn’t Jeanine Piro have been locked-up in an institution years ago?), although the (few) more literate analysts like Bret Baier are more careful in accessing  Mueller’s statement—although one suspects that Trump privately considers Baier and Chris Wallace to be “losers.” 

While most people do in fact realize that Trump is living in a world of make-believe, playing by rules only he has the “genius” to fathom, and utterly unmindful of the damage he is causing to civilized norms, there is a sizable percentage of  whites (with a few minorities who pathetically attempt to outdo the bigots in their bigotry) who are like weeds with deep roots of hatred that thrive because Trump not only refuses to mow the grass every once in a while, but allows the weeds to grow and prosper and blight the lawn. Now, suddenly we see this epidemic of racist white women coming out of the woodwork menacing blacks and Hispanics with Trump-inspired harangues and even threats with weaponry—the latest incident involving a female manager of a campground in Mississippi pulling out a gun on a black couple who merely wanted to have a picnic. 

The question of how low is too low for Trump supporters and even Republican lawmakers was answered by Trump himself even before the election:  "You know what else they say about my people? The polls, they say I have the most loyal people. Did you ever see that? Where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay? It’s like incredible.” We are reaching the point where that is becoming less and less a fantasy only Trump shares.

Trump’s latest blow-up proves that his infrastructure “plan” was never a serious one

When Donald Trump was campaigning for president, he promised a $2 trillion infrastructure plan to create jobs and shore-up decaying roads and bridges, the conditions of which the American Society of Civil Engineers has given a grade of D+ and would cost (surprise) $2 trillion to fix; Trump would never come up with anything on his own if it actually made any sense. As one might recall, when he became president, Barack Obama and the Democrat-controlled congress—to the intense opposition of Republicans who were more interested in preventing an Obama policy “victory” than with the welfare of the American people—passed a $700 billion economic stimulus  bill that included “just” $111 billion for infrastructure. Only three moderate Republicans in the Senate voted for the bill during the height of the “Great Recession.” But as we have seen repeatedly, Trump’s own infrastructure “plan” has never gotten off the ground, largely because the Republicans in control of Congress his first two years were simply not interested. They passed their tax cut bill that largely benefited corporations and the already well-off, and then  called it a day. 

The lack of seriousness about an infrastructure bill, and merely using it as a political prop, was made plain when Trump held a press conference ostensibly about infrastructure, but almost immediately pivoted into his controversial Charlottesville comments about “fine people,” completely overshadowing what little he had to say about the original topic, soon to be forgotten. Trump has on occasion brought up the topic at his early campaign rallies, but unlike those of Obama which were largely spent to pitch policy initiatives in a rational manner, Trump’s only seems to be interested in throwing red meat—mostly in the form of misinformation and lies—to his faithful fanatics who just want their voices to be “heard.” Mention of “infrastructure” is just more talk and no action, and his supporters couldn’t care less. 

Democrats, of course, support an infrastructure plan because it fits into their own political program, and at least the leadership wants to make a show of “working” with Trump on something that benefits voters. But Trump is not interested in “benefitting” anyone but himself and his “brand”; if anyone benefits who actually needs “benefitting,” that is entirely accidental. His repeated misrepresentations and outright lies about all things that he has “accomplished” as president and his refusal to be “transparent” in his internal policy and financial dealings demonstrates his extreme paranoia, something he shares with Richard Nixon. Such paranoia has created problems of Trump’s own making; no one in their right mind should trust Trump or his principle aiders and abettors with making policy decisions that are based on reasoned examination of the facts, but only those based on  paranoid instincts. 

Thus it should have come as no surprise to any party that the infrastructure meeting the other day between the Democratic leadership and Trump was a trap to force House Democrats to end their investigations of Trump. Infrastructure has been from the start more smoke and mirrors than a serious policy proposal, given the fact that Republican lawmakers themselves when they controlled Congress never discussed or put forward even the barest of bones of a proposal. The Trump administration itself has never provided anything more than a few “ideas” of what an infrastructure plan would like that, only some regulation changes. If there was any “seriousness” to an infrastructure proposal, Trump wouldn’t be using it as a bargaining chip to conceal his crimes; thus Trump’s infrastructure rhetoric should be taken as it is: as rotten in its foundation as many of the nation’s bridges and dams.

Hispanics in this country live under a different code of "justice"

In June, 2017 Army Green Beret Staff Sgt. Logan Melgar—part of a U.S, anti-terrorism team that included Navy SEALs and Marine Raiders—was taken to a local clinic in Bamako, Mali where he was declared dead, apparently of asphyxiation. Melgar’s superiors at a base in Germany were immediately suspicious, and ordered that physical evidence be preserved, sending a CID team to investigate.  The Pentagon initially attempted to cover-up the death, with two Navy SEALs who were “persons of interest” in the death “transferred” out of the country. Two months later the media reported the suspicious circumstances of Melgar’s death, and questions relating to it have since led to charges against four soldiers for felony murder, involuntary manslaughter, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, hazing and burglary. 

One of the accused soldiers, Navy SEAL Adam Mathews, reached a plea deal in exchange for his testimony. According to the Military Times, the four soldiers had been out drinking well into the wee hours of the morning while Mathews—who had only just arrived in Mali 24 hours earlier—was harangued by the others about “slights” supposedly inflicted on them by the Hispanic Melgar, and decided to join them in a “hazing” exercise to “teach him a lesson.” After receiving a grudging “OK, let me go back to sleep”  from his uncharged Green Beret superior, Mathews, as a party to the all-white troop, testified that a sledgehammer was used to batter down the door in the room Melgar was sleeping in,  and then:

(Navy SEAL Tony) DeDolph jumped on Melgar, locked him in a chokehold on the bed while Matthews grabbed Melgar’s legs and the Raiders began to duct tape the legs, the Washington Post reported. During all of this, they noticed that Melgar had stopped breathing. They tried to revive him, Matthews said. “He remained unresponsive, so we laid him back down and I began rescue breaths while the tape was cut off of him,” Matthews said, according to the Post. “His chest rose and fell from my rescue breaths, and during one of the breaths, I saw red-tinted spittle come out of his mouth and hit me in the face,” Matthews said, according to the Post. They used a defibrillator and cut open his throat in an emergency procedure to establish an airway. Instead of calling an ambulance, they took him to a nearby clinic, where Melgar was pronounced dead. The four defendants then decided that the two SEALs would tell investigators what happened but not mentioned the Raiders’ involvement, according to the Post.

The evidence that Melgar was suffering from internal bleeding suggests that something more happened here than what Mathews admitted to. Military judge Navy Capt. Michael Luken appeared incredulous at the justification given for the act, asking “What I’m trying to understand is how was this a deficiency?” concerning the “last straw” being an “incident” where Melgar allegedly drove past the Marines on the way to a function at the French embassy. Since Mathews was not in the country when this occurred, he was something less than convincing even in justifying his own involvement. Supposedly there were other “incidents” that “annoyed” the others, and Melgar had allegedly complained about prostitutes being brought into the housing units, and Melgar’s wife testified that her husband had spoken about the “immaturity” he had encountered. 

If all of this sounds vaguely familiar, it should be. Its contours are right out of the 1992 film A Few Good Men, where a Hispanic Marine was “hazed” because he just didn’t “fit in,” and died as a result of the actions of two Marines who had been “ordered” by their direct superior to “teach” their fellow Marine “a lesson” on becoming a “good soldier.” Except for one thing: the SEALs and Marines accused in the Melgar’s death were not acting on the “orders” of a superior, but on their own initiative, which somehow makes it even worse. This suggests some justification of the contention that they were “immature,” but also one suspects that their action was also motivated by their belief that Melgar didn’t “fit in” their special clique for “ethnic” reasons, fueling mutual animosity. As in the film, the victim was completely at the mercy of extrajudicial “punishment” by forces that were blatantly biased against him. That this occurred during Donald Trump’s watch only heightens the sense that anti-Hispanic bigotry had much to do with this, since to most Hispanics are not "real Americans" despite their indigenous heritage.

This isn’t the only recent story that suggests that Hispanics are given short shrift in the meting out of “justice” in this society. In the most recent running of the Kentucky Derby, the apparent winner, Maximum Security, was disqualified for allegedly “interfering” with other horses, principally by “drifting” outside his apparent “lane” on the final turn. This was the first such disqualification in Derby history. Many saw it as a “ticky-tack” offense, one that often occurs in horse races; but at least two jockeys complained after the race, and upon further “review,” the three race stewards ruled for disqualification, which they subsequently “upheld” within hours of an appeal by the owners, Gary and Mary West, who have since filed suit in federal court to have their horse’s victory reinstated. One thing that is interesting about the alleged infraction is that so much attention has been paid to it that horse racing “experts” have acted as if this is an “uncommon” occurrence when it is not, and because of this, one must ask why this incident is being treated differently than others just as “egregious.” 

The stewards’ ruling thus has a suspicious aspect to it, as does that of the Horse Racing Commission, which decided to suspended Maximum Security’s jockey for 15 racing days in an effort to “minimize” further disrepute upon the original decision. The commission claimed that the jockey failed to “controI his mount and make the proper effort to maintain a straight course, thereby causing interference with several rivals that resulted in the disqualification of his mount." The jockey was even accused by another as riding like a “drunk driver.” The insults aside, the attorney for the jockey said that “his unsupported and unsupportable suspension" would be appealed.

Out the 20 horses that ran the Derby—considered by many as too crowded a field to start with when other races run 14—there was only one Hispanic jockey, Luis Saez. Guess who was Maximum Security’s rider?

Trump supporters don't care if he is a pathological liar as long as his lies only hurt those they hate

As of April 27, 2019, The Washington Post recorded 10,011 false or misleading claims made by Trump during the 828 days he had been president. That is a shade over 12 per day. Of course, three weeks have passed since then, so we can expect him to have added another 275 or so to his grand total. Today the Associated Press examined his claims of “treason” by the FBI and anyone daring to question the legitimacy of his presidency. If anything, if in fact Trump associates did “work” with individuals tied to the Russian government in order to grease the path to Trump’s election, then that could be characterized as “treason.” While the Mueller report could not prove a conspiracy between Trump associates and the Russians despite showing that many did have contacts with Russian agents, this was in part because many Trump associates “in the know” either took the Fifth (which in itself is cause for deep suspicion), or perjured themselves in their testimony to Mueller’s team. It doesn’t help Trump that Vladimir Putin has come to his defense by lying about proven Russian interference in the 2016 election (and beyond) to aid Trump; it only deepens the suspicions against him. 

The AP also noted Trump’s other recent untrue boasts, such as that about the decrease of prescription drug prices, and about employment figures that fail to point out the continuing high percentage of unemployed workers who have simply “dropped out” of the job market, which has not changed since he has become president. Further, the U.S. GDP that has not grown by “trillions and trillions of dollars” since he has become president; it has grown by a one trillion dollars, and he can’t really take credit for even the 2017 numbers. Also pointed out was Trump’s simplistic notion of trade in a world economy (people who work paycheck-to-paycheck prefer cheaper products, even if they are imported goods), and that the modest rises in low-to-low middle income wages has been due not to his policies but largely by local initiatives, such as Seattle’s mandatory minimum wage of $15-an-hour, and the fact that it is not “tech” jobs that are so much in “demand,” but “meritless” jobs that the conceited will not do, such as in warehouse, production, retail and janitorial services, which are not disappearing any time soon. Trump also continues to lie about the effect of tariffs; they are in fact an additional tax that not China pays, but U.S. importers pay, which they pass on to consumers in higher prices. Their actual effect on the government coffers is almost too miniscule to notice.

So the question is why do so many Americans buy into Trump’s lies; if nothing else, we have never seen a president this pathological. Many Trump supporters are simply into typical conspiracy theories involving “socialists,” others simply like having their ignorant prejudices and race hatred declared aloud, and still others are so ideologically fossilized that they are besotted by Trump’s willingness to “compromise” only with those between the far-right and far-right extremism. But more troubling to me is that there are some “thinkers” out there who seem to believe that there is no dissonance between their own beliefs and what Trump has repeatedly stated and done.

In an extreme example, I had a recent conversation with a Trump diehard who I assume is a “libertarian” given the illogic of his interpretation of the motives and policies of Trump and Republicans generally. On one hand, he believes that Mexico should be just treated like it was an appendage of the U.S., given the longstanding historical, cultural and labor interactions between the two countries. He also believes that Mexicans entering this country—legally or not— to work should be treated just as Puerto Ricans are, and not be referred to as “immigrants” in any sense at all. I supposed this theory would sound like “socialist” extremism to most people, but the fact is that Americans and Mexicans have far more in common culturally and historically than Americans do with immigrants from Asia and India (why do you think there are so many Spanish place names?). On the other hand, he incomprehensibly insists that Trump and the more xenophobic Republicans have not been engaging in racist rhetoric (every other “Mexican” entering the country is a “violent criminal,” etc.) and espousing immigration policies that go to the other extreme. “They” are only trying to bring “common sense” to the discussion, which some people might suggest is just another way saying racist. But like most people whose brain functions cannot sense the dissonance between fantasy and reality, this individual prefers to just shut his mind to any further conversation.

The reality is that obstinate Trump supporters, who Republicans are counting on in 2020, seem completely immune from the effect of Trump’s daily lying, usually either repeated or supplied by the usual suspects on Fox News. Because of this, I have some real concerns about the possibility of Trump actually getting re-elected—especially a man who truly fears being prosecuted for criminal acts if he is not protected by the office. Despite the fact that Trump’s lies have been meticulously recorded, millions of people still take as gospel every untrue statement he makes. Does he truly believe everything he says? It is obvious that he gets much if not most of his “factual” information from right-wing sources that deliberately “misinterpret” or baldly misrepresent data, if not tell outright lies based on their “instincts” or “gut,” which of course is also a Trump characteristic, free from such annoyances like “facts.”

But Trump has always been a “showman,” and thanks to the training of Roy Cohn—who had been Joe McCarthy’s chief assistant in demonizing those on the left as “commies”—he learned the art of denying and lying so loudly that people could become immune from even taking him seriously; he was (and is) a pathological liar, but so what as long he didn’t “hurt” anyone. In today’s environment, his white nationalist supporters certainly don’t believe his lies are “hurting” them—just the people they hate.

Only the rich and privileged can afford to be “patriotic” in Trump’s world

Music used to be one the principle means in which young people expressed their hopes, dreams and desires. They “spoke” in their natural voices, and artists and their producers took pride on how their messages were transmitted musically. Today, when one listens to what passes as “music” it is not just the lack of guitar “gods,” piano virtuosos or producers with orchestral pretensions, or the incredible banality of songwriting (songs that have “catchy” melodies are derided as “old school”), but the fact songs are delivered by the counterfeit mechanism of Auto-Tune, which can make any tuneless fraud into a “star”; Bob Dylan might not have been a Diana Ross as a singer, but his distinctive everyman “voice” only heightened the appeal of his Nobel Prize-winning music.

Instead of the emergence of contemporary Dylans or Beatles, we must do with overrated vulgarity, self-obsession and alienation transmitted through nothing more than monotonous, computer-generated “beats”; even the instrumentation of so-called “bands” is little more than background noise that provides no “hook” or melody that sticks in the mind. Nevertheless, many millions of people swear by this “music,” and there is no “evolution” in sight, especially since the “music” industry has devolved into promoting “personalities” rather than actual music.

But there was a time when many musicians felt it was their responsibility to provide a “voice” for their generation that was otherwise denied to them by the prevailing political, economic and social order, with a directness that still resonates after so many years. One such song that spoke with remarkable clarity and insight was Credence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son”:

Some folks are born
Made to wave the flag
Ooh, they're red, white and blue
And when the band plays
"Hail to the Chief"
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord

It ain't me, it ain't me
I ain't no senator's son, son
It ain't me, it ain't me
I ain't no fortunate one, no

Some folks are born
Silver spoon in hand
Lord, don't they help themselves? Yoh!
But when the taxman
Comes to the door
Lord, the house look a like a rummage sale, yeah

It ain't me, it ain't me
I ain't no millionaire's son, no, no
It ain't me, it ain't me
I ain't no fortunate one, no

Yeah, some folks inherit
Star-spangled eyes
Ooh, they send you down to war, Lord
And when you ask 'em
"How much should we give?"
Ooh, they only answer, "More, more, more" yoh!

It ain't me, it ain't me
I ain't no military son, son
It ain't me, it ain't me
I ain't no fortunate one, one

This song was recorded 50 years ago, driven by a simple, yet catchy hard-rock guitar riff, yet still sounds as  relevant and fresh now as then.  Nothing has really changed since then, but one wonders if that song was recorded today if it would get any airplay or even “speak” to the current self-absorbed generation whose political philosophy rarely advances beyond what annoys them personally. 

A song like “Fortunate Son” has much to say about who benefits and who pays in our society, then as now. Donald Trump’s current trade war with China has been a botched affair from the beginning because he failed to strengthen his hand by enlisting the support of European allies, instead alienating them with his buffoonish blowhardness that hasn’t impressed the Chinese, either. Now, after raising tariffs to 25 percent on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, and China retaliating by placing tariffs on American exports, Trump is telling low-to-middle income Americans that it is “patriotic” to suffer higher prices while he and his rich cronies feel none of the pain. Being “patriots” is easy for them, because there is no real price for them to pay. 

Some say the rich should be “patriotic” about paying progressive taxes since they really don’t need all that money they accumulate, while others are in need. According to a recent Forbes article, nearly 80 percent of all Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck; the rich are not among those people, because regardless of what taxes they pay in fact, there is always plenty left over to save. And the rich are always looking for ways to reduce their taxes, and they still have multiple “creative” ways of doing just that; just ask Trump—according to the New York Times, a former Deutsche Bank fraud specialist believes that Trump and Jared Kushner may have laundered millions of dollars to Russians in 2016 and 2017. This is what “patriots” do?

And Trump, with no real basis to do so save that he wants to destroy Barack Obama’s “legacy,” decided unilaterally to undo the nuclear agreement with Iran, forcing signatories of the agreement to enforce old sanctions, and egging on Iranian officials into blustering on about military “retaliation” by itself and its regional proxies. Trump, like the schoolyard bully who becomes a coward when someone confronts him physically, has become a bit frightened by the potential of military conflict with Iran, We are talking about a man whose grandfather immigrated to the U.S. to avoid military service in Germany, whose son Fred avoided serving in World War II, and then his son Donald essentially faked a foot injury to avoid serving in Vietnam. But as much as Trump has told us that he wants to avoid foreign “entanglements—at least he wasn’t the one who lied about WMDs that didn’t exist in Iraq, leading to a pointless war that resulted in 4,000 American lives lost—he has done more than any president in recent memory to set the tables for future conflict everywhere his amateurish meddling has come into play. It is like the master chess player who is at first confused by his opponent’s “strategy” that he doesn’t quite see yet—before realizing he playing against someone who is a complete novice and doesn’t know what he is doing. 

So who will pay for Trump’s international mistakes? Not him, just those who are expected to do their “patriotic” duty and suffer needlessly for their country.