Archive for the ‘Trump’ Category
patriarchal power, money, and endings
I’ve written before about how people make the category error of confusing patriarchy/matriarchy, which is a system, with men/women, which is about individuals. Of course we can think of woeful women and marvellous men, but that’s not at all the point.
And then there are others who say that the aim should be égalité, not oppression of one gender by another. Of course this is reasonable, but if we look at other primates we find a complexity that is hard to parse into neat categories. In a study of 121 primate species, published in PNAS, entitled ‘the evolution of male-female dominance in primate societies’, they start with this:
We show that societies where males win nearly all aggressive encounters against females are actually rare. Evolutionarily, females became more dominant when they gained more control over reproduction, as in monogamous, monomorphic, or arboreal species, as well as when they faced more competition, as in solitary or pair-living species. Contrarily, male-biased dominance prevails in terrestrial, sexually dimorphic, and polygynous species.
Human primates (and don’t we just hate being described that way) are, these days, mostly monogamous, very varied in terms of size, and generally terrestrial, so it’s hard to say how that works for gender dominance.
However, though it galls me to harp on human uniqueness, we have created or evolved these things we call civilisation, language, nations, technology, etc, which have complicated questions of gender dominance. For example, it’s clear that size would hardly be expected to matter so much in a technically-savvy society such as ours. Then again, male violence against women, as we all know, is far more prevalent than its opposite.
Male dominance is still very much the norm in human societies, and is often taken for granted in surprising ways. I remember as a mature-age student in the 90s befriending a young woman who was convinced that men had better, more complex brains than women, and that neural physiology would bear that out. What could make her think this? Did she also think that male cats and dogs had more complex brains than their female counterparts? It seems that our patriarchy, slightly declining though it is in recent times, is still doing its damage in terms of human ambitions and expectations.
One way that gender empowerment can be measured in human societies, and nowhere else in the living world, is wealth. Moulah. Wealth, they say, is power. And when we look at the USA, supposedly the richest country on Earth, with the greatest wealth disparity in the WEIRD world, it’s very clear that wealth is wielding its power there in rather disturbing ways. This has made me wonder – how much wealth, globally, is in the hands of men, compared to women? Would it be 90%? Surely more than that. Surely closer to 99%. In any case it makes a mockery of looking at gender dimorphism when determining the power imbalance between the sexes in humans. And it’s no good looking at the disparities of pay between Mr and Ms Average, I’m talking about the world’s controlling billionaires, all of whom are men. Here’s the opening paragraph of an essay from the Brennan Center for Justice, on money spent on the recent US election:
The 2024 federal election cycle was the most secretive since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010. Dark money groups, nonprofits and shell companies that spend on elections without revealing their donors, plowed more than $1.9 billion into last year’s election cycle, a dramatic increase from the prior record of $1 billion in 2020.
Though it occasionally happens, the super-rich, pretty well all male, don’t contribute money to the left side of politics. There is an Emoluments Clause in the US Constitution, but it’s a sick joke, and I’m very doubtful about that $1.9 billion figure – surely it’s far more than that. And although it hasn’t been so prominent lately, the ‘project 2025’ agenda includes an assault on women’s rights and freedoms in that beleaguered country, including a nationwide ban on abortion care, with the further threat of banning all forms of birth control and fertility treatment such as IVF. It also plans to prosecute health professionals who engage in abortion care, and to largely curtail the Affordable Care Act, which would disproportionately disadvantage women in a number of ways.
Of course Trump, who is now clearly the dictator of that country, is less concerned with project 2025 than with prosecuting anyone who has slighted him, and with cashing in on his dictatorship, but his fellow-travellers are mostly of the macho-fascist type, so the assault on women’s rights, freedoms and empowerment will continue, perhaps into Trump’s third term. All we seem to be able to cling to is the long arc bending towards justice that Martin Luther King evoked.
I suppose it will all end by our discovering how smart we are, as opposed to how smart we think we are….
And then maybe bonobos will survive us, and evolve…
References
how are things in Guatemala? Trump wants to know, and learn…
Politically, there are two kinds, or wings, of extremism, left and right, or communist and fascist, though they both trend toward dictatorship. It’s always been obvious to me that the USA, if it ever went awry, would do it on the right side of that see-saw. Remember that McCarthy bloke and the anti-Red witch-hunts of the 50s? Remember the Vietnam war with its half-million civilian death toll, all about halting the ‘red menace’? Today it isn’t communism, it’s wokeism, feminism and even liberalism that have become terms of abuse in that faraway land.
I love its faraway-ness, from my more or less impoverished Australian perspective. It allows me to indulge in oodles of schadenfreude. After all, don’t United Staters deserve everything they’re now experiencing, having elected Old Shitmouth for a second time? And I’m actually grateful for their mess, as it was likely the principal reason for Australia’s centre-left government being returned with a much-increased majority in recent elections.
I have to say, I feel cynical about everything USA these days. Did Old Shitmouth really win that last election? Could any other democratic country allow someone who fomented a bloody insurrection after losing an election escape imprisonment, let alone regain the kind of absolute power afforded US Presidents, a power that no other democratic country on the planet bestows upon its leaders? I recently heard – I don’t always follow the US scene closely – that Old Shitmouth was allowed to pardon all those insurrectionists on returning to power. What kind of unutterably worthless and shit system this is, and the worst thing about it is that United-Staters don’t even seem to notice!
And so far, this term, only a few months in, looks far worse than the last, and my worry is more about the global consequences of this race to the bottom – though of course there are plenty of good people in the USA who don’t deserve this.
It’s typical of the USA that the thing that’s hurting Trump most is his associating with a very dodgy character who spent years sexually exploiting under-age girls. This doesn’t sit well with a country that has a greater percentage of Christian puritanical sects and obsessives than any other WEIRD nation. Never mind the travesty of putting RFK in charge of the nation’s health system, and so many other deplorable hacks in charge of the various agencies that should never be allowed to be politicised, but obviously can be under the US system. No wonder they have ‘no kings’ marches – it’s because they do have an elected monarchy – and dodgy, wealth-dominated elections for their monarch to boot.
Where will it end? We’ve all become pretty certain it’s going to get worse before it gets better. I’m kind of fascinated – schadenfreude again – but also disturbed and angered. At how Putin is taking advantage of all this. At how many overseas politicians are still kowtowing to this absurd US leader. At how good people are losing their jobs or being thrown out of the country. At the speed of this race to the bottom.
The overseas repercussions, though, are of great concern. Putin, who I suspect is getting desperate over this endless war he started, and its domestic effects, seems to be attacking NATO nations, hoping that Trumps’s lust for dictators like himself will keep him sidelined. Or maybe he, Putin, just wants to go out in a blaze of glory. However, it may be that the recent Putinland drone incursion into Poland will meet with virtually no NATO response, or more likely an inadequate one. It does seem, however, that Trump has begun to see that his support of Putin has been bad for his own business, and he has recently acknowledged that Putin is ‘the aggressor’ in the European situation. Hopefully he, and NATO generally, will become more aggressive in combatting him in the future.
But on the US domestic front, the cruelty and inhumanity of the Trump administration has been horrific.
So, how are things in Guatemala, as the song almost goes? While the liberal media in the US have been incensed by the treatment of some 500 Guatemalan children being rounded up and put on planes to be sent back to their country and an uncertain future, precious little has been said about the mind-boggling fact that these children were sent to the hellhole that is the USA – by their own families – in the first place. What could they have been thinking – or, to repeat myself, how are things in Guatemala?
It will come as no surprise to find that the country or region’s recent history, really since Spanish colonisation, has been tragically brutal, and successive US governments have contributed to that brutality, being behind a number of coup d’états and political killings. In 1931 Jorge Ubico was swept into power by the land-owning elites keen to maintain dominance in a region devastated by the Great Depression. Wikipedia gives a taste of Ubico’s version of fascism:
He replaced the system of debt peonage with a brutally enforced vagrancy law, requiring all men of working age who did not own land to work a minimum of 100 days of hard labor.[84] His government used unpaid Indian labor to build roads and railways. Ubico also froze wages at very low levels, and passed a law allowing land-owners complete immunity from prosecution for any action they took to defend their property,[84] an action described by historians as legalizing murder.[85] He greatly strengthened the police force, turning it into one of the most efficient and ruthless in Latin America.[86] He gave them greater authority to shoot and imprison people suspected of breaking the labor laws.
Thought I should leave the links intact.
All very unwell, but what does it have to do with the USA? After all, FDR’s response to the Great Depression was quite different, to put it mildly. However, though Ubico was certainly an admirer of European fascism, he was well aware of the need for US support in his region, and was happy to round up any Guatemalans of German descent, and to provide land for a US base there when the USA entered WW2.
And then there’s the interesting story of the United Fruit Company (UFCO), a benign-sounding name for a US multinational company which became infamous in the early 20th century for monopolising trade, transportation and labour in the so-called banana republics of Central America – Honduras, Costa Rica and Guatemala among them. Exploitative neocolonialism, as earlier practiced in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere, was the term used by its critics. These profiteering ventures and tactics, often barely distinguishable from slavery, left much of Central America almost as devastated as the ‘Belgian Congo’ after Leo Victor’s depredations.
And US interference and culpability continued. As usual it was about the exaggerated, indeed ridiculous threat of ‘commies’. Guatemala held its first fully democratic election in 1945, and successive governments instituted land, labour, health and education reforms, during a period thereafter known as the ‘Guatemalan Revolution’. It was all too much for profoundly anti-communist US governments under both Truman and Eisenhower. Truman tried to organise a coup in 1952, much influenced by the afore-mentioned UFCO, whose massive profits had been cut by the Guatemalan government’s actions, and supported by the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza Garcia, one of several brutal scumbags that dominated Nicaraguan politics for decades, fully supported and promoted by the USA in its delusory battle against ‘communism’. Presumably it’s much better, according to US leadership, to have by far the biggest rich-poor gap in the WEIRD world, than to have any kind of state support for the less well-off. And they won’t even allow neighbouring governments to express this kind of humanity!
Excuse my indignation.
Truman’s attempted coup was aborted, but his successor, Eisenhower, was, of course, even more anti-commie, and some of his team had financial interests in the corrupt UFCO, so the Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz just had to go. Good old Wikipedia describes the outcome:
Eisenhower authorized the CIA to carry out Operation PBSuccess in August 1953. The CIA armed, funded, and trained a force of 480 men led by Carlos Castillo Armas.[120][121] The force invaded Guatemala on 18 June 1954, backed by a heavy campaign of psychological warfare, including bombings of Guatemala City and an anti-Árbenz radio station claiming to be genuine news.[120] The invasion force fared poorly militarily, but the psychological warfare and the possibility of a US invasion intimidated the Guatemalan army, which refused to fight. Árbenz resigned on 27 June.[122][123]
So US-fuelled corruption had become the new order. Armas, mentioned above, a militant right-wing extremist, became the next President, fully backed by the Eisenhower regime. He was murdered in 1957, and of course the CIA was heavily involved in deciding his successor, Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes, a somewhat unstable figure who was finally toppled in 1963, after another coup d’état organised by his defence minister. His excuse was predictable – the regime was becoming ‘overrun by communists’ – always an essential line for keeping the Yanks onside. This was a very unstable time for the struggling nation – in fact the period between 1960 and 1966 has been described, perhaps retrospectively, as the Guatemalan Civil War. Ydigoras’ successor, Enrique Peralta Azurdia, funded death squads to deal with leftist unrest, and Wikipedia describes one of many low points:
Another notable event occurred on March 3 and 5, 1966, when the G-2 (military intelligence) and the Judicial Police raided three houses in Guatemala City, capturing twenty-eight trade unionists and members of the PGT [the Communist Party]. The twenty-eight “disappeared” while in the custody of the security force, marking it one of the largest forced disappearances in Latin American history.[7]
In 1966, the country elected it first ever civilian President, against all odds. However, backed financially and militarily by the US, extreme anti-communist repression continued. The new President, Julio César Méndez Montenegro, is described by Wikipedia as ‘left-of-centre’, but its description of events during his tenure hardly supports this. Civil war, of course, had hardened positions on both sides, with the left always suffering most. Wikipedia makes it clear:
the United States expanded training within Guatemala’s 5,000-man army and outfitted the Guatemalan security forces with the most modern counterinsurgency equipment available.[3] The United States also assisted the Guatemalan security forces in the implementation and use of counter-terrorism, and the establishment of counter-terror units under the supervision of U.S. police advisors.[4] With increased US military support, the Guatemalan Army launched a counter-insurgency campaign that successfully combated and dispersed the left-wing guerrilla organizations fighting in the mountains and country.
Clearly both sides were now engaging in all-or-nothing fighting, bent on revenge for the suffering the other side was causing, but with US-subsidised might always on the side of the right. The story of militias and atrocities continued through the 70s and 80s. During the early years of the Reagan Administration, Guatemala was regarded as a pariah state, ruled by a murderous military junta, but Reagan was fully supportive. The ruthlessness of the Right led, unsurprisingly, to a greater integration of leftist resistance, with growing support from Mexico and other neighbours. The indigenous population was also under threat throughout these decades. In 1992 Rigoberta Menchú, a Mayan Kʼicheʼ human rights activist, was awarded the Nobel Peace prize ‘for her efforts to bring international attention to the government-sponsored genocide against the indigenous population‘, described as ‘a longstanding policy of the U.S.-backed military regimes’.
In 1996 the Guatemalan civil war, or series of civil wars, supposedly came to an end. Again, from Wikipedia,
According to the U.N.-sponsored truth commission (the Commission for Historical Clarification), government forces and state-sponsored, CIA-trained paramilitaries were responsible for over 93% of the human rights violations during the war.
More than 450 Mayan villages were destroyed, and over a million Guatemalans displaced.
I would hope, of course, that things are much better now in Guatemala, but the fact that parents are sending their own children off to the USA, of all places, unaccompanied, surely suggests otherwise. So, what’s the story? I’ve been trying to research this but it’s difficult – all I’m getting is the fulsome coverage of the Trump administration’s treatment of these kids. I have learned that the country has one of the highest violent crime rates in Central America, and that, since 2017, there has been ‘democratic backsliding’. So perhaps parents are imagining that, on balance, their children would have a better chance in the USA. Of course, few people there or elsewhere would have imagined that United Staters would’ve been so imbecilic as to re-elect Trump, if that’s what they did…
So, I’ve found a Washington Post piece, from July 2018, entitled ‘Why are so many children coming to the U.S. from Central America in the first place?’ Its author, Rachel Schwartz, reports:
Experts tend to divide the things driving Central Americans to flee into two groups: economic factors and violence and insecurity. The first group includes the lack of economic opportunity, including a lack of jobs or inadequate opportunities for education. The second group includes violence and victimization, not just by gangs, other criminal groups and state security forces but at home as well.
It seems that targeted victims of crime are mostly wanting to migrate, but these motives aren’t easy to separate from seeking greater economic opportunity. Also gang violence is hard to separate from gang recruitment. However, Guatemala’s flights to the US seem to be differently motivated than those from the two other affected Central American nations, Honduras and El Salvador. People/children from these two nations are around 4 times more likely to cite gang violence as the reason for their flight, compared to Guatemalans. This aligns with Guatemala’s significantly lower homicide rate, which has been trending downward now since 2009. Almost 25% of Guatemalans claimed domestic abuse as a reason, a similar percentage to that of the other two nations.
But that was a summary of a 2018 essay. A 2024 Human Rights Watch report begins thus:
Guatemala’s democratic backsliding accelerated during 2023 with corruption weakening the country’s democracy and justice system. Authorities undermined institutional checks on the abuse of power to prevent accountability. Independent journalists, prosecutors, and judges who had investigated and exposed corruption, human rights violations, and abuse of power faced increased harassment and criminal prosecution.
The rest of the report makes for extremely depressing reading. Clearly today’s Guatemala is a disaster zone. And the Trump administration is clearly doing its best to send children back there, while perhaps learning a few lessons about how to increase corruption and create a more permanent neo-fascist state domestically.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2024/country-chapters/guatemala
the USA and Ukraine: disasters and tragedies
This was a children’s hospital in Mariupol, Donetsk
I’ve become more or less convinced that listening to United Staters commenting on their own political situation is pretty much a waste of time. Outsiders have a much more objective perspective…
Oh, that’s right – I’m an outsider! Lucky me!
Seriously, how many US pundits complain about their presidential system, the massive power it wields, the massive immunity granted to it, the massive amounts of money thrown about in their circus campaigns, the ridiculous ‘individuality’ of it all? How many compare their massive rich-poor gap with that of other WEIRD countries, the massive, and surely related, incarceration rates, the lack of per capita expenditure on public education, health and welfare? What they do go on about is how the ‘greatest nation in the known (or unknown) multiverse’ has somehow come to this. The ‘world’s richest [and therefore most successful] nation on the planet’, ‘the world’s greatest (and first modern) democracy’ (that one’s a real staple, spoken with a kind of glazed expression, like a mantra they’ve been chanting since kindergarten – and it’s bullshit, they were a country economically based on slavery at the time of their first election, and they didn’t allow half their population to vote in federal elections until 1920).
The fact is, the US politico-social system is SHIT. And that’s an understatement. Nations that have been persuaded, or well-nigh forced to emulate it (South Korea is a tragic example) are suffering the consequences.
What we need – all the WEIRD and developing countries – is to get completely away from ‘I alone can fix it’ wankers (pretty well all of them being men) and towards collaborative, preferably female-dominated piloting of the ship of state, with always a concern, more than anything, for the ‘left-behind’, those disadvantaged through no fault of their own. The tedious shifts from so-called ‘left-wing’ and ‘right-wing’ governments, each intent on demolishing what went before and leaving their own egotistical mark on things, should be replaced by gradualism, consensus and collaboration, with, always, fingers on the pulse of the populace, their needs and reasonable aspirations. That might require eliminating men from government, at least until they learn the error of their ways….
Anyway, I began this post wanting to say that the best commentaries on US politics are definitely coming from outside the country (and this might be the case for analyses of any country – if only those inside the country were prepared to listen!). I recall reading that people always exaggerate their skills and abilities, and downplay their failings, as in some respects a ‘healthy’, or evolutionarily successful, approach to making their way in the world, and that if you really want a more accurate view of them, ask their frenemies. I suspect the same goes for nations…
The tragedy of the advent of Trump, is that he’s an outcome of a massively flawed politico-social system that won’t be reformed ‘any time soon’, as they’re fond of saying. And it coincides tragically with the reign of a far worse individual, Vladimir Putin, a psychopathic thug with vast volumes of blood on his hands already. The current ‘negotiations’ with Putin are of course a very sick joke. Putin isn’t negotiating, his aim – to destroy Ukraine as an independent nation, whatever the cost – will never change, and Trump and his minions’ flailings signify nothing. What Ukraine needs from the USA, in concert with Europe, is armaments, fighters and 100% support. Ukraine has to win this war, so Trump’s second term, with his pusillanimity and love of dictators, has been disastrous for that nation. It’s all very unedifying and hard to watch, even from afar…
The USA’s political system is not normal
Andrew Weissmann, the well-known US lawyer, legal expert and, I believe, MSNBC politico-legal commentator, has presented a talk from his home called ‘Reality Check’. My purpose here isn’t to respond in detail to his critique of the current US situation, but to return to and elaborate upon some of my own critiques of the USA’s social and political systems.
First, the Presidential system, which is way too much like a monarchical system, albeit elected. Weissmann has emphasised, as I have, channelling Benjamin Franklin, that politicians are our servants. If Trump had ever been made to accept that this really was the case, he would never have run for President, or for any political office. When Trump first started making noises about running for President, about a decade ago, many prominent Republicans spoke out strongly against him, knowing not only of his ignorance, but his passion for self-aggrandisement – effectively his only real passion. So Trump quickly realised that he needed to get ‘the people’ behind him, and was successful enough to ‘win’ the 2016 election, though Hilary Clinton was the actual winner (yes gerrymandering and Electoral College-type systems plague many countries, including my own, and constant reform needs to be advocated). Why did this happen?
It’s complex, but has largely to do with a huge rich-poor divide, much larger than any other WEIRD nation. The poor, many of whom would never bother to vote, in a system they don’t much understand, are generally under-educated, and easily manipulated. The rich, on the other hand, in a system which is all abut money, are happy to donate to a fellow flouter of the tax system. Most WEIRD nations have strict rules about campaign contributions, even the USA, but compliance with those rules is another thing, and while there might be a few law-abiding super-rich people…. haha, I’m joking. Huge amounts of money are shifted during US elections, and money is still flowing swiftly today, into Trump’s coffers.
So that’s how an obvious grifter and ignoramus can get into office today in the US, in a way that couldn’t happen in Australia – to focus on the country I obviously know best, but which I think is similar enough to other English-speaking Westminster-based nations (Britain, Canada and New Zealand) to be representative. It couldn’t happen here because we don’t have a Presidential system. We have a party-based system in which the Prime Minister (primus inter pares) is voted to that position by the elected members of her or his own party, and can be voted out at any time by same. This doesn’t have to be disastrous because we vote for parties and policies, not individuals. Nor do we give our Prime Minister any pardoning powers, or any immunity. We do have a pardoning system, rarely used, which is ultimately in the hands of the federal Attorney-General, usually on the advice of the High Court, the highest court in the land. The monarch in Britain has a similar rarely-used pardoning power, which is only granted on the advice of the government of the day. The contrast with the US President’s freewheeling powers is too horrendous to dwell upon. To mention some others – the Presidential candidate gets to choose her or his running mate, who, if she becomes Vice President, will become the leader of the nation if the Prez becomes incapacitated, or is bumped off, without ever having been personally elected to the position.
And that’s just the beginning. The President gets to select a whole squadron of unelected people to positions of great power and responsibility – positions that, under a party-based system, would be taken up by individuals elected by their local constituents. And this same President gets to stay far from the madding crowd in a White Palace surrounded by courtiers, while our Prime Minister sits in the parliament with her fellow ministers and MPs, defending their government’s policies against the opposition’s jibes and critiques. Moreover, most WEIRD countries have a multi-party system, in which a variety of views and approaches to government can be aired and debated. This can make decision-making more cumbersome, but also more nuanced, as a wider variety of the people’s views are taken into account. Government can be a little more participatory, whereas I would argue that there is no government less participatory, in the WEIRD world, than that of the USA.
Moreover the USA is the most divided nation in the WEIRD world. It may be united in its jingoism, but that’s about it. I’ve mentioned the huge rich-poor divide, and this is exacerbated by that nation’s having, by a long, long way, the highest per capita incarceration rate of any WEIRD nation, and the lowest minimum wage, federally. It also has the lowest federal spending on education, health and welfare. All of this hurts people, especially the poor. You could say that the country is united by all these failings. I certainly can’t think of any other way that it is united.
So Weissmann is worried about the current US political situation becoming normalised, but my view, on learning about the US socio-political system, in place more or less since its inception, is that Trump’s accession to the ‘throne’ is largely the result of the normalisation of that seriously, almost fatally flawed system. In other words the problem is much deeper than Weissmann realises, or seems prepared to admit.
Jingoism, as mentioned, is a big problem in the USA. One can be nationalistic, or patriotic, to use the term preferred by Timothy Snyder, while recognising that all political systems need to be open to reform, as society evolves. But the USA’s system has congealed into a highly combative two-party contest, as if they’re rival football players and their fans. One gets the impression that most of the ‘fans’ have little idea of their party’s policies, as long as they win the game. And any criticism from outside, I’ve learned to my bemusement, meets with a torrent of invective and jingoistic claptrap – and it’s really hard to know whether this is a superiority complex or the opposite.
The advent of Trump, however, and the lack of proper checks and balances within the US federal system, has raised serious international concerns. Trump is an extremely lazy, ignorant and noisy man who is drawn to other big boss figures on the world stage. He’s keen on making big, momentous, much talked-about decisions in which he’s seen as a winner, and damn the details (and the effect upon the losers). I can’t help but feel that Tom Phillips had Trump in mind, when, in his 2017 book Humans: a brief history of how we fucked it all up, he described the attitude toward leadership, and work, of the world’s most notorious mass-murderer:
… it’s worth remembering that Hitler was actually an incompetent, lazy egomaniac and his government was an absolute clown show. In fact, this may have helped his rise to power, as he was consistently underestimated by the German elite. Before he became chancellor, many of his opponents had dismissed him as a joke for his crude speeches and tacky rallies…
Why did the elites of Germany so consistently underestimate Hitler? Possibly because they weren’t actually wrong in their assessment of his competency – they just failed to realise that this wasn’t enough to stand in the way of his ambition. As it would turn out, Hitler was really bad at running a government. As his own press chief Otto Dietrich wrote later in his memoir The Hitler I Knew, ‘In the 12 years of his rule in Germany Hitler produced the biggest confusion in government that has ever existed in a civilised state’.
His government was constantly in chaos, with officials having no idea of what he wanted them to do, and nobody was entirely clear who was in charge of what. He procrastinated wildly when asked to make difficult decisions, and would end up relying on gut feeling, leaving even close allies in the dark about his plans.
There’s a bit of an argument among historians about whether this was a deliberate ploy on Hitler’s part to get his own way, or whether he was just really really bad at being in charge of stuff… But when you look at Hitler’s personal habits, it’s hard to shake the feeling that it was just a natural result of putting a work-shy narcissist in charge of a country.
Tom Phillips, Humans… pp 129 -132
This is Trump to a T – (okay, replacing the obsessive anti-semitism with a more generalised bigotry). In his previous outing as Prez there was much bemused reporting about his ‘down-time’ and his ‘passion’ for playing golf… You just don’t get that kind of ‘leadership’ from someone who has come up through the party ranks via a proven ability to work for her constituents, to bring people together, to effectively articulate and institute policies. As I’ve written before, if there was an effective vetting system for candidates, a system Trump has never been subjected to, he would never have been hired to manage a public toilet, never mind a nation. Nevertheless the US system allows this. They even boast that any of their citizens can become President. But that’s definitely not what you want, and it’s nothing to boast about.
References
Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, 2017
Tom Phillips, Humans: a brief history of how we fucked it all up, 2017
a conversation about dictatorship, intellectuals, bonobos and the strange case of the USA
Francisco Lopez, one of the world’s lesser known dictators – unless you’re Paraguayan (see references)
Canto: So there’s now Putin’s macho invasion of Ukraine, Trump & co’s macho trampling of US democracy, such as it is, Hamas and its macho terrorist attack in southern Israel, and Israel’s massive macho response, Xi’s macho politburo and his assault on female empowerment, and the usual macho claptrap in Iran, Afghanistan, Burma, Syria, Yemen, etc etc, etc, so how’s your bonobo world going?
Jacinta: Well, my teensy-tiny part of the world is going okay, and hopefully that tiny-teensy patch south of the Congo River is too, for now. And patches of the WEIRD world are making slow progress, from century to century.
Canto: So you’re taking the long view. How admirable. Seriously, it’s the only way we can maintain any optimism. When the internet suddenly became a big thing in everyone’s life, I was excited – so much useful knowledge at our fingertips without having to visit libraries, subscribe to science magazines, buy books and so on – I didn’t really pay much attention to the social media aspect and its dangers, which have become so overwhelming in the USA, but probably here as well for all I know. I often hear – it’s repeated so often it’s almost as if I comprehend it – that so-and-so has been ‘radicalised by social media’. But what does that really mean?
Jacinta: Well, I think it starts with the fact that people want to be with like-minded people. They like to be part of an ‘in-group’. People who really deserve the ‘intellectual’ title are actually in a tiny minority. They’re generally more independent-minded and suspicious of any in-group thinking.
Canto: And yet, bonobos are real groupies, aren’t they? Isn’t that a problem for you?
Jacinta: I’m not pretending we should be like bonobos in all ways, but, since we’ve been focussing on free will, and the lack thereof, our recognition of this lack should make us more compassionate, from an intellectual perspective. And bonobos are the compassionate, and passionate apes, presumably not coming at it from an intellectual perspective. What they’ve become ‘instinctively’, we need to become from a more knowledge-based, intellectual perspective.
Canto: Way to become more sexy, by just giving it more thought.
Jacinta: It doesn’t require that much thought, just an open-eyed – and certainly more female-centred – view of what macho violence has done and is still doing.
Canto: What about the ‘problem’ of female self-obsession, fashion-consciousness, and general ‘femininity’ – highlighting the decorative over the functional?
Jacinta: Like the ‘problem’ of male dressing tough, or business-like or sporty-casual or whatever, these are minor differences which are already changing with greater equality. Visit any Aussie pub. Anyway, looking decorative rather than functional has often to more to do with status than gender. Though there’s still a way to go.
Canto: I’ve noted that human society, at least in the WEIRD world, seems to be divided into right or left wing obsessionalism. What do you make of this?
Jacinta: Taking the long view, it’s a passing phase..
Canto: Well if you take the long view everything’s a passing phase. Nations are a passing phase, and now everyone’s obsessed with borders and the status of immigrants, as if migration hasn’t been a thing since humans came into being and before – ask any bird-dinosaur.
Jacinta: So, such terms as neo-Marxism or neo-fascism seem laughable to me. It’s largely macho stuff. We’re more about wanting to get on with people, recognising our different backgrounds and influences and trying to find common grounds rather than ideological grounds for grievance. And what are those grounds? The desire to be heard, accepted, even loved. Youse men are too interested in besting, in winning. Of course, I’m generalising – there are male-type females and vice versa.
Canto: Well, I can’t disagree. But isn’t that competitive spirit good for capitalism as well as war?
Jacinta: Ah, capitalism. There are info-wars out there about whether capitalism is good or bad. To me, it’s either, or it’s both, because it’s much more than some political ideology. Birds do it, bees do it, even the fungi in the trees do it. It’s more than just human nature.
Canto: So, you mean capitalising?
Jacinta: Yes, and you can do it in a dumb way – say, by basing much of your diet on one or two species, hunting and gathering them to extinction, then heading towards extinction yourself because you can’t change your culinary ways. Moving to an agricultural lifestyle was a smart but risky thing to do, and was best done gradually, as with any change of diet….
Canto: But this has nothing to do with capitalism as we know it.
Jacinta: Ha, I neither know nor care about the dictionary definition of capitalism. Or the political definition, I should say. I’m thinking it in the broadest sense – capitalising on food and other resources, on our smarts, our technology, our history. And we can be synergistic capitalists, or symbiotic capitalists. Isn’t that what trade is all about? And getting back to bonobos, isn’t their sexual play a kind of synergistic capitalism, especially with the females? They’re building bonds that unite the community, especially the females when the odd too-aggressive male starts to cause trouble. Social capital, they call it. We need more social capital.
Canto: Trade alliances seem to be good for maintaining the peace I suppose, but it’s all beginning to fray…
Jacinta: Idiots like Trump, as far as he has any policies, think that closing the borders and shitting on your allies will MAGA, as if isolationism has ever benefitted any nation that wants to progress. How are the Andaman Islanders going?
Canto: Trump just intuits that the idea will resonate with his base, insofar as he thinks at all.
Jacinta: Yes, being born into wealth, but without intellect, by which I mean intellectual curiosity, the kind of mind that tries to ‘rise above the self and grasp the world’, to quote our blog’s motto, he’s purely interested in self-promotion, and his instincts tell him it’s not the curious and the questioning that’ll follow him, but those impressed by his wealth and his bluster. Look at any dictator – they all project this air of extreme self-importance, it’s the first and last, the ‘must-have’ quality.
Canto: And the fact that there are always so so so many dupes for these guys, that’s what astonishes me most. Why is it so?
Jacinta: I think conditions have to be right. There has to be a substantial proportion of the population that are under-educated, but above all suffering, feeling deprived, abandoned, desperate. Smart, successful and well-heeled people seek out their own, and easily slip into the fantasy that most people are like them. They’re not, especially in places like the USA, with its rich-poor gap, its tattered social safety net, its pathetic minimum wage, its massive incarceration rate, its group-think holy rollers and the like. And surely no nation is more deluded about its own superiority than the USA, so vague but persistent appeals to patriotism, which are the sine qua non for dictators (Hitler being the prime example of that) will always play exceptionally well there.
Canto: Hmmm, quite an indictment, but the USA, to be fair, is very diverse, almost like a few countries rolled into one. New York State and the north-east coast seem to be no-go areas for Trump, and California too… that’s my uneducated guess. It’s like the civil war never ended, it’s so divided. United States indeed!
Jacinta: Haha, we should get off this obsession with the US, but indeed, I’ve often thought they’d be better off dividing the place into two, or even three. Or rather, I just wish they’d do it for our entertainment’s sake.
Canto: Okay, so we’ve covered a lot of macho ground – though it often feels like the female Trumpets blow the hardest. But they can’t help it – no free will after all, right?
Jacinta: Well, yes, but that’s not a cause for despair – determinism isn’t pre-determinism. It means working towards a world in which the determining factors are as positive as they can be. But that’s for another time…
References
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/trump-approval-rating-by-state
Getting wee Donny 5
DA Fanni Willis – going for it
Canto: so our last conversation on this topic was subtitled ‘the waiting game’. We’re still waiting.
Jacinta: Never fear, the arc of the universe bends slowly, but it bends towards getting wee Donny.
Canto: Yeah well I want it to happen within his lifetime thanks. It seems the number of civil and possibly criminal cases keeps rising, but it’s like heaven, where nothing ever happens.
Jacinta: Yes, we are not amused, but we are a bit. Wikipedia even has a page called ‘list of lawsuits involving Donald Trump’, but it’s probably well out of date.
Canto: I suppose we need to divide them into civil cases – suits for damages – and criminal cases. We’re certainly not lawyers, though of course we’re super-smart, so we should be able to make sense of it all.
Jacinta: Yes, well we’re not going to deal with them in order of importance, because there’s a certain degree of subjectivity in such ordering – many civil cases are of vital and immediate concern to some but not to others. For us non-United-Staters little of this is of direct concern, we’re just watching from the peanut gallery.
Canto: Yes, so Trump v Vance – which has been rather long-running, but with important recent developments. It started with a subpoena by Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance in August 2019 to obtain multiple wee Donny documents from the Mazars accounting firm – though there’s been pressure on the wee one to present his tax returns ever since his infamous election.
Jacinta: Yes, and it’s been resisted with BS like he’s perennially under audit, that nobody cares about his taxes, and that he’s the boss of everyone so nyanya. Anyway, on July 20 2020 the US Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, found that a sitting president wasn’t above having to comply with a state criminal subpoena. The case was sent back to do the rounds of the lower courts, on the basis that Donny and his wee minions might be able to find other reasons for not complying, and so it went – the lower courts dismissed claims that the subpoena was over-broad, and the case eventually arrived back at the Supreme Court, which sat on it from October 2020 to February this year, presumably because of the election, but eventually it denied the request to hear the case again, so Mazars has handed over the docs for review by a grand jury in Vance’s criminal case, which started with hush money payments to Stormy Daniels but has since clearly broadened. The House Oversight and Reform Committee, which issued a subpoena for the same Mazars records some years ago and was ignored, has now reissued that subpoena, which the wee one will no doubt fight.
Canto: Expensive business. But the Vance case has generated much attention due to his hiring of forensic analysts and a highly-touted mob prosecutor recently. An interesting piece in the New Yorker last month, though, presents the case as running for at least the rest of this year, just in its investigative phase, which means Vance will have retired by the time we get to see any action. It’s still very much a waiting game.
Jacinta: The other major case is out of Georgia, where they’re trying to rig elections beforehand, so that future trumpery types don’t have to get their hands dirty trying to throttle votes out of hapless officials next time around. Fulton County DA Fanni Willis, who’s pursuing wee Donny on illegal interference, including ‘solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local governmental bodies, conspiracy and racketeering’ in the 2020 election in Georgia, has hired one John Floyd, a lawyer who has written a book on prosecuting racketeering cases. I suspect, though that these possible charges will end up being watered down.
Canto: Well it might be that Willis has a thing for racketeering, as she won a high-profile racketeering case, re cheating on school tests, but this one takes high-profile to a higher level, to put it mildly.
Jacinta: Anyway Willis is being gutsy, in a traditionally Republican state (though it might well be changing, as witness the Ossoff and Warnock victories), taking on the Republican enfant terrible, wee Donny, when the Republican governor is doing his utmost to support the wee one by trying to make it impossible for Democrats to win there again.
Canto: But I really think the Republicans are shooting themselves in the arse with all this voter suppression shite. It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out over the next few months, with, it seems, the Democrats on the up and up re popular support. But I must say, I rather enjoy watching United Stater politics compared to the Australian version. I’m talking just as a spectator sport. There are just so many arseholes, lick-spittles, gold-diggers, out-and-out morons, and their counterparts, underdog heroes, justice warriors, passion-spun vloggers and the like – it all makes Australian politics look hopelessly staid.
Jacinta: Well, having 14 times Australia’s population certainly helps, with the good, the bad and the ugly. But getting back to wee Donny, clearly his criminal activities over a lifetime should see him in jail for the rest of his hopefully long and painful life…
Canto: And may dogs have mercy on his bloated carcass.
Jacinta: … but we’re talking about the USA here, so he won’t get much if anything in the way of jail time. For example, like Al Capone, he might get caught on his tax dodges, but not on fomenting insurrection or causing widespread death through covid disinformation and negligence.
Canto: Hopefully all the lawsuits will lighten his wallet, but I have to concede that he’s an expert sponger and grifter, and I imagine that an ex-President’s emoluments would be eye watering from our modest perspective, never mind all the real estate he’s accumulated.
Jacinta: Well let’s be optimistic, apart from the 29 lawsuits, most of which are undoubtedly of the sort any decent lawyer would love to act on, it really does look like the Manhattan case has legs. Everybody knows he’s a tax crook – he’s more or less admitted it himself.
Canto: Interestingly, an Australian news piece agrees that he could see jail time, though they quote some of his associates saying he’s more likely to flee the country – something I’ve often thought myself. Vlad would welcome him – he’d get an erection at the very thought of harbouring wee Donny, and having him speak out endlessly against the US from his new home.
Jacinta: Yes, Vlad would make him very comfy, that’s for sure. More fodder for the peanut gallery. It would be amusing if these turkeys didn’t do so much damage…
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lawsuits_involving_Donald_Trump
https://abcnews.go.com/US/fulton-county-da-opens-criminal-probe-trumps-efforts/story?id=75804119
getting wee Donny 4: the waiting game
the USA’s massive incarceration system – and the details are much worse – but the worst get rewarded
Canto: So we’re sick of wee Donny, and more importantly there’s so much that’s more valuable to write about….
Jacinta: But to be fair, and to be positive, this is about justice and reform, so that nobody like that can ever be allowed such power in the future, in a country that claims ad nauseam that it’s a paragon of nations etc etc.
Canto: Yes, reform of the political and the justice system – neither of which is likely to happen in the near future – is obviously required in the USA, and with their new, highly-regarded Attorney-General, not yet sworn in, hopefully some vital reforms can happen.
Jacinta: So the US Supreme Court has finally decided not to take up the appeal by the trumpets regarding the handing over of financial documents to the Manhattan DA. And this is another area requiring reform – endless appeals processes which not only deliberately waste time but use up the resources of the justice system for no good reason. There need to be penalties for this, and restrictions on the appeals process, which obviously favours the wealthy.
Canto: Though as to how wealthy this money-grubbing serial bankrupt is, that’s to be ascertained….
Jacinta: He seems to always have lawyers to pursue all these appeals, and they wouldn’t be stupid enough to do it gratis – or would they? I’ve never had the money to hire any lawyer, not that I’ve ever needed to. What a boring life I’ve led. Anyway, all these financial docs relating to wee Donny’s businesses for an eight-year period, 2011 to 2019, have been handed over to Cyrus Vance, the Manhattan DA, who has hired forensic tax and financial specialists and a crack lawyer, Mark Pomerantz, all of which indicates that this will be a Big Show, involving wee Donny’s wee kiddies and his long-time CFO, Allen Weiselberg, among others.
Canto: I just hope it happens soon and doesn’t drag on – justice delayed is justice denied. Pundits are talking about the ‘bad look’ of an ex-Prez perhaps being jailed, which infuriates me. World leaders are precisely those whose wrong-doings have the most profound consequences – in this case covid-19 fatalities, vulnerable kids permanently losing track of their parents, Kurds left high and dry in the Middle East, Saudi princes rewarded for murderous deeds, and the rise of hate crimes within the USA, all due to wee Donny’s soi-disant leadership. Not to mention all the victims of a fifty-year white-collar crime spree before that.
Jacinta: Well, he’s still at large, and campaigning for his trumpets in Ohio, Georgia and elsewhere. Pundits are disputing whether or not he’s a spent political force. It’s astounding. The prospective A-G is promising to get to those behind the attack on the Capitol, and the stink leads directly to wee Donny. And there’s so much else. Where did all that 2016 campaign money go? What’s now to be uncovered from the Mueller enquiry? What dodgy material is there from his time in office? Dodgy deals with Saudi Arabia, inaction on the Khashoggi murder, and of course Russia and Putin. It goes on and on. What a nation.
Canto: People are claiming that the GOP is being destroyed by the continuing presence of this wee bloke. Poor GOP. Many of them are still talking of election fraud, though the result of the election was in line with every opinion poll, left-wing, right-wing, centrist and aggregated, over four years. Wee Donny was on the nose – something to do with his nappy – within a few weeks of being elected, and he stayed that way throughout. So his 2020 loss was as predicable as the sunrise.
Jacinta: Well I draw some hope from Michael Cohen, who’s currently capitalising on his role as reformed trumpet. He claims that wee Donny hates being the defendant in court cases, because he always loses. So bring on the civil cases as well as the criminal ones. Cohen himself is suing Donny’s Disorganisation for $2 million in legal fees – proof that even bad lawyers don’t come cheap in the USA.
Canto: Haha, actually they’re legal bills, incurred during the Mueller and congressional probes. The Donny Disorganisation promised to indemnify him for those costs, according to Cohen, who’s been assisting the legal authorities on all this stuff for some time. And wee Donny’s wetting himself about it all, of course.
Jacinta: So – felony charges in Atlanta, Washington DC and New York, and civil cases all over the place, and yet we seem to be in a holding pattern, with as yet no A-G, no charges being laid, and with Donny’s supporters going crazy for him, imagining he’ll return to office on March 4, or that he’ll have a second coming in 2024. To do what?
Canto: What about the sexual allegations? Business Insider Australia did a report on this back in 2017. Apparently some 26 women have accused Donny of sexual misconduct, but the E Jean Carroll sexual assault claim seems the stickiest.
Jacinta: Great choice of words mate. According to a recent David Pakman video, and a CNN political piece, another woman, Summer Zervos, also has a defamation suit against Donny, related to sexual assault allegations. That case was put on hold recently and will be argued before the Court of Appeals. If Donny loses these cases – and the Carroll case looks the more serious – I presume it will mean he’s been caught lying, and the women have been caught truth-telling, and then they could go on to criminal proceedings. Pakman, though, is doubtful, and talks of a two-tiered justice system, which I have to say, seems to exist everywhere. Most people who get caught up in the justice system can’t afford any lawyers, let alone those who’re adept at running out the system for their clients.
Canto: Yes I don’t suppose it’s worthwhile to spend too much more time waiting on justice for someone who’s been so easily able to flout the law for so long. And yet…
Jacinta: There are so many victims, let’s not forget.
References
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/women-accused-trump-sexual-misconduct-list-2017-12?r=US&IR=T
UH-OH: Trump May Have to Answer Rape Allegations…Under Oath (David Pakman video)
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/07/politics/summer-zervos-trump-lawsuit/index.html
getting wee Donny 3: Georgia on his mind
this list is from 2019, and so the list goes on…
Canto: So several pundits are claiming that Donny’s Georgia antics may pose the most immediate of his problems.
Jacinta: ‘I jes wanna find 11,780 votes, which is more than we have..’ That’s from the January 2 call to Brad Raffensperger, to be used in evidence.
Canto: Yes, the Georgia Secretary of State, a Republican, released this recorded phone call to the public, and has become a hero, and a target, ever since.
Jacinta: The key word here is ‘find’ – as well as the number, of course. He could no doubt claim that he feels certain some votes were ‘lost’, accidentally or deliberately, by the vote-counters, whom he’d like to claim are opposition plants, but he only wants to find, with the help of the Secretary of State, enough to win the election in Georgia – which still wouldn’t win him the presidency.
Canto: Which raises the question – so obvious to investigators – as to whether he leaned on other close jurisdictions (Arizona from memory was one) to find other votes, considering that his target wasn’t just Georgia.
Jacinta: Must be hard on wee Donny, having to think of more than one problem state at a time.
Canto: Apparently a new Georgia DA, Fani Willis, is looking to make a name for herself – and all power to her – by launching an investigation into the nappy-clad buffoon that United Staters, in their infinite wisdom, chose – or actually didn’t choose by some 3 million votes – as their numero 45.
Jacinta: She’s been in the job for six weeks, and is destined to become quite the historical figure. Already the case might involve Lindsey Graham, Joker Giuliani and other trumpets trying to carry out wee Donny’s agenda. The key statute is ‘criminal solicitation to commit election fraud’, a phrase that plays in my ears like the music of the spheres.
Canto: Mmmm, sounds a bit clunky to me. ‘Conspiracy to commit treason’ sounds sweeter.
Jacinta: Come on, he doesn’t want to betray his nation, he just wants to own it.
Canto: True enough.
Jacinta: So this is a felony requiring at least a year in prison, and it’s surely as strong a case as can be had, and there may be more, including racketeering and conspiracy charges. But according to the NYT, Willis is a centrist who feels she has an obligation to follow the law in these matters.
Canto: Actually she’s the Fulton County DA. How many DAs do they have in that country?
Jacinta: One for every district presumably. That’s 94, according to the DoJ. Almost two per state, but presumably a state like Alaska would have one, and California several. But I’m looking at these districts, and Fulton County isn’t on there, and Fani Willis isn’t mentioned. Georgia apparently has three districts – northern, middle and southern – but it also has county DAs, and dog knows how many of them there are throughout the country. Anyway, Fulton County covers much of Atlanta, the state’s capital, so it’s pretty central.
Canto: So, in this infamous phone call, wee Donny also issued threats – first, that he’d refuse to support the Georgia candidates for the Senate, who both went on to lose their elections.
Jacinta: Though I wouldn’t blame wee Donny for that – great grassroots work by the Democrats was, I prefer to think, the principal reason for Warnock’s and Ossoff’s wins.
Canto: And secondly, Donny actually threatened Raffensperger with criminal charges if he didn’t comply with his orders. I’m reading this Slate article, which says, inter alia:
As election law expert Rick Hasen noted at the time, there is no question that Trump was asking Raffensperger to manufacture enough votes to overturn the Georgia election on the basis of paranoid delusions.
But I’d object to the term ‘paranoid delusions’. Donny’s just a manipulating windbag, it’s his only way of being. That means never ever losing, as he’s not adult enough – to put it mildly – to take it. Anyway, the Slate article lays out the law:
Any person who “solicits, requests, commands, importunes, or otherwise attempts to cause the other person” to falsify voting records is guilty of “criminal solicitation to commit election fraud in the first degree.” The crime is a felony offense, punishable by up to three years in prison (and no less than one year). An individual is culpable even if they failed to induce fraud.
Jacinta: So that seems pretty straightforward, but what with the role of money and dodgy lawyers and such, it doesn’t seem that anything to do with crime is straightforward in that country. Anyway, as mentioned, there’s a possibility that Lindsey Graham might be in trouble too, due to his ‘enquiries’ about maybe tossing out some mail-in ballots, and Joker Giuliani for promoting conspiracies about the election.
Canto: But the Georgia republicans are making a desperate attempt to change the rules so that a ‘grand jury’ (United Staters love their ‘grand’ shite) would have to be drawn from the whole state rather than Fulton County, which is a Democrat stronghold. But they don’t have the numbers, apparently. But it’s an indication that republicans are still keen to go along with wee Donny and his government-stuffing ways to hell and back.
Jacinta: So, lots to look forward to. We might turn our attention to the new administration’s Department of Justice next. Merrick Garland has a senate confirmation hearing on February 21, and no doubt republicans will throw dumb partisan questions at him, but he’ll be confirmed, and I don’t think he’ll be able to avoid all the corruption that clearly went on at the behest of wee Donny.
Canto: I’ve heard he’s also going to make domestic terrorism a major focus – so look out Antifa, or something…
Jacinta: Yes, on that matter, I’m wondering if wee Donny will actually get caught up in all the charges resulting from the January 6 events, since so many seem to be now saying Donny made us do it, if it weren’t for wee Donny, etc etc.
Canto: Oh let me count the many many ways to get wee Donny…
References
Donald Trump may be charged in Georgia court for election fraud, conspiracy (video)
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/02/trump-raffensperger-election-fraud-criminal-charges.html
Georgia Republicans Are Trying to Change the Rules for Fani Willis’s Prosecution of Donald Trump for Election Crimes
getting wee Donny 2: tax stuff etc
this goes back to 2016, but still no sign of justice
Canto: So there’s the more general matter of tax evasion, tax fraud, bank fraud, wire fraud and so forth – we’re no tax or finance experts, but we’re prepared to learn, for the fun of finding out how bad things might be for wee Donny.
Jacinta: Or should be, given effective white-collar crime legislation, and limitations to these endless appeals processes. By the way, I heard there was more news on the attempt, or desire, to evict him from Mar-a-Largo. Can that be included as a legal problem?
Canto: Why not? And what is this ‘largo’ thing? I’ve seen Key Largo – some thing to to with the Florida Keys…
Jacinta: That’s an archipelago, nothing to do with the keys to Mar-a-Lago (spelt without the ‘r’). Largo’s a coastal town in Florida, so I don’t know if it’s worth connecting the dots. As to tax matters, I heard a while back that ‘forensic accounting experts’ have been hired re investigations into wee Donny’s taxes, which reporters say is a big deal.
Canto: Okay so we’re leaving Mar-a-Lago for now (unlike Donny). Yes The Washington Post reported on this in late December. It concerns the DA’s office for Manhattan, headed by Cyrus Vance. They’ve been investigating Donny since 2018, initially in regard to alleged hush money payments made in 2016. But the investigation has since expanded to include insurance fraud as well as bank and tax fraud.
Jacinta: Stuff that appears to have been overlooked for decades. In fact they admit as much, since ‘the probe is believed to encompass transactions spanning several years’, according to the paper. All of this comes ‘from sources close to the case’ – Vance and his hirelings are naturally keeping mum about it all.
Canto: It’s explosive stuff, but heartening. Anyway, the forensics company they’ve allegedly hired is FTC consulting, and it’s a bonafide ‘global business advisory firm’. The paper mentions an ‘ongoing grand jury investigation’, so that’s a thing. We don’t do grand juries in Australia, so we might have to learn about that.
Jacinta: Vance’s office is battling to obtain years of tax returns and such from Mazars USA, the accounting firm Donny uses. It’s described as ‘an independent member firm of Mazars Group, an international audit, tax and advisory organization with operations in over 90 countries’. It sounds legit – but everything wee Donny touches dies, according to Rick Wilson – so I suspect Mazars USA is feeling the breath of death on its nape right now. The tax records are described as the final piece in an already well-advanced investigation. We shall see.
Canto: So this is a big one. Donny’s lawyers, such as they are, have been fighting all this, and the Supreme Court has already rejected the idea that he was immune from state court proceedings as Prez, which he ain’t no more. But of course the litigation has continued, with Donny’s lawyers claiming the subpoena for this financial stuff was ‘overbroad’ and issued ‘in bad faith’, and now it’s before the Supreme Court again, though Donny is no longer able to hide behind the presidency – which of course he should never be able to do. But in a banana republic…
Jacinta: Apparently he’s been granted a stay by the Supreme Court, and the technicalities of this are unclear to me, and I’ve been finding it hard to get free info about the length of this stay, so it’s frustrating.
Canto: It’s a ridiculous ongoing situation, hopefully an only in the USA situation – I pity any other country that allows such legal horrors. But with Donny now being unemployed, there should be an easier path to justice – it’s much easier to charge unemployed people there than anyone else.
Jacinta: Hmmm. I found reporting from early October that a federal appeals court then ruled against Donny’s lawyers, who tried to block the handover of tax documents to the Manhattan DA. Presumably that’s when the lawyers took it to the Supreme Court, and they granted a stay, presumably in mid-October.
Canto: Mein gott, so what exactly is a stay, for what reasons can it be given, and surely there’s a time limit on them?
Jacinta: Good questions, but I’ve found a very interesting article by Richard Lempert on the Brookings Institution website from October 19, when an appeal was on its way to the Supreme Court, arguing that the Supreme Court should end things now – meaning then. In its first para, I learn that the New York Times already has Donny’s tax returns – the stuff Vance is filing for – and is sharing them with the public. Whether that’s the whole kit and caboodle, I don’t know. And of course Donny claims the docs are false. Anyway the article points out that Vance is asking for more than tax returns – supporting docs are needed to prove criminality. The article then goes into a lot of legal detail about subpoenas, Article 2 powers, precedent and how courts deliver their rulings, but Lempert’s essential view is that Donny’s legal arguments in the initial case were weak, and they’ve come up with nothing new in the interim. So the Supreme Court shouldn’t take up the case.
Canto: But they have taken it up?
Jacinta: It does seem as if they have. Or maybe not. An article from Bloomberg, dated January 20, so quite recently, said the case was ‘now before the Supreme Court’, but that they hadn’t acted on it for three months, without providing reasons. The pay wall descended before I could work out whether that meant they’d deferred looking at the case or they’d deferred a decision to look at the case. But their decision may not matter, as apparently Vance may have sufficient material for his case already. I suppose only he and his legal team would know.
Canto: Michael Cohen was on cable news recently, arguing for SDNY to swiftly move on the matter of campaign finance violations, for which he was jailed, and also expressing an expectation that the new head of the DOJ, Merrick Garland, once approved – which may ultimately take another month – would look into Donny’s financial affairs as president, which will be interesting. Biden seems to want the DOJ to keep out of politics, but have Donny’s financial shenanigans ever really been political?
Jacinta: We can only await events. Meanwhile, there seems to be a real concern about the dangers of neo-fascism in the country. Those right-wingers who’ve gone against wee Donny recently seem to be running scared. Could the fear of reprisals be inhibiting legal action against wee Donny? That’s another thing to look into, as well as the situation in Georgia, where they have pretty strong evidence of serious attempts to overturn a fair election. Still a lot to get to…
References
Trump’s tax returns: Why the Supreme Court should end things now
getting wee Donny 1: 2016 campaign finance violations
one of wee Donny’s ‘reimbursement’ cheques – a smoking gun?
Canto: So we both agree that free will is a myth, and that this has major implications for crime and punishment, but we’re also both human – at least I am – and we want to see nasties being punished, and in fact we delight in it. As a person with a lifelong loathing of bullies, I’ve too often fantasised about bullying those bullies, even torturing them endlessly. And I do wonder if my sudden interest in US politics from the time wee Donny looked like he might bullshit his way into their presidency has more to do with gunning for his downfall than anything else.
Jacinta: Yes we think similarly but we have the capacity also to step back and be more analytical and curious about a system that allows such an obvious scammer to take up the very top position in what so many ‘Americans’ – and I put that in quotes coz I’ve heard quite a few inhabitants of that double continent getting annoyed that these ‘Americans’ refer to themselves in that exclusivist way…
Canto: But what should we call them? Yanks? Uessians? United Staters?
Jacinta: Yeah, good, let’s call them United Staters from now on. So many United Staters think they have the world’s greatest nation…
Canto: As the Brits did in their days of glory in the 19th century…
Jacinta: True, the myth of economic power entailing moral superiority dies hard, and jingoism is a major barrier to national self-analysis. So we, as outsiders and non-nationalists might be better equipped to examine why it is that wee Donny, with his so obvious incompetencies, manipulations and deceptions, has gotten so far and damaged so much, with so few consequences. What does it say about the USA, are these deficiencies shared by other nations (leaving aside the out-and-out dictatorships and undemocratic oligarchies), and can the USA redeem itself by imposing some sort of justice on this character, for the first time in a long lifetime?
Canto: Yes, so this series, ‘getting wee Donny’ will look at his crimes, at the system that allowed them, and how the system might reform itself, or transform itself into something more respectable, so that nothing like wee Donny can arise again. And this means not only looking at their criminal justice system, but the anti-government ideologies that have supported wee Donny’s destruction of responsible and effective government. There’s a malaise in that country, which might prevent wee Donny from facing justice, for fear that the malaise turn into a pandemic of self-slaughter. Are we facing the downfall of the USA?
Jacinta: Unlikely. Too many WMD for a start. And the nation has a lot of smarts, in spite of all the morons.
Canto: Morons with guns, and lots of them. And enough brains to make plans…
Jacinta: Yes, there are a lot of obstacles to getting wee Donny, but first I want to look at the plans to get him, now he’s unprotected by infamous and absurd claims to presidential immunity, unworthy of any decent nation.
Canto: Actually, I’d like to look at how Australia and other Westminster-based nations, and other democracies in general, deal with crimes committed by political leaders while in office. I agree with you that immunity for those in the highest political office is absurd, they’re the last people to be given immunity, and should have a whole panoply of laws applied to them, but look at Israel, where Netanyahu appears to be getting away with all sorts of dodgy behaviour. We can’t go blaming the US without checking out any possible beams in the eyes of others, including ourselves.
Jacinta: Haha well I wouldn’t describe the USA as having nothing more than a mote in its political eye, but point taken. We’ll look at the legal accountability for Australian and other political leaders as we go along, but wee Donny is now a private citizen, and I recall that one of his first crimes in relation to the whole presidency thing occurred when he was a candidate, and he paid off a couple of women to remain silent during his campaign. His then lawyer and ‘fixer’ Michael Cohen was sentenced and imprisoned for a range of crimes, including campaign finance violations at the behest of ‘individual one’, known to be wee Donny. This was confirmed by Cohen in congressional testimony, and two cheques signed by Donny, reimbursing Cohen, were presented as part of that testimony. Six other reimbursement cheques were shown to the New York Times, but it seems none of these cheques provide details of what these reimbursement were for, if indeed they were reimbursements at all.
Canto: Mmm, so far, so weak. It would be worth having a closer look at that part of Cohen’s charge sheet that includes, from memory, two charges of campaign finance violations. Also, did his sentencing go into detail about what part of it was specifically for those violations? Clearly the fact that he was convicted of of campaign finance violations makes some sort of evidence in itself. Cohen wasn’t the one running for office, he did it for Donny, as the charge sheet presumably states…
Jacinta: There’s a press release from the Southern District of New York from August 2018 stating that Cohen pleaded guilty to, among other things, one count of ‘Causing an unlawful corporate contribution’ and one count of ‘Making an excessive campaign contribution’, each of which could incur a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment. But here’s the thing – Cohen pleaded guilty, and wee Donny would never do that. And another problem is that, according to Stephen Weissman, writing in the Washington Post, there’s a legal requirement for campaign finance violations to be ‘wilful’, that is, done with knowledge that they’re illegal.
Canto: So in some cases, ignorance of the law is an excuse.
Jacinta: Well, yes, perhaps because some kinds of law, like these, are intricate and complex, and it might be easy to break them in all innocence.
Canto: Innocent wee Donny, sure. I think you could make a case stick here.
Jacinta: Hmmm. We’ll have to wait and see – until after this empêchement shite has failed – if SDNY goes ahead on this front. Meanwhile there are many other trails – and possible trials – to follow.
References
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/how-michael-cohen-broke-campaign-finance-law
https://www.vox.com/2019/2/27/18243038/individual-1-cohen-trump-mueller