What’s Sauce for the Goose is not Sauce for the Gander

Trump

 

I am very grateful for the Winnipeg Free Press reminding me what Donald Trump said about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election.  If you recall, she was being investigated for using a private email server instead of the presumably more secure State Department server when she was the Secretary of State. This is what Trump said at the time:

 “She shouldn’t be allowed to run … If she wins, it would create an unprecedented constitutional crisis. In that situation, we could very well have a sitting president under felony indictment and, ultimately, a criminal trial. It would grind government to a halt.”

And please remember at the time Clinton was being investigated, no chargers were ever laid so obviously there was no conviction. This is unlike Trump who has now been convicted on 34 counts of filing false business records in relation to his payments to Stormy Daniels pursuant to a non-disclosure agreement in order to keep the truth of the payments from the American electors. So, according to Trump, Clinton should not have been allowed to run even though she was not charged at the time he said that, and never was charged, while Donald Trump who was convicted of a felony should be allowed to run even though potentially he might be imprisoned during or after the election.

Clearly, Trump does not believe that what is sauce for the goose is sauce fro the gander.

Trump is a strong believer in a double standard. One for himself and one for everybody else.

Felon

criminal Justice, Law, Polarization, politics, Trump, Trumpism

 

I admit it. I am shocked. Earlier today, I predicted to friends that I believed Donald Trump would be acquitted of all 34 charges against him. The verdict is in. Donald Trump, the president of the United States,  is a convicted felon. I was dead wrong!  I freely admit it. The jury found him guilty on all charges.  I admit I could not be happier and believed he richly deserved this defeat. The American jury system stepped up and did its job. I underestimated it.

 

We must remember that this is Trump’s second jury trial. The first jury ruled that he was responsible for sexually abusing a woman, even though he had vigorously denied it outside of court. Though of course, he chose not to testify under oath and subject to cross examination even after promising he would testify. Effectively the jury in a civil case said he was guilty of sexual abuse! That is a very serious conclusion. That jury reached that verdict by a majority decision of jurors after hearing all of the evidence, listening and considering the cross examination of the witnesses by expert expensive lawyers, and listening to arguments from lawyers for both sides.

This second trial was different. It was a criminal trial. The first trial was decided on the basis of a preponderance of the evidence. The second trial had to be decided by a unanimous jury on each of the 34 charges. And the second jury had to believe Trump was guilty on a higher standard of proof, namely, proof beyond a reasonable doubt.  Basically, they had to decide he was undoubtedly guilty based on the evidence.  Again, the jury had to carefully listen to all of the evidence, not just statements from Trump or statements from the prosecutors or liberal commentators. The jurors listened to all the evidence and all of which was subject to cross examination by the best lawyers money can buy. That of course is the money of the Trumpsters that was donated to Trump. Reputedly that was in the millions of dollars paid by campaign contributions. Again, the jury had to listen to arguments from both lawyers for the prosecution and defence. The jury listened to instructions about the law from a judge who is trained and experienced to be impartial and fair.

This is not fake news. This is fact.  Donald J. Trump the ex-president of the United States is a convicted felon. The second jury decided that Donald Trump knowingly paid hush money to a porn star to silence her in order to keep that information from the American electors and then falsified the business records to accomplish this goal. They had to believe he intended to cover up a crime for each of the charges.

Once again Trump decided not to testify under oath subject to cross examination, contrary to his promises. Each day (or many days) at the end of the day during the trial, he chose instead to speak not under oath and not subject to rules of law about what could be said, and not subject to cross examination, but outside the courtroom to reporters. He did not present any evidence to support his claims that the trial was rigged and the judge was corrupt. None. He just made the statements. The witnesses for the prosecution on the other hand, were each cross examined, in some cases brutally and at great length, by experienced lawyers.

Again, none of this is fake news.  CNN did not make this up. It is real.

America is a badly divided country. Millions of people believed Trump’s lies and as a result the country is deeply polarized about this man, but it is time for the division to stop. It is time for Trumpsters who have supported him through thick and thin to concede defeat and admit they were wrong. We all make mistakes.  I just admitted to making a big one in this post. They should give up and support President Biden even if they sincerely believed Trump was the better option. We all make mistakes. His supporters all made a big one. They supported Trump. It is time for his supporters to end the division in America for the good of the country and admit they were mistaken and that everyone should now support Biden.

 

January 6th:  A  Culmination

2024 Trip to South West United States, American Fascism, Death of Democracy, Domestic Terrorism, Extremism, Right-wing Extremism

 

After 9/11, Americans understandably, began to fear foreign terrorists. They were hit hard by the events that day. As a result, they created the Department of Homeland Security which concentrated on doing everything possible to stop foreign terrorists. Over time, they began to realize that there was a much bigger problem and it was home-grown. Terrorism, by Americans in their own country!  I call this domestic terrorism.

In the talk by Professor Jacob Ware and  his cohort Bruce Hoffman that we listened to thanks to Arizona State University, the speakers concentrated on domestic terrorism. Their talk was called “God, Guns, and Sedition. “

Importantly, Ware and Hoffman do not see the events of January 6th as a ‘one-off.’ Rather, as Ware explained they see January 6th as the culmination of a movement that has been growing for decades. Many Americans, looking through their rose-coloured glasses frequently are heard to say, after each tragic event, ‘we are not like this,’ or ‘this is not America’ when actually that is exactly what America is about. America was created through violent insurrection, genocide of native peoples, and  violent slavery and the biggest problem is that this has never been seriously acknowledged by a country that thinks it is exceptional. It is another example of American wishful thinking. That is the way they want it so it must be true. Ignore reality. Live in FantasyLand where it is much more comfortable.

 That, of course, is why Republicans, and the American-right, including the extreme right in particular, is working so hard to deny history. They see January 6th as a bunch of rambunctious tourists or crisis actors as Matt Goetz claimed in the House of Representatives. They don’t see the reality, which I submit impartial observers with all the facts, would readily admit they saw that day. That reality is that they were American right-wing extremists: Trumpsters and their ilk.

 Unless Americans are able to face the truth about their country they will never solve the horrible problem they have with domestic terrorism. There is little room for optimism here either.  They show no signs of wanting to learn the truth. To them, ignorance is bliss.

Black Lives Matter Insurrection or not?

Death of Truth, Decline of the west, Domestic Terrorism, Extremism, Polarization, Police, Political Violence, Right-wing Extremism

 

I want to talk a little about the Black Lives Matter movement.  Perhaps because the right-wing and the left in America get their information from completely different sources, Fox News and the Internet on one side, and CNN, the Internet, and traditional news media on the other. Even on the Internet both sides go to different sources that are polar opposites. The two movements (left and right) have completely opposite views of what happened in Minneapolis, or on Capitol Hill on January 6th,  and other parts of the US.  The right-wing saw insurrection in Minneapolis Portland, and other places, but not at the Capitol. The left wing saw insurrection at the Capitol.

I really think it is a matter of what images the media of choice has chosen to emphasize. Fox News likes to put the emphasis on black rebellion and CNN emphasizes right wing rebellion. This is a key source of division.

In Minneapolis, for example, the media showed graphic images of protesters, many of them, not insignificantly black, ignoring police and laws to burn down businesses, some of which are even owned by blacks. To many white Americans this is proof of the anarchy at the root of the protests against the current regime.

African-Americans and their allies on the left see a white privileged state supported and protected by police that will use all of its powers to tamp down non-white rebellion while doing nothing to protect innocent children of African-Americans.

Neither side is able to see any truth to the side of the other. The other side ignores truth in favor of its own self-serving ideology. The two sides are unable to agree on basic facts so are unable to reach any agreement about what the problem is and how it should be solved. each side is mystified by the apparent blindness of the other to obvious truths.

White spectators at a BLM rally in St. Louis brought out automatic weapons to protect their property. White vigilantes were seen bearing arms in cities to protect white businesses from perceived ruin. This is what the left saw from its media sources. Meanwhile peaceful white and black protestors fear for their lives on the streets of American cities.

It is very difficult for Americans to deal with domestic terrorism  when they cannot agree on what the basic facts are. In the “good old days,” where most news came from 3 television networks that had no strong ideological differences between them, there were no such disagreements about basic facts. As a result, there was not such strong polarization as there is now. As a result of all this the middle is being hollowed out. The extremes are growing, on both sides. I don’t know what we can do about it.

This does not augur well for America. It suggests, to me at least, ruin to come. I hope I am wrong.

A Covid Booster for Extremism

American Fascism, Conspiracy Theories, Death of Democracy, Death of Truth, Domestic Terrorism, Political Violence, Populism, Right-wing Extremism

 

Ware and Hoffman continued their very interesting talk talk to us via Arizona State University in a talk entitled “Guns God and Sedition.”

They pointed out, that then  in the 2020s there was not just a booster for Covid, there was a Covid Booster for radical right-wing violent extremism. As Hoffman and Ware say in their book, and Ware repeated to us in his lecture, “pandemics are basically tailor-made for conspiracy theorists.” A pandemic provides fertile soil for crazies to plant the wildest conspiracy theories. Such as a theory that a presidential election was stolen, even no evidence has been provided for that theory.

 

Pandemics, like conspiracy theories are bred and hatched in secret and then explode into public view catching nearly everyone by surprise. It is almost natural to look for secretive causes for such disturbing events.

 

As Ware said, “2020 ends up becoming this tremendously tumultuous year with covid pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests, and this very contentious political moment leading up to an election in which we have 2 candidates both claiming victory in that election which leads up to January 6th which is the most important moment in our book.”   Ware says that the riot on January 6th 2021is the most serious threat to American democracy that he and Hoffman catalogued in their book. It is the first breach of the capitol since 1814 when the British and their rough and tough Canadian allies stormed the Capitol.

 

Of all the incidents described in their book and the many they mentioned to us in their talk the event on January 6th 2021 was the most significant. It was an American game changer, though now in the US only one side recognizes that. On that day American democracy nearly died. And many now many fear in 2024 we are headed for another such momentous event. Many in America believe that if Donald Trump loses the election in 2024, though that does not yet seem likely but certainly is conceivable, Trump will raise his forces of rebellion and this time it will be worse. Much worse.

 

Why was the terrorism at Charlottesville so Important?

American Fascism, Domestic Terrorism, Extremism, Political Violence, Right-wing Extremism

I want to return to the talk we heard  on line through the auspices of through Arizona State University this winter,  The talk was called God, Guns, and Sedition. That was more than enough to catch my eye it was led by 2 professors who wrote a book called by that name.

As Jacob Ware said,

“This remains a huge moment for the emergence of the modern violent far right, because they felt they could organize publicly and they could commit acts of violence in the defence of the ideology and that they would have protection from the White House. Charlottesville marks the coming out party of a new far right, which dubbed itself the alt right, characterized by youthfulness, viciousness, mobilization on line, and passionate support for President Trump.”

 

In a word, I would characterize them as bullies.  This is significant, because in my view the essence of fascism is being a bully. Donald Trump, of course, as we all know is a classic bully. So are many of his faithful followers.

The extreme right in America for the first time ever, felt they had a fellow traveller in the White House.  They could see that Trump was one of their kind. They felt that one of their own was in charge and they were going to take advantage of it.

 This incident at Charlottesville contributed to a huge increase in violent extremism on the far right in the US. As Ware said, the 2&1/2-year period between the terrorism in Charlottesville to the start of the pandemic in March of 2020 is where there was a huge spike in far-right violence.

In 2018 there was the pipe bomb incident that targeted members of the media and left with bombs.

Shortly after that was the deadliest anti-Semitic terror attack in US history that occurred in a synagogue in Pittsburgh. In March 2019 of that year there was an attack in Christchurch New Zealand targeting the Muslim community and killing 51 worshippers. That terrorist also produced a lengthy Manifesto that he published on line.

The following month there was a terrorist attack in Poway California where a former college student fired an assault rifle inside a synagogue packed with worshipers during Passover in 2019, killing one woman and injuring three others. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for his hate-motivated attack. On the same day, the terrorist pled guilty to a charge of arson in connection with a fire at another religious institution, namely, a Mosque and Islamic.

 

In August of that year the US experienced the deadliest attack against the Latino community in El Paso Texas.

There were also a number of similar events in Europe in 2019. Right-wing extremism was spreading around the world. Domestic terrorism was becoming a hit.

As Ware said, “so we see this explosion of White Supremacist and anti-government violence that really grabs the attention of western governments.” It also grabbed the attention of extremists around the world.

Things were heating up. Extremists were happy. It was their time to shine.

Walk beautifully on the earth

Movies, New Attitude to Nature, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

Professor John Moriarty was always on a religious quest. In the lecture I listened to after all these years, he said he wanted to walk beautifully on the earth!

 

Moriarty describes the earth this way:

 “The universe is a continuous manifestation of wonder biding over, wonder overflowing any container it could be in…The only space journey we should ever take should be to take us home to  the earth, the great and sacred earth.”

 

Moriarty then refers to a story in Exodus Chapter 3 where Moses encountered a burning bush in the desert of Sinai. The bush kept burning and burning. It should be consumed quickly because it is a dry bush in a desert but it keeps on burning. Then Moses hears a divine voice—the voice of God—who tells him to take off his shoes because the ground on which he stands is “holy ground.”

 

To this Moriarty adds,

“all ground is holy ground. You cannot be standing anywhere on earth and not be standing on holy ground. And every bush is a burning bush. Like any bush in Connemara… They are burning with green fire in the spring. They are burning with red fire in the autumn… It took someone like Van Gogh to show us that every tree is a green column of flame. Is green fire.”

 

Moriarty wants us, each one of us, to take off our shoes and experience holy ground. He also wants each of us to take off our shoes of European thinking. We must get rid of European creeds. We must be open to new experiences. We must “walk the earth with a barefoot heart and a barefoot brain.” Like Elvira Madigan we must have the courage to get off of what is safe and experience the new and the dangerous.  We must experience a year of thinking dangerously. No, we must experience a lifetime of thinking dangerously.  Safety is a trap that can deaden the heart and the mind that should be open to the new.

As Moriarty says, he does not want to be interrogated after his last day on earth and be asked if he ever set foot on the earth. To say no would be heart-breaking, for “setting foot on the earth is to set foot in paradise.” This is what I have been calling a new attitude to nature. An attitude filled with wonder. Not a desire to conquer it.

Like Henry David Thoreau, he does not want to admit on that last interrogation that he never lived at all. That would be a heart-breaking admission.

 

Courage to Walk the Sacred Earth

Movies, New Attitude to Nature

 

 

 

Moriarty said that in our century human beings have walked on the moon and like Neil Armstrong said it was a small step for man but a big step for mankind. Moriarty denies this. He says it was a very small step for humanity.

“To walk on the moon is no big deal…Have we walked on the moon because like Elvira Madigan we haven’t yet had the courage or the grace to step down and walk the sacred earth?

 

Moriarty says sometimes he stopped in at a house in Connemara where he lived in Ireland and saw children watching television. They were obsessed with other worlds that they saw. The characters in the films often had completely clean uniforms that didn’t smell of the barn or the heather or anything real. The children didn’t see the real wonder around them—Connemara. They were fed on ersatz wonder instead. Is that not even more true now in North America.  Children are obsessed with watching things on their phones or monitors. No one has time for real wonder any more. Pity that.

 

According to Professor Moriarty,

 “We need “to take a space journey to the earth…we would never want to set foot on Mars we would never want to set foot on any solar system inside or outside our galaxy.”

 

Is Moriarty right here?  Why does nature stop at earth? Is the moon not part of nature? How about Mars? How about the Milky way?

If you listen to astronauts speaking about their experiences in space it is far from prosaic. Maybe Moriarty was wrong on this point. I wish we could ask him, but that is too late. He is gone. He no longer walks the sacred earth with beauty. But we can. This is all part of releasing a new attitude to nature. That too is a sacred goal. That should be part of our religious quest in the modern age.