Cromwell

The Rio Olympics on Friday.

US men finally come out to play.

Relay team was DQ’d.

Always figured they’d lose.

Could they really beat Bolt?  There’s no way.

As is evidenced by his behavior as a businessman, as well as his statements on the campaign trail, Donald Trump thinks rules are for chumps.  In his eyes, life is an unending series of confrontations in which the powerful prevail, and the weak (or deluded) suffer what they must.

Xi and Putin clearly agree with these views.  The Chinese government rejects the application of international law in the South China Sea and attempts to resolve issues in its favor through direct, separate negotiations with each individual adversary, backed up by the threat of superior force.  Putin, for his part, has torn up the international rulebook in his dealings with Ukraine.

Obama, and all of our Presidents of both parties since World War II, have accepted, and attempted to improve, the existing rule-based system.  The TPP is a perfect example of that.  The issue with a rule-based system, of course, is who is going to enforce the rules, and how.  That is still a work in progress.

Her hiccup on the TPP notwithstanding, Clinton clearly believes in a world of international agreements and institutions.  Whose view will prevail?  That will be up to the voters in November.

The Rio Olympics, last night.

Big guys throwing the shot out of sight.

Usain Bolt is the man.

Run him down?  No one can.

Relay team second time gets it right.

Some of the more idealistic right-wing print commentators have looked deep into the soul of the Trump GOP and don’t like what they see.  In their eyes, the system worked better when the angry white workers were Democrats, and their party supported limited, not swaggering, government.

This argument was, of course, at the core of the Sanders “revolution.”  If Sanders had taken the idea to its logical conclusion, he would have campaigned hard in the Deep South, attended NASCAR races, courted the support of country music stars, and held firm to his position on guns.  He didn’t do any of those things, because it became clear to him early on that their net effect would be to lose, not gain, Democratic primary voters.

Assuming, for purposes of argument, that this is a desirable outcome, how can the Democratic Party become more of a class-based party consistent with Bernie’s original vision?  Or, to put it another way, how can the Democrats win over white working class voters without losing an equivalent number of minorities?

I think there are only two avenues:

1.  The GOP reacts to a cataclysmic Trump defeat by firmly disavowing bigotry and by telling bigoted voters to go elsewhere.  Good luck with that. Those voters are the core of the GOP; while they may present a problem in Presidential elections, they win a lot of local, state, and Congressional elections.

2.  A Democrat with very special qualities succeeds in threading the needle.  He would have to be male, charismatic, and a Southerner, with a clear understanding of, and sympathy for, rural people and rural culture.  He would also need strong roots in the civil rights movement.

In short, he would have to be Bill Clinton (minus the foibles) for the 21st Century.

The Rio Olympics, Wednesday.

Our hurdlers rock!  What can I say?

Our jumpers were great;

Gatlin got there too late;

Eaton’s quest for the gold is halfway.

 

As I noted in a post months ago, a fascist is someone who seeks to impose a reactionary program by extraconstitutional means.  As such, the vast majority of reactionaries are not fascists, but all fascists are reactionaries.

There is little in Trump’s pre-election past which suggests that he started the campaign as a fascist;  after all, he wrote (sort of) “The Art of the Deal,” not “Mein Kampf.”  As his campaign has evolved, however, it has become more and more thuggish and dangerous.  The final straw, for me, was his threat to treat the outcome of the election as illegitimate, and to call his supporters out on the streets if he loses.  That was the point where his coarseness turned into something far more sinister.

Why is this happening?  I hate to harp on this subject, but I think it is inherent in his candidacy.  If you don’t have any ideology except self-worship, and you don’t have any job qualifications, how else can you run except as a putative strong man?  And if you run as a strong man, at what point do you acknowledge the limits our political system puts on you and start showing restraint?

To illustrate the point, imagine a President Trump dealing with a deadlocked Congress and increasingly bold critics.  The man on horseback has been exposed as just another politician who can’t get anything done.  How does he respond? He has three choices:

1. Pull a Palin, and quit;
2. Learn to live with the humiliation of being a failed strong man (i.e., a loser); or
3. Double down on the strong man routine, ignore the Constitution, and shut up his critics.

If I were a betting man, I would put my money on #3.  That’s the problem; even if he never intended to threaten our liberties, his ego will drive him in that direction.

           I Am The Fascist

I am me as you are me as they are me and we are all together.

See how they run when I show them my guns

See how they fly.

You’re crying.

 

Sitting on a gold plate

Waiting for my jet to come.

Locking up opponents.

Sucking up to Putin.

Man, you should have seen me kicking Muslim butt around.

 

I am the apeman.

They are the apemen.

I am the fascist.

Goo googa joob.

 

Expert texpert choking heatstroke

Climate change is really just a hoax.

We’ll burn all the coal

Put the ozone in a hole

Kiss your ice goodbye.

You’re crying.

 

Criminals are dead ducks

And all of my opponents, too.

Building up a great wall.

Immigrants are gone, all

Erecting lots of monuments to myself and me.

 

I am the apeman.

They are the apemen.

I am the fascist.

Goo googa joob.

 

Parody of “I Am The Walrus” by Lennon/McCartney.

The Rio Olympics, last night.

Our sprinters aren’t doing much right.

Kicking butt in the gym.

Kerri’s loss, it was slim.

Usain Bolt runs and runs out of sight.

Thank you for your interest in coming to the United States.  Please answer a few simple questions to establish your eligibility for a visa:

1. Muhammad was: (a) God’s prophet; or (b) the former heavyweight champion of the world.
2.  The wall will be built and paid for by (fill in the blank).
3.  The mainstream American media are:  (a) biased; (b) crooked; (c) disgusting; (d) all of the above.
4.  Barack Hussein Obama was born in (place name).
5.  Ivanka and Melania are (provide a number).
6.  Identify the developer who remade the Manhattan skyline and singlehandedly made New York the greatest city in the world.
7.  Hillary Clinton belongs in (fill in the blank).
8.  Vladimir Putin is:  (a) an elected dictator; or (b) a good friend to the US in the war against Islamic extremism.
9.  Terrorists and their sympathisers should be:  (a) tortured; (b) sent to Gitmo; (c) tried by military commissions; (d) all of the above.
10.  The new tax cut will:  (a) explode the deficit, cause interest rates to skyrocket, and cause a recession; or (b) create a growth spurt unknown in modern history.

The correct answers are:  1(b); 2. Mexico; 3. (d); 4. Kenya; 5. 10; 6. Donald J. Trump; 7. jail; 8. (b); 9.(d); 10. (b).  If you got all of these right, congratulations!  You are a true friend to America, and you are free to enter.

Warren famously said that he read the sports page before the rest of the paper because it described man’s accomplishments, while the front page was a catalogue of failures.  It’s hard not to think about that when you watch the Olympics and the rest of the news.

A mosaic is a work of art comprised of countless tiny stones of different colors, each in its own place.  White is the predominant color of a sheet of ruled paper; the colored lines are only there to provide contrast and definition to the blank spaces.

As usual, this is the most important issue in the 2016 election.

The Rio Olympics, day ten.

Rudisha wins gold once again.

Simone grabs the beam.

She’s not perfect, it seems.

And Felix falls short at the end.

With one notable exception, everything about Trump’s candidacy is an affront to the Christian Democrat faction of the GOP.  His flashy lifestyle, crass materialism, arrogance, bigotry, and antipathy to society’s “losers” are antithetical to the one world type of conservatism that the CDs espouse.  The exception is abortion; his earlier pro-choice statements notwithstanding, there is no reason to doubt that he would appoint judges who would restrict women’s reproductive rights to the maximum extent feasible, which is a matter of great importance to many CDs.

What’s a poor CD to do, then?  They can’t even avoid the issue by voting for Johnson, like the Conservative Libertarians.  My best guess is that the vast majority of them will suck it up and vote for Clinton, because while she may be pro-choice, she won’t endanger their lives, liberty, and property.

There is no denying that the most prominent figures in pop music today are  predominantly women.  The question is why?  Here are some tentative answers:

1.  Rock is dead yet again.  Great rock music is usually fueled with testosterone.  Most of today’s rock stars are old enough to rely on Viagra.

2.  Max Martin doesn’t write for men.  No elaboration necessary.

3.  TV singing competitions emphasize bluesy pop over rock and hip-hop and thus favor women.  Women and men win these competitions in roughly equal numbers, but the shows themselves emphasize genres that work well for female performers, which, I suspect, ultimately has an impact on the music that is played on the radio.

4.  Cirque de Soleil style live shows favor women over men.  Who wants to see some scruffy rocker change clothes five times during a set?

The Rio Olympics, day nine.

Simone in the gym doing fine.

Bolt prevails in the end.

You can’t touch him, my friend.

Van Niekerk’s foes ran out of time.