Cromwell

It’s January 20, 2021.  Here is what has happened in the US since the election of President Trump:

1.  After a brief and unsuccessful effort to “renegotiated” with President Xi, Trump has imposed his 45 percent tariff on Chinese goods.
2. The GOP Congress has also passed the enormous Trump tax cut.  As a result of these two events, in addition to the explosive growth in military spending and entitlements, prices and the deficit are skyrocketing.  The Fed consequently increases interest rates dramatically.  The market crashes, and the country heads into a deep and lengthy recession, which is exacerbated by the loss of jobs in export industries.
3.  Trump calls for patience, saying that import substitution, in time, will address the economic problems.  Patience is in short supply, however; the Democrats sweep the 2018 elections.
4.  The notoriously thin-skinned Trump persuades the lame duck Republican Congress to pass a Sedition Law which exposes critics of Trump and the GOP to criminal sanctions.  Executives with the NYT and MSNBC are charged with violations of the new law, but no jury will convict them.   However, the new Supreme Court, with three new Trump appointees, upholds the law, saying that criticism of the President during a time of national crisis is a “clear and present danger” to the public welfare.
5.  The new Democratic Congress attempts to reverse the Trump legislation in 2019, but does not have enough votes to override his veto.  The recession continues.
6.  Trump attempts to mobilize support from violent gangs of blue color workers who are employed in the new import substitution businesses.  Most of America is appalled.
7.  Ever the strong man, Trump considers declaring a state of emergency and cancelling the 2020 elections, but ultimately decides against it in the face of united opposition from his own party and the military.  At this point, his support has dwindled to a handful of blue collar workers and the Deep South.

After President Sanders takes the oath, he celebrates the coming of the “revolution.”  However, there is no money for social problems; it takes decades to repair the damage done by the Trump Administration.

OK, so maybe I’m an alarmist, but what in here doesn’t have a basis in fact?

An epic battle of the national id and superego.  Let’s go, superego!

There once was a Donald named Trump.

The MSM made him a grump.

He claims to be strong

But he’s really just wrong

And his numbers are starting to slump.

As I’ve noted on many previous occasions, there is little point in voting for Sanders unless he can also produce the “revolution.”  The “revolution” would turn the Democratic Party into more of a working class based party than the current coalition of victims, which is practically impossible unless its leaders tailor their pitch more to the kind of white working men who are currently supporting Trump.  That would mean showing far more sensitivity to white rural values, including gun ownership, than is popular with most of the members of the party.

Sanders could have taken a strong stance on these issues.  He could have, for example, argued forcefully and consistently that gun control measures are best handled at a local level, because the party needs the votes of rural gun owners.   To take the matter to a higher plane, he could have taken the position that racial issues are simply a distraction from the more important matter of uniting the working class to rein in capitalists and Wall Street bankers.  He didn’t do any of that, because he knew perfectly well that it would cost him more votes from urban and suburban activists than it was likely to win.

In other words, in the final analysis, Bernie sold out the “revolution” and became a conventional left-wing Democratic candidate because it gave him a better chance of becoming President.  He wasn’t going to win in either event, but it would have been a lot more interesting if he had decided to compete harder with Trump for his angry white working class voters.

There once was a woman named Hill.

She took on the Bern with her Bill.

She’ll run out the clock

Then it’s time to take stock

The Trumpster’s the next one to kill.

 

The Democrat maverick Bern

Against him the calendar turns.

His party’s soon over.

It’s time to get sober.

Here’s hoping that soon he will learn.

My wife and I create DVDs from the photos and videos that we generate from our foreign trips (she does the vast majority of the work).  We try to match the images with appropriate music:  some of it is pop, but some of it is obscure songs from the internet.  The ultimate product is sort of a long form video.  We’re not professionals, but there are times when the juxtaposition of an image, or series of images, and the music can be pretty powerful.

The DVD for our 2011 trip to Ireland includes a song from the internet called “Irish Ways and Irish Laws.”  The gist of the song is that Ireland was once a bastion of pure Irishness, has been battered by foreign conquerors throughout the centuries, but will rise again to be free of outside influences some day.

When you pair this song with images of St. Kevin’s Church at Glendalough, it is pretty compelling stuff.  In the real world, however, the concept behind it is ridiculous;  whether you like it or not, English DNA pervades the Irish nation, and will never disappear.  You could just as well imagine the English trying to drive Norman French words and Danish place names out of their culture.

The fact is that Ireland, for better or worse, is a multi-cultural nation. Fortunately, it is fairly clear to me that the majority of the Irish people accept that concept, and that majority is only growing with time.

April Fools

April fools.

Can Cruz rule?

Hopeless John

Trudges on.

 

Badger State.

It’s getting late.

Trump wins the duel?

April fools.

Trump supports nuclear proliferation, which makes sense:  it’s sort of a global equivalent of the Second Amendment.  After all, nukes don’t kill people; people kill people.

I think we should all sign the petition permitting everyone at the GOP convention to carry guns.  They would be doing us a big favor if they used them, and it would be great TV, just like the Trumpster himself.

Both Trump and Cruz argue whenever possible that they are engaged in a battle against “political correctness.”  Their ostensible point is that the nation cannot hope to win a battle against its enemies if it is ideologically indisposed to even name them correctly.

The voters, of course, understand perfectly that Trump and Cruz are really saying that their perceived domestic foes–African-Americans, Hispanics, uppity women, Muslims, gays, et. al.–are eroding traditional forms of authority and need to be put in their place.  The paradox is that even Trump and Cruz are afraid to put the issue in such bald terms for fear of creating a backlash, so they frame the battle much more obliquely.  The battle against PC, therefore, is itself PC.

Rosenthal has a column entitled “What Does Donald Trump Want?” in today’s NYT.  He doesn’t specifically allude to it in the body of the column, but anyone who has seen “Key Largo” will observe the similarity to a question asked about the gangster Johnny Rocco, and the answer in the movie is eerily appropriate:  “More.”

It depends on the circumstances.  In peacetime, assuming free trade is more or less the norm, it is hard to see much of a benefit to the dominant country.  During wartime, if you can’t maintain supply lines between the dominant country and the empire, it has no great value.  However, if you are at war and have control over the sea, the empire can be a critical source of manpower and raw materials; the British experience during World War I proves that.

Yesterday

All those Muslims seemed so far away.

But those bombers are all here to stay.

Oh, I believe in yesterday.

 

Look at me.

We’ll build a wall to keep them out, you’ll see.

We’ll waterboard and torture gruesomely.

We’ll fight the war aggressively.

 

We no longer win.

It’s a sin.

But two can play.

I’ll turn it around

Make those clowns

Beg for yesterday.

 

Yesterday.

Where there’s a winner, there’s a way.

I’m gonna kick their asses, come what may.

Cause I believe in yesterday.

 

Parody of “Yesterday” by Paul McCartney.

An important part of American exceptionalism is the belief that liberal democracy will work everywhere;  in other words, limited government, freedom of the press, checks and balances, due process, etc. are, and should be, universal. That doctrine has a really poor track record in many parts of the world, most recently in the Middle East, but we expose ourselves to charges of hypocrisy if we don’t adhere to it.  As a result, our imperialist efforts in the recent past have typically focused on replacing tyrants with more acceptably democratic leaders, not on taking and exploiting territory, and our political arrangements typically run afoul of the local political culture and therefore collapse after we leave.

A few questions for Cruz:

1.  What exactly is a “Muslim neighborhood?”  What is the threshold at which a “neighborhood” becomes “Muslim?”  Is it a percentage or an absolute number?  Where would you get reliable information to establish this?
2.  Who would do the patrolling?  Would it be state or federal officials?  If you are planning to use state people who are already on the ground in that area, how would you make that happen, given that they aren’t under your control?  If they will be federal agents, where will they come from, and who will pay the bill?
3.  What do you mean by “patrolling?”  Do you mean warrantless surveillance on masses of people who have not engaged in any kind of criminal behavior?  If so, how do you plan to justify this obviously illegal plan?

One can only draw the following conclusions from this ridiculous idea:

1. Trump is not the only GOP candidate who believes in the use of “truthful hyperbole.”
2. Cruz is very passionate on the subject of religious freedom for his kind of people: evangelical Christians.  For others, not so much.

There once was a Texan named Ted.

He’d single out Muslims, he said.

Our sage Constitution

Defiled by pollution.

On this, he and Trump are in bed.