A Parting Insult to Democracy and the American People From the Ex-President and the Enabling GOP Leadership

The GOP: Now remade in his image and standing for 

him and his interests

The pardons and commutations the ex-president granted yesterday were a direct insult to the rule of law and people who respect it. His clemency was for criminals who were corrupt and/or betrayed the public trust. The New York Times writes:

Randy “Duke” Cunningham maintained a “bribe menu” on his congressional office stationery that featured different levels of payments he required from military contractors if they wanted his help to win corresponding levels of federal contracts.

As mayor of Detroit, Kwame M. Kilpatrick turned City Hall into what prosecutors called “a private profit machine,” taking bribes, fixing municipal contracts and even using hundreds of thousands of dollars from a city civic fund to spend on friends and family, as well as campaign expenses.

Robin Hayes, a former member of Congress serving as chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, pleaded guilty to lying to F.B.I. agents about his role in a plot to bribe a state insurance commissioner as part of an effort to secure $2 million worth of donations toward state re-election campaigns.

All received clemency from Donald J. Trump early Wednesday morning in one of his final acts as president. And Mr. Trump’s choice to use his unchecked clemency power on their behalf highlighted a theme that coursed through the more than 235 pardons and commutations he issued during his presidency — a disdain for a justice system that seeks to hold public officials to account for violations of the public trust.

In announcing the pardon last month of Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, who had been convicted of financial violations, witness tampering and conspiracy to defraud the United States, the White House noted that his conviction stemmed from the special counsel’s investigation, which Mr. Trump’s aides asserted in their explanation “was premised on the Russian collusion hoax.”

Within weeks of stepping down as the president’s lawyer in 2018, John M. Dowd, who defended Mr. Trump in the special counsel’s investigation, began marketing himself as a potential conduit for pardons. He told some would-be clients and their representatives that Mr. Trump was likely to look favorably on petitioners who were investigated by federal prosecutors in Manhattan — who regularly took on cases that touched Mr. Trump or his associates — or tarnished by perceived leaks from the F.B.I., which he openly came to distrust and criticize during the Russia investigation.

One of Mr. Dowd’s clients, William T. Walters, a sports gambler convicted of charges related to an insider-trading scheme, had his sentence commuted by Mr. Trump early Wednesday. Mr. Dowd denied that he had boasted to anyone about his ability to obtain pardons and declined to answer questions.

So there it is. The ex-president's parting shot at democracy, the rule of law and the American people. We get an outrageous insult wrapped in corruption and based on lies. The man was toxic from the beginning to the end of his rotten, illegitimate presidency. There is every reason to believe that he will continue to inject as much poison into society and politics as he possibly can, just as he did before he was sworn into office.

Culpability in the GOP

After all, the ex-president is a completely unrepentant criminal, a traitor and a full-blown fascist tyrant wannabe. And that goes a long way toward describing most of the GOP leadership. Sadly, it also describes too many of its rank and file members. Some really are fascists and do not much care about the criminality, corruption, mendacity and treason of their leadership. That's the real heartbreaker. The people at the top know exactly what they were doing and why. They get not one shred of sympathy. It's the deceived, manipulated and betrayed rank and file that are in a different moral situation.

Homework Due Today!

 

 (see assignment here)

Ding dong the Wicked Witch of the West Wing is, for all POTUS intentions and purposes, dead!   

Time to give him your personal send-off.

Please post your parting thoughts below in whatever form you like.

I decided to go the “eulogy” route.  Hope it gives you a few LOL’s.

We Have a New President: The Beast is Gone from the Executive Branch

It's gone, at least for now. Biden is president. The inept, mendacious, incompetent, deeply corrupt radical right GOP beast is out of the executive branch. It still poisons congress and the federal and state courts. And, it still controls anti-democratic radical right media like the Sinclair Broadcasting, Cumulus Media and Fox News leviathans. At least for now the White House is much more pro-democracy, pro-truth and pro-rule of law.

To say the least, Biden has his work cut out for him. The beast still poisons congress many state governments and significant swaths of society. But at least the forked tongued head of the snake is cut off.

Is the Last, Biggest RINO Hunt Underway?

The president (for the next 30 minutes or so) muses about splitting off of the radical right GOP about forming a new radical right third party. The New York Times describes what is going on in Arizona, where the president's supporters control the state legislature. They still firmly believe the election was fraudulent. They do not seem to be bothered by the Jan. 6 attempt to overthrow the government by force. The NYT writes:

While some Republicans nationwide are beginning to edge away from Trumpism, Arizona is a case of loyalists doubling down, potentially dividing the party in fundamental and irreparable ways. The consequences could be particularly acute in a state that had long been a safe Republican bet, but that has seen a significant political shift in recent years, in large part because of both the increased political participation of young Latinos and the changing views of white suburban women.

The far-right extremism is hardly new in Arizona. The state gave birth to anti-immigrant border militias, legislation that effectively legalized racial profiling, and is home to Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County who pushed a hard-line message on immigration. But the kind of Trump fervor that has been on vivid display in the state since the November election has taken on momentum that even some conservatives in the state find alarming.

Some Republicans in Arizona have now begun to sound the alarm, warning that the party is pushing itself into oblivion in a state where independent voters make up nearly a third of the electorate.

“The angry, spiteful messaging that is coming out of the party right now, it’s not going to win the new west,” said Adam Kwasman, a former state legislator who was once named one of the most conservative lawmakers in the state while in office and who voted for Mr. Trump last year.

“There’s an act of serial larceny going on right now,” said Chuck Coughlin, a longtime Republican strategist in Phoenix who changed his own party affiliation in 2017 and is now an independent. In the dozens of calls Mr. Coughlin has received from worried Republicans, he said, his advice has been consistent: Don’t bother trying to save anyone who has supported “acts of sedition.” “It has become a party of outright contempt for any authority except for one man. The Republican Party is in the midst of its own French Revolution now.”  

John Fillmore, a state representative who has attended several protests, likened the debate within the party to a “cleansing,” and said he was more concerned about purging those who have criticized Mr. Trump than losing voters.

“The party is discombobulated and the absolute turncoats like Jeff Flake and Liz Cheney will feel the wrath of the Republican voters,” Mr. Fillmore said. “We’re a family, and ultimately what happened was that members of the family went against the family and they did it with a vengeance. It’s what The Godfather said: Don’t ever go against the family. It’s sad.”

The GOP in Arizona may be in the midst of its own French Revolution. The question is what about the rest of the GOP everywhere else? But as one can clearly see in John Fillmore's comments, the Trump wing of the GOP is tribal: Don’t ever go against the family. That dogma applies no matter how autocratic, corrupt, mendacious and incompetent the GOP family has become. Family uber alles!

The Trump family: Never go against it

The Radical Right GOP States It's Position: Four More Years Of More GOP Gridlock

The hyper-partisan speaks: Four more years of gridlock, get over it

Washington warned us

All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community ....

However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.  

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. -- George Washington, Farewell address to the American people, 1796 (underline added)

In the last hour or two Senate majority leader McConnell (R-KY) made it clear that there will not be bipartisanship going forward. Biden does not get one day or one second of respect for his election. McConnell invokes the American people in this matter based on the November 2020 election. That the majority will of most people has been irrelevant before this is still irrelevant. McConnell's 2 minute statement is in the video below.

McConnell mentions that what the president was a bad boy, maybe signalling it is OK for republican senators to impeach the corrupt, treasonous scumbag. But that is a purely political calculation having nothing whatever to do with what is best for the public interest. McConnell decides most or all matters only on the basis of what is best for him and his authoritarian, corrupt, incompetent, and mostly treasonous party. GOP senators will decide to protect the president or impeach him on the basis of what servers their personal interests first. The public interest is beside the point.

McConnell's comments include this: 

"Certainly November's elections did not hand any side a mandate for sweeping ideological change. Americans elected a closely divided Senate, a closely divided House and a presidential candidate who said he'd represent everyone. So our marching orders from the American people are clear. We're to have a robust discussion and seek common ground. We are to pursue bipartisan agreement everywhere we can, and check and balance one another, respectfully, where we must."

What McConnell did not mention, for obvious reasons, is that millions of Americans voted as they did on the basis of blatant, provable lies and deceit. Lies and deceit heavily favored the GOP. If the GOP leadership, specifically including McConnell, had been honest with the American people about the election and the president, and much of what happened over the last four years, the election would not have been close.

As I've pointed out here before, seeking common ground means not compromising on anything unless it is absolutely necessary for the GOP to stay in power. The will of the American people is irrelevant. Checking and balancing one another where we must means everywhere there is political advantage to do so. The public interest is mostly irrelevant most of the time. That clearly signalled obstructionism ("balancing") will come with or without one shred of respect for majority public opinion. 

My guess is that most of the balancing will be accompanied by a torrent of disrespectful lies and hyper-partisan radical right GOP deceit, i.e., business as usual. 

 

Lying About History: The 1776 Commission Report

One goal of the radical right's run at power is to create false realities. That has been the core goal of divisive, mendacious dark free speech that conservative sources have been spewing for decades. That poison has now poisoned and trapped millions of minds into sincere belief in objectively false realities, e.g., the election was stolen.

The radical right is not going to go away and neither will its heavy reliance on lies, deceit, irrational emotional manipulation and hyper-partisan motivated reasoning. One example of how extreme the radical right is in its quest to rewrite history and deny reality is the president's crackpot 1776 Commission. It is a complete fraud, but that does not matter. What matters is trapping minds in the radical right's sticky poison. The New York Times writes:

The White House released the report on Monday of the presidential 1776 Commission, a sweeping attack on liberal thought and activism that calls for a “patriotic education,” defends America’s founding against charges that it was tainted by slavery and likens progressivism to fascism.

President Trump formed the 18-member commission — which includes no professional historians but a number of conservative activists, politicians and intellectuals — in the heat of his re-election campaign in September, as he cast himself as a defender of traditional American heritage against “radical” liberals. Not previously known for his interest in American history or education, Mr. Trump insisted that the nation’s schools had been infiltrated by anti-American thought and required a new “pro-American” curriculum.

The commission formed part of Mr. Trump’s larger response to the antiracism protests, some of them violent, that followed the May killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis.

In his remarks at the National Archives announcing the commission’s formation, Mr. Trump said that “the left-wing rioting and mayhem are the direct result of decades of left-wing indoctrination in our schools.”

The commission’s report charges, in terms quickly derided by many mainstream historians, that Americans are being indoctrinated with a false critique of the nation’s founding and identity, including the role of slavery in its history.

“Historical revisionism that tramples honest scholarship and historical truth, shames Americans by highlighting only the sins of their ancestors, and teaches claims of systemic racism that can only be eliminated by more discrimination, is an ideology intended to manipulate opinions more than educate minds,” the report says.

The report drew intense criticism from historians, some of whom noted that the commission, while stocked with conservative educators, did not include a single professional historian of the United States.

James Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association, said the report was not a work of history, but “cynical politics.”

“This report skillfully weaves together myths, distortions, deliberate silences, and both blatant and subtle misreading of evidence to create a narrative and an argument that few respectable professional historians, even across a wide interpretive spectrum, would consider plausible, never mind convincing,” he said.  

“The biggest tell in the 1776 report is that it lists ‘Progressivism’ along with ‘Slavery’ and ‘Fascism’ in its list of ‘challenges to America’s principles,’” Thomas Sugrue, a historian at New York University, wrote on Twitter. “Time to rewrite my lectures to say that ending child labor and regulating meatpacking = Hitlerism.”

Released on Martin Luther King’s Birthday, the report even takes aim at the legacy of the Civil Rights movement, saying that it “was almost immediately turned to programs that ran counter to the lofty ideals of the founders.”

That is the level of cynicism and mendacity that drives the autocratic, anti-democratic, anti-truth, bigoted radical right. They released this filth on Martin Luther King’s Birthday. One can ask how many tax dollars were wasted in producing this "report."

At least the people who wrote this deeply immoral pack of lies had the guts to put their names on it. Mike Pompeo, a radical right white Christian Nationalist has put his name on it, so he is one of those responsible for this travesty. 

The full report is here.