The Trouble With Trump

 It is not "hyperbole" to describe Trump as a narcissistic and amoral pathological liar, as well as a convicted felon. It is not political bias or ever "Trump hate." All is based upon objective facts, no matter how much his delusional followers deny or ignore them. His actions require scrutiny and analysis. Consider the following:

"After meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said that about 2 million Palestinians could be resettled as the U.S. rebuilds the war-torn area into the "Riviera of the Middle East."

UN Secretary Guterres described the proposal as "tantamount to ethnic cleansing," and Amnesty International called such action a "war crime." US Secretary of State Rubio called it "a very generous plan to rebuild Gaza," ignoring the fact that massive destruction in Gaza was done by indiscriminate Israeli bombing of infrastructure, including schools and hospitals, while murdering over 48,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children. That massive destruction, accompanied by denial and blockage of humanitarian aid by Israel is "collective punishment," also defined by international conventions as a war crime.

The cultural insensitivity and inhumane tenor of the proposal is astounding, but also unfortunately typical of Trump. He envisions Gaza as one of his golf course development projects for the wealthy. It is not that he necessarily "hates" Palestinians, though his history regarding Arab and Muslim people suggests racial and religious bigotry. His more salient ethic is that he doesn't care about or regard Palestinians as human beings. They are "inconvenient" obstacles to his view of "economic development."

The "problematic" aspect, the trouble with Trump, is that he is in the White House. When he previously opposed/demanded removal of North Sea wind farms to improve the views from a proposed Trump golf course development, he was ignored and laughed at, not least because of implications for UK energy if he were taken seriously. However, when he makes equally or more insane self-serving proposals as a US president, and the Sec. of State obediently genuflects, world leaders are less sure whether to take him seriously. They know that Trump is a madman but given the submissive nature of the GOP majorities in Congress and slavering fealty of Trump appointed US government officials, other countries and their leaders are uncertain whether they can trust the American people any longer.

For better or worse, Trump "speaks for" the USA for the next 4 years [subject to possible impeachment]. Whether it is annexing Canada, seizing the Panama Canal, purchasing Greenland, or a trade war with the nations primary trading partners the American public is "responsible for" the idiotic things said and done by its president, including CRIMINAL actions. The SCOTUS has said such high crimes and misdemeanors are presumptively subject to presidential immunity from prosecution. The DOJ will not investigate wrongdoing and is persecuting government employees who have done their job investigating and seeking to hold Trump and others accountable. The GOP led Congress lacks the integrity or courage to impeach Trump, and prior failed attempts to do so have emboldened Trump.

The current GOP has been described as a "jellyfish," an organism without a brain or a backbone. The description is unkind, but not entirely inaccurate. The point is that any remedy cannot be expected from those quarters, regardless of damage Trump inflicts on the nation and the world, regardless of the adverse effects on countless of American families. They have produced this durable result through gerrymandering, financial corruption, and coopting media, and will make recovery most difficult.

And now, the steering wheel of US government has largely been turned over to an unelected billionaire tyrant who has openly threatened any GOP congress member who might dare to resist or disobey. Federal employees are subject to a reign of terror, fearing for their jobs if they do not swear fealty to the Trump/Musk regime.

Two courses of action remain. The first is to continue to pay attention, analyze, and call out falsehoods and deceit. The purpose of this is not to persuade the MAGA cult members or change their minds, arguably a lost cause. The purpose is to make factual information visible and to reaffirm the value of truth and integrity. Changing minds of those who refuse to accept facts might be a futile and frustrating effort, like "teaching a pig to sing," but such affirmation does resist allowing prevarication, deceit, and corruption to change those who do value honesty, facts and integrity.

The second course of action is to cultivate and support representatives at all levels of government who do value democracy, honesty, and integrity. Seek out and communicate with representatives who truly are representative of voices and values that wish to make life better for all. Engage in difficult and uncomfortable conversations about deficiencies in governance and systemic ills of racism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of institutionalized bigotry.

If these courses of action are followed vigorously and consistently, the eyes of the world may see that the American people may be worthy of trust, despite the "trouble with Trump," and that this too shall pass.

Absurd Religious Posturing and School Funding

 Once again, an apparent religious dispute has risen to the level of Supreme Court review. The underlying dispute is absurd and a red herring argument. The dispute rests on challenge to a decision by the Oklahoma Supreme Court to deny public funding to a religious charter school [Catholic]. The state court ruled that a charter school is a "public school" and thus not entitled to public funding. The dispute centers on interpretation of the First Amendment provisions regarding free exercise of religion and non-establishment of religion by the state. 

Previous SCOTUS rulings have laid out the groundwork for resolving such potential controversies, and it is odd that the Oklahoma Court was not sharp enough to use the guidance of those precedent. For decades, public funds have been used to support parochial schools, but ONLY for providing services which are essentially non-sectarian. For example, if the school curriculum supported is basic math, science or English, there is no "establishment clause" violation for providing educational services for students. The challenging part is when the content of curriculum drifts into religious doctrine and inculcation of religion. The SCOTUS guidelines indicate that those functions may be performed by the school but not supported by public funding. Admittedly, this does enter a difficult area in which a court must examine the content and intent of instruction in a school operated by a religious group. But a detente has been reached in most quarters, where parochial schools have generally agreed to segregate curriculum voluntarily in exchange for the benefit of partial public funding. Peripheral disputes have arisen over questions about who can teach in such schools, and unwed pregnant women have been rejected as teachers for ANY subject when the religious doctrine indicated they did not adhere to the religious beliefs of the operating group. The Oklahoma decision, however, did not turn on such finer points. Instead, the court bluntly ruled that a charter school has to be non-sectarian.

The state court ruling will likely be overturned because it is too broad. It should be returned to the state court for examination of what education is actually proposed for being funded by the public treasury. The argument that the denial of public funding is based upon the religious beliefs of the diocese proposing to operate the school is a red herring, a false flag. A proper denial of funding would NOT be "based on the religious beliefs" of the school operator, but rather upon the curriculum and how it was being taught. It would not matter what religious sect made the proposal for funding, Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, or Muslim, as long as the funding provided was to be used for general education and non-sectarian curriculum instruction. The funding body for the state could legitimately demand public review of the curriculum to compare with state and national standards.  Anyone challenging the funding could bring in evidence of religious study or indoctrination actually taking place in the classrooms.

There is, of course, room for mischief. Some religious groups may want to substitute "creationism" for scientific theories of evolution and natural selection. Some current sects may teach, as "science," that all vaccines are dangerous, despite rigorous testing and FDA approval. Some sects may believe and teach that the earth is flat, despite all scientific evidence to the contrary. Some sects may believe that only specific religious volumes should be taught as "literature," despite state established curriculum standards. Some believe that chattel slavery did not exist in the US, and that Africans came to the continent as "indentured servants." All such notions could be readily exposed and could result in denial or withdrawal of public funding. 

The real danger of such misguided and misinterpreted cases being subject to SCOTUS review by THIS high court is the danger of a politically driven ruling that goes beyond the parameters of the case or controversy itself. The current conservative majority has been looking for opportunities to push its political agenda. A "sloppy," poorly reasoned, or ungrounded decision could open doors for broader diversion of public funding to religious organizations and enterprises that would not be necessary based solely upon the question of one specific funding application for a charter school should or should not be granted. Such concern should not be major if we were faced with a SCOTUS that could be trusted to respect precedent and make rational and principled decisions. Unfortunately, the current SCOTUS has the confidence of only 30% of the public, and with good reason. So, religious posturing on a rather narrow case could provide a platform for political posturing by a corrupted SCOTUS.   

Supreme Court will weigh approval for US’ 1st publicly funded religious charter school, in Oklahoma

 January 20, 2025 - A Day of Remembrance

January 20, 2025 will and should be a day of remembrance. The phrase: “A day that will live in infamy” has been taken, but may be reappropriated with equal force to today’s events. On this day, the United States was not attacked by a foreign enemy, as in Pearl Harbor; it suffered an irremediable assault from an enemy within. It is for some a day of mourning, and it is hoped that those who support and gloat over the events of the day will also respect the right of those who have respected the nation and its constitutional democracy to mourn.

On this day, the United States has ceded any moral authority it might have retained in the world. It has chosen to dive into a venal cesspool of cynicism and exploitation. The national demise cannot be blamed solely upon the vacuous character of one narcissistic autocrat, as he has demonstrated sufficient followers and enablers to win a national election.  It might well be argued that this leap has been foreshadowed and is no surprise. Steps toward the edge have been apparent, in decimating the Voting Rights Act, overturning Roe v Wade, attacks on LGBTQ+ rights, corruption of SCOTUS justices. Yet there has been a significant and viable resistance, a willingness to call out perfidy and betrayal of fundamental constitutional and humane values. It was believed that there were certain lines that should not and could not be crossed. That belief in the American electoral system was naive, not just a belief that the system would sustain a balance, but in failure to recognize the degradation of its very underpinnings.

Today is a watershed moment in US history, a staining event unlike any other in its admittedly tainted history. A convicted felon is installed as President. A draft dodger who is disqualified from admission to any national armed service, who disparaged war veterans as “suckers and losers,” and who threatens military invasions against sovereign lands is being installed as Commander in Chief of the national defense. A convicted grifter and fraud who has filed for bankruptcy no less than six times is placed in charge of the national economy and budget administration. An anti-intellectual whose children have never attended any public school, and seeks to abolish the Department of Education, is now in charge of national education policy affecting millions of public school children. A person so scientifically ignorant that he promoted drinking bleach to remedy COVID-19, has appointed a science denying anti-vaxxer to lead the national health agency and protect public health. And the very person who incited an armed mob to attack the Capitol and hang the sitting Vice President in a treasonous insurrection to overturn the 2020 national election, and now promises to pardon the traitors as “patriots,” is the person with primary responsibility for preserving constitutional democracy. And this is not a complete list of his transgressions. During the Inauguration ceremony, he declined to place his hand on the bible as he took oath of office, as all his predecessors have done, indicating the vow is an empty promise.

To be sure, the historical record and performance of the United States has not been without fault and there have been many shameful events, foreign and domestic, calling for reflection and remedy. US support of foreign wars, Viet Nam, Iraq Invasion, and Israeli genocide in Gaza have all diminished the nation in the global sphere. The distinction is whether the ethic of the general populace could be said to trust in a rational and moral balancing dialectic of informed public discourse, or whether the public mind has been so infected and corrupted that belief in E Pluribus Unum can no longer be sustained.  Two important factors suggest the latter. First, corruption and decay of the fourth estate, whose function was supposed to inform the public and foster rational debate, has degraded such that the media is little more than a megaphone and echo chamber for a wealthy oligarchy. Second, the fundamental architecture of representative democracy includes an independent judiciary capable of maintaining some legal standards and precedents as “guardrails” against corruption and antithetical chaos by the executive and legislative branches. Less than a third of the public now believe in and trust the SCOTUS as capable of reliably performing that function. And certain politically driven judges in the federal district and circuit courts of appeals can predictably be counted on to issue sweeping rulings to facilitate corruption and undermine legal standards and precedents. 

All is not lost; all is not doom and gloom.  The sun will rise and set tomorrow and life will go on. However, it will be a decidedly and palpably different America, and by no rational or moral measure a “great” one. People will of necessity adjust to life, commercial and social interactions, albeit within much more limited parameters than before. Violent official anti-immigrant rhetoric will be manifested in nationwide raids by armed ICE agents under the new “Border Czar” to terrorize immigrants. The assault by executive order is to include schools, hospitals and churches. The terror will be visited on all brown people, whether or not documented or citizens because, as former Arizona Sheriff Joseph M. Arpaio maintained, “they all look alike.” Any citizens who resist such authoritarian pogrom-like tactics are also threatened. Voices like that of Rev. Martin Luther King have been intimidated to silence or drowned out by right wing hate speech. 

The rise of unbridled gun rights activism means that one dare not get in an argument with any stranger on the street, in the supermarket, or in a parking lot for fear that the challenged other may pull out a concealed weapon and shoot. Children are no longer safe when sent to public schools, and virtually every fourth grader is versed in lockdown and active shooter protocols. Even smaller scale interactions withdraw into more restricted spheres, where one must be chary of broaching “liberal” topics at social parties or at work. Even innocuous arguments at neighborhood football or baseball games over referee calls can become lethal; and playing partners at the golf or tennis club will become segregated along progressive and MAGA lines. What may once have been thought of as paranoia or irrational fear now becomes a survival standard. Despite cynical and hypocritical calls for “unity and prosperity,” after January 20, 2025 America becomes a very divided and morally bankrupt place.