The Division: Continued

Iit is difficult, even painful, to have to find something day after day that does not emphasize the awfulness of our situation.

But now: The big news is as follows, courtesy of Rachel Maddow, who actually tells us what’s going on in Fascistville: Namely, the use of Force has begun. Yesterday (Thursday or Friday) Doge scum, after being turned away by government employees, forced their totally illegal way into an “Aid Agency” escorted by armed marshalls. [Say that to yourself out loud ten times.]

All in all I am being forced to think that all these protest gatherings and town halls that Maddow rightly upholds, are inspiring and challenging but basically are still not forestalling every illegal or treasonous act that, under the aegis of President Trump or co-President Musk, continue unabated. They have so far had the effect mainly of embarrassing cowardly Republicans–while however being often simply ignored by their targets.

History tells us that force is not repelled by verbal protests or judicial rulings — after all, it is the executive branch that ultimately enforces judicial orders. As the Dean of Berkeley’s Law School puts it, “If a president decides to ignore a judicial ruling, the courts are likely rendered impotent.” Neither the judiciary –guided by the wavering John Roberts–nor the now leaderless Democratic Party, nor the worthless ex-Republican Party, are constituted to deal with a reincarnation of Caesar.

Any MAGA among them: Who knows? We do know that the Republican National Committee has told GOP reps and senators to stop holding town halls. But this little item says something:

“Almost 80 percent of Republican men believe that society as a whole has become too soft and feminine.” And “ The increase among Republican women is even larger — from 41 percent to 67 percent.” And Trump’s Gallup approval rating as of now: 48%, only slightly less than his share of the vote. Not a mandate, but doing what you want without kickback–who needs a mandate?

So we are a fundamentally divided nation. But the real power is not fundamentally divided, it’s sawing away while we protest. Killing as it goes, stripping away rights as it goes; silencing dissident voices as it goes.

And we do know this, which is hard to grasp: Justice Amy Cony Barrett is being showered with threats and intimidation for ruling (as did CJ Roberts) in favor of the District Judge who forced (or tried to force) the rampant law-breakers of Muskump to stop, at least for the moment, their unilateral effort to wreck the life-saving efforts of USAID in Africa; which was established by Congress for just that purpose. This is where Law goes when there is not a decent human being in what used to be called “conservatism” is now willing to defend it.

At the moment, that is, the despoliation of the constitutionally created Federal government, as well as the deprivation of essential tools and finances of state governments, continues unabated. The Democratic Party is able to challenge–that is, filibuster–a few non-budgetary votes in the Senate; but nothing in the House, which controls the shape and size of the forthcoming budget that is conceived by Trump and Musk as a wrecking tool of the welfare State, which title must never be used with derision: it keeps people alive.

Which is to say every agency anywhere that serves the basic needs of vulnerable people who t are conceived as “waste” by the man who may be the worst monster in history–that is, their health, their education, their housing, their very security is eliminated, never to be reconstituted in any form. And those who served are treated like an enemy. Even veterans: “Thank you for your service” becomes “Go fuck yourselves.”

But that is the goal: for the killer Musk, who dispatches his teenage cretins to destroy the state that yes, being a creation that even if imperfect, employs millions of faithful professionals who protect us from the rule of lawlessness, because that is his deepest desire. And as well for there to be no possible regulation of any kind to interfere with his unchallenged vastness. The gutting of Social Security as “waste” has already begun; did not Trump make some ridiculous claim about protecting it?

As for him, his needs are simple: to be the Absoute Monarch…of what, like whom? Coriolanus? Caesar? Caligula? Lady Macbeth?

And whatever the outcome of forthcoming elections, from where will come the replacement of the gigantic theft of human well-being that has been transferred to the wealthy: and who will take it back from them? By voting? That’s to be kidding. To repeat: there is no such thing as a non-violent revolution in the teeth of armed force–ask the shade of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln or Frederick Douglas — who didn’t have to deal with a domineering market in bonds. And on the question of violence, who commands that armed force today; and who has prepared it for what is very likely to be forthcoming?

Indeed, the truth about this is that the worst Fascist Administration in history is already engaging in mass murder at home and abroad: from the fate of USAID to the denial of battlefield intelligence to Ukrainian forces while cancelling cybersecurity aimed at the power of his footsy buddy Putin. And wait until they finally grasp that they can’t peaceably deport eleven million law-abiding residents. What then?

And added to that: Looking at all the censorship, the closures, that are piling up: in many instances their representations are gone forever. Many in the communication and legal profession have already engaged in the anticipatory neck-bending that eliminates all talk of resistance, even among those who have the wherewithal to engage in it. Anything that smacks of solidarity; anything that smacks of human rights; anything that smacks of redistribution; anything that smacks of anything that smacks of community: all to the compost heap.

Every day we plunge deeper and deeper into the depths. Here is the worst surrender I can think of at the moment: How did ten (10) Democrats in the House manage to support the censure of Rep. Al Green for “incivility”: a Representative who, while waving a cane at the President after the State of the Union Address, gave one of the most deeply felt speeches of all time about what that word–civility–meant: that a President who plans to destroy Medicaid is “civil” and deserves respect.

It must have been incredibly painful for a black Texan to represent thousands upon thousands of needy people in a State the governing tyranny of which turned down an 800 billion dollar Medicaid grant from the pre-Trump Federal budget. Of course, their Fascism is extreme, but adding up all the harm the President and his Musketeer are wreaking, the primary message is clear: Fuck the poor! Fuck the poor! Fuck the dependent!

And when will Al Green’s Democratic Party become a real Party–as is the present Party of the Republican fascists–that stops the kow-towing to a President who rewards and praises cop-killers. Rather, they should storm the Senate’s podium and force those gutless wonders to make a choice.

But from the look of things…? Here’s JD Vance, who outrightly has threatened to defy court rulings on where we are: Trump should “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state” and that “when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’” (He didn’t; he wrote it in a private letter–maybe.)

Indeed. Russell Vought, Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, has written that the right “needs to throw off the precedents and legal paradigms that have wrongly developed over the last 200 years.” So, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt, and FDR, and LBJ, and Earl Warren, and William Brennan and…. Their shades should go to Canada.

And Elon Musk, never to be outdone, has called for an “immediate wave of judicial impeachments,” an almost comically obvious effort to intimidate judges who are hearing challenges to Trump’s actions. Though Justice Barrett probably doesn’t think it’s comical.

And neither do I.