If the media aren't salivating over porn star Stormy Daniels, they're salivating and/or retching over war porn addict John Bolton joining the Trump administration. Bolton did constitute at least a quarter-lobe of Bush's-dry drunk brain, after all. So the fact that erstwhile Iraq War critic Trump is embracing the "hawkish" Bolton - on the 15th anniversary of the illegal invasion, no less - is making even some Neocon-embracing, Saudi-groveling Democrats' hair curl.
It's bad enough that Trump is a hypocrite, Bolton is a hypocrite for talking tough about Russia at the same time he's enriched himself by, among other things, canoodling with Russian oligarchs on behalf of the National Rifle Association.
We are supposed to be selectively outraged by some, but by no means all, of the corruption going on this establishment. Thanks to the dearth of media coverage, most people are not too shocked that the US has sold billions of dollars' worth of weapons to the Saudi royals for their war on poor Yemenis, and the humanitarian crisis of starvation and cholera it has wrought.
So this week's designated bad guy is John Bolton. Not that he doesn't eminently deserve the title, of course; it's just so hard to keep straight so many names of so many miscreants vying for attention in our overloaded brains at any given moment.
In her Sunday column comparing the two boy kings - George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump - and their mutual Neocon addiction, Maureen Dowd writes:
My published comment:Because the Dr. Strangeloves treated W. like a host body, we ended up in two tragically unending wars.In the bitter contest between the Rumsfeld Defense Department and the Colin Powell State Department, John Bolton was a Rummy person who was a fifth column at State, along with Liz Cheney. Like a walrus version of Wile E. Coyote, he lived to dynamite treaties, alliances and anything with “global” or “multilateral” in the title.He was known as the most undiplomatic diplomat ever, with a rip-their-eyeballs-out, foaming-at-the-mouth style.
Calling Bolton a hawk is an insult to hawks, who are sharp-eyed, who kill only what they can eat at one sitting, and who are actually tameable if paired with a properly trained handler. A better moniker is "war criminal." However, since in 2002 Bolton pre-absolved himself of culpability for war crimes when he advised Bush not to ratify the Rome Statute/ International Criminal Court Treaty, he continues to roam free.***
Not only was the Bush cohort never prosecuted, Bush himself is being rehabbed in the propaganda court of oligarchic opinion. Trump is so magical that way; he makes some of the worst scoundrels and killers in US history look like choirboys compared to himself.
Bolton is far too depraved to be called a mere hawk. But I do think it's fair to call him a mawk, given the way he slimily burrowed into Bush's soft yielding brain while whispering all those lies about the non-existent WMDs. Bolton is both a predator and a parasite.
The one black lining on the dark cloud is that Trump is neither a proper handler, nor as malleable as Bush. Trump's dwindling supply of sycophants can't hold a candle to, for example, the malevolence of the still-ticking Dick Cheney (who is likely too crafty to accept a temporary invite into the current chaotic inner sanctum.)
Odds are that Trump will grow as tired of Bolton as he has with the rest of them. We can only hope that both these criminals will be forced out before they ever get the chance to bomb any more innocent people.
For more run-of-the-mill mawkishness, we can always count on Times resident scold Charles Blow to supply it in overwrought dollops. In his latest effort, he bemoans the tragic damage that our most recent boy king is doing to America's benevolent "brand." All because of Trump, you see, people all over the world who used to love United States diplomatic product are now wrinkling their noses in disgust. The merchandise's value is being threatened. And as the title to his latest column asserts, this makes Trump absolutely "un-American." Attempting to analyze Trump's recent lying to Justin Trudeau of Canada about a non-existent trade deficit, Blow writes:
My published response:It bears repeating that Donald Trump is a pathological, unrepentant liar. We must state this truth for as long as he revels in untruth.But there is something about the nakedness of this confession, the brazenness of it, the cavalier-ness, that still has the ability to shock....
Our relationship with our allies around the world depends on some degree of mutual trust and respect. What must they think when they watch Trump demolish those diplomatic tenets? How are international agreements supposed to be negotiated when one party is a proven, prolific liar?We have no idea just how damaged the American brand has become under Trump.
Trump is as American as rotten apple pie. He isn't the disease, he's just the most glaring symptom of the disease which has been deliberately crafted in the laboratories of the money-soaked Congress.
Trump uses racism as a weapon to divide and conquer just as the US has from its very inception.:From the slave trade, to the colonization and extermination of natives, to the international plunder by the World Bank and the IMF, to the forever wars waged from nearly 1,000 military bases.
Trump destroying the American "brand?" To the permanent ruling class and to the media whose job it is to sell a "narrative" of democracy and equality, yes. But to many of us, the "brand" was exposed as a fraud long ago. Ask the refugees from the Middle East, for example, how they feel about Trump's sullying of the "brand." Ask the unemployed factory workers in the US Midwest. Ask the millions of families evicted from their homes after the 2008 collapse, while the bankers got bailouts and bonuses and the top 1% pocketed 94% of all that lost household wealth. Ask them about "brand damage" and they'll either weep bitter tears or laugh right in your face.
Trump's lies are his essential currency. List them to your heart's content and he won't care a whit. The Trump brand is the American brand boiled right down to its very essence: capitalism on crack.
***The country not only needs a high colonic to purge itself of the Trump offal, it needs the therapeutic nourishment of a new New Deal.
Times op-ed contributor Susan Jacoby, meanwhile, sets up a nifty little neoliberal straw man in her recent piece, entitled "Stop Apologizing for Being Elite." It seems that hordes of Fox News Deplorables hate you because you happen to possess a college degree and hold a job and earn a decent salary. But don't let them get you down. Above all, stop feeling so ashamed just because you earned yourself a seat at the table, and they didn't. Stop feeling sorry for them! The ignorant should take a tip from her own dear departed grandmother and learn to love learning for learning's sake. And liberal intellectuals should take more pride in their own accomplishments as they mawkishly preach a bootstrapping, ladders-of-opportunity agenda to their less-educated brethren:
Gran has been in my thoughts even more than usual this year, because I know that she would have scoffed at one of the unanticipated consequences of the Trump presidency. I am referring to the endless self-flagellation among well-educated liberals — “the elites,” in pejorative parlance — about their failure to “get” the concerns of white working-class voters. Gran never expected anyone to “get” her. She was determined to educate herself for what she considered the privilege of citizenship.Our current political discourse is corrupted by two equally flawed narratives about the relationship between social class and politics.
The first is a fable accepted by many intellectuals, who have found themselves guilty because just enough white working-class voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin handed Mr. Trump his Electoral College win in 2016. Many fear that this year’s midterm elections will once again result in a rejection of “elitism” by the same voters.
In a second, equally flawed narrative — adopted by a segment of both blue-collar workers and intellectuals — the American working class is so victimized that almost none of its members are capable of accepting the responsibility of civic self-education.And the third flawed narrative is Jacoby's own, given that she conflates the allegedly maligned educated elite ( for example, doctors who won't accept Medicaid patients) with the noxious Power Elite. Jacoby does not discuss the latter group in her article at all.
So I responded:
The resented "elites" aren't intellectuals like doctors and teachers. They are the permanent ruling class of career politicians and operatives, corporate media propagandists and personalities, and the handful of very wealthy families and CEOs who actually run this show.
If doctors refuse to treat Medicare and Medicaid patients, it's because the aristocracy refuses to adequately subsidize health care for the poor, disabled and elderly. Regular people aren't blaming underpaid teachers (bravely beginning to strike for a living wage) and adjunct college professors with advanced degrees who, along with other members of our growing economic underclass, often qualify for meager Medicaid and food assistance. If these professionals feel "guilty" about Trump, then it's probably news to them.
Education may have been a ticket to the good life back in Grandma's day, but since the US devolved into an oligarchy, this is no longer true. Our money-soaked, privatized government ensures that the culture of corruption, of which Trump is only the most glaring symptom, will continue to fester.
While the far-right GOP openly disdains humanity, the centrist Dems go the insipid concern-trolling route, touting incrementalism and bragging about "diversity" - as the oligarchs permit a token few black, brown and female persons to rise within the ranks in order to give the ultra-rich some much-needed identity-politics cover.
But guess what? The empire has no clothes, and people are noticing.
