Kids of my generation were royally steamed when the Good Witch of the North informed Dorothy she’d had the power to return to Kansas all along. Now “Glynda” Bob Mueller tells us we all better start clicking our heels if we want to get back to America.
The length of the investigation was our first clue. Were Trump an actual Siberian Candidate, Mueller couldn’t have spent two years aligning ducks while Kremlin instructions were being executed. The Russians conspired to elect Trump without involving him directly. “Donald! Comrade! Please to just you beink you!”
In 400 pages of Russki/Trump flirtation, Mueller lacked that quid pro quo that would justify a treason indictment. The public record is teeming with quids (the Trump Tower meeting, Trump Tower Moscow, Deutsche Bank loans) and quos (Trump cedes Ukraine, blocks sanctions, undercuts NATO) but the pros remain dotted lines, never solid.
If Mueller lacked wherewithal to charge a sitting president a traitor, Trump with his desperate, even valiant, obstruction evidently believed his own guilt.
This lazy, unlearned, unteachable, cruel, venal, undisciplined, inarticulate, loutish, brutish, racist Chief Executive—exposed to VD (and disposed to incest) — damages global stability, and the republic and Constitution, with his ongoing assaults on truth and reality, and validates Putin’s skill at playing a dummy hand.
Trump’s gross behavior and appetites reasonably reflect America. We are civically degenerate — and not just Trump’s base. Most of us believe the presidency a serial dictatorship and Congress a nuisance. We invest the office with war-making powers, and see nothing wrong with a perpetually mobilized military. We see injustice routinely doled by courts and cops. We expect broadly popular policy initiatives to languish. We see laws tailored to corporate profiteering and shrug, convinced deep down that America is atomically money.
The republic is over and the empire endures (say, a thousand-year reign). So what if campaign functions are outsourced to foreign contractors? Or dictators? As multi-national corporations are trusted to distribute the world’s wealth and workload, why shouldn’t an emergent cabal of stateless oligarchs manage our thoughts and expectations? One-world rule has been achieved! The aspiration of conquerors and philosophers from Alexander to Jesus, from Karl Marx to Gene Roddenberry, was accomplished not by force of arms or ideas, nor our common humanity, but by their abnegation.
M. WARNER, Minneapolis, Minn.
[Editor’s Note: This letter was written before Mueller’s report was released.]
In 2016 I could not bring myself to vote “corporate,” that is, to vote for Hillary. I felt that she and the other corporate Dems (and Republicans) would lead us to a “slow death, rather than the more rapid death Trump is promoting. By “death” I mean destruction of the environment; ever rising inequality, increasing corporate, rather than citizen, power; more money in politics; and no healthcare. I felt (although I would never vote forTrump) his presidency would sharply divide the country and make citizens carefully think about where government policies are leading us. This has happened. I feel vindicated in my thinking — that in many ways a Trump victory would increase left-leaning populists in the long run.
Because of the great divides in our country that Trump has created, in reality there are four parties now vying for the presidential nomination in 2020: Trump Republicans, non-Trump Republicans, corporate Democrats, and progressive Democrats (led by Bernie Sanders). Progressive populists now have a real chance to take the presidency (especially if Bernie chooses a young woman as a running mate).
If the Democrats choose to put up another corporate candidate (Dems need to accept that their last corporate clone lost) they stand a very good chance of losing again. But even if this next corporate Dem wins, where will we be? We will again be on the corporate “slow road to death:” rising inequality, environmental destruction, etc. We now have a great chance to have a Progressive Populist in the presidency. It can be done, we can win in 2020. This is why Margot Ford McMillan’s column in the 4/1/19 TPP made me want to puke. How could she advocate for another run of the mill centrist Democratic candidate and disparage Bernie Sanders. How can she consider herself a progressive populist? Populist she may be, but she’s about as progressive as Trump, or Joe Biden. And how, could she come out against Bernie at this time? Amazing, just amazing!
Sometimes I’m disappointed in your paper, mostly over articles by phony populists you have writing for you, such as Margot Ford McMillan and Froma Harropl they are a detriment to the label “Progressive Populist.”
BOB BOGNER, Aspen, Colo.
Although there are many excellent candidates or potential candidates for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination, I believe there is one outstanding individual superior to the others and who has not been mentioned in your publication or in most other publications — Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Congressman Adam B. Schiff. He is the brightest, most articulate, honest, and even-tempered politician I have heard in many years and may be the only potential candidate who I believe can defeat President Trump — an ignorant, inarticulate, corrupt, temperamental, and unstable individual.
EDWARD L. KOVEN, Highland Park, Ill.
I believe that I speak for many Democrats when I tell you that I don’t like some of the overall direction that the national Democratic Party is taking. Neither do some authors, such as Thomas Frank. I would like the party to be more like it was in the 1960s, when it focused primarily on the bread-and-butter and kitchen-table issues that affect about 90% of Americans except for the wealthiest top 10%. I want the party to stand for enhancing the social safety-net programs such as Social Security as well as advocating for other social programs including a Canadian-style national health insurance program.
I believe that the party focuses far too much on fighting against President Trump and the Republicans on the “identity politics” and “cultural-war” issues and has become out-of-touch with lower- and middle-income Americans and their financial struggles to survive and pay their bills.
STEWART B. EPSTEIN, Rochester, N.Y.
I’ll bet you will have gotten a lot of feedback on a quote from [Trump Re-election campaign spokesman] Tim Murtaugh in the 4/15/19 Dispatches under the headline, “TRUMP CAMPAIGN WARNS NETWORKS AGAINST BOOKING DEMS”:
“As you know, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report found that no one associated with President Donald J. Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia, despite repeated offers from Russia-linked operatives ...”
Really? Casual viewers of the mainstream network evening news should be aware of the Trump Tower meeting that “never happened,” or was about adoption. Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and others jumped at that one. If Tim Murtaugh is to be believed there were other opportunities.
Are we to believe that all other overtures were turned down?
KEN ESCH, Pittsburgh, Pa.
[In “Legacy Preferences” (4/14/19 TPP), Gene Nichol wrote of wealthy parents buying admission to prestigious colleges for their children.]
As much as we like to think we’re superior to the folks of the ancient world because of our advanced technologies, I’m sure that Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Seneca and other great philosophers didn’t take bribes to enroll rich parents’ sons in their academies.
We have much to learn from those exemplary teachers, particularly on the subject of ethics.
In those days, man was the measure. But sadly, in our day, money is the measure. Now that this scandal is out in the open, we can only hope that society will put a stop to the abhorrent notion that only those kids whose parents have deep pockets deserve to be admitted into the elite colleges.
DAVID QUINTERO, Monrovia, Calif.
With the GOP’s all-out effort to deny global warming in order to please the oil and gas firms that are their major contributors, it will be very difficult to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide that we would need to keep our planet from dying.
There is another tack: the book The Uninhabitable Earth [by David Wallace-Wells] reports on carbon capture on a grand scale as a possible solution. “David Keith demonstrated a method for removing carbon at a cost perhaps as low as $94 per ton — which would make the cost of neutralizing our 32 gigatons of annual global emissions about $3 trillion. If that sounds intimidating, keep in mind, estimates for the total global fossil fuel subsidies paid out each year run as high as $5 trillion. …. None of that subsidy has to continue. Further, slow-walking action on climate change, (as we are doing now), will cost the world $26 trillion by just 2030.”
LEE KNOHL, Evanston Ill.
Unfettered Capitalism leads to inevitable disparities in income. Lots of articles have been written about this subject, and yet we are going on the same path. We, as a nation, will not touch any subject unless there is a “profit” angle — be it a prison, health or the education system. We are overdoing it! So many times you have heard about a manufacturer planning to retrench their staff positioning and immediately their stocks go up. Nobody thinks about those retrenched staff as to how will they meet their expenses, as long as their own stocks register a rise.
Frankly speaking, the Democratic Party are talking about Socialism and how it would help defeat abject poverty. Anytime President Trump talks of Socialism, he repeatedly talks about Venezuela, yet he does not mention the Northern European countries. Please, Mr. President, it is as if the newly elected Democratic Party members are talking about all manufacturing steps will be controlled by the State and there will not be any business people.
G.M. CHANDU, Flushing, N.Y.
You know, with the obvious lack of security at Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort down in Florida, I think it’s time for the US government to use eminent domain to seize Trump’s private property and build a wall around Mar-A-Lago in order to ensure our national security, just like Trump wants to do at our southern border. Of course, Mexico will pay for it.
MIKE EKLUND, Mercer, Wis.
Rather than bemoan the demise of dairy farms, let’s drink to the future and embrace healthy, environmentally friendly plant-based diets. Soy milk is available everywhere, and even Carl’s Jr. has an awesomely delicious plant-based burger.
If we really care about animals, we should stop milking them.
KERRY MASTERS, Liberty Lake, Wash.
From The Progressive Populist, May 15, 2019
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