Trump is not the problem

 While the 45th occupant of the Oval Office has dominated the news since he announced his candidacy for the 2016 presidential primaries in 2015, we lost the chance to make him a one-person problem when we failed to vote against him in sufficient numbers in November, 2016. As soon as he reached the most powerful leadership position in the world, he embodied all of the hopes of the voters and the business interests that put him there. Those hopes already existed before he placed them on the throne, and they will exist long after he is gone. If you strike him down, he will become more powerful than you can imagine.

When Hitler destroyed Germany with his manic obsessions, it was blatantly obvious. All of Europe was devastated by years of war. World War I failed as the "war to end all wars," but World War II succeeded as the War to Make War Inadvisable. I know it's not as snappy a title, but economic analysis bores most people to sleep. Germany reinvented itself as a bastion of tolerance because the country got to experience the ruinous consequences of bigotry run amok. If Hitler had the sense to keep his hatred within his own borders, the camps would probably still be running, in defiance of world disapproval, but global unwillingness to undermine German sovereignty. Look at how the Soviet Union behaved during its time, and how the "free world" built up arms, muttered threateningly, and stayed carefully on its own side of the line. Nukes made the stakes too high.

Global war became obsolete in the 20th Century. Warfare remains constant all over the globe, but no one with even a bachelor's degree in business wants a no-holds-barred total war for world domination. Small wars are profitable, although they have to be well managed. Big countries can pick on smaller ones, although the United States got its ass handed to it by the Vietnamese. Live and learn. Cough cough -- Afghanistan -- cough cough! Maybe not so much. But in any case the damage to a nation, its morale, its spirit, its compassion, drastic as they may be, don't damage production capacity and drain the resources of the top tier of wealth, for whom the country is run.

In 1984, George Orwell drew a broad, crayon sketch of how real global domination works. While much of the book is oversimplified, as all fiction has to be, many basic principles apply. Most notably, the common people, the most numerous, can be controlled by the information they are fed, and the necessities of life that are dribbled out in just enough of a flow to keep the strivers struggling to get their little bit, believing that their lives will get better, or at least no worse, if they just keep working for as long as they can.

Donald Trump is not the problem. Donald Trump is the visible pustule above a deep, systemic infection. You know that squeezing a zit can actually cause sepsis. Popping Trump might release a gratifying shower of pus and a momentary sense of relief, but the underlying infection would grow more entrenched. Indeed, pustule Trump was a shocking but predictable symptom of the poisoning that had been injected in steadily increasing doses since 1980. And, as we are constantly reminded, the real infection dates back to 1619, and further back, to contemptuous colonialism. The heirs to the country's worst aspects hold all of the power right now, because the numerous masses are controlled by the information they are fed, and the glorification of life-devouring work schedules that never seem to lead to that better world we were told must result from greater productivity. "Nobody wants to work anymore." Well, no shit: what has it gotten us?

Because the corrupt Supreme Court has placed Donald Trump out of reach of the law, we won't have the satisfaction of seeing the justice system work the way we were always lied to that it does: bringing any criminal before a jury of their peers, to be tried on the basis of the evidence, in accordance with the law. Until July 1, 2024, we at least could hold out the slim hope that the legal system could be used on anyone who broke the law, even though we saw it applied unequally as a matter of routine. No legal authority had officially codified any aspect of that inequality until now. With that seal broken, the tiers of the justice system may each in turn receive official sanction. The Constitution is only as good as the people who interpret it.

Real change starts from the bottom up. That's why the authoritarians shifted their focus to control at the state level at the same time that they worked diligently to eliminate federal authority. Smaller jurisdictions are easier to manage, because local voters actually have a harder time getting complete information. Sure, you can go to public hearings on upcoming issues, but who has time? Are the meetings during your work day, when you can't leave the job you desperately need for your meager income? Are they at night, when you work your second or third job, or are taking care of your family, or just resting up for the next day's toil? By removing federal oversight on behalf of ordinary citizens, the authoritarian movement guarantees that local bullies reign supreme. Your success at the local level depends on how strong local political machines are, and how dirty they can get without penalties. Like murdering civil rights activists and letting the murderers go free for decades. Authoritarian politics and organized crime are indistinguishable.

Monetizing the Meerkats

 Picture the classic photo of meerkats, with a couple of sentinels standing tall while the rest of the group forages. The group takes turns standing guard and gathering food, so everyone gets what they need.

Humans divide tasks more completely, using money to ensure that anyone not directly engaged in producing food or making shelter gets some. Our sentinels need to get paid in order to maintain their vigilance and reporting.

The myth of impartial journalism stems from an ideal worth striving for, and from some real life examples of it. But how can a journalist be truly impartial if there is such a thing as right and wrong? The obvious stuff may be easy enough, but, when it comes to conjectural policy, editorial bias skews everything.

In the old model of print journalism, ad revenues would determine the size of the paper. Once the ad banks were laid in, what remained was the "news hole." A paper might run at a deficit for a while, but financial reality is financial reality. In general, a paper would have to keep a sustainable balance. Thus, "All the News that's Fit to Print" becomes, "All the News that Fits." An editor decides what's worthy to make the cut, even more than when coffers are full and a few more things can be shoehorned in.

Now we have many reporters on platforms of all sizes, from a couple of planks sketchily nailed into the top of a swaying tree to concrete monoliths of established corporate media. No one has a monopoly on the truth or any obligation whatsoever to deliver it. Our sentinels keep watch and report.

Corporate media can no longer be trusted. Collectives providing information from lower tiers definitely reflect their own biases. Bias does not always bring inaccuracy. Unfortunately, your sense of accuracy depends on your vision of the present and future of the country. Those opinions are shaped by your beliefs about the past and the principles you derive from those beliefs.

In reality, nothing is secure, as the SCOTUS decision of July 1, 2024 proves. They rendered the entire constitution and Declaration of Independence irrelevant by making the president a king. For our nation to succeed, ruled by a document instead of a personage, we needed people of integrity to uphold and defend that document against all enemies foreign and domestic. Instead, domestic enemies have used the system to destroy the system. But I digress.

To keep our watchful meerkats standing tall, they needed the funds to survive. All media have been holding out the beggar's bowl for years, but it's gotten worse and worse in the past couple of decades. The people who want you uneducated and uninformed have done a good job of vilifying public education and the profession of journalism, while concentrating control of mass media in their own hands. Journalism that doesn't expose the schemes of the powerful is just public relations.

The sides are drawn: it's money versus people. We toil to get some and it gets dragged back from us. Every endeavor that might once have started out based on some intellectual and ethical principle becomes a business and turns toward the pure pursuit of maximum profit margin. This cynical and destructive model warps the entire economy.

An independent journalist does not provide food or shelter. They provide information. The truth is seldom popular, so the income is meager. There's no easy money anywhere. It's hard to rise in the pyramid scheme of capitalism. The "idle rich" have to keep scampering around looking busy, while the descending tiers of their supporters do the dirty work to keep them in power and secure the foundations of cheap labor: us.

I can say for certain that the time to observe, analyze, and write comes directly from either sleep or work. If you can't connect your efforts to a revenue stream, or even a series of discrete splashes, your income will suffer.

A Republic We Couldn't Keep

The thing about a dark day for America is that darkness doesn't fall right away. We will go through the rest of the election, with the media treating the death blow to representative government in this country as just another facet of this perfectly normal contest between the old familiar parties.

The fatal blow has fallen after a long series of maneuvers dating back to 1980. So in that sense it's not really a surprise. It happened sooner thanks to the many factors that led to the election of Donald Trump in 2016, but it was always the goal of wealthy people who believe fervently that the entire purpose of the United States is to make rich people richer. Everything they have done has undermined trust in the federal government and voting in general.

The flaw in government is that it's run by people. Ours used to run fairly well, but has deteriorated steadily under immense pressure from the private sector bent on proving that it doesn't work. As cooperating elected officials have fed the corporatocracy more and more money, the private sector has been able to construct an unending propaganda campaign supporting their own interests. According to the US Supreme Court, bribery of public officials is now completely legal. And just today they ruled that the president is a king, whose power is beyond the reach of the legal system. All other branches of government -- including the Supreme Court -- became irrelevant. The lesser branches can fight among themselves, but instead of checks and balances among equal members of a triumvirate, the order is hierarchical. The president is at the top, with the Supreme Court in second place, and Congress is dead last. Actually, the American people are dead last. If we continue the now meaningless entertainment of having elections, we might still place some intermediate tormentors above us in the neutered legislature, but all of us are subject to the whims of the tyrant.

Life may seem normal for a time. We will all continue to struggle to pay our bills, and be encouraged to blame the wrong people for our woes, or be told it's all our own fault for lack of a work ethic. The discrimination will become more and more blatant. We will have no recourse. Protesters can be run over, shot, beaten, and jailed indefinitely.

The legal system has long been just another tool of oppression. If we didn't have an unfair legal system, rich people wouldn't get the cushy treatment that they do, while ordinary citizens have to go through the whole wringer. For a time we had crusading lawyers who would use the system to force it to do right from time to time. That's gone now. With the entire judicial system under the control of authoritarians, anyone could get sucked in and convicted. If you displease the rulers, they have no reason to let you slide. Just about everyone will be cheap labor, easily replaced.

I will never understand how this represents freedom to the multitude who will find out the hard way that it does not. We're all going to have to take that rough ride with them. Thanks for nothing, you fucking morons.

Crime definitely pays. It just handed the most powerful military force in the world to whoever wins the next presidential election. And it got the most criminal president in the history of the United States a de facto pardon, because he will never be brought to trial. Whether he wins the election in November or not, the Supreme Court decision stands for the next criminal bold enough to take them up on it. 

Trump has a clear path to having any conviction overturned by this Supreme Court if he should happen to face trial. At the state level they'll just have to install GOP governors to grant the pardons, or threaten a Democrat and get them to flip.

 Life goes on, just trying to pay your bills. At least, as Trump himself has said, you don't have to worry about voting anymore. Just try to stay out of trouble.