What next? Death squads?

It is a feature of despotic societies for the government to use unidentified paramilitary forces in unmarked vehicles to seize opposition people and protestors off the streets and take them to secret locations for questioning. Very often these people were killed and their bodies never recovered. These kinds of things were notorious in many Latin American dictatorships and around the world (Sri Lanka was another example where such squads operated with impunity during the civil war and the insurrection) and the calls by mothers to return the ‘disappeared’ became rallying cries.

Yesterday’s revelations of what is going on in Portland, Oregon have disturbing similarities to those events.
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The Goya company should re-think this endorsement

Robert Unanue, chief executive of the Goya company that sells food products associated with Hispanic cuisine, attended a White House event organized by Trump to try and gain Hispanic support and fulsomely praised him. This angered many people who called for a boycott of Goya products.

So what does Trump do in response? He posts a photo of himself with a bunch of Goya products and his daughter Ivanka did the same, raising ethics questions about the propriety of using their official government positions to endorse products. (Readers can now pick themselves off the floor after laughing heartily at my using the words ‘Trump’, ‘ethics’, and ‘propriety’ in the same sentence.)
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White House press secretary inadvertently tells the truth

One of the things about the people in the Trump administration is that thought they may be corrupt and incorrigible liars, they are also not that smart and will sometimes inadvertently tell the truth. Consider what Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said yesterday at her press conference.

In response to a question about what President Donald Trump would say to parents who have kids in school districts that may be online-only, McEnany said: “The president has said unmistakably that he wants schools to open. And when he says open, he means open in full, kids been able to attend each and every day at their school.

“The science should not stand in the way of this,” she added, saying it is “perfectly safe” to fully reopen all classrooms. [My italics-MS]

She must have realized what a stupid thing that was to say because she later tried to cover up the blunder by saying “science is on our side here”, even though it is patently not, and if true would make her earlier statement nonsensical.

Just another day in the Trump stupidverse.

The large audiences Trump craves keep eluding him

We know that there is nothing that Trump loves more than to give long speeches to a large gathering of his fervent supporters. He seems to fancy himself as having powerful oratorical skills, possibly because his fans, like trained seals, laugh and applaud on cue at the right points. It does not seem to matter that the laugh lines consist of childish taunts, slurs, and derogatory nicknames. To him and them, they seem to be witticisms of the caliber of those delivered by Oscar Wilde.
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Let me make this perfectly clear

Fellow FtB blogger HJ Hornbeck over at Reprobate Spreadsheet privately alerted me to the fact that what I thought was a somewhat anodyne response that I made in a comment thread is being portrayed as somehow at least a semi-endorsement of transphobic views. My comment was purely a suggestion about how to keep small group discussions focused on the topic at hand, something I had some experience with as a teacher, and had nothing to do with whatever is the topic of discussion.

I tend not to write defensively. I assume that my words will be taken in good faith and not try to anticipate how my words could be misconstrued. I know that I am not aware of all the issues that members of the transgender community face and hence may, on occasion and out of pure ignorance, say or write something that should and could have been phrased better and thus may fall prey to those who seek to misinterpret my words to advance transphobic agendas. I would like to apologize in advance if that happens and would appreciate correction from those, like HJ, Crip Dyke, Andreas Avester, Rhiannon and others who know much more than I do.

So let me state my position as clearly as I possibly can.

I fully support the right of the transgender community to equal treatment and to be granted all the respect, rights, and privileges that all the rest of us enjoy. And I definitely oppose any attempt to exclude members of the transgender community from any activity by questioning the ‘reality’ of their gender.

Under no circumstances should people interpret what I write (even if poorly worded) as contradicting any of the above or as even the slightest endorsement of transphobic views.

Trump is flailing

It is becoming increasingly clear that Trump is flailing, trying desperately to reverse his sinking fortunes. We know that he is relentlessly focused on ratings and polls and however much he may like to think that these are being manipulated by his enemies to make him look bad, he has to realize at a gut level that things really are not looking good. Just yesterday comes news of a poll that shows him losing to Joe Biden by 13 points in Pennsylvania, a state he won in 2016, one of the small group of states that includes Michigan and Wisconsin that gave him his electoral college victory despite losing in the overall national vote.
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The rise and fall of demagogues

Senator Joe McCarthy casts a long shadow over American politics. The radio program Fresh Air had an interview with Larry Tye, author of the book Demagogue, that chronicled McCarthy’s smear campaign that brought him such fame. Starting in 1950, his wild allegations of Communists having infiltrated pretty much the entire US government, including the military, led to many people being fired and their lives destroyed, with some dying by suicide.

McCarthy adopted scorched-Earth tactics against anyone who opposed him, piling on lie after lie, making unsubstantiated allegations just in time to make the news deadlines, and quickly moving on to new ones before the earlier ones were investigated and repudiated. He would also lash out at anyone who opposed him, even campaigning against fellow politicians, and was so successful that he became feared and few ventured to criticize him. The comparisons to Donald Trump just jump out at you, including the detail that McCarthy was advised by the same sleazy lawyer Roy Cohn (1927-1986) who was a mentor to Trump and represented him in defending the charges that Trump’s housing properties discriminated against potential black tenants.
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