The pregnant widow of Sgt. La David Johnson mourns at the remains ceremony when Johnson's body arrived at the Dover Air Force Base.
Let’s be clear:
The the contrast and the un-measurable chasm between the “call to duty” of the four lost American special forces soldiers and their erstwhile “Commander-in-Chief” is unfathomable.
Will this debacle finally cut across partisan lines?
The widow of La David Johnson was quoted, in tears and great anguish, as saying when the call from the president concluded 45 kept referring to Sgt. Johnson as “your guy.” She lamented that “He didn’t even know his name.”
We know their names and honor their sacrifice: Sgt. La David Johnson, Staff Sgt. Bryan Black, Staff Sgt. Jeremiah Johnson and Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright died as a result of the October 4th attack, after helping local forces in Niger combat ISIS terrorists. We support American Gold Star families.
Was this mission a part of 45’s “secret plan” to defeat ISIS? We have no idea, but we do know 45 owns this debacle, even as he incompetently seems to also have no idea what is going on in his name as our supreme commander. He seems to know far more about cheating at golf every weekend that the execution of the current war. His “secret plan” to defeat ISIS is probably a secret to this very day to him.
There are unconfirmed intel leaks that point towards the Niger mission being a secret operation to liquidate AQIM leader Belmokthar. Other reports are that the special forces were there to train indigenous forces, on a maneuver in an over-extended and isolated patrol. What we do know is tht we need an investigation on the scale of the Bengazi!!!1!11! investigations. Hypocracy, thy name is Republican duplicity and Alt-Right propaganda.
This should no longer be at question: we have a crisis in our Republic. The relentless Russian “troll factory” that is weaponizing divisive disinfo is incompetently handled by the US Cybersecurity Department and is currently running amok, seemingly with this administration’s blessing of willful ignorance. Wake up, Cybersecurity Department lifers, we’re well into a very serious and dangerous cyberwar with Russia.
The lack of response to Putin’s propaganda offensive by US officials is an offense. These particular cybersecurity threats work by targeting the sleeping and malevolent confirmation biases of insecure American gullible bigots, useful idots, that want to make “America. An enemy strategy that resonates with 45’s malevolence. And with the president’s lack of the most basic of common sense and empathy in the office of the Executive, Trump every day “tells you what he is:” not an American leader, but for all appearance and purpose, looks and acts exactly like an unwitting “useful idiot” Russian puppet would act.
And as to 45’s banal, hectoring cult of personality drones, 45 can do no wrong so long as this President undercurrent embodies their worst hatreds. This ideologue-loving percentage of the American population are in in a hypnotic and slavish devotion to this “personality.”
These people seem to be driven by the feeding of their subconscious fears, self-selecting to be solely informed by a multiplicity of right-wing media of every narrowcasting media genre that push conspiracy theories, divisive Russian propaganda, and follow an Orwellian beat of “fake news” that touts anything that fact-checks this dangerous narrative. Reprehensible spin-doctor outlets that profit by practicing a viral deception that panders to fear and the scapegoating of “the other.”
I’ve been reading H. L. Mencken lately. He has a lot to say from nearly one-hundred years ago that is germane to this administration’s danger to democracy:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
~ H. L. Mencken — 1880-1956
Historically, nations have been here before. This is how empires devolve and dissolve.
On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
~ H. L. Mencken
What we have now is a malignant narcissist at the helm, positioned by kompromat by one’s adversaries, in the role of our nation’s leader. We are on a slippery slope to destabilization, “fascism lite” or possible anarchy. The cumulative disaster of this presidency is a clear and present danger to our functioning as a democracy. A “reality star” with no grip on realpolitik or reality itself.
Now, with 45’s response to the Gold Star families, there is an encapsulation for all and for all time the nature of the existential threat we now face. His disconnect is fathomless. An abyss. He says, “It won’t be pretty.” Indeed.
Here’s the timeline of the latest foolish and reprehensible action of 45 that is a condensation of the trouble America is in:
- A question was proffered a day or so ago on the WH lawn about the Niger flustercluck, that cost the lives of four special forces soldiers.
-
Staffers at the National Security Council drafted and circulated a statement of condolence for President Donald Trump to make almost immediately after a deadly ambush of U.S. soldiers in Niger earlier this month.
But Trump never publicly issued the statement. Instead he was too busy tweet-waring with the NFL and Senator John McCain, and golfing at his own resort.
- A question regarding his silence on the Niger affair provoked in 45 the usual disordered, narcissistic brain that triggers him to dissemble and blurt out the usual bellicose hyper-defensive bleat about other presidents not doing as “bigly” a job of (insert anything here) of “presidenting.” In this instance, extending the condolences of the Commander-in-Chief to families who have suffered the sacrifice of a loved one in his military.
- So, it’s probable 45 ran back double-time into the Oval Office, and made a whirlwind set of tone-deaf calls on the spur of the moment. A hurry-up set of self-centered and sensitivity-free calls to the families of the special forces men lost in Niger (so he could back-date what he’d just boasted about on the lawn and give his staff cover to release statements they can spin to look like he was/had been doing his job.)
- The call showed that the Commander-in-Chief who is responsible for sending military personnel into danger has no particular regard for the deaths of his soldiers, and probably thinks no more of them than inanimate objects. Objectifying others is a hallmark of the sociopath and the narcissist.
- Then the ill-thought-out, uncaring read-out of one of the calls (heard and verified by several people listening on speakerphone, including a Congresswoman) was released.
- Instead of calling the wife of the fallen soldier back and trying to adjudicate his message to her, in case this was a misunderstanding, as the goal is to honor her husbands sacrifice for his military, 45 went on a Twitterstorm to excoriate the Congresswoman for revealing his soulless gaff. To quote: “Democrat Congresswoman totally fabricated what I said to the wife of a soldier who died in action (and I have proof). Sad!” But the only proof proffered supports the statement of the Congresswoman, corroboration by the other family members listening in on the speakerphone.
- Then, immediately following the chaos of the president today, another family member of a soldier revealed that four months ago 45 got on the line with him about the loss of his son in the CiC’s war. As usual, the the delusional Grifter-in-Chief went overboard with one of his usual bombastic “promises” to write a personal check (! a president thinking cash is a balm for the loss of a son!) for $25K to this father, and “promised” to set up a GoFundMe-type of site for this family, sponsored by the White House itself.
- Which, apparently, 45 forgot about as soon as he hung up the phone.
- But two hours after this father made the news, the White House said basically “Oh...but the check is in the mail!” Let’s see the postmark on that letter and date on that check. I bet the envelope franking reads about an hour after that statement was released. Another backfill his staff had to jump-to to cover 45’s illusionary bombast.
- To quote Kurt Vonnegut, “And, so it goes.”
Did 45 acknowledge to Mrs. Johnson the importance of the mission her husband died attempting to achieve for this Commander-in-Chief? It’s hard to believe he did as it took nearly two weeks for him even to address the tragedy of this mission, and then only did when confronted by the media.
Did he have situational awareness of this mission? One wonders. He’s quoted as saying: “I think apologizing's a great thing, but you have to be wrong. I will absolutely apologize, sometime in the hopefully distant future, if I'm ever wrong." Yet his pathology is determinate that he will never live to see that day “in the distant future” when he will acknowledge he is wrong.
Did 45 in this call stop to listen to Mrs. Johnson? Doubtful; he’s apt to always be counted on to only ramble on about himself, either his perceived slights or his delusional “bigly” accomplishments...and if interrupted, be depended on to lash out with things perhaps like “he knew what he signed up for.”
Does 45 have a ability to extend any measure of comfort or gratitude for anything to anyone? Not by anything that 45 has done by example in his entire suite of utterances in a long deceitful public life.
Has he called this widow back seeking to make right her anguish regarding her reaction? Obviously not.
Behold this faux Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful military in the world and despair. If he “likes people who weren’t captured” regarding John McCain’s service, is it a not a natural evolution of this attitude that he also dislikes people who die in his wars?
If 45 can’t get this most basic, human sentiment and action right, he can’t get anything, anything, anything right. He’s now over-verified his soullessness. A Commander-in-Chief that is only a bottomless well of self-pity with the exclusion of feeling for anyone or anything else. This is zero “business as usual.” We’re not losing the leadership of the world, we’ve lost it.
“The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.”
~ H. L. Mencken
What do you call a man who never regrets a discreditable act even when he’s been caught dead to rights?
And you can be sure this administration’s “leader”, if he inevitably continues to follow the established trajectory, is destined to suck this country into a black hole, an inescapable death spiral.
This is our Girolamo Savonarola and this is the hour of our Bonfire of the Vanities. This is our Rome burning, and our Nero out fiddling around on the golf course.
How did we get here? One influence that must be considered is the Kremlin Playbook.
Putin is well on his way in his project, as a state actor and active adversary to America, in destabilizing the US. And his “troll factory” continues, even as you read this, to spew propaganda like a fire hose, infecting American social media by mocking up sites that heighten racial and political divide.
Putin would love to provoke a civil war in this country. And his propaganda machine is frighteningly effective. “Fake news” as a religion is spreading like a California wildfire. It’s full-on propaganda warfare that’s effectively mind-f’ing a good third of this nation.
Putin would like to see a nationalist uprising in the Free World wherein he could rise as the new leader of his world ideology. The danger of this is palpable. The Russian propaganda is stoking the latent fears of the working class.
“The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.”
~ H. L. Mencken
My German-born caretaker in childhood, Lotte, who lived through WWII in Berlin, and saw the rise of nationalism for what it was, an evil unleashed upon the world, once surprised me as a seven year-old in 1962 with a statement about that hellion “blood and soil” debacle: “Child, it can happen here in this country, too.”
That was when our post-war flag-waving of assumed American exceptionalism for me began to erode. Finally, I told myself, “If it does happen here, I want to watch for the signs, and have an exit plan. I don’t want to be trapped in a dystopia like so many in 1939 were in Germany, with no way out of a land of ‘Your papers, please.’”
“I can tell you that events were incremental, that the unbelievable became the believable and, ultimately, the normal.”
~ Ralph Webster, in “A Smile in One Eye: a Tear in the Other,” speaking about the rise of the Third Reich.
The leader of a country has a sacred trust. A buffoon bent on bellicosity and his-way-or-the-highway has none. We know a country by it’s leadership. So, what does that say about 2017 America?
We knew 45 has profoundly disordered thinking. We knew he is a narcissist.
Now we know he is on the spectrum of a sociociopathic pathology. And so far, he’s virtually unchecked in this pathology. Meanwhile, we’re saddled with a Legislature comprised of a majority “No Nothing” party who have abdicated their duty as a check and balance to an out-of-control Executive.
“In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.”
~ H. L. Menkcen
We now have confirmation that Trump just sees our military, in turn, either as a toy he slavers to use in a grand military parade (like strongman leaders so adore) or use as a weapon that in his mind has no more weight or difference of consequence than a mean tweet.
45 is psychologically disposed to capricious behavior that could trigger a war. One that could meet world wide resistance. The Geneva Conventions (another document 45 had not read) written after a war that claimed approximately 60 million lives, was crafted to prevent such horror ever being visited on the earth again. It expressly prohibits a first-strike war defined as an “act of aggression” like Pearl Harbor, or the German invasion of the Sunderland, Czechoslovakia, and Poland.
If we do go there, to instigating a first-strike, to what the world agreed was “Never Again” land, we will go with no allies, no friends, no mandate. 45 will “go nuclear” with a small death-cult following of our home-grown “Il Douche” loyalists. This is very much like 45 ran his crime family business; with no friends, save for his nepotistic appointees, yes-men, sycophantic paid-for lawyers, and his ever imaginary friends and fans.
Perhaps, because the voices in his head say so, we might wake up one fine morning embroiled in a costly and senseless war that could go global. After all, our military men and women are seen as merely objects to 45. Objects. Like everybody else. It’s shown in how in the rare moments he has to meat one. He’s isolated socially because he recoils from real or honest human contact.
He’s shown he can’t perceive the value of anyone’s life but his own. And he’s unhinged hair-trigger mean. If he is a blank regarding the loss of one soldier, it suggests he also be a blank regarding the millions projected lost in a first-strike against North Korea or Iran.
Woe be to our military service folk serving under this CiC if one dark day he has a apoplectic rage-quit fit at an imaginary slight and goes launch postal. It is not 45, but they and us who will pay the cost.
“The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.”
~ H. L. Mencken
The world is watching our world of trouble. And this profoundly flawed person in our White House is in complete and total charge of the world’s most powerful military, and military weapons (not least of which are the launch codes to our atomic arsenal.)
Now we’re served certainty that 45 can’t even muster fake empathy to save his political life. Perhaps because he was never graced any empathy or love in his emotion-barren childhood. We speculate about 45’s innerspace like we speculate about alien lifeforms in outer space: with a variety of opinionated incomprehensions.
We do know this: our Commander-in-Chief is a turbulent, damaged, volatile, impulsive, foolish and dangerous president.
"Will no one rid me us of this meddlesome priest president?" (or turbulent priest deranged village idiot acting as president.)
~ A cry attributed to Henry II of England, expressing his frustration regarding his conflicts with Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1170.
Congress: Do your job. We’ll do our job by voting in a blue wave of Congress-critters that can do the job.
We must fight back before it’s too late for us. Weaponize democracy. Identify cohorts and, if you have to, drive every one of them to the polls in 2018 and 2020. We need the vote count, we need our disadvantaged and progressives to turn out like the and we need to get our cohorts voting.
Talk policy, not party. Talking about your party is akin to arguing about sports teams. The vast number of Americans like our policies, like Medicare (passed into law by Democrats.)
There are many that have Right Wing radio and Fox in their heads that parrot a divisive, derisive party line. Be in their other ear, and gently persuade. Instruct, rather than argue against the propaganda. Provide balance against the inflammatory Infowars conspiracies, and the “Hannaty insanity.”
“A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.”
~ H. L. Mencken
Change may take patience, but do you really have something better to do than regime change? Don’t disconnect from 45 supporters if you can at all manage it. Bring them nearer. Hang in there, it builds character. We have a Russian propaganda war to fight. Be on the front lines.
An old saying is “You can beat the Devil with kindness.” Gandhi proved that long ago.
Organize. Now. Run Democrats for every seat down to School Board and Animal Control, like the “Values Voters” do. Their strategy worked, didn’t it?
Give your progressive voice to local public policy. If at all possible, consider giving a few hours to local public service, or run for a local office, and be the change you want to see.
If you want to change things, you have to be in the world. Action. That means me and you. If not all of us, then who? More of what we have now?
Meanwhile...in the interim, in the seeming eternity of this baneful administration...Muellersmas can’t come fast enough.
