#GoneByValentinesDay

In yesterday's Salon writer Lucian Truscott posted an article titled "Defeat is inevitable. Everybody knows it, even Trump." He recalled his experience covering the Watergate scandal, and how he knew the end game had begun when the Washington establishment organized to rid itself of Nixon. He says that time has now come for Trump, finishing his screed with "Now Washington’s immune system is about to expel yet another infection from the body politic. The end game is here. Even Trump knows it."

This seems obvious. There has never been such a buffoon and purveyor of fraud on a worldwide scale in human history. Trump, the culmination of many decades of perversion of the "American experiment," is too crude and malevolent for even our declining culture. If this country has any decency left, to coin a phrase, it will get rid of Trump, and soon. Families have to raise children. The fabric of society, weak as it is, has to set some kind of standard. Trump has shown himself to be barely human.

The only question at this point is when, and who Trump takes down with him. The problem for "Republicans" is that when people start setting standards they might keep going. Given that the "Republican" party is a criminal organization, the elevation of standards might rise above them.
______________________________________

Here's a song.

Will Farrell hosted Saturday Night Live last week, and reminded us of a president who did more harm than Trump has so far.

For a visual reminder of the Bush presidency, click here.

R.I.P. Dolores O'Riordan.  Here's my favorite Cranberries song.

R.I.P Hugh Masekela. I saw him perform on a double bill with Miriam Makeba in 1993. Here's a sample of his music.

A Defense of Vladimir Putin...Sort of

When evidence was revealed that the Russian government hacked the "Democratic" party in 2016, various pundits and politicians were in near-hysteria, calling it an "act of war." These are hysterical times, so the declaration of an act of war is not as taken as seriously as, say, the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

Still, such a declaration is an implied call to action, a plea for some kind of response. Since nuclear war is not an option, and conventional war would lead to nuclear war, a return to the metaphoric "Cold War" seems to be what the punditocracy has in mind. Many careers were made on the previous cold war, and vast profits were made. A new one would be good for the economy. What is good for Raytheon is good for the U.S.

We might want to look at the Russian hacking in a larger context. We should first ask why they are hacking our elections, and why they are presumably hacking other parts of our system. The first and most obvious answer is that they can hack us, and apparently have an easy time doing it. Hacking is the use of computer technology to enter computer systems, either to gather information, to interfere or damage their operation, or both.

A government runs several risks in hacking, so just being able to do it is not enough reason. In the case of Russia, it has been a U.S. adversary since the revolution of 1917. In the early 20th Century it was mainly an ideological rivalry, but after World War II it became more complicated, a dividing the world up between friend and foe for reasons beyond ideology, and more to do with world hegemony. And profits for the weapons industry. The Cold War became a catch-all excuse for a massive arms buildup, a broad expansion of the military, and invasions, wars, assassinations, overthrows, subversions, extortions and other whatnot that developed a life of its own. This included interference in foreign elections.

As the Cold War grew in size and investment of resources it became a drain on other priorities, such as repair of our physical infrastructure, social welfare and protection of the environment. The same drain of resources was going on in the Soviet Union, and on December 26, 1991 the supposedly “communist” system collapsed.

With the collapse the Cold War ended. A vacuum resulted. Our massive “Defense” industry no longer had a handy excuse for continuous growth. No diabolical opponent, no need for such a huge and growing military-industrial complex. We were instantly "the world’s only superpower."

What does the world’s only superpower do when there is no major opponent? Change to a distributive, just, peaceful and environmentally benign presence on the planet? Hardly. The system must go on as it has. The weapons industry - and the rest of the economy - would collapse if it could not increase its profits. Find new threats. Create new threats. Be a threat. Wage new wars. Make them endless. And, revive Russia as our diabolical adversary. For good measure, infiltrate the country’s fledgling “democracy,” promoting candidates for office who would be acquiescent to American manipulation and control.

It was all working according to plan. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and its control over its Warsaw Pact neighbors, NATO seized the opportunity to expand its own sphere of influence all the way to the Russian border. It should have come as no surprise that Russia’s powerful leader Vladimir Putin would find ways of fighting back.

Find them he did. Putin, not hindered by constraints or scruples that might inhibit other world leaders, embarked on the dual undertaking of securing his domestic power while weakening the encroaching threat from NATO. Looking back on it, it was easy. Russia has no democratic history, no institutional infrastructure of democracy. It was ripe for the picking.

As for NATO, Russia's neighbors could be easily threatened and co-opted. Then the NATO countries themselves could be weakened. How to do this? Easy. In the emergent world of cyber-existence, great vulnerability emerges along with it. Supposedly capitalist countries embraced the promise of computer technology as the savior of mankind, or at least of mass industrial mankind. The imperative of infinite growth could remain indefinitely (forever) with the presumed cornucopia of the digital universe.

It seems like genius, the ease with which Vladimir Putin has undermined our supposed democracy. We should have seen it coming, just like we should have seen the September 11, 2001 attacks coming. Massive strength has inherent vulnerabilities, and with massive strength the first vulnerability is hubris. Excessive pride. USA! USA!

So now we are stuck with criminal sociopath Donald Trump as President of the United States. It is a cosmic joke, but a joke that we deserve. As is plainly obvious to anyone looking at the U.S. from the outside, our political system is profoundly corrupt, controlled by corporations and wealthy individuals. Politicians, in order to remain in office, must pay obeisance to these moneyed interests. A phony system such as this, like that in Russia, is ripe for the picking. Vladimir Putin, the master of the harvest, picked the low-hanging fruit in both countries. He is very likely a criminal sociopath on a level that confounds comprehension, but he is a far smarter than the one we have. And, he controls him. Americans, plagued with avarice, stupidity, bigotry and celebrity obsession, are effectively bystanders in this dance of world hegemony.

There is actually cause for optimism. We have no choice as a species but to change this dynamic. Climate change alone dictates the inevitability of change. Vladimir Putin is not stronger than climate change. He’s just a guy. A dangerous guy, to be sure. Still, just a guy. He will be gone soon enough. Trump, a scam artist and cosmic fool, will be gone even sooner. The rest of us will no longer have the option of avarice, stupidity, bigotry and celebrity obsession. Or pro football. Escapist religion. Escapist entertainment. Escapist technology. We will either rise to a new level of existence or pass out of existence. We will have to make that choice soon.
_______________________________________

Here's what climate change is doing to polar bears. It will be doing similar things to humans very soon, though not necessarily in the same way. Here's another polar bear video.

Here's another link about interference in elections. This is the Washington Post's latest summary of the Russian government's election hacking in Europe.

Here's a song. Here's Another.

This interview of Vladimir Putin by (now disgraced) faux gravitas TV guy Charlie Rose gives a good sense of how much smarter he is than Trump (and Rose). The full interview used to be on Charlie Rose's Facebook page, but it's hard to find. Here's part of it. Here's another part.

Who'da guessed? Vladimir Putin has a Facebook page. He bills himself as "The leader of the world."  Sounds familiar. Why not? Anyone can call himself leader of the world these days. Here's a song.