Trump & Putin

Trump and Putin

I listened with fascination to a podcast discussion between Sam Harris and Anne Applebaum. Applebaum writes for the Washington Post, but her credentials are even more impressive for this discussion. To quote from the Harris blog, “Anne Applebaum is a columnist for the Washington Post and a Pulitzer-prize winning historian. She is also a visiting Professor at the London School of Economics where she runs Arena, a program on disinformation and 21st century propaganda.

Formerly a member of the Washington Post editorial board, she has also worked at the Spectator, the Evening Standard, Slate, the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs, the Economist, and the Independent. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Financial Times, the International Herald Tribune, Foreign Affairs, The New Criterion, The Weekly Standard, the New Republic, The National Review, The New Statesman, The Times Literary Supplement, and many other journals.

She is the author of Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956, which describes the imposition of Soviet totalitarianism in Central Europe after the Second World War. Her previous book, Gulag: A History, won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 2004.”

The discussion contained several threads, including a full conversation about the incoherence of Trump.  He speaks some babble-language, probably mostly closely akin to what a 2-3 year old speaks. Mainly though, Applebaum focused on Trump and Putin. As to the connections, she has some interesting insights.

First, Putin can legitimately be labeled as the head of the Russian Mafia. He is using means both legal and illegal to enrich himself. Of late, it has become obvious that, when his ties to organized crime threaten to flush to the surface, critics mysteriously disappear, are ejected from the country, or simply die under questionable circumstances. So, it would seem that Russia is safely in the hands of its mafioso bosses.  And, now, it would appear, Trump plans the same outcome for America.

His campaign apparently adopted a Russian style campaign of disinformation. Paul Manafort helped to plan the campaign of the Putinesque Ukrainian leader, after which he began as the campaign manager of the Trump campaign.  The Russian style of campaigning is to develop false narratives of the opposition (in this case Hillary Clinton) and then employ both social media and fake news (in this case Breitbart and Fox) to disseminate and expand the false narratives.  In large measure, people believe both the fake news sites and the social media sites.  If it appears on TV, folks assume the facts have been verified and can, therefore, be believed. Why they continue to believe social media is beyond ordinary explanation.

Trump’s financial ties to Russia are manifold and well known. Even his children have bragged about the immensity of the Russian financial connections.  Manafort’s connections are as impressive, receiving ten million dollars per year on one contract alone.  The fact that Manafort withdrew from the campaign is largely irrelevant, since Trump continued throughout the campaign to employ the same tactics used in Russia by Putin.

But her central point is that we really do not need a “smoking gun” obtained by the CIA or a deep FBI investigation. What we already know is reason enough to do something about our President. Impeachment is one, but perhaps not the only remedy we might consider.  His continued illegal financial remunerations break the emoluments clause in the constitution, and he has consistently refused to take any action to stop these payments.   Yet, we do not act, and that is perhaps the most troublesome aspect of this entire affair. Yes, he was elected officially, and he is officially our President. But our President is not above the law, thank you.  So, given that his actions, past and present, actions that likely violate the law, are known and open, why do we not act?  Well, one may assume that republicans do not act, because it is not in their best interest to act. Acting against their leader would be viewed as a suicidal gesture, and republicans are not yet ready for such acts. Also, it is now clear that republicans view holding onto their lucrative positions in Congress as way more important than serving the people who elected them.  And, it should be noted, that, since republicans often fail to act in ways that help their constituents, they clearly will never act to meet the needs of people who either do not vote, or vote for other kinds of folks.

And then, finally, what about all those folks who voted for Trump and his merry band of Mafioso’s? Why do they continue to support him? The last numbers I saw suggest that 37% still support Trump, and that number simply astounds me. Really . . . with all we now know, 37% of our people support him?

Ms. Applebaum suggests that his supporters may well begin deserting Trump when it becomes clear that he lied to them and that he is not acting to meet their needs.  Well, I wonder, when might that be?  It is abundantly clear that he lies nearly everytime he opens his mouth, so it apparently is not just lying that matters to his supporters.  What is it they wanted again from Trump? Oh, yeah, their old jobs back. They want to be 1940’s-style coal miners again, or they want to work in big factories producing things we used to produce in the 1940s and 1950s.  Well, that may or may not happen anytime soon, although he is working at eliminating the regulations that keep coal-fired plants from polluting. We can then resume looking like we did before EPA regulations cleaned up our air. That should be fun.

But I think that his promises about jobs are mostly feckless, because I continue to believe that Trump really doesn’t know anything. He seems the most remarkably ignorant (stupid??) man ever to grace the White House. He helped to blow the health care replacement bill, mainly because he and his staff don’t know anything about either health care, insurance, or even politics.  They wander about in the dark, while he issues his daily stream of witless commentaries that seem barely even in English.

So, what is with his supporters again?

Well, one possible explanation is organized religion. Organized religion has existed for centuries, millennia even, as a force that communicates a belief system that borders on the lunatic. They created an entire after-death world of folks floating around on clouds chatting it up with long dead relatives and maybe even Shakespeare. But the specifics don’t matter. What matters is that many/most people are most afraid of death, and the cessation of being.  The Churches of the world, knowing that, created these fictional worlds that convey to the fearful (faithful) that they need not fear death, if only they pay attention to their church leaders—obey and you will be rewarded. Disobey/disavow and you will be punished with . . . The Zen of Nothingness.  Their game is closely akin to a Ponzi scheme, but because you die first, and nobody ever comes back to testify to the lie, the Ponzi can go on indefinitely.

So, folks now routinely listen to patent nonsense on a weekly basis, and yet they continue to support their leaders, even when their leaders do things like routinely rape little boys, or abuse the hapless in many other ways. 

Now, given that mentality, Trump becomes easier to understand and recognize. He has been compared to a carnival barker. But no, I would suggest he is way closer to a religious leader. We know carnie barkers lie, but they give us some fun along the way. Religious leaders lie, but we rarely acknowledge their lies, because we are too scared to so acknowledge the obvious.  And the more autocratic Trump becomes, and the less he responds to questions, the more he appears like a religious leader.  Most folks don’t routinely question their popes, or their ayatollahs. It just isn’t done.

So, he may get away with his Three-card Monte game for quite a while. Unless and until the other folks we elect to Congress and maybe even the judiciary decide that enough is enough.  But that may take a while, and may actually never occur unless and until we replace all the folks currently holding office, and that would require everyone to actually get off their asses and vote. Wow, voting . . . what a concept.

That Trumpster

The Con Game

I just finished reading a story in The New Yorker about HSBC and a man, Herve Falciani, who basically pulled an Edward Snowden and made off with many HSBC documents showing how the bank was actively involved in helping citizens of many nations evade income taxes. The bank, of course, uses the Swiss secrecy system, but is really in the business of money laundering.  Mr. Falciani, when caught out, fled to France, where he turned over to French authorities, the records showing the bank system of tax evasion.

We used to actually bank with HSBC. That was just before they were caught laundering drug money for Mexican drug kingpins and setting up off shore bank accounts for them in the Cayman Islands.  It was very clear; HSBC was part of an organized crime ring, yet nobody went to jail. They have been fined many times. In one book, “The Hidden Wealth of Nations”, economist Gabriel Zucman estimates that the world’s rich salt away, out of reach of taxing authorities, $7.6 TRILLION.  HSBC was fined $1.8 billion to avoid any criminal penalties, in only one of several cases brought against them.

That was, by the way, when we stopped banking with HSBC. They didn’t notice of course. They never do.  We don’t have a billion dollars. As an aside, when we opened an account with a local bank, F&M bank, we first asked the branch manager, “ Before we open the account, you must tell us, are you part of an organized crime ring”? He gave us this blank look, and then we explained.

But that experience, and then reading the article, convinces me that the world’s global banking system is actually just part, a key part, of the world’s system by which the wealthiest 1% seek to acquire almost all the money on the planet, by means fair or foul. Neither they, nor the world’s banks care whether the means are legal, only whether they work.

Which brings us, of course, to The Donald, he the ringmaster of the Trump circus, The Greatest Show in Town.  It is said that The Donald is actually in real estate. But I think it is more accurate to consider him in global finance. He is in real estate, the way a hedge fund manager who happens to be gambling in the world of technology, can be said to be “in the hi-tech world.” It is entirely incidental to the main frame of their work, which is, scamming the public out of its gold.

The Donald invests in, or gambles in, real estate to be sure. But he also gambles in higher education, alcoholic beverages, beef, and other assorted ways to also con the public out of its gold. He demonstrates that, if you start out with enough money, you don’t actually have to be very smart to make a lot of money, if you are willing to gamble, and willing to con folks.

The Donald is being sued at the moment by some folks who think he conned them out of a lot of money (for them) in connection with his fake Trump University. He denies everything, of course. He always denies everything. And, while listening to NPR this morning, they interviewed a lady, who happens to be a Trump supporter, about his con game called Trump University. And her response was something like, “well, people need to take responsibility for what they spend their money on. “ In short, it’s not Trump. If he can con someone, it’s entirely the fault of the Connee, rather than the Conner. That comment made me think that Trump was entirely correct. Apparently, if he went out on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, pulled out a gun and began shooting people, his supporters would say, “well, it’s really the responsibility of people to stay away from the paths of bullets. If they can’t do that, then they will get shot. I still support Mr. Trump.”

This, then, is the current state of America. A cartoon con man, the leader of the pack at The Trump Circus, is now the darling the American Right Wing. Megan Kelly is in love with him. Paul Ryan supports him. Mitch McConnell wishes him well, as heads the GOP into the darkest corners of Hell.  The GOP no longer has any claim to honesty, or morality. Nor, I might add, has the Christian Taliban, which will soon be shouting his praises –Hallelujah St. Trump.

And so, on with The Wall, and on with the Great Deportation. And on with the Great Muslim Denial.

I’ll bet even the NRA is thrilled.

And remember, “only suckers pay taxes”.