Will Trump be reelected in 2024?
A very dear friend who doesn’t follow politics closely asked me today, with real concern, “Will Trump be president again?” I responded by saying it…
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Ukraine War, October 11, 2022: The Russian people will bear the shame of Russia’s aggression and war crimes for a thousand years
Ukraine War, August 17, 2022: It is time to get serious and end this war
Ukraine War, July 12, 2022: “Cognitive occlusion”–Mental defenses against hard truths; Genocide in progress
Ukranian War, February 28, 2022: How to stop Putin, if he has become a madman with nuclear weapons? Dispatches
Ukraine War, February 27, 2022: The spiritual dimension–Albert Camus, “Letters to a German friend” 1943-44; Dispatches and analyses
Max Boot calls for Garland to appoint Special Prosecutor to investigate Trump’s crimes
Fascists are winning, democrats are losing
Dispatch from an imagined future: The Fascist Victory in America (2021-2025)
A Parable of our time: “Our democratic house is on fire!”
There is a man running up and down the street, with his hair all frazzled and his eyes filled with terror, shouting, “The house is on fire! Our house is on fire! Our whole democratic city is on fire!”
Outside a cafe, on a bright sunny morning, a number of people sit calmly drinking their coffee. A few, but not as many as in the past, are reading their newspapers.
“Help! Help!” the screaming man implores. “Don’t you know, the whole city is on fire!”
The seated individuals proceed calmly to drink their coffee and chat among themselves.
“Don’t you know?” the wild man implores again, “The whole city is on fire!”
Different individuals respond variously.
“You exaggerate,” one says. “We don’t see any flames.”
“The houses in the next street are on fire,” the wild man rejoins.
“Don’t worry,” another replies. “Someone will take care of it.”
Abandoning Afghanistan: The moral costs
President Joe Biden ridiculed the Afghan soldiers who did not fight after the American withdrawal left them with no prospect of holding their own against the Taliban. Biden’s remarks were a cruel attack upon soldiers who had founght valiantly over the years, at a cost of some 68,000 lives.
He didn’t mention the girls of Afghanistan, who for 20 years displayed great courage in going to school, too many times at the cost of their lives. Angelina Jolie pays tribute to these girls and women, and their courage.
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WE SHOULD NEVER FORGET–What really happened on January 6: Molly Ball’s article in TIME on Mike Fanone
Read Robert’s article, which translates the Capitol insurrention of January 6 into immediate personal terms, in a political context we all need to understand.
Fanone’s experience is one we should never forget.
The dog days of August and the Olympic Games: Time to act on Trump and the Republican fascist threat
See Jonathan Freedland, “Trump may be fading away, but Trumpism is now in the American bloodstream; He left in disgrace, yet all signs point to…
The indictment of Trump: The Democratic wall of silence begins to break
See, 1) Laurence H. Tribe, Barbara McQuade and Joyce White Vance, “Here’s a roadmap for the Justice Department to follow in investigating Trump,” Washington Post,…
Should Trump be indicted? REVISED — A comprehensive evaluation of the arguments
A fundamental norm of a democratic state governed by law is that the authors of serious crimes must be prosecuted and sent to prison if found guilty. This rule should apply no matter who they are.
Both President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland have solemnly stated (Garland under oath) that they would not let political considerations influence Department of Justice decisions on whether or not to prosecute individuals.
Both Biden and Garland have violated these promises, in a most egregious and blatant manner, by refusing to prosecute Donald Trump and his co-conspirators.
There appears to be an iron-clad agreement between President Biden, Attorney General Garland, and Democrats in Congress, not to raise this issue, that is, not to even talk about it.
What, indeed, might be the arguments against prosecuting Trump and his Republican co-conspirators?
As there has been virtually no public discussion of the reasons that have led the Democrats to refrain from indicting Trump and his co-conspirators for their apparent crimes, the disadvantages of this course of action have not been articulated or discussed seriously in the media.
IMPUNITY: The biggest and most important story no one will cover
IMPUNITY: The biggrest and most important story no one will cover
When will Trump be indicted?
Why are we asking this question five months after Democratic President Joe Biden has been in office?
A Pulitzer Prize is waiting for the Newspaper or Magazine that will field a news team to take this story on.
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The Biden administration and Merrick Garland’s Justice Department have not convened grand juries and indicted Donald Trump and his Republican co-conspirators for the many electoral crimes and other crimes they committed in what amounted to a vast Republican conspiracy to overthrow the election and the Constitution.
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All the attention has been diverted to the Capital Insurrection on January 6 and the violent demonstrators who seized the Capitol. Attention of the media has focsed on the foot soldiers, and not the generals who sent them into battle. Trump and his Republican co-conspirators commited many acts of intimidation of election officials, and other acts of obstruction of justice. Why have Biden and Garland not prosecuted these crimes?
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It as if some foreign country that is an enemy of democracy had launched a massive missile attack on the United States that unleashed a tasteless, odorless gas on the entire population, causing total amnesia regarding certain tenets of democracy and the rule of law.
One such bedrock principle of the rule of law is that crimes must be punished, suspected criminals must be indicted and tried, and, when found guilty, sent to prison.
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If Trump gave us the Normalization of the Unthinkable and the Normalization of the Unforgivable, President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland have given us the Normalization of Impunity.
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Which newspaper or magazine or news team will go after the Pulitzer that is just sitting there, like on a table, waiting for someone to pick it up?
REPRISE: When will Trump be indicted?
Putting all of these actions together, it appears that Donald Trump led a vast conspiracy, in which he enlisted the support and cooperation of Republican federal, state, and local legislators and officials, to overthrow the results of the November 3 presidential election and, consequently, the Constitution of the United States.
Why have we heard virtually nothing about federal or state grand juries investigating these alleged crimes?
There have been only a few exceptions, such as the grand jury in Atlanta where a courageous prosecutor is investigating a blatant case of apparent election interference for which there is recorded and public evidence.
Why indeed has former President Donald Trump not yet been indicted for the many crimes he has apparently committed?
When will he be indicted?
Moreover, when will his many Republican co-conspirators and accomplices in these apparent crimes be investigated and themselves indicted?
What is going on?
We are all tired of thinking about Trump and his crimes. However, democracy is a very fragile flower, and we have just seen how close we can come to losing it. If America’s first fascist president, and the many members of the Republican Party who engaged in a vast conspiracy to overthrow the Constitution, are not held accountable before the courts for the very numerous crimes which they committed, the lesson of political impunity will not be lost on others.
Americans who are too cowardly to defend American democracy by prosecuting, and insisting on the prosecution of, those who have committed criminal acts in furtherance of the Republican conspiracy to overthrow the Constitution, will have only themselves and their own passivity to blame if it is lost.
America has become a Country of the Absurd
Reprinted, with permission, from ABSURARAMA! June 6, 2021. In the United States, perhaps 50-70 million voters, including a vast majority of Republican voters and almost…
The U.S. doesn’t need investigations or commissions. It needs prosecutions.
Republicans have done the Democrats and the ciountry a huge favor by blocking the creation of a special joint commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection. ..
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No, we don’t need any further commissions of inquiry to distract us from the real issues and stakes in American politics today.
What we need is a Justice Department Task Force to launch and coordinate the prosecutions of Donald Trump and his Republican co-conspirators who committed many serious felonies in their efforts to overthrow the election and the Constitution in 2020-2021. Trump should also be prosecuted for his many egregious crimes in office, including the instances of obstruction of justice detailed–with a summary of the evidence–in the Mueller Report, and the many instances of obstruction of justice through witness tampering and retaliation against witnesses for truthfully testifying in impeachment investigations.
The rule of law is at stake here.
Congress, and in particular the House, has an important role to play. Instead of spinning their wheels in yet another congressional inquiry into the insurrection on January 6, the Democrats in the House should be holding hearings into why the Justice Department has not proceeded with prosecuting Donald Trump and his co-conspirators for the many crimes he and they committed in office, including the rash of election-related crimes committed after November 3, 2021.
Living offline for a year; and the author’s Twitter experience
Aaron Rosenberg lived offline for a year, trying to understand what it was like in order to help him understand the subject of his academic research.
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I myself experienced some of the extraordinary pull of Twitter while following in extremely close fashion political developments related to Donald Trump’s attempts to hang on to power after losing the election on November 3, 2021.
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Aaron Rosenberg’s experience is instructive. When thinking about my Twitter experience, I recall reading somewhere that the average life of a tweet is about 15 minutes.