Trump and Scott Walker — Collaboration in Shared Malice

Racism and malice connect Trump and Scott Walker.

Madison, Wisconsin—By background, Donald Trump and Scott Walker appear different people.

Rivals for the 2016 presidential nomination of the Republican Party, the Iowa caucuses sent the two pols in different directions—launching the campaign of the New York developer and aborting the run of the religious zealot.

Walker claimed he was "called away" by God in September 2015 after his poll numbers plunged and God reportedly told Walker to find a "positive conservative message" to oppose Trump.

God had anointed Walker just weeks earlier, reportedly telling Walker in July 2015 his "plan" is for Walker to run for president, though Walker was quickly revealed as a ridiculous figure (Mal Contends, Mal Contends, The Politico, New York Times).

God and politics change, and now Walker is a leading ally of Trump's.

What actually happened is Walker and Trump are pathological lightweights whose bizarre hatred of Wisconsin and United States citizens, particularly black and brown people, has forged the two in shared delusions of battle, valor and shining genius.

This madness would be disqualifying if the Democratic Party of Wisconsin (DPW), were running in 1950s-60s-70s mode, the DPW glory days.

Walker and Trump's alliance is forged in unhealthy lust, bordering on sadism, to injure and dominate disfavored agents and enemies identified by vocalized criticism of this fascistic movement, and an old-fashioned fascist movement is what this is. All the elements are blinking red: There's the white folk myth, agents of corruption and evil, cowardice, careerism and 1,000,000s of bystanders.

God had nothing to do with the rise and fall of Scott Walker and Donald Trump.

The partnership between Trump and Walker in shared malice is an alarming step in using political power and pubic policy as a means to inflict, imprison, even kill. Why Wisconsin Republicans have not sought to bring back the death penalty is a political mystery.

As movement architects, both Walker and Trump appear to revel in their own genius and boldness in implementing demonization and division to procure electoral and policy victories. Fascism in classical liberal societies is an old story but post-Citizens United, it takes no vision to see where we are headed.

Consider the white supremacist rally and murder in Charlottesville, and Trump's embrace of a serial child molester in Alabama, shameful acts that tell the story of who Trump and Walker are.

Notes Steve Schmidt this morning:

Trump shattered the moral authority of his Presidency during Charlottesville. It can never be restored. We live in the surreal world where the words of the POTUS have no meaning. His presence brings no comfort. He is an avatar of disunion, division; selfishness and immorality.

— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) February 17, 2018

Scott Walker's conduct with respect to Charlottesville and the Roy Moore-child molestation saga show the two white supremacists' deep commitment to themselves replacing simple decency.

Charlottesville

In August 2016, Walker declined to criticize Trump for his surreal embrace of white supremacists in Charlottesville (The Capital Times).

"My comment on this is I denounce the bigotry and hatred and I’ll let the president and his team speak for him," said Walker, (Political Heat, Fox6Now-Milwaukee). Every Wisconsin newspaper and local TV station should have saturated the state with coverage of this outrage. But racism is part of Wisconsin's DNA, so this outrage was more-or-less expected.

Roy Moore

The year after Charlottesville, in Nov. 10, 2017, Walker defended sexual predator Roy Moore, saying allegations of child sexual assault are not credible, comparing women's complaints of assault with unfounded rumors that Walker had a "love child," (Wisconsin State Journal). Walker reversed himself three days later after widespread criticism.

Misogyny and tribalism explain the lack of outrage in the Walker-Roy Moore affair.

Scott Walker's support for Roy Moore's child molestation and Trump's Charlottesville shame explain why Walker avoids unscripted public appearances where he has to answer questions.

Wisconsin 2018

As a life-long Wisconsinite, I'm not sure if Scott Walker were to face the Wisconsin people in a grand public setting and then explicitly declare black and brown people as inferior and women as less than men, if this madness would knock Walker's support below 46 percent.

I just don't know, and but I do intend to keep fighting.

Allan Nairn on America during Trump Admin

Cops' beating, killing, imprisoning and harassing people is a
fact of life getting worse under the rightist Trump
administration. Above is a shot from a video of a cop
beating a black teen caught by a cell phone. The
video elicits equal parts outrage and approval in
Wauwatosa, Wisconsin in May 2018. See Mal Contends.

Rightist Republicans demolish the Republic

Donald Trump's campaign boast about hypothetically killing a man in public and maintaining his core political support is one of the few truisms the lunatic in the White House has emitted.

Trump is a radical rightist leader of a mass base of fascistic Americans—they hate black and brown people and would be happy to see them all warehoused in prisons.

If Trump were to declare the black-and brown problem must be solved with a final solution begun with a declared state of emergency, Trump's white supporters would declare approvingly, 'yep, Trump's doing something, MAGA.'

Republicans in Congress would weasel their way to express their support.

Across America emboldened, politicized municipal police departments target citizens for any or no reason with the assurance their careers are secure. Liberal mayors and municipal officials—in Wisconsin, think Madison's Paul Soglin and Milwaukee's Tom Barrett—go along.

After the recent beating of a NBA player in Milwaukee, Tom Barrett expanded on his tame expression of concern, and offered a public apology to the police victim. Milwaukee Police Chief Alfonso Morales had said the assaulting cops acted "inappropriately," as though the vile gang of white cops committed a breach of etiquette and not a human rights violation.

Black and brown people get hit the worst.

The lunatic in the White House routinely boasts about his standing among cops and Evangelicals who flock to police departments to kill, harass and imprison for Christ.

Allan Nairn is interviewed by Jeremy Scahill in The Intercept today.

This is critical reading on the nature of Republican America and the white supremacist Donald Trump administration. They block voters and try to slash any federal expenditures that help people, working at all levels of elected government though no Republican dares campaign on these intentions.

Said Allan Nairn:

Well, Trump dragged a rightist revolution into power. It’s the Paul Ryan agenda which could never have gotten elected in its own right, because it’s anathema to most Americans — slashing Medicare, slashing social security, transferring trillions of dollars from the working people, and even the poor and the middle class to the very rich. Mitt Romney kind of tried to run on that and failed. Ryan, in his own right, could never get elected president. But Trump, with his genius for unleashing the beast in white America, touching these deep chords of racism that succeeded in turning a crucial number of previous white Obama voters into Trump voters, precisely, in large part, because of his racist appeals and his appeals to fear.

He succeeded in dragging the Republican Party into the White House with a minority of the votes. And this is a Republican Party that is one of the most radical mainstream political parties in all of American history, perhaps with the exception of the pro-secessionist Democrats at the time of the Civil War. And they’ve been in there, they’ve been implementing a rightist revolution, doing the massive transfer of wealth in part via the tax bill, but also an important part by systematically, agency by agency, trying to gut the constraints on large corporations and the oligarchs, regarding the environment, their treatment of labor, their ability to discriminate, their ability to commit fraud without fear of being sued by the public, increasing the rights of rich individuals to intervene in politics, decreasing the rights of collectives of working people to intervene in politics, like the Gorsuch-led Supreme Court decision just the other day, inhibiting the ability of workers to file class-action lawsuits against their employers.

It’s a systematic program that’s been in the works since 1980, really. In a sense, it dates back to the old Powell memorandum, where Powell, who later joined the Supreme Court, said we, the representatives of the rich, we’ve got to fight back against this new environmental movement, against this consumer movement, against the labor movement, and also implicitly against the Civil Rights movement. 'These people have been making too many gains, we’ve got to organize ourselves.'

And they did! They created Heritage, and this whole other elaborate apparatus, and later the Koch Brothers came in, and they created ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. They sent people down to the state legislature. And they’ve been working on this program for decades.

And, now, as the Republican Party has evolved to the most radical extreme, Trump dragged them into power again. They happen to have control of both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court. And they’ve been going around rigging the system so that a diminishing minority of people can hold power and continue to govern. Just as Trump was elected with a minority of the votes, they’re trying to set it up through a long list of tactics, including purging of voter rolls, voter suppression shortly before Election Day, gerrymandering, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, smaller and smaller numbers of people can win elections and retain power.

In Wisconsin, a reformist candidate for the Democratic Party nominee for governor, Matt Flynn, is campaigning on a platform of emptying the jails of those convicted of non-violent crimes. "Stop destroying lives," said Flynn.

Flynn faces a lot of opposition from both the Democratic and Republican parties.

Destroying lives is an objective of the most dangerous political party in American history, the Republican Party, which tries to insulate their rule from the democratic process.

Trump and his movement have not reached the bottom yet.

New York Times v Sullivan Faces Challenge amid Changing Judiciary, Emboldened Racists

Manitowoc County Sheriff Lt. Andrew Colborn (ret)
has included an argument in his federal defamation
suit against the creators and distributors of Making a
Murderer that seeks to eviscerate First Amendment
protections exemplified in the First Amendment
case, New York Times v Sullivan.

Update: Trump calls for new accusers of Justice Kavanaugh to file suit for libel, and for U.S. Justice Dept to "rescue" embattled judge, (Newsweek).
 --
Madison, Wisconsin — "One of the things I'm going to do if I win, ... I'm going to open up our libel laws so when they [the press] write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. We're going to open up those libel laws," blustered Donald Trump in February 2016, (The Politico).

Trump repeated his views on modern libel law doctrine after taking office because apparently he was not informed there are no federal libel laws that he can "open up."

Further, holdings of the landmark Supreme Court case, New York Times v Sullivan (1964), prevent an aggrieved government official from winning "lots of money" and prevailing in a civil action against citizens expressing opinions deemed caustic, unorthodox or irreverent, for example, toward our 'leaders.'

So, why worry? Trump is a lunatic, and whatever fantasies he manages are tempered by the reality of long-won legal victories holding malicious public officials in check.

The First Amendment freedoms of the press, speech and expression with which Trump is actually quarreling offer the most powerful protection in the world to people voicing thought at variance with  public officials' assessment of their character and performance, (ACLU, Jan 2018; NYT, Feb 2019).

Trump's desire to litigate against the authors and publishers of prose written at Trump's expense seems little more than the wish of a half-wit pining for the 21rst century equivalent of the Sedition Act that criminalized writings thrusting government officials into disrepute.

Today, the Federalist Society, Republican senators and Donald Trump work assiduously to transform the federal judiciary into an adjunct arm of the Republican Party, white Evangelicals and corporate special interests, a la the corrupt Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Challenges to foundational cases codifiying American liberties are bubbling up through the federal judiciary.

And, Trump has "appointed nearly one in four of the nation's federal appeals court judges and one in seven of its district court judges," all activist ideologues vetted for their fidelity to an authoritarian and ahistorical jurisprudence, reports Carrie Johnson at National Public Radio.

Further, two of nine Trump-appointed justices serve on the Untied States Supreme Court forming a five-four majority of hyper-activist judges working for the interest of the Republican Party.

It is in this milieu that we ought to be concerned about Republicans on the United States Supreme Court hollowing out our liberties generally.

The Trumpist hostility against the press has escalated into a political assault against the journalists themselves. Reports the New York Times: "A loose network of conservative operatives allied with the White House is pursuing what they say will be an aggressive operation to discredit news organizations deemed hostile to President Trump by publicizing damaging information about journalists. ... [Poiltical] operatives have compiled dossiers and research that is "said to extend to members of journalists’ families who are active in politics, as well as liberal activists and other political opponents of the president."

Specifically, current efforts to ultimately convince the United States Supreme Court to revisit New York Times v Sullivan should be considered in light of the struggle between those who see human beings as instruments and often enemies of the State, and those who see the State as an instrument of human beings.

Crazy, crazy. It's rightwingers.

Cases in three different regional appellate circuits — Second, Sixth and Seventh — feature rightwing plaintiffs intent on revisiting Sullivan, the eloquently written opinion codifying First Amendment rights of the press, speech and expression by citizens voicing thought regarding public officials. [Sullivan protections were subsequently expanded to include other classes of public figures, somewhat more controversially.]

Though the three challenges do not appear to be well-organized, well-considered and linked, we would be fools to not be concerned.

New York Times v Sullivan

L.B. Sullivan, a Montgomery, Alabama Commissioner of Public Affairs filed a libel suit against "Negroes," clergymen and the New York Times Company for a full-page ad, entitled "Heed Their Rising Voices," run in the Times on March 29, 1960 in which the defendants call for human dignity, guarantees of the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and defense of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, (p 257, New York Times v Sullivan).

The ad was signed at the bottom of the page by the "Committee to Defend Martin Luther King and the Struggle for Freedom in the South."

L.B. Sullivan was not mentioned by name in the ad, but the ad condemned actions of the Montgomery police, and Sullivan reasoned he was implicitly criticized and libeled because of his authority as a supervisor of City police, (p 258, New York Times v Sullivan). 

A jury in the Montgomery County Circuit Court awarded Sullivan $500,000.

American Court victories won for liberty usually come after indescribable costs in blood and lives — state-perpetrated genocide, slavery, terror, massacres, murder, frame-ups, incarcerations, character assassination, trauma, intimidation, hate, racism and harassment, continuing today.

The New York Times and civil rights workers prevailed over the tyrannical Montgomery police and its odious City officials at the United States Supreme Court.

Justice William Brennan writing for a unanimous court authored a defense of the liberty of the people against government tyrants, a principle that today stands as both an inspiring statement for liberty and a landmark declaration of the power of citizens over public officials.

Writes Brennan:

The First Amendment, said Judge Learned Hand,

presupposes that right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues than through any kind of authoritative selection. To many, this is, and always will be, folly, but we have staked upon it our all. United States v. Associated Press, 52 F.Supp. 362, 372 (D.C.S.D.N.Y. 1943).

Mr. Justice Brandeis, in his concurring opinion in Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357, 375-376, gave the principle its classic formulation:

Those who won our independence believed . . . that public discussion is a political duty, and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government. ... Believing in the power of reason as applied through public discussion, they eschewed silence coerced by law -- the argument of force in its worst form. Recognizing the occasional tyrannies of governing majorities, they amended the Constitution so that free speech and assembly should be guaranteed.

Thus, we consider this case [New York Times v. Sullivan] against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials. (New York Times v. Sullivan).

Parable of Racist Police

To understand the power of Sullivan today, consider a recent example of racist Wisconsin police in which the DeForest, Wisconsin Police Chief Daniel Furseth was caught on video surveiling and mocking a group of black teenagers dressed for their high school prom, and stopping by an area restaurant, as was reported by a former police intern on YouTube in June 2018.

DeForest, Wisconsin Police Chief Daniel Furseth is a racist
cop who surveiled and mocked five young black men
in some faux black slang with a demeaning, racist and
derogatory narrative caught on video. Furseth was widely
criticized, resigning under fire before joining like-minded police
at the Town, not the City, of Madison, Wisconsin. Prior to
the holdings in New York Times v Sullivan (1964), public
officials like the Furseth could prevail in libel actions, pleading
libel per se against those such as the police intern who
published the video on YouTube. Wrties the whistle-
blower: "This is what the stupid, ignorant, and imbecilic Village
of  DeForest elects to be their 'Top Cop.' This is the racist
Chief of Police Daniel Furseth, who is much like the rest of
DeForest, poorly educated, socially intolerant, and completely
incompetent when it comes to federal law (you know
the one that trumps state and local law when it’s in conflict
with it). Only a redneck and backassward community like
DeForest would want someone like this as a Chief to keep the
black man out."

Observing the youths and commenting in mocking accent, Furseth said: "Okay, we is out on our dates. We got the bitches, we gonna get them, and we gonna give them food. I got my cane, I’ve gots (sic) my suit. Oh baby … Okay, boys, let’s go in. This is the fanciest restaurant we ever been to and it’s called the Steak ‘N Shake. (Laughter) Unbelievable."

A reader should listen to the 36-second clip on YouTube to get a full accounting of the malice and racism that most small-town Wisconsin cops know to keep under wraps. Furseth and his all-white police force really do not like black people.

In August 2018 came reports of four new counts of misconduct by Furseth, (WISC-TV).

Chased out of office, the racist Daniel Furseth was never heard from again, right? Wrong.

Furseth was quickly hired by the town of Madison, not the City, in October 2018.

An official with the town of Madison police department, not the City, confirmed by phone on August 14, 2019 that Furseth is still employed with the Town police, locally notorious for racism, harassment, bogus citations and misconduct.

Pre-New York Times v Sullivan (1964), or had American jurisprudence taken another direction, the Town, DeForest and Furseth may have enjoyed cause for civil action for my opining that Daniel Furseth and Town and Village officials are racist, ignorant pig-fuckers who should have their teeth kicked out.

The former police intern who blew the whistle on YouTube similarly might not enjoy protections for his commentary about the character of the DeForest, Wisconsin Police Dept in which Furseth rose through the all-white ranks to become chief in 2015.

The judiciary over the last 60 years has risen to become a refuge for civil pleadings from social movements working for those persecuted by the State — often the repository of lurid souls like Daniel Furseth and L.B. Sullivan who, one may believe, should be anomalous is a classical liberal society.

Liberties Prevail

The United States Supreme Court of the 1950s, 60s and 70s in significant areas made it appear individual rights prevailing were a dynamic as inevitable as the triumph of reason over racism and liberation over atavistic taboo.

Landmark legal rulings after rulings were won and each victory seemed a fulfillment of long-denied liberties as the civil rights and peace movement flourished.

Brown v Board of Education (1954), New York Times v Sullivan (1964), Loving v Virgina (1967), Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) and United States v. United States District Court (1972) and dozens more Court holdings promised to buttress citizens against routine incursions of liberty by State actors and law enforcement.

Sullivan under Attack
 
Many today fear an epic backlash, and the challenges to Sullivan are emblematic.

 There are now at least three cases in three different appellate circuits — Second, Sixth and Seventh — in which rightwing plaintiffs appear intent on revisiting New York Times v. Sullivan.

• Sixth Circuit - Nicholas Sandmann v. WP Company LLC, d/b/a [doing business as] The Washington Post (2:19-cv-00019). Plaintiff says he will appeal the dismissal decided in jUly 2019.
• Seventh Circuit - Andrew Colborn v. Netflix, Inc (1:19-cv-00484). Likely to be dismissed in a  Dec 19, 2019 hearing in District court. An appeal is possible.
• Second Circuit - Sarah Palin v New York Times Co, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 17-3801. Case will be heard on the merits in U.S. District Court.

All three plaintiffs above are political rightwingers.

Sandmann and Palin are demonstrable racists.

All three cases appear more the result of isolated rightwing angst at the liberal press, and, in Colborn's case, astonishment that analysis and commentary dare accuse a law enforcement officer of criminal misconduct.

So, Google-alert the cases and keep your eyes out.

Trump's 'Make America Great Again' Call Is Normalized

DeForest, Wisconsin Police Chief Daniel Furseth is
a racist cop and noted scum-bag who rose through the
ranks of the DeForest Police Dept where racism
opens doors to white cop careers.

Donald Trump's work against American society alarms most everybody outside the Republican Party coalition as this lunatic has united the right under a call for the restoration of America.

The GOP's agitprop operation lends coherence and inspiring myths for generations of American whites who have divined anew the alleged evils of alien forces — the universities, the cities, enclaves of immigrants and Muslims, the lying press-fake news and identifiable blackish folks carrying on in public as they breathe and laugh.

A racist DeForest, Wisconsin, (a few miles north of Madison), Police Chief Daniel Furseth mocked and ridiculed a group of young black folks who simply gathered together to dine at a local Steak ‘N Shake restaurant.

A police intern came in possession of the video, (made in 2007), and bore witness to the vile, casual racism of DeForest, Wisconsin.

The racist cop Furseth spoke in a mocking accent on the video, mimicking the young group in what is supposed to be a faux, black English vernacular:

'Ok, we is out on our dates. We got the bitches, we gonna get them, and we gonna give them food. I got my cane, I’ve gots (sic) my suit,. Oh baby … Ok boys, let’s go in. This is the (fanciest) restaurant we ever been to and it’s called the Steak ‘N Shake.'

'Unbelievable,' Furseth continues, dropping the accent. ...

Furseth is typical of white cops in Wisconsin, and a plurality of white Wisconsinites who voted Trump into office.

Furseth accepted a severance package from DeForest in late June, (Phillips, Wisconsin State Journal), but the racist culture remains. Furseth rose through the ranks of the DeForest Police Dept not in spite of his racism, but because of his racism.

Wonder how a Evangelical troll like Scott Walker gets elected. Walker, like former Gov. Tommy Thompson, appeals to racism and that's an imposing base in Wisconsin.

To Wisconsin whites, the mere sight of black people in public is per force a problem requiring an armed response and constant police vigilance.

Trump's racist tropes trace directly back to the propaganda of 20th-century totalitarian terror states.

• The Soviet Union, the reactionary dungeon state that targeted, for example, everything from Noam Chomsky's cognitive psychology to anything American or libertarian, including any thinker who dared propose liberty, peace and humanity as the basis for a society vis a vis the USSR, (IndyMedia, CIA)
• NAZI Germany promising a return to traditional values and law and order against alien influences, (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

Trump's Make America Great Again appeals enjoy only a plurality of support among the population.

Ruling with minority support is a strategic project of the Republican Party. There is no apparent bottom to what Trump and the Republican Party will do to destroy political opposition to Trump by the American people.

For starters, the United States Senate should be shut down next week unless Sen. McConnell agrees to deferring the Supreme Court hearing and vote until the next Congress in 2019.

Trump Escalates Republican War Against Voting in Cuckoo Recount Effort

Jacob Lawrence - from the Migration Series (1940–41)

Updated - Madison, Wisconsin — In modern America, the Republican Party's war against voters is waged as a full-spectrum assault against liberty, accelerating in the last ten years.

Destroying black and brown lives, stripping human beings of dignity and liberty, have long been sport for white folks here. But Republicans have escalated  systemic destruction of the foundational right to cast votes (see Article III, Wisconsin Constitution; Ballotpedia).

Trump's new effort to ultimately convince courts to declare that 100,000s of voters' ballots are illegal is the latest of this anti-human project.

Trump's campaign gives County Canvassing Boards names of disfavored voters and says, throw out these ballots.

Extreme action for certain, but business as usual in a broader sense.

I worked as a Wisconsin election inspector (poll worker), for some 60 shifts between 1998 and 2016.

It used to be funny — because it was pathetic — to witness the sudden chill in the room, uncomfortable shifting in chairs, worried expressions of white poll workers morphing into grimaces bordering on disbelief as young black men entered the polling place in the morning shift at the old Fire Station Number Two in Fitchburg, Wisconsin (Alder Dist One).

Well, who can blame the white folks? 

You should have seen the voters' black hair, dark-brown skin, often adorned in golden jewelry and tight dark tee-shirts of I don't know what. You know what they do, who they are. 

And our white votes get cancelled out by these guys?

It's the way it is.

White poll workers and the Fitchburg City Clerk's office were not amused by black folks. In fact, they were hostile to anyone who reported Fitchburg racism. I know. [By the way, anecdotal reports from the 2020 presidential general elections indicate the voting experience is getting better now.]

This is Wisconsin, so it may surprise readers what one becomes inured to, but from a first-person stand-point, I can say I tried to alert the political world about Fitchburg. See also Kaleem Caire, president and CEO of One City Learning Centers, and his experience with Fitchburg.

Nothing surprises me here.

Trump's latest absurd forays into obliterating swaths of voters can be seen as a continuation of white efforts to troll black and brown folks, ongoing Republican work to transform election law to stop non-Republican voters and a heightened operation against entire jurisdictions such as Dane County and Milwaukee County. (See Beck, Glauber and Marley, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Nichols, The Capital Times).

In 2016, in the voting rights litigation, One Wis­con­sin Insti­tute v. Thom­sen, much Repub­li­can vot­er-obstruc­tion leg­is­la­tion was swept away, opening up metro voting districts to help voters vote and have those votes count.

Of course the Republican legal empire struck back.

In June 2020, Judge Frank Easterbrook, from the Seventh Circuit, using his propensity to play loose with facts, penned Luft v Evers; One Wisconsin Institute, Inc. v Jacobs, (Nos. 16-3003, 16-3052), (Marley, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).

Easterbrook reinstated most of the Republican-enacted restrictions on early voting.

Easterbrook sees no racism in Republicans' Wisconsin election law, as long the Republican Party's animus toward minorities includes an animus toward Democrats. A bizarre judicial doctrine.

Crazy is the order of the day.

You hear about the Trump campaign attorney heading up the stop-the-ballots effort here? 

Trump's lead attorney, Jim Troupis, and his wife's votes would be invalidated, were Trump to prevail in his current recount-and-stop ballots efforts in Wisconsin (see Beck, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and Law and Crime). 

This is because Trump wants early voting, (in-person, absentee), votes invalidated in Dane and Milwaukee counties. 

One can think of a few Due Process and Equal Protection problems with Trump's sought-after remedy for an imagined injury at the hands of Dane and Milwaukee counties.

Bear in mind, limiting early voting and racial intent and effect in Republican efforts to halt voting in jurisdictions where black and brown people live is fine, [no Constitutional problems], with Easterbrook.

But even Easterbrook, were this case to reach the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, would recoil.

It's crazy time in Wisconsin, but crazy is pretty much standard-going the last ten years, and is consistent with Wisconsin's secular religion: Most white folks really don't like black and brown people very much.

Bernie Sanders Calls for Progressives' Election as Means to Defeat Trump

Will the Democratic Party establishment wake up and work for progressives in this Blue Wave year?

Democratic primaries in the coming weeks will tell, including in key states Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Ohio

In Ohio, Dennis Kucinich (with Tara Samples) is running for the Democratic Party's nomination for governor. The election is May 8.

Kucinich is backed by Our Revolution, a non-profit progeny of Bernie Sanders' 2016 run for the presidency. In a rational political culture, Our Revolution's endorsement would give the primary election to Kucinich.

The failed War on Drugs has destroyed communities, filled prisons and cost taxpayers millions.

More and more states are doing their part to restore sense, compassion and fairness to their criminal justice systems. It's time Ohio did the same. #OHGov https://t.co/ggMQ0dnEjr

— Dennis Kucinich (@Dennis_Kucinich) May 1, 2018

Tune in next Tuesday night at MSNBC to watch the results come in.

Pennsylvania

In Pennsylvania, Bernie Sanders has made three endorsements—John Fetterman for Lieutenant Governor, Greg Edwards for Congress, and Jess King for Congress. (The race for governor is widely seen as a likely win for Democratic incumbent Tom Wolfe).

The Pennsylvania election is May 15.

From a fundraising email from Bernie Sanders:

If we are going to defeat right-wing Republicans in 2018 and 2020, we need to win in states that Trump won, like Pennsylvania. And, in my view, the only way we win in those states is by supporting progressive candidates who have the guts to defend working-class families - white, black, Latino, Asian American, Native American - and take on the power and greed of the billionaire class.

Here's some very good news. In Pennsylvania there are three strong progressive candidates who can win their primary fights and win the general election.

As you know, Donald Trump represents something we have never seen before in the history of the United States. It is not just that he represents the interests of the wealthy and powerful. It's that we have never had a president with more authoritarian tendencies than him.

The 2018 midterm elections will be long remembered as a pivotal moment in American history because, if we are successful, we can put an end to the disastrous Trump agenda. If we are not, we will have at least two more years of a rapid shift toward authoritarianism, the further normalization of corruption and the continued rise of oligarchy.

But we cannot defeat Trump and the Republican Party with the same playbook, or by supporting the same kind of candidates long favored by the political establishment and financial elite. That is how we got to where we are today.

That is why I am traveling to Pennsylvania later this week to support three strong progressive candidates: John Fetterman for Lieutenant Governor, Greg Edwards for Congress, and Jess King for Congress. Their primaries are on May 15, and they need your help now. So here is the part where I ask:

This is our chance to elect three great progressives who will help lead the fight against Donald Trump and the dangerous Republican agenda. They need our help to win in Pennsylvania.

Our job in 2018 is to take on and defeat Trump's authoritarianism, xenophobia, racism, sexism, homophobia and religious bigotry. But we can only do that if we run candidates who can rally the American people around an agenda that works for them, not the billionaire class.

For more than a decade now, John Fetterman has been an outstanding progressive leader in Pennsylvania. From early in his career he has stood with the working families of the state as he advocated for a $15 per hour minimum wage, Medicare for all, marriage equality and ending the failed war on drugs. He has been an outspoken defender of women’s health, immigrant rights, racial justice and LGBTQ equality.

For the past 25 years, Greg Edwards has worked tirelessly to organize for justice in health care, education and economic dignity. The powerful grassroots movement behind Greg Edwards is championing Medicare for all, universal pre-k, debt-free college and raising the minimum wage, and he is living his values of unwavering inclusion by building the diverse coalition Democrats need to win in his district.

Jess King has seen firsthand how the biggest corporations have hurt workers and squashed competition. In Congress, she will work to pass Medicare for all, rein in Wall Street, break up corporate monopolies, and support the real job creators: small businesses in our local economies.

These are three great candidates you can be proud to support. Candidates like John, Greg and Jess will help us stop Trump while ushering in an era of strong progressive change in this country. Thank you for supporting them. They need our help.

In Solidarity,

Bernie Sanders

Trump Adminstration Flies Under Color of Alt Right; Denied Holocaust Gassing During Passover

Zyklon B labels shown as evidence at the Nuremberg trials
The first and third panels contain the German Pest Control Company
emblem and the brand name Zyklon. The center
panel reads "Poison Gas!" "Cyanide Preparation! [skull and crossbones]
to be opened and used only by trained personnel."
The labels were used as evidence at the
International Military Tribunal trial of war criminals at Nuremberg.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of
National Archives and Records Administration, College Park

Holocaust Remembrance Day, (Yom Hashoah), this year is April 24. It would be fitting to do something, say something, express something as an openly anti-Semitic Trump adminstration stains the world.

Update: See (Fandos, Landler, NYT).

Each new utterance on the Holocaust by Trump administration officials should lead thinking people to question the very decency of the American presidency.

This week, the latest imbecilic Holocaust rant emitted during Passover by White House spokesperson, Sean Spicer, follows by weeks the series of prepared anti-Semitic histrionics by high-level administration staffers during International Holocaust Remembrance Day in January, and subsequent Holocaust-related follow-up statements in January and February that shocked the world, (Mal Contends).

Trump had campaigned in the months leading to the November 2016 Election Day using anti-Semitic tropes, drawing a respectfully appalled response in the American political culture.

At a White House briefing this week, Spicer justified the missile strike in Syria by falsely claiming even Hitler didn't use chemical weapons.

From NYT: " ... misconstruing the facts of the Holocaust — Nazi Germany’s brutally efficient, carefully orchestrated extermination of six million Jews and others — Mr. Spicer instead drew a torrent of criticism and added to the perception that the Trump White House lacks sensitivity and has a tenuous grasp of history."

Madness. Calls for Spicer's resignation abound.

White House spokesperson Sean Spicer raises
outcry with talk of Hitler, Assad
and Poison Gas (Fandos, Landler, NYT)

That the Trump adminstration—already staffed with anti-Semites, white supremacists and Alt Right crazies—has neither a fundamental understanding nor a decent appreciation of the Holocaust should lead to an intimidate eight-day halt of non-vital United States government operations. Spicer's resignation is not enough.

Spcier's comments are not a communication problem, not a mistake, they evince an indecent administration.

Every member of Congress should refuse to enter their offices and the Capitol, and district offices. As well, the closing of all Congressional offices is warranted until a full accounting by the Trump adminstration is accomplished.

This won't happen of course, the rightwing crazies and white supremacists hold sway in the United States, and resistance is weakening.

Notes Alex Emmons in The Intercept, whose text is reproduced below:

While defending Donald Trump’s strike in Syria, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters on Tuesday that not even Adolf Hitler used chemical weapons during the World War II.

'You had a — someone as despicable as Hitler — who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons. So you have to, if you’re Russia, ask yourself is this is a country and a regime that you want to align yourself with?'

When asked for clarification, Spicer said that he meant dropping chemical weapons on unsuspecting towns of Germans.

'When it comes to Sarin gas, he was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Ashad [sic] was doing. … He brought them into the Holocaust center, I understand that.'

Spicer continued:

'In the way that Assad used them, where he went to towns, dropped them down to innocents — into the middle of towns — I appreciate the clarification there, that was not the intent.'

After the news conference, Spicer issued yet another statement, this one in writing:"In no way was I trying to lessen the horrendous nature of the Holocaust, however, I was trying to draw a contrast of the tactic of using airplanes to drop chemical weapons on innocent people."

[For the edification of the Trump administrator:] According to the American Chemical Society, Hitler stockpiled large amounts of Sarin gas during the Second World War, but never used them on a European battlefield.

But it is common knowledge that poison gas was his method of choice for the mass murder of Jews, LGBT people, and others during the Holocaust. More than a million people were killed by the poison gas Zyklon B — a derivative of cyanide — at the Auschwitz camp alone.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates that Hitler’s overall death toll includes as many as 6 million Jews, over 7 million non-Jewish Soviet citizens, nearly 2 million non-Jewish Polish civilians, people with disabilities, Gypsies, and an undetermined number of political prisoners and LGBT people.

Artist and intellectuals risked their lives in NAZI-occupied territories in expressing opposition to fascists, militarism and genocide, (a word  did not exist prior to 1944, during World War II). Their work lives today.

Today, the Trump adminstration is launching a war on art, Only fools laugh at the future:

George Grosz, God of War, 1940 - Fear of the Other

Recall the anti-Semitic nature of he Trump adminstration revealed in January, (Mal Contends):

George Grosz, God of War, 1940 -
Fear of the Other

The White House failure to mention the destruction of European Jews and anti-Semitism in its statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day occurred because the White House is "incredibly inclusive" and takes "into account all of those who suffered," White House spokesperson Hope Hicks said in remarks to CNN this weekend, (Tapper, CNN).

The explanation by Hicks pleads that so many millions were slaughtered in the Holocaust that mentioning the European Jews is not consonant with the stated White House commitment to inclusion.

That Hicks' remarks are nonsense threatens to blow into a controversy the likes of which not even Trump has yet seen.

Millions of Americans openly assert Trump is a fascist and white supremacist, abetted by white supremacist and chief White House political advisor, Stephen K. Bannon.

The mission of International Holocaust Remembrance Day is to bear witness today, and the suggestion that inclusion compels the White House to not mention Jews and anti-Semitism is scandalous.

Writes CNN's Jake Tapper:

The presidential reference to the 'innocent people' victimized by the Nazis without a mention of Jews or anti-Semitism by the White House on International Holocaust Remembrance Day was a stark contrast to statements by former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Anti-Defamation League Director Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted that the "@WhiteHouse statement on #HolocaustMemorialDay, misses that it was six million Jews who perished, not just 'innocent people' and 'Puzzling and troubling @WhiteHouse #HolocaustMemorialDay stmt has no mention of Jews. GOP and Dem. presidents have done so in the past.'

Asked about the White House explanation that the President didn't want to exclude any of the other groups Nazis killed by specifically mentioning Jews, Greenblatt told CNN that the United Nations established International Holocaust Remembrance Day not only because of Holocaust denial but also because so many countries -- Iran, Russia, Poland, and Hungary, for example -- specifically refuse to acknowledge Hitler's attempt to exterminate Jews, 'opting instead to talk about generic suffering rather than recognizing this catastrophic incident for what is was: the intended genocide of the Jewish people.' 

The latest [January 2016] outrage by the White House follows Trump's executive order banning Muslims from seven countries from entering the United States in an act that signals Trump's open commitment to racism and Islamophobia as official policy.

Bernie for Democracy; Trump for Racism and Birtherism

This is the golden age of political journalism, fortuitous as we are able to witness the slow-motion downfall of American democracy and efforts to save it.

All in with Chris Hayes, The Rachel Maddow Show (TRMS) and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell feature a murderers' row of political analysis.

Yesterday is typical.

Amid the same traitor-terrorist-treason-socialist dictator rhetoric (joined in by Hillary Clinton's SuperPAC this accelerated election cycle) as the last presidential election comes two polar opposite on the mantel of simple decency: Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.

Sanders and Trump meeting in the general election is a distinct possibility as Clinton has again misread the election. This is not a 'change' election, it's a 'we're-sick-of your-shit' election.

TRMS and Sanders

Bernie Sanders offers a compelling defense of government for the people and by the people on TRMS in an exclusive interview.

Sanders excoriates the American rightwing accusing conservatives of 'a concerted attack against every major public institution.'

Video below.

Lawrence O'Donnell Show and Trump's Birtherism Comes Back

At the Lawrence O'Donnell show a piece features Donald Trump resorting to birtherism again yesterday in an extemporaneous, unscripted question-and-answer event in Rochester, New Hampshire. (Second video below)

Trump said before the very first question at the Rochester event, "This man, I like this guy," referring to the questioner.

The questioner said, "We have a problem in this country, it’s called Muslims. Our current President is one. We know he’s not even an American."

Trump responded, "We need this question," and laughed.

"We have [Muslim] training camps growing where when they want to kill us. That's my question, when can we get rid of it," the questioner asked Trump.

No problem.

Responding to the question, Trump said, "We're going to be looking at a lot of different things. A lot of people are saying that and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there. We're going to be looking at that and plenty of other things."

Somehow I really didn't expect Trump to call the guy a nut-job, racist, and an indecent human being. If there were ever time for Trump's insults, it was at this event in Rochester New Hampshire. (Tuohy, New Hampshire Union Leader)

McCain

O'Donnell noted a similar occurrence in 2008 and contrasted Trump's response with the response by Sen. John McCain who shot down a bigoted question in a similar setting when a woman said to McCain, "I don't trust Obama. I have read about him. He's an Arab." (another bad thing, to this woman's mind)

Reports CBS News in October 2008:

McCain shook his head in disagreement, and said:
'No, ma'am. He's a decent, family man, citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with (him) on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign is all about.'

O'Donnell's segment featured an interview with Trump’s Iowa campaign co-chair, Tana Goertz, who proceeded to melt under O'Donnell's questioning.

Trump's campaign released a statement to O'Donnell reading, "Christians need support in this country. Their religious liberty is at stake."

Incredible, no it's America today.

---
Bernie Sanders Interviewed on TRMS

Lawrence O'Donnell Show and Trump's Birtherism Comes Back

McCain 2008 Campaign Manager and Strategist Renounces Republican Party, Resigns Membership

The systemic sacrifice of children has begun
as calls for feeding the young to MAGA are
heeded. The Flight of Moloch - by
William Blake
America über alles

Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell singled out as indecent

Steve Schmidt, Republican Party strategist and an architect of two presidential campaigns, has publicly renounced the Republican Party, vowing to align with the Democratic Party to fight against the "the party of Trump."

Schmidt made his comments on social media Wednesday morning as the number of children taken from parents by the U.S. government has now exceeded 11,000.

Steve Schmidt said the Republican Party has become "corrupt, indecent, and immoral" and "filled with feckless cowards who disgrace and dishonor the legacies of the party’s greatest leaders."

Singling out House Speaker Paul Ryan (R) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R), Schmidt said former Republican Party standard bearer, President Ronald Reagan, would be "ashamed of McConnell and Ryan and all the rest ... ."

29 years and nine months ago I registered to vote and became a member of The Republican Party which was founded in 1854 to oppose slavery and stand for the dignity of human life. Today I renounce my membership in the Republican Party. It is fully the party of Trump.

— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) June 20, 2018

It is corrupt, indecent and immoral. With the exception of a few Governors like Baker, Hogan and Kasich it is filled with feckless cowards who disgrace and dishonor the legacies of the party’s greatest leaders. This child separation policy is connected to the worst abuses of

— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) June 20, 2018

Humanity in our history. It is connected by the same evil that separated families during slavery and dislocated tribes and broke up Native American families. It is immoral and must be repudiated. Our country is in trouble. Our politics are badly broken. The first step to a

— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) June 20, 2018

Season of renewal in our land is the absolute and utter repudiation of Trump and his vile enablers in the 2018 election by electing Democratic majorities. I do not say this as an advocate of a progressive agenda. I say it as someone who retains belief in DEMOCRACY and decency.

— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) June 20, 2018

On Ronald Reagan’s grave are these words. “ I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph and there is purpose and worth to each and every life.” He would be ashamed of McConnell and Ryan and all the rest while this corrupt government

— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) June 20, 2018

Meanwhile, intellectuals and writers continue to sound the alarm the United States is entering a period of domestic fascism and state violence formerly reserved for its black citizens and Native Americans.

"All mass crimes in history start with a justification, a necessity rationalization, a sick form of nationalism and racism," notes The Intercept.

Last night as the AP broke the story the Trump administration had erected special internment camps for infants and toddlers, Rachel Maddow broke into tears at the end of her news show as she handed over MSNBC coverage to the Lawrence O'Donnell Show.

MSNBC and NBC News have stationed dozens of reporters and producers in the American south as each day newscasts seem more like a bearing of witness as the U.S. government attempts to hide locations and operations of secret holding facilities housing the children taken from parents.

The Trump administration signals that its child-snatching regime is a complex that is built to last.

The number of children stolen from their parents by the United States government now exceeds 11,000.

Just heard from @HHSGov again:

Of the 11,786 minors currently in the unaccompanied alien children program, 3,280 are female and 8,506 are male.

We still don’t have photos of or acces to any girls or toddlers.

— Jacob Soboroff (@jacobsoboroff) June 19, 2018

No need for Rachel Maddow to apologize as most of America is right behind her.
---
Sacrificing our children as Moloch calls.

By Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)

Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars!
Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies!
Old men weeping in the parks!
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch!
Moloch the loveless!
Mental Moloch!
Moloch the heavy judger of men!
Moloch the incomprehensible prison!
Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows!
---

When Moloch calls for the sacrifice of children, religious mania is ever-present in America's DNA. Those without character round up children in a ritual sacrifice requiring the ascent of 1,000s. No member of ICE has dissented and spoken out.
---
"The religion of Moloch — as such creeds may be generically called — is in essence the cringing submission of the slave, who dare not, even in his heart, allow the thought that his master deserves no adulation. Since the independence of ideals is not yet acknowledged, Power may be freely worshipped, and receive an unlimited respect, despite its wanton infliction of pain."
— Bertrand Russell, A Free Man's Worship (1903)

Social Science: Trump Voters Are Racist, Human Filth

Madison, Wisconsin — Mehdi Hasan has a piece in The Intercept establishing a fact many national Democratic Party leaders wish to avoid.

In Wisconsin and other states where Donald Trump outperformed expectations in the 2016 election, racism was the driving force, accumulating social scientific data shows.

Put another way: Trump voters hate blacks, immigrants and Muslims. Not as obvious as the reader may believe. Few wish to acknowledge this truism.

Notes Hasen:

Other surveys and polls of Trump voters found "a strong relationship between anti-black attitudes and support for Trump"; Trump supporters being 'more likely to describe African Americans as "criminal," "unintelligent," "lazy" and "violent"'; more likely to believe "people of color are taking white jobs"; and a "majority" of them rating blacks "as less evolved than whites." Sorry, but how can any of these prejudices be blamed on free trade or low wages? ...

Always remember: You have to identify the disease before you can begin work on a cure. In the case of support for Donald Trump, the results are in: It isn’t the economy. It’s the racism, stupid.

Hasan's work is spot-on, his piece is a must-read.

Made me think of Trump last August appearing in east-central Wisconsin in the white homeland of West Bend in Washington County, (Mal Contends), (Alcindor, NYT). [Used to drive to West Bend with my mom from Fond du Lac to buy new cooking utensils in the summers. She loved it, never could comprehend why.]

Reported Yamiche Alcindor in the Times last year:

Jack Beck, 65, a retired bricklayer who lives in West Bend, said he planned to vote for Mr. Trump and did not blame him for making a low-key stop in Milwaukee, given the city’s racial tensions.

'Every night in Milwaukee, there is someone being shot, and they make nothing of that until a cop is involved, and then all of a sudden it’s always blamed on the cop,' said Mr. Beck, who added that he hoped West Bend’s black population would not increase. He tied much of the unrest in Milwaukee to his belief that black residents do not want to work hard and instead want to use police killings to get handouts from the government.

Imbeciles like Jack Black propelled Trump to a win in Wisconsin, though the depressed Milwaukee vote, that urban vote, helped as well, courtesy of Republican statewide voter-suppression efforts that transformed Wisconsin election law in six years since 2011

In Wisconsin, a Republican cannot wring more white votes out of the white WOW counties next to Milwaukee County. WOW is an acronym for Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington counties or White-on-White as we say at Mal Contends, (New Republic), (Jackson, Boston Globe).

Trump carried Washington County by 30,875 votes in 2016. In 2012, Romney won Washington County by 31,573 votes.

But if West Bend's Jack Black and his ilk had their way a Trump victory is not enough, we'd segregate blacks and then lock 'em up. Oh, that's right, we already do that.

Black Folks Flacking for Trump at MLK Holiday Events Disgrace Themselves

President* Donald J. Trump, with Alveda King, center, niece
of slain Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,
and joined by Isaac Newton Farris Jr., left, nephew of
Dr. King, and Bruce Levell of the National Diversity
Coalition for Trump, right, signs the Martin Luther King Jr.
National Historical Park Act, Monday, Jan. 8, 2018, aboard
Air Force One, in Atlanta, Ga.
(Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2018

President* Donald Trump is a vile, repulsive human being.

But Trump could not proceed in his reign without the help of a handful of black folks who flack for Trump against the cause of justice and equality.

This human garbage was brought out by the White House this last week.

Two presidential* events marking the 2018 Martin Luther King, Jr., federal holiday and the designation of King-related historic sites—during which only a reporter's shouted and unanswered questions brought up Trump's racism—tell the story of black collaborators with Trump, (White House Jan 12 remarks at signing of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day proclamation; Roosevelt Room; Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park Act of 2017, (H.R.267 — 115th Congress (2017-2018); President Donald J. Trump Signs H.R. 267 into Law, Jan 8, 2018).

For example, at the the Jan 8, 2018 event aboard Air Force One, three black attendees flacking for Trump are Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King Jr., Isaac Newton Farris Jr., nephew of Dr. King, and Bruce Levell of the National Diversity Coalition for Trump, (White House).

Said Farris at the Jan 12 remarks at the presidential* King-holiday proclamation:

So, President Trump, thank you for taking the time to acknowledge this day. Thank you for remembering that we’re all Americans and, on this day, we should be united and love for all Americans.

Love? Right

Then there's the worst of the black Trump flacks: Alveda King.

"I do not believe President Donald John Trump is a racist. The economy’s up. Jobs are up in the black community. There is great promise to get a lot of people who have been unfairly incarcerated out," Alveda King told 'Fox and Friends' today, continuing her flacking for the most racist president in American history, (Washington Examiner).

See The Root for more commentary on this garbage.

Today, Trump will observe King's holiday at his golf course.

And from 2012:

An 'extremely credible source' has called my office and told me that @BarackObama's birth certificate is a fraud.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 6, 2012

Maybe Alveda and Isaac Newton Farris will look up the source and set the record straight.

Fascism Today

Hundreds marched for peace and children in Madison,
Wisconsin on August 26 2017. Marchers led by youth
questioned the necessity of police and criminals
shooting them, saying, "I want to live."
Photo by Paul McMahon, (Heartland Images)

Madison, Wisconsin — At some future point in American intellectual life, racism will be recognized as a deranged condition, indexed in psychopathology and the political annals of lunacy.

Putting aside the inherent problems in the psychiatric field working by metaphor and abstraction, a belief in race is delusional and is a dangerous pathology.

The abiding belief in race and the anti-human behavior this delusion causes is not dysfunctional in American society.

The resurgence of American racism led by Donald Trump today builds upon the ideological ground on which America was founded: Genocide, social dominance, enslavement and terror. Trump is in a sense the logical inheritor of American racism.

It behooves the reader to consider the foundational aspects of deadly and torturous racism when one reads the daily ravings emitted from the White House, because oppression and control of ethnic minorities is as American as the military-industrial state.

On the up side, Paul Krugman has his swing back for some time now.

His piece in today's New York Times is a joy:

As sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz., Joe Arpaio engaged in blatant racial discrimination. His officers systematically targeted Latinos, often arresting them on spurious charges and at least sometimes beating them up when they questioned those charges. Read the report from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, and prepare to be horrified.

Once Latinos were arrested, bad things happened to them. Many were sent to Tent City, which Arpaio himself proudly called a 'concentration camp,' where they lived under brutal conditions, with temperatures inside the tents sometimes rising to 145 degrees.

And when he received court orders to stop these practices, he simply ignored them, which led to his eventual conviction — after decades in office — for contempt of court. But he had friends in high places, indeed in the highest of places. We now know that Donald Trump tried to get the Justice Department to drop the case against Arpaio, a clear case of attempted obstruction of justice. And when that ploy failed, Trump, who had already suggested that Arpaio was 'convicted for doing his job,' pardoned him.

By the way, about 'doing his job,' it turns out that Arpaio’s officers were too busy rounding up brown-skinned people and investigating President Barack Obama’s birth certificate to do other things, like investigate cases of sexually abused children. Priorities!

Let’s call things by their proper names here. Arpaio is, of course, a white supremacist. But he’s more than that. There’s a word for political regimes that round up members of minority groups and send them to concentration camps, while rejecting the rule of law: What Arpaio brought to Maricopa, and what the president of the United States has just endorsed, was fascism, American style.

Fascism has been here for some time.

Trump just targeted elite sectors of American society positioned and inclined to fight back.