Trump, Israel, White Racists, Blood Libel, Myths and Storms on the Horizon

Emboldened American racists feel free to act out and display
antipathy towards those with dark complexions. The crowd
at the Make America Great Again rally in Minnesota on
June 22, 2018 joined the president in jeering and outrage.
Photo by Tom Brenner, the New York Times

Updated - America's chief racist pulled the United States out of the United Nations Human Rights Council, a nemesis of the worst human rights abusers such as Israel, the United States and the Gulf monarchies. But pick a state outside of Scandinavia and it's not clear world history is bending towards human rights.

Trump's asinine act is preceded by world criticism of the latest Israeli border massacre and the Israeli blood sport of shooting the legs off of Palestinian teenagers for laughs. The withdrawal also follows Trump's expansion of caging children and families and the United Nations calls for human rights for refugees seeking asylum in America, (Richard Falk, New York Times).

Since Trump began campaigning for president in 2015, his anti-Semitic tropes and myriad blood libels against selected groups have repulsed the narrow majority of Americans who can still be counted in the company of the decent. But the blood libel is escalating, (Krugman, New York Times).

Paul Krugman is alarmed:

The speed of America’s moral descent under Donald Trump is breathtaking. In a matter of months we’ve gone from a nation that stood for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to a nation that tears children from their parents and puts them in cages.

What’s almost equally remarkable about this plunge into barbarism is that it’s not a response to any actual problem. The mass influx of murderers and rapists that Trump talks about, the wave of crime committed by immigrants here (and, in his mind, refugees in Germany), are things that simply aren’t happening. They’re just sick fantasies being used to justify real atrocities.

And you know what this reminds me of? The history of anti-Semitism, a tale of prejudice fueled by myths and hoaxes that ended in genocide.

An open question is whether the logical extension of Trump's white supremacist blood libel — a Holocaust, a war — is on the horizons as Trump presents his evolving and incoherent warrant for genocide to American whites, Evangelicals, local municipal police and every Republican officeholder, all of whom comprise his base.

The former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper warned this week Trump's new and still-strong "zero-tolerance" policy is harming America's "international image," (CNN).

It's a ridiculous statement by Clapper who discusses moral atrocities by accessing effectiveness in transmitting public relations messages. Trump's detractors in the intelligence community are perhaps not the most effective human rights activists.
---
Trump's public relations messages at some point will not be enough for his base that will quickly veer out of Trump's control. The mindless mania of Trumpists require feeding, a blood sugar-high with screams, dismemberment and tangible displays of cruelty. Trump, from his perspective, was wrong to halt the emission of images of suffering and cruelty. His people love it.

Evangelicals and cops take to social media with malice, relishing the assaults against a black athlete like Sterling Brown with seven squad cars full of racist Milwaukee Police for a parking ticket infraction. Brown has filed a federal civil rights action against the cops and the city of Milwaukee, (Mal Contends).

Trump knows the appetites of his base and he seems to be enjoying the resulting spectacle of chaos and dehumanization that he daily feeds our country.

This is not the time to be on the sidelines.

History may show the Summer of 2018 as one of the most consequential periods in the life of America.

Trump's unite-the-right project has targeted human beings for banishment, imprisonment and extermination, no less.

The capacity of decent people, people like Steve Schmidt, to speak out, to act is the margin of mitigation and is necessary for the reversal of Trump's Make America Great Again (MAGA) project.

MAGA fascists are like Trump, a fearful people. Blacks, Browns, Muslims, anything different from their limited experience and alien to their closed minds are feared.

Attempts to study human nature to explain the human susceptibility to fascism and authoritarian political movements are doomed. Psychology as a discipline has not advanced sufficiently to address the human condition.

Each individual mind must access the bellicose and malicious and the condition of others and make a decision on the relevancy of human suffering to one's life.

Consider the words of the British thinker, Bertrand Russell, on the objectives of a liberal education, an endeavor feared by Trumpists and MAGA minds of all stripes:

 "... to give a sense of the value of things other than domination, to help create wise citizens of a free community, and through the combination of citizenship with liberty in individual creativeness to enable men [and all genders] to give to human life that splendor which some few have shown that it can achieve." (Russell, Power: A New Social Analysis (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1938) p.319. Cited in Chomsky, Problems of Knowledge and Freedom, The Russell Lectures - (delivered in 1971), (New York: Pantheon Books, Random House) Introduction).

For a movement like MAGA dedicated to conquest and demonization following the worst traditions of America, human splendor, creativeness and liberty are to be feared in all realms of the human condition.

Trump's Followers as Are Repulsive as the Lunatic in the White House

Update: Five-thirty-eight.com, (Thomson-DeVeaux), concludes, "Right now, however, even though some white evangelical leaders have condemned Trump and the family separation policy, there’s no evidence that their followers are poised to turn on the president." Of course not. Opposing Trump involves thought or empathy, two qualities missing in the deluded white Christianite fundamentalists.

Notes Thomson-DeVeaux: "A 2017 poll from the Public Religion Research Institute that found that white evangelical Protestants were the only religious group in which a majority (57 percent) said they’re bothered when they encounter immigrants who don’t speak English. They were also the likeliest to say that they have little or nothing in common with immigrants."
 ---
We have never had a strutting, malignant narcissist as president, not like this.

Trump is so lost in his solipsistic delusions that he gazed longingly, and narrating his walk across a stage, began fondling an American flag after a talk because Trump loves America so much he couldn't contain himself.

Fox News Insider reported the spectacle like this: "President Trump showed his love for America on Tuesday in a video that has now gone viral."

Trumpists — the bigoted, vile bunch of white Evangelicals and racists who actually support this goon — are as ethically indictable as Trump or Trump TV.

Whether it's Kiron, Iowa or Kenosha, Wisconsin, Trump supporters are enabling this regime of cruelty and bedlam.

Not even the spectacle of 1,000s of children and babies being snatched, caged and trafficked across the country is sufficient to break support among followers because cruelty is the point behind most of Trump's support.

Cut these idiots off. If they own a business: Boycott it. If they live in your neighborhood: Avoid them. Oppose them in any decent way you can conceive.

Farron Cousins of the Ring of Fire is not surprised by anything Trump or his followers do or say.

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)

Cop Problem — NBA Player Sterling Brown Files Federal Civil Rights Action Against Cops and Milwaukee

Updated - "The NBA's Sterling Brown, who was tased and arrested earlier this year after an altercation stemming from a parking violation, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the city of Milwaukee, the police chief and the eight officers involved in his arrest," reports CNN.

"Key to the suit will be one of the officers' alleged social media posts, which appear to celebrate the actions of the officers, three of whom were suspended without pay. Though an initial police report described Brown as aggressive, Police Chief Alfonso Morales has since apologized for the officers' behavior, saying they acted 'inappropriately.' Mayor Tom Barrett said, 'No citizen should be treated this way.'

Sterling Brown found out the hard way Milwaukee Police are malignant and racist.

Morales treated the cop attack like a breach of etiquette. Barrett cried crocodile tears.

Named as defendants in the action are: POLICE ALFONSO MORALES, in his Official capacity, SERGEANT SEAN A. MAHNKE, SERGEANT JEFFREY S. KRUEGER, OFFICER JOSEPH J. GRAMS, OFFICER BOJAN SAMARDZIC, OFFICER JAMES P. COLLINS, OFFICER CRISTOBAL MARTINEZ AVILA, OFFICER ERIK A. ANDRADE, and OFFICER JASON P. JENSEN.

After tasing, beating and arresting Brown for a parking ticket, the cops took to social media to ridicule and belittle Brown.

From lawsuit filed today: One of the officers involved in the tazing of Milwaukee Buck Sterling Brown joked about the incident on Facebook and then - after Game 1 of the NBA finals - joked about doing the same thing to JR Smith pic.twitter.com/TK9MkgmlJv

— Wesley (@WesleyLowery) June 19, 2018

The portrait Sterling Brown's 40-page lawsuit (largely backed up by publicly available videos) paints of the Milwaukee officers who tazed him: needless escalation, bragging about overtime for beating someone up, coordinating their stories, racist FB posts pic.twitter.com/RrJKSxX4vv

— Wesley (@WesleyLowery) June 19, 2018

Brown in his civil rights complaint offers an indictment of the Wisconsin cop problem and systemic racism directed at citizens by racist cops.

Reads the complaint:

20. This imbalance in violence against African Americans by police officers is particularly rampant in the State of Wisconsin. Mesic et al., The Relationship Between Structural Racism and Black-White Disparities in Fatal Police Shootings at the State Level , 110, Journal of the National Medical Association, 106, 110 (2018). 21.

21. In Wisconsin, over fifteen unarmed African Americans are shot by police officers for every individual unarmed white person shot by a police officer.

In Wisconsin, racist cops thrive in the para-military goon squads because in part they enjoy the political protection of liberal mayors in Milwaukee and Madison.

Racist Milwaukee cops such as Erik A. Andrade openly ridiculed and mocked Brown because "he and other Defendant officers are allowed to engage in unlawful attacks and arrests of African Americans without justification and then relish such events without any fear of real discipline," the suits says, (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).

Gill v. Whitford — Court Opinions to Voters: Here's How You Win

In Wisconsin gerrymandering case, voters
have to wait while Republicans rampage.
Waiting image by Edward Hopper.

The United States Supreme Court did more than provide voters with a roadmap back to the Court in Gill v. Whitford, Wisconsin's gerrymandering case.

The four liberal judges' concurring opinion built a legal yellow-brick road and a fast-track for Wisconsin voters to prevail against the Republican state-election riggers, going so far as to suggest evidence, argument, type of plaintiff and harm claims that would presumably snag at least Justice Anthony Kennedy's vote.

That's a pretty good result from an order to remand to lower court that has Republicans pretending to ballyhoo.

The three-judge, lower-court panel, except for Federalist Society-linked, rightwing and corrupt Judge William Griesbach, will likely not be amused by Republican stalling this time around.

Wisconsin Republicans are lying about the no-decision, passing Roberts' opinion off as an unanimous decision on the merits, which it definitely is not, an indisputable fact that everyone except for Gov. Scott Walker (R) and Attorney General Brad Schimel (R) understands.

Gill v. Whitford is not a "reversal," as Schimel pretends. It's a do-over.

Concludes Chief Judge John Roberts: "The judgment of the District Court is vacated, and the case is  remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion," (p.22).

Further proceedings in this case means litigation at the three-judge panel in the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit jurisdiction, then directly back to United States Supreme Court.

Roberts went out of his way not to dismiss the claims, calling the claims "unsettled," (p.21) and unresolved. Kennedy likely forced this most-significant of concessions by Roberts. The two Soviet-minded justices, Thomas and Gorsuch, write in a concurring opinion they want the case dismissed.

Though Roberts frustrates voting rights by dismissing the argument that engineering one-party control of the legislature through gerrymandering is a mere "generalized" claim not sufficient for the Court to hear and decide, a ridiculous position, the take-away from Gill v. Whitford is obvious.

Roberts wants to decide the case, and wants a nationwide, precedent-setting (and narrow) remedy for voters getting the shaft on gerrymandering by craven state politicians.

Frustrating for sure, because now pro-democracy forces have to wait and Republican-appointed justices' forced a punt on a case they should have decided now.

But from a Supreme Court that is hostile to Due Process claims, perverse on the First Amendment and corrupted for Republican interests on political cases, there is ample reason in the opinions for voters to celebrate: A coming victory in a year or two assuming Anthony Kennedy does not retire.