Fear, Division and Hope

Breathing Lessons:  Another day in Trump America.  The demonstrations continued. The huge crowd that passed through my neighborhood on its way back downtown after a stop at the Mayor’s Gracie Mansion residence was boisterous, largely masked and impressively peaceful and trailed by a large police contingent. In NYC, despite some testy moments, it appears that the Mayor and Police Commissioner finally raised their game and that the combination of an earlier curfew, albeit one that many ignored, combined with a more effective policing of looters resulted in a more peaceful day where the focus was on the demonstrators' message rather than looting and mayhem.  Things in Washington DC continued to be surreal.  With the help of his trusty lieutenant Attorney General Barr, who keeps exceeding Trump’s expectations every day, a bizarre “police” force was cobbled together to “protect” the streets of the nation’s capital from the largely peaceful demonstrators who responded to Monday evenings gas attacks by showing up in even larger numbers.  With a number of states refusing to lend any of their National Guard troops to Trump and Barr’s efforts, the group “protecting” the capitol from the demonstrators now appears to include “soldiers” from forces as varied and inappropriate as the Customs and Border Patrol, the Drug Enforcement Agency and some unidentified, heavily armed and masked figures who some cynics suggested, without evidence, might even be mercenaries from Betsy DeVos’ brother Erik Prince’s crowd at Blackwater.  That’s probably not true, but is entirely believable given Trump’s law and order posture and his tweet cries for DOMINATION! The insecure, megalomaniac and his abettors also called in the heavy hardware because we know how much Trump loves tanks and flyovers.  Trump’s willingness to use military means to suppress demonstrators hasn’t gone unnoticed overseas and north of the border.  The usually composed and articulate Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau had such a hard time composing an answer to a question about Trump’s actions that didn’t involve four letter words that he stood silent for almost a minute while he did his best not to say what he was thinking.  Chinese authorities didn’t restrain their glee, they went on the offensive, questioning Trump’s right to criticize their repressive actions in Hong Kong and with their minorities pointing out that he’s lost any moral high ground now that he’s tossing tear gas at peaceful demonstrators to facilitate photo ops.  As to that tear gas, Trump’s minions insist that it wasn’t tear gas, just some other crowd control material that makes you choke and want to tear your eyes out, as if that’s a defense.  And, responding to huge criticism from within the military, Secretary of Defense Esper actually claimed that he had no idea that Trump’s Monday march to St John’s Church was an orchestrated effort for the Trump campaign video that almost immediately went out to Trump’s base.  Instead he insists that he thought he was heading to the church to inspect toilet facilities that had been damaged during Sunday night looting.  You can’t make this crap up.  As to the orchestration of the St John’s visit, with criticism mounting, everyone in the White House appears to be pointing the finger at someone else.  Chief of Staff Meadows claims that the whole thing was Ivanka and Hope Hick’s idea with the first daughter getting credit for the Bible lifting exercise.  Apparently she carried the holy book across the street in her very expensive, large white designer tote.  As to the “not tear gas,” tear gas, apparently it was administered at the direction of Attorney General Barr who was dismayed to see that those inconvenient peaceful demonstrators had overstayed their curfew and were blocking Trump’s path to the church.  

Inflection Point? When asked about Trump’s assault on the demonstrators, most Republican Senators responded with a combination of “what are you talking about” or “I was too busy to notice” or complete silence though a few, did express some mild dismay.  In addition to the usually “concerned” Susan Collins, that list included Ben Sasse, who said that he was “against clearing out a peaceful protest for a photo op that treats the Word of God as a political prop,” and Lisa Murkowski who said  “what we saw last night was not the America I know.”  They said that while heading into the Senate chamber to vote for another one of Trump’s unqualified nominees.  Its also been reported that senior military officials are growing uncomfortable with Trump’s threat to send the military into those states that need “help” suppressing demonstrators and looters.  However, it’s still not clear if any of the ones that matter are willing to do anything about it, although  a former top policy official at the Pentagon, James Miller, resigned from his role on the Defense Advisory Board yesterday, citing Defense Secretary Esper's visible support for law enforcement officers’ clearing of protesters from Lafayette Square and Mike Mullen, a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, published an op-ed in The Atlantic yesterday entitled “I Cannot Remain Silent, our fellow citizens are not the enemy, and must never become so.” He goes on to say “I have to date been reticent to speak out on issues surrounding Trump's leadership, but we are at an inflection point, and the events of the past few weeks have made it impossible to remain silent.”  He added “Whatever Trump's goal in conducting his visit, he laid bare his disdain for the rights of peaceful protest in this country, gave succor to the leaders of other countries who take comfort in our domestic strife, and risked further politicizing the men and women of our armed forces.”   He’s not the only one speaking out, George Bush who is usually hesitant to speak out about his successors released a statement saying “protests are a strength of America, adding those who set out to silence those voices do not understand the meaning of America or how it becomes a better place.” None of those statements are likely to influence Trump who spent part of yesterday demonstrating his faux religiosity some more by visiting the Saint John Paul II National Shrine adjacent to the Catholic University of America.  During that visit, which was condemned by Washington Archbishop Wilton Gregory, who said he found it ”baffling and reprehensible that any Catholic facility would allow itself to be so egregiously misused and manipulated in a fashion that violates our religious principles, which call us to defend the rights of all people even those with whom we might disagree,” Trump was overheard pushing a dour faced Melania to smile. 

Politics Unusual: For his part, Joe Biden who unsurprisingly won seven more primaries yesterday, taking him closer to officially clinching the Democratic nomination, delivered an, “impassioned” speech in Philadelphia yesterday where he criticized Trump’s divisiveness while laying out several plans of his own for helping to heal the racial divide.  The contrast between Biden’s words and the monosyllabic crap and repetitive buzzwords that we’ve been hearing for the past three and one half years was stunning, even more impressive given that Biden is hardly the most skilled speaker out there.  In other primary news, racist Iowa Congressman Steve King will not be returning to the House next year, he lost to one of his Republican challengers.  That’s a good news/bad news scenario.  His loss makes it very unlikely that the Democrats will be able to win his heavily Republican seat, but at least King, who up until last year was actually viewed as an important Iowa “kingmaker” for aspiring Republican presidential candidates, is out. In other Iowa news Theresa Greenfield won the Democratic Senatorial primary and will now run against Republican Senator Joni Ernst. Though Ernst retains an edge, it’s not considered insurmountable, Greenfield is viewed as a strong challenger for the seat.  And it now looks like the Republicans will have a bifurcated convention.  The boring procedural stuff will take place in Charlotte, North Carolina but because that state’s Democratic Governor refuses to commit to allow 50,000 virus spreaders to show up in August, the loud, virus spreading stuff will take place in some other as yet undesignated locale, likely in a Republican stronghold where virus concerns don’t matter.  As to COVID, despite all the focus on the demonstrations it’s important to note that while Trump has stopped holding regular meetings with his virus taskforce because he so over that stuff, the virus is still out there, everywhere.