an autodidact meets a dilettante…

dream, dream, dream

As I’ve often said, I’m lazily distracting myself by watching Trump’s downfall and commenting on it. I don’t seem to have the staying power at present to write anything too sciencey, and the Trump disaster is easy to attend to, though I must say I mute the TV or youtube every time the Trump comes on (isn’t it funny how the name itself smacks of the con man). I much prefer hearing about him second-hand. Again, though, I must say my prediction of him being out by the end of the year looks more of a dead cert than ever. It’s just a matter of the Mueller team having too much on their plates to digest. It’s likely they won’t have finished their meal by year’s end. But Trump may well have been spat out and into gaol by then. It depends of course on how Mueller organises his indictments – bottom up or top down. It could also be a bit of both.

But Trump is America’s tragedy. What happens, after all, once he and his family are ousted? The Presidency itself, the institution, will be seriously damaged. I’m sure the nation will manage to limp along until 2020, and a likely big turnaround in the mid-terms will largely put the nation’s affairs in safer hands, but new, tighter laws will have to be enacted, re nepotism, emoluments, financial disclosure, vetting of candidates for office, inter alia. These are essential to make the USA safe, and to allow it to be taken seriously again on the global stage.

Okay enough of the high-minded lecturing, let’s get down to wallowing in the grubby details. Everybody’s waiting for the next indictment or subpoena from the enquiry. Kushner? Trump Jr? Erik Prince? Roger Stone? Take your pick from these and a host of others. And what about this Stormy Daniels affair, another follow-the-money rib-tickler? Where do I begin?

A shady Lebanese-American wannabe mover-and-shaker, George Nader, has been questioned by the Mueller team, presumably primarily about a meeting in the Seychelles involving himself, an even shadier mover-and-shaker Erik Prince (an advisor to and supporter of Trump), and UAE diplomats with financial ties to Russia. There was apparently a dodgy Russian banker, Kirill Dmitriev, at the meeting as well. There’s little doubt that getting Prince to testify will reveal more dirt, but the team will have to make sure they know everything before asking the questions. I just wish I could listen in on what they do know.

Meanwhile there’s a special election in Pennsylvania and Trump has been there big-noting himself and insulting opponents, mostly women. He’s even promoted the idea of executing drug-dealers, because he’s a great admirer of Phillipines dictator Duterte. I’m currently reading Chasing the scream, a fast-paced narrative and denunciation of the disastrous war on drugs, but of course Trump doesn’t read, and certainly doesn’t care. He just likes the idea of killing people. I’m waiting for the result of this election, waiting for the next subpoena, the next indictment, waiting waiting…

I’m also hoping that women will play a major role in Trump’s downfall. I’m a little wary of the Me Too movement, having been falsely accused myself. True, I wasn’t accused by a woman, but it has taught me very effectively that accusations can be easily made, and with devastating consequences. But what the movement highlights is that, because of power imbalance, men have been treating women too badly for too long, and women are fighting back. It’s interesting to note that the Politico article just linked to cited recent research which ‘found women were nearly twice as likely as men to be deterred from running for office because of potentially having to engage in a negative campaign’. Such campaigns are what so many men like Trump choose naturally as their MO. And here’s another interesting quote, with an Australian theme:

In 2016, the Guardian published an analysis that found Hillary Clinton received abusive tweets at almost twice the rate of her Democratic primary opponent Bernie Sanders, while former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard, too, received about twice as much abuse as her male challenger, Kevin Rudd.

Actually, Rudd and Gillard belonged to the same party, but it’s probably right to describe them as opponents.

So I’m hoping that after the carnage of this Presidency, with Trump and his family in jail and his successor discredited, that the President after 2020 will be a woman. Obviously she will be a Democrat.

Elizabeth Warren has struck me as very impressive, from my still fairly minimal observations of her – a leftish liberal more palatable to the squeamish Americans than Sanders. After some more research I may write a piece about her. I certainly wouldn’t want any ‘celebrity’ female candidates running for office, and I suspect Hillary Clinton has done her dash.

As I slowly write, things keep happening. Rex Tillerson has been sacked. Silly man, he should’ve resigned long ago. I’ve had a bit of a fantasy in which all the top White House staffers and Trump appointees get together, decide enough is enough, and stage a mass resignation. It would actually be better for them – instead of being stuck in utterly thankless jobs, they’d come out of it as instantly employable for having the guts to take a stand. But of course, this would take organisation and co-ordination, and we’ve seen no evidence of that in this administration.

Finally, Putin has attempted to murder another Russian expatriate, along with his daughter. Many others have been poisoned too. Trump has belatedly come out in support of the British government’s rather tepid statement that Russia is ‘highly likely’ to be behind the nerve agent attack – though the whole statement is worth reading. Putin’s minions are saying that given Putin’s recent announcement that they’ve created some kind of super-weapon, it’s dangerous to accuse Russia of wrong-doing. To me, this is tantamount to an admission of guilt, and fairly solid proof of Monsieur Putain’s mafioso scumbag credentials. How to deal with this? Internationally and with unassailable solidarity. Russia has already been brought to its knees by Putin’s thievery, but we need to apply more pressure and provide as much support as we can to the millions of Russians who want to be freed of this scumbag so they can enter the adult world.

I’m a little disappointed that the Trump is still holding good at 40%, which should ensure he doesn’t get re-elected (yes yes, out of office by year’s end), it seems that only more indictments of the inner circle will drop him down below 35. Not sure if I mentioned this before, but I’m reading Chasing the scream, the racy but horrifyingly tragic bestseller by Johann Hari about the spectacularly disastrous ‘war on drugs’ in the USA and Mexico (disastrously forced on it by the US). The Trump recently threw red meat to his base by promoting the idea of execution for drug dealers (in the campaign for the Pennsylvania by-election, won by the Dems, haha), another know-nothing piece of squawking from someone who knows nothing but the idea of crushing, stamping, beating. It’s Mussolini without the hanging – yet.